The lunch was hastily pulled from the wagon and gulped in silence. The boys were at last convinced that something serious was really going on. In ten minutes they picked up their tools ready to start. Sturgis strung them out rather close together on a line leading to the lakes and himself disappeared into the brush to the westward.
For a while the boys worked in silence digging their little trenches and spreading the dirt on the leaves on the side toward the fire. When no immediate signs of the fire appeared they began to relax a little and call to one another.
“Do you really believe that fire can burn clear up here by this afternoon?” Scott called to Merton who was working next to him.
“Search me,” Merton called back. “Sturgis and Dan seem to think so and they must know. Doesn’t seem possible, does it?”
“No, not if we can judge by the way it was traveling this morning. Still, it was going some on the other side of that clearing.”
They had just about finished the ditch assigned them when Sturgis appeared again with Dan and two of the men.
“You haven’t any time to lose, fellows. Start the backfire there right at the edge of the trench. Then watch it like a hawk to see that no sparks blow over on you.”
He lighted a handful of leaves with a match and thrust them into the litter to start the fire in the brush. It was not a difficult task. The dry leaves and brush ignited readily and the fire spread rapidly. By picking up bunches of burning leaves and carrying them a little farther along the line the fire was soon spread over the entire distance from the road to the lakes. It ate back slowly against the wind and sparks were continually jumping the narrow space across the little break. Nor were they as easily handled as they had been in the early morning. Every spark which landed started a fire immediately and several times fires were started in dead pinetops which required the whole force to put them out. Dan and the men aided in the work where they were needed.
The boys found it hot and exciting work. The lack of sleep the night before, the ride in the springless wagon and the early morning work were beginning to tell on their untried muscles. Gradually as the front of fire crawled back farther from the trench fewer sparks were carried across and they were enabled to devote part of their time to putting out the dead stubs and wiping out every trace of inflammable material in the burned area.
The backfire had burned some hundred feet from the trench and yet there was no sign of the approach of the main fire other than the thick pall of smoke which the wind drove down close to the ground. It irritated their nostrils and stung their eyes, especially the smoke from the hardwood brush in the backfire, till the tears streamed down their faces.