Scott found himself enjoying a few minutes rest near Dan. “It seems as though this backfire would burn up more of the forest than the other one. Couldn’t you start it closer to the main fire?” he asked.
“You ain’t any too far away from it now,” Dan answered. “Listen.”
The crackling of the backfire near at hand made it hard to distinguish more distant sounds, but Scott could hear a dull roar which seemed to dominate everything like the base viol in an enormous orchestra and it was apparently growing rapidly louder. The dull boom of falling trees became more and more frequent. Suddenly, as he listened, this indistinct roar swelled to a terrific burst of thunder. It was like to nothing he had ever heard before, and yet in it he recognized the elements of a great fire, the same sound that he had heard in a big fireplace, but magnified so tremendously that it was almost beyond comprehension. His instinct was to run, run anywhere, no matter where, but he stood there too terrified to move.
His instinct was to run ... but he stood there too terrified to move.
“Ain’t she going some now?”
The calm voice close beside him brought him to his senses and the sight of Dan gazing unmoved at the opposite hill reassured him. He shuddered to think how near he had come to disgracing himself and laying himself open to the everlasting jibes of Bill Price. He felt the blood coming back into his pale face and was thankful for the soot which covered it. He tried to look unconcerned, but the frequent bursts of ever increased fury on the other side of the hill made him start in spite of himself.
“Will that little line of burned brush stop such a fire as that?” he asked as calmly as he could.
“Nothing would stop it up there,” Dan answered, “but she’ll slow up some when she gets to the top of that hill. How about starting the backfire a little closer to it?” he grinned.
Before Scott could answer the taunt the fire burst over the entire length of the ridge in front of them with one mighty, deafening roar and the red flames shot a hundred feet in the air. It was a sublime sight, those red flames shooting wildly up through the dense pall of black smoke but Scott would have felt more comfortable a mile or two away. The scant two hundred yards to the top of that ridge seemed as nothing in the face of that raging conflagration. A deer maddened with fright and blinded by the smoke, bursting through the backfire and dashing close to him in its flight, almost threw him into a panic.