“How far west does the main fire extend?” Sturgis asked.
“Within about forty rods of Deming Lake.”
“Deming Lake!” Sturgis almost shouted. “That means that it may get on to section thirty-six.”
“Almost there now,” Franklin answered cheerfully. “We can stop it on that row of lakes if it just don’t come around from the southeast on the other side of them. That’s going to be the big trouble.”
“We’ve got to stop it,” Sturgis gritted between his clenched teeth. “If that fire ever gets into that young growth on thirty-six Professor Roberts will never forgive me.”
“The only way you can do it,” Franklin assured him cheerfully, “is to clean things up here tonight so that you won’t have to waste men on patrol and fight her face to face down there in the morning.”
“I guess you’re right,” Sturgis assented, “and we’d better be getting at it. You take the boys and start cleaning up from the south end of the lake here and I’ll go see what Dan is doing with the fire across the road.
“We’ve stopped the first rush now and there is no more danger tonight, but the wind is a little southeast and if the fire gets around us to the west and breaks away in the morning we’ll be worse off than we were before and all our work wasted. Now we have to clean up the edges of this fire for two miles. Bury the fire along the edges, cut down all the stubs which may throw sparks, and throw back into the fire all burning logs and rotten stuff.”
“Two miles,” Bill Price exclaimed, “and here I’ve been dreaming of home and mother. Come on, boys, for every one that dies there’ll be one more vacancy for the under classmen.”
They filed away around the lake and were soon scattered along the front of the fire intent on their gruelling work. The wind had gone down and the fire no longer ran readily, but it burned too fiercely to permit of close approach and they were forced to resort to the slow, tiresome process of trenching and allowing the fire to burn up to it. It was comparatively easy to keep it from crossing. Then they were able to go back and complete the cleaning up. As each man cleaned up the little patch assigned to him he passed on to another ahead of the foremost man. And so they worked one weary hour after another, slowly crawling along that crooked line. It became so dark and the line of the fire was so crooked that the boys had no idea where they were or where they were going. Each man was practically isolated in the darkness. Occasionally it happened a man toward the end of the line who had been delayed by some refractory stubs found himself deserted and became completely lost, unable to find the other workers.