They mounted and rode up the slope together. As they approached the ridge it seemed very apparent that it was not a brush pile burning. The smoke was rising from a considerable area. From the ridge they could see it plainly. It was a ground fire on the lower slope just below the lookout station.
“Quickest way will be to ride to the lookout station and get a couple of shovels from the cache.”
So they galloped up to the station and raided the tool cache. There was no one there. They grabbed the shovels and ran down the slope. The first person they saw was the lookout’s wife, dressed in overalls and swinging a shovel like a ditch digger.
“Where is Benny?” Baxter called to her.
“He’s working on the other end of it,” she replied without turning from her work.
“Then I’m going over there,” said Baxter with decision. “He’s sent me out on many a dirty fire and I want the satisfaction of seeing him work on one himself. Don’t know as I’ll even help him unless it’s pretty bad.”
Only the needles on the surface were dry and a shovel full of the moist earth put out the fire wherever it reached it. Scott fell to work a little bit ahead of the woman and they progressed rapidly. It was only a few minutes till they met the lookout and Baxter and the fire was out.
“How did it start, Benny?” Baxter asked. “Throw a cigarette out the tower window?”
“Looks like it,” Benny admitted. “No, some sheep herder did it. I happened to pick him up with the glasses away down by the cliffs, and I caught sight of him from time to time as he came up the valley, but I could not recognize him. Just about the time he reached the pass up there I found the smoke. Since then I have been too busy to think about him.”
“He probably dropped a match,” Scott suggested.