The Boy With the U. S. Foresters

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

A subdued but fiery inspiration, as of some monster breathing deeply in the darkness, gradually made itself heard above the voices of the night, and an eddying gust brought from the distance the sound of twigs and branches crackling as they burned. As yet the fire was not visible, save for the red-bronze glow seen through the trees reflected on the sky above. But before they reached the scene of the fire, Wilbur realized how different it was from the blaze he had left. Then it was a difficulty to be overcome: now, it was a peril to be faced.

"It has run about three miles since I left it," Wilbur said. "I hope we're not too late."

"It's never too late to try, son," replied the Ranger, "so long as there is a tree left unburned. There ain't anything in life that it ever gets too late to try over. If a thing's done, it ain't too late ever to try to do something else which will make up for the first, is it?"

"But I failed to stop it before," said Wilbur.

"Nary a fail. A fight ain't lost until it's over. An' when this little scrap is over the fire'll be out. You ain't had but one round with this fire so far."

"That's certainly some fire," rejoined the boy as they turned sharply from a glade to the edge of a hill that looked upon the forest just below. It was a sight of fear. Overhead, the clouds flying before the wind were alternately revealing and hiding the starlit and moonlit sky behind, the dark and ragged wisps of storm-scud seeming to fly in panic from what they saw below them. The wind moaned as though enchained and forced to blow by some tyrannic power, instead of swaying before the breeze, the needles of the pines seemed to tremble and shudder in the blast, and dominating the whole,—somber, red, and malevolent,—the fire engulfed the forest floor. In the distance, where some dead timber had been standing, the flames had crept up the trunks of the trees, and now fanned by the gusts of wind, were beginning to run amid the tops.

"Will it be a crown-fire, Rifle-Eye?" asked Wilbur, remembering what he had heard of the fearful devastation committed by a fire when once it secured a violent headway among the pines.

"It's in the tops now," said the old hunter, pointing with his finger, "but I don't reckon there's enough wind yet to hold it up there. The worst of it is that it's not long to morning now, an' we shall lose the advantage o' fightin' it at night. I reckon we'd better get down and see what we can do."

In a few minutes the hunter and Wilbur had fastened their horses and presently were beside the fire. To the boy's surprise the old hunter made no attack upon the fire itself, but, going in advance of it some hundred feet, with the boy's hoe, which he dragged after him like a plow, made a furrow in the earth almost as rapidly as a man could walk. This, Wilbur, with ax and shovel, widened. The old hunter never seemed to stop once, but, however curving and twisting his course might be, the boy noted that the furrow invariably occurred at the end of a stretch where few needles had fallen on the ground and the débris was very scant.

After about a mile of this, the hunter curved his furrow sharply in toward the burned-out portion, ending his line behind the line of fire. He then sent Wilbur back along the line he had just traversed to insure that none of the fire had crossed the guard thus made. Then, starting about twenty feet from the curve on the fire-guard, he took another wide curve in front of the floor-fire, favoring the place where the needles lay thinnest, until he came to a ridge. Following him, Wilbur noted that the old woodsman had made no attempt to stop the fire on the upward grade, but had apparently left it to the mercy of the fire, whereas, on the further side of the ridge, where the fire would have to burn down, the old hunter had made but a very scanty fire-guard. Then Wilbur remembered that he had been told it was easy to stop a fire when it was running down a hill, and he realized that if, in the beginning, instead of actually endeavoring to put out the fire, he had made a wide circuit around it, and by utilizing those ridges, he could have held the fire to the spot where it began. For a moment this nearly broke him all up, until he remembered that he had seen another fire, and that Rifle-Eye had told him of a third one yet.