This satisfied Harry, who led the way up the hillside, and it seemed to Frank that they scrambled over fallen logs and branches and through thick undergrowth for the greater part of an hour before they crept carefully down again to another hollow. Though they floundered all around it there was no sign of the deer, and Frank was relieved when his companion intimated that they might as well go back to the ranch. Dinner was the first thought in both their minds when they reached it, but it struck Frank that the fire had become a tremendous conflagration and he noticed that a dense cloud of smoke was blowing across the clearing.
"It's a real fierce burn and there's more wind than there was, but we'll get a meal before we look around," Harry remarked.
There were, however, one or two difficulties in the way of their doing this. The kettle had boiled nearly dry, and the pork had disappeared through the burned-out bottom of the spider. Harry said that he could manage to fry another piece on the rim of it if Frank would refill the kettle, and eventually they sat down to dinner and spent a long while over it. Then Harry got up reluctantly.
"I guess we had better see what the fire's doing," he observed.
Frank was almost appalled when he reached the doorway. The whole clearing was thick with smoke, out of which there shot up a furious wall of fire that rose and fell with a crackle resembling volleys of riflery and a roaring even more disconcerting. What was worse, it seemed to be creeping into the thick bush behind the house, and Harry, running a few paces toward the corner of the building, stopped aghast with the red light flickering on his dismayed face.
"Dad promised he'd get Webster's slashing burned, but it wasn't in the contract that we'd burn off his house," he said. "We'll have to hustle. See if there's an ax and grubhoe in that woodshed."
Frank found the tools, and while he attacked the larger bushes near the back of the house, Harry began to cut down the undergrowth in front of it. By and by Frank came back and they dragged the brush away toward the clearing where it could burn harmlessly, but the smoke grew more blinding and every now and then a shower of sparks fell about the boys. Fires sprang up among the underbrush, and falling upon them with the ax and spade they savagely thrashed them out. Frank burned his hands in doing so, but there was no time to trouble about that and he toiled on, coughing and choking, until at last they were forced to stop for breath.
They stood close in front of the house, with a mass of withered fern and half-burned brush smoldering in front of them, while a sheet of fire rose and fell amidst dense clouds of smoke behind the building. The daylight appeared to be dying out, but Frank could not be sure of that, because it was almost dark one moment as the smoke rolled about them and the next they stood dazzled by a flood of radiance.
"We have done 'most all we can," said Harry wearily. "It was the wind getting up that made the trouble—I should have noticed it—but if it stands for the next half hour we ought to save the house. The fire's eating back into the bush all the while."
"Should we get any of the things out?" Frank asked.