“No, Bob, our fire has been out too long. There’s a fire somewhere near here sure as shooting. I can’t see the smoke, but I can surely smell it.”
“Well, what shall we do about it?” asked Bob.
“There’s nothing that we can do for the present,” answered Bill. “Let’s pack up and get going. We ought to pick out some place above here on the river where we can make a good camp for the night.”
They packed their equipment in their car and started up the road. The river was beautiful with the large trees on both sides. The sun was still high in the sky and here and there, where the road came out into the open, it seemed as if they had emerged from a tunnel. Everything was so much brighter. There was practically no wind and they came to long reaches where the river ran along for a considerable distance without a ripple. At other places the river ran over rapids and the splashing, bubbling water presented a decided contrast to the placid surface of the other parts of the river.
As they continued, the river became narrower, the valley in which they were traveling more confined, the sides of the mountains steeper and the vegetation thicker. They were gradually ascending into the mountains. Here and there they obtained a view through the trees of the country ahead or behind. The mountain sides were thickly covered with trees, which formed a beautiful green covering that followed the contour of the ridges and valleys. Once in a while they saw an area which had been burned over at some previous time. The snags, tall, gaunt, white skeletons of what had been magnificent trees, were scattered through the second growth timber. Nature was trying to remove all traces of the fire with the small trees, but the snags stood there as grim reminders of the forest’s former grandeur.
Here and there a pioneer had taken out a homestead and had cleared the ground in the immediate vicinity of his crude buildings. Usually some attempt had been made to cultivate part of the cleared area, but there were always a few sections still covered with the stumps of trees which had been cut. A couple of horses, several cows and some pigs roamed through the clearing as the nucleus of future herds of live stock. Bill marveled at the bravery of the men bringing their families to such a wild section of the country.
They came out on an open space where the river made a sharp curve. The road had been built on top of a steep cliff. Ahead of them was a narrow cut in the mountains through which the river flowed. Beyond the cut Bill saw what he thought to be a cloud of smoke. It seemed to be as thick and dense as a rain cloud. Bob stopped the car when Bill pointed at it.
“There must be a whopping big fire ahead of us,” said Bill. “I guess that Cecil must have arrived there right in the thick of it.”
“You must have an awful good nose, if you could smell that from where we were, five miles down the river,” said Bob. “It’s a fire all right, and looks as if it were a big one.”
“Let’s go on up and see it,” suggested Bill. “It must be an awful but fascinating thing to see.”