“A man whose business it is to make estimates of the amount of timber in a woods,” replied Kotok. “The logging companies usually have timber cruisers go over a section before they start operations. Thus they can form an idea of the amount of lumber they will be able to get out.”
On the return trip Bill and Kotok flew deeper than ever into that little-traveled section of the state. The afternoon sun threw its beams onto the leaves and made the green carpet of trees passing beneath the plane seem like a beautiful picture. The fires were very few for the first part of the trip and the flight very pleasant, but after they reached Rusty Butte and turned to the north, conditions changed. It was there that they ran into the smoke cloud again and had more dirty flying.
They reached the Umpqua River and had but fifty more miles to do when they saw an enormous fire The ceiling was so low that they had to fly along just above the tree tops, and from that low height could see the men working around the fire. It also was apparent that the fire was confined to a bend in the river where the river turned almost back on itself. Thus by building a fire lane across the bend the fire would soon burn itself out. Bill at once saw the great value that an airplane reconnaissance would be to the man in charge of a fire crew there. In a rough section like that, a man would take hours to work his way through the timber and over the mountains to get that information. Kotok undoubtedly saw in a few minutes the proper place to place the fire break.
They picked up a few more fires before reaching the Siuslaw River. Most of them were small and apparently under control. They had reached the area adjacent to the Willamette Valley. Here there were a few old fires about burned out, but none of those blazing furnaces which threatened the entire forested area like the larger ones farther away.
Bill landed his plane on the airdrome and was glad to be back at the base. It had been hard flying with the thought continuously in his mind that if his engine stopped he would have to land in the trees. It would not have been so bad had the ceiling been unlimited so that he could have gained sufficient altitude to at least try and glide to a burned-over area or land in some second growth timber, but the thought of making a landing in the tops of trees which were two or three hundred feet above the ground was not so pleasant.
“Did you get them all?” asked Bill as they walked to the operations office.
“I think so,” replied Kotok. “My map shows twenty-three fires.”
“How did you locate them without any landmarks?” asked Bill.
“You may not realize it, but I have been operating in this country for a long time,” explained Kotok. “I have been fighting fires here for the past seven years. These mountains all mean something to me and they all have different shapes, covering of trees or rocky formations by which each is distinguished from the others.”
“They all looked alike to me,” said Bill. “Perhaps, before the season is over, I will be able to tell one from the others, but not now.”