The ground fire, lashed by the rising wind of the morning, had leaped off the earth and become a crown fire. It had entered the edge of the black growth.
One after the other the green tops of the hemlocks and spruces burst into the horrid bloom of conflagration. They flowered. They seeded. And the seeds were fire-brands that scaled down the wind, dropping, rooting instantly, and blossoming into new destruction.
“She can’t be stopped! She can’t be stopped!” moaned Britt. “She’s headed for the Notch, and then tophet’s let loose!”
But with the persistence of his nature he set off to rally the crew to a flank movement.
With the inadequate force it was rather a skirmish than a battle for those who fought in the face of the great fire.
Through the night, with shovels and green boughs they had attacked the conflagration’s outposts. The red army of destruction took this punishment sullenly. The main fire seemed to crouch and doze in the night, dulled by the condensation of dews and lacking the spur of the winds.
At daylight Barnum Withee had arrived with his men and set them to trenching along the tote road parallel with the advance of the fire. He had not reconsidered his bitterness against his tyrant John Barrett. But the unconquerable instinct of the veteran woodsman, anxious to save his forest, had driven him to the scene.
To Barnum Withee’s crew Dwight Wade and Christopher Straight attached themselves by entirely natural selection, having excellent personal reasons for avoiding the direct commands of the Honorable Pulaski Britt.
And to Wade, struggling with blistered hands to drive his mattock through roots and vegetable mould to the mineral earth, appeared Prophet Eli on his ding-swingle. The prophet surveyed him with almost arch look, and piped, in his shrill tones:
“Oh, the little brown bull came down from the mountain,
Shang-roango, whey?”