Tired as the girls of the Camp Fire had been, the night before, they were wonderfully refreshed by their night’s sleep. The weather was much more pleasant than it had been, and a brisk wind had driven off much of the smoke that still remained when they reached the Pratt farm as a reminder of the scourge of fire. So the conditions for walking were good, and Eleanor Mercer set a round, swinging pace as they started off.
“I’ll really be glad to get out of this burned district. It’s awfully gloomy, isn’t it, Bessie?” said Dolly.
“Yes, especially when you realize what it means to the people who live in the path of the fire,” answered Bessie. “Seeing the Pratts as they were when we came up has given me an altogether new idea of these forest fires.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean. It’s bad enough to see the forest ruined, but when you think of the houses, and all the other things that are burned, too, why, it seems particularly dreadful.”
“Tom Pratt told me that a whole lot of animals were caught in the fire, too—chipmunks, and squirrels, and deer. That seems dreadful.”
“Oh, what a shame! I should think they could manage to get away, Bessie. Don’t you suppose they try?”
“Oh, yes, but you see they can’t reason the way human beings do, and a lot of these fires burn around in a circle, so that while they were running away from one part of the fire they might very easily be heading straight for another, and get caught right between two fires.”
Soon, however, they passed a section where the land had been cleared of trees for a space of nearly a mile, and, once they had travelled through it, they came to the deep green woods again, where no marring traces of the fire spoiled the beauty of their trip.
“Ah, don’t the woods smell good!” said Dolly. “So much nicer than that old smoky smell! I never smelt anything like that! It got so that everything I ate tasted of smoke. I’m certainly glad to get to where the fire didn’t come.”
Now the ground began to rise, and before long they found themselves in the beginning of Indian Gap. The ground rose gradually, and when they stopped for their midday meal, in a wild part of the gap, none of the girls were feeling more than normally and healthfully tired.