The flames sent a stinging tongue through the cab window. Jack instinctively jerked the corner of the canvas over his face. The hot wind tore at him like a breath from a furnace. He smelled the hair singeing on the backs of his hands. The little Irishman crawled close to his legs under the canvas. The dinky and the flats had become a blind rocket rushing down the mountainside.
The dinky rocked and lurched. Jack prayed inside that there might be nothing across the rails. He groaned as he thought of what would happen if a burned tree had fallen to block their way. He hoped that if they failed that he might be utterly destroyed. That would be better for Nellie than having him brought home afterward.
Jack risked a look ahead. The corner of the wet canvas was steaming. In front on either side the blaze was leaping and licking at short growth trees. Beth had been right. Only the fact that this was cutover land, small stuff, might save them. In the heavier timber of the virgin forest they would not have had a chance.
Their rushing speed now was more like the swift dash of an airplane. But a plane could go up. The dinky and the flats could only become a twisted mass of wood and iron if they were ditched. A blast, hotter than all the others, scorched Jack’s face. He got his head under the wet canvas again before he breathed, which was well. One draught of that blaze into his lungs and whether they held the track or plunged into the superheated ground would not have mattered to him.
It seemed like an hour or more they had been tearing along, hemmed in by the blaze. Probably it was no more than a minute, for the swathe of the fire was less than a mile in width. A quick cooler draught struck Jack’s face. He pulled away the canvas. For the first time since leaving the upper level he could see the track ahead. Two snaky rails were running toward him and disappearing under the dinky.
Jack heard the wheels squeal again. The men were striving to set the brakes. Their speed did not seem to lessen perceptibly. He heard a loud snap on one of the flats. A brake chain had parted. One of the men came crawling over the top of the tender, clinging to the swaying sides.
“We can’t hold ’er!” he shouted. “Don’t try brakin’ th’ dinky—you’ll pile ’er up.”
Curves where the track disappeared shot up the mountain toward them, and miraculously disappeared under the engine and cars just when Jack was sure they would be catapulted into the wall on one side or over the precipice on the other.
“If she holds we kin check ’er on th’ loadin’ pier—gotta mile run there,” said the lumberjack in Jack’s ear.