“Our fire line will be about one hundred feet long. I’d say this particular fire calls for a trench about two feet wide through the duff and litter; we’ve got to get down to mineral soil. Everything inflammable must be cleared off this path. Bushes or low-hanging branches that the flames can reach have to be removed or avoided.”
At this point, he stopped talking to lay out the fire line, tracing its path through the forest with a hoe. It was a zigzag route which detoured around bushes that were too large to be uprooted and low-hanging tree branches. “We avoid anything that would give the flames a chance to leap the fire line,” Dick explained.
As soon as the boundaries were clearly defined, he distributed the tools and assigned specific jobs to everyone. Russell Steele showed as much respect for the young ranger as any enlisted man had ever accorded a general. Sandy and Jerry worked with the hoes, breaking the first ground. Their job consisted mainly in clearing a swath through the loose litter, shoving it in toward the advancing flames.
Dick Fellows and Russ Steele came in back of them with Pulaski tools, hacking out stubborn roots and small shrubs and cutting deeper into the duff. Quiz brought up the rear with a shovel, scooping up loose matter that had tumbled back into the ditch and sluicing a light layer of soil across the ground in front of the line. They worked intently, without speaking, to conserve their wind; and the line grew rapidly. Still, the fire was within two feet of the barrier when Quiz sent the last shovel of dirt rattling into the waist-high flames.
The heat was searing, and their lobster-red faces streamed with perspiration. Their clothing was soaked and streaked with dirt. Jerry and Quiz staggered back from the line and collapsed on the ground.
The ranger waved Sandy and his uncle back too. “Better take a breather,” he warned them. “The worst is yet to come.” He took a long drink, then emptied the rest of his canteen over his head.
After a five-minute break, Dick passed out the long-handled beaters to the three boys. He handed Russ Steele a burlap bag soaked in water. “We’ll do the best we can with these. The idea is to patrol the line and keep a sharp watch for embers that fly over it.”
They stationed themselves at 25-foot intervals, with Russ and Dick each holding down an end of the line. The flames reached the edge of the break and leaned hungrily across it.
Sandy brought the flat of his rubber beater down on a spark that kindled on his side of the line. “It gives me the creeps the way the fire seems to be reaching out for you,” he yelled to Jerry. “It’s almost as if it was alive.”
Jerry was too busy swatting to answer him. Down at one end of the line, Dick tossed aside his smoking burlap sack and grabbed a shovel. With horror, Sandy saw a thin trail of fire race along the edge of the ditch, skirt the end and blaze up in a patch of grass around the ranger’s legs. Sandy dashed down to attack the breach with Dick, and together they extinguished the flames and the long fuse of burning grass that had kindled it.