“Thanks,” Dick gasped, as Sandy raced back to beat at a fiery tongue that was licking at the brush in his sector.
For at least a half hour they battled the tenacious foe, and then the flames began to subside, their frantic efforts to leap the line growing more and more feeble.
At last Dick Fellows announced hesitantly, “Looks like we have her, men.”
The boys let out a lusty cheer, and Jerry did a comical little waltz with his long beater. But their exultation was short-lived. For some time, no one had paid much attention to the dead tree in the center of the burned-out area, now a solid pillar of fire reaching into the sky. The ranger had been relieved to note that it stood a safe distance apart from the other trees, and he decided that its chief hazard lay in the sparks that kept rising intermittently from it. Then disaster struck.
Crumbling from decay and the ravages of termites, and further weakened by the flames, the towering snag unexpectedly gave way at the base. As the fire fighters stared in hypnotic fascination, the tree toppled in slow motion toward a thick cluster of pines on the left flank of the fire. It went crashing down into their midst, sending a spray of sparks and flame over the thick, dry foliage. Instantly the crowns of the trees erupted simultaneously in a huge balloon of flame with a noise like an exploding bomb. A blast of red-hot air singed Sandy’s hair and eyelashes and sent him stumbling backward with his hands over his face. Rejuvenated, the front of the fire leaped the barrier and blazed up beyond control at a dozen separate points.
“She’s crowned!” the ranger yelled in despair. “That snag did it. The surface fire had heated the foliage to the point of combustion and it was just like touching a match to a gas jet.”
Sandy was aware of a strange rustling in the trees overhead. “What’s that?” he asked the ranger. “It can’t be wind.”
“It’s wind all right,” Dick told him. “Once these fires get really going, they make their own wind.”
“It’s simple,” Quiz explained. “You can even feel it standing near a big bonfire. The updraft of hot air creates a partial vacuum over the fire area, sucking in cool air from all around it.”
“What do we do now?” Russ demanded.