“Anyway, it’s nothing for us to worry about. We haven’t had a big blow up this way in almost two months.”
“Say, Dick,” Jerry asked curiously. “Do they know for sure what started this fire?”
“Not with absolute certainty,” the ranger told him, “but it’s a pretty good bet that it was that lightning storm we had a few days back. Lightning is by far the leading cause of forest fires in the United States.”
Sandy yawned and glanced at his watch. “Gee, it’s almost midnight,” he said.
“Why don’t you guys catch forty winks in the back of that big van over there,” Dick suggested. “I’ll wake you up if there are any new developments.”
At that instant, the walkie-talkie came to life. Dick conversed briefly with headquarters, then smiled apologetically at the boys. “Sorry, fellows, but that nap will have to wait. Landers has decided to hold up setting the backfires on the south line until we know for sure what’s going to happen with that wind. Jerry, you take the word on down: Stand by with the flame throwers, but don’t start backfiring until we get confirmation from headquarters. No sense burning down any more timber than we have to.
“Sandy, you go down the ridge and tell Macauley and Roberts that they can start backfiring any time they’re ready.”
“Right!” the boys said in unison, and started off in opposite directions.
It was an eerie sight watching the men fire the grass with their flame throwers. Rapidly they moved along the top of the ridge with the cylindrical tanks strapped to their backs, the long metal nozzles spewing out jets of blazing gasoline that consumed everything they touched. Soon the entire crest was aflame. To the west, a towering column of smoke spiraled high into the moonlit sky, the glints of the inferno below shimmering on its underside. It reminded Sandy of the familiar mushroom cloud of an atomic blast, and with a sick feeling he remembered the missing bomb lying somewhere in these woods.