Wolfe opened the throttle as far as he dared. With the other hand he opened the valve to the sandbox.
When they had covered three miles, a voice from the flat ahead sent tremors to Wolfe's heart. The voice said but one small word, but that one small word meant destruction.
"Fire!"
Fire, when the fine, new mill had run but half a day!
It was a cataclysm.
XVII
Soon the now thickly overcast heavens became lighted everywhere ahead by a lurid, blood-red glow. It was evident that the conflagration was great and steadily growing. Granny Wolfe knelt on the lumber flat, turned her seamed and troubled face toward the Omnipotent, and begged that a rain might come and put to rout the element that is at once mankind's best friend and worst enemy. The rest of the party kept grimly silent.
When the little locomotive pushed its one car through the jaws of Devil's Gate and into the basin, those on board were greeted by a spectacle that was nothing less than appalling. Every one of the deep and finely-timbered coves was a raging furnace of dead leaves, dead wood, and resinous pine, which were as dry as tinder. The big mill itself was a raging furnace. It was already too late for any rain except a cloudburst to save anything whatever. The devastation promised to be complete within a very short time.