Leaving Wirth at the camp to cook up a regular dinner, Miller, Peterson, and I left for Mulvaney’s Camp to see what condition it would be in, if we had the unexpected fire. We arrived there about ten o’clock and opened up the blacksmith shop, got out empty barrels, cooking utensils, and everything that would hold water, and started Miller out to round up a couple of yokes of cattle. He returned in an hour or so with about ten head. We selected two yokes out of the bunch and, hooking them up to a breaking-plow, plowed about a dozen furrows around the camp, after which we turned them loose. They immediately started off in a westernly direction, which you may call animal instinct if you will, for we afterward found that to be the only possible direction they could have taken and evaded the fire, which unbeknown to us was so soon to follow. We sat down and smoked our pipes and joked about the unnecessary precaution of filling the barrels, as at that time it was one of the prettiest autumn days I have ever seen, not a cloud in the sky, not a breeze stirring, no sign of smoke anywhere, and no possible chance, apparently, of there ever being a fire. Nevertheless, we were carrying out instructions and we set to work to fill up the barrels, which took about an hour.
We had just filled the barrels on the roof of the long barns, when Miller, who was on top of one of the barns, called my attention to a cloud of smoke that had suddenly sprung
up on the horizon about five or six miles to the south and west of us. I climbed up on the roof of the barn, where I could get a better view. The wind suddenly arose and within ten minutes it had attained the velocity of a cyclone; what followed happened so quickly it has never as yet been quite clear to me. I can remember the black cloud settling down and in less time than it takes to write this, the fire was upon us—not on the ground as you might imagine, but in the air. The heat became terrific and the first sign of a blaze sprang up in the top of a broken stump about twenty feet in height and a hundred feet from the sleeping-shanty.
I jumped off the roof of the barn, grabbed up a water bucket, Peterson doing the same, and ran for the sleeping-shanty, a distance of about 150 feet. Before we could reach it, it was afire. We threw several buckets of water upon it, but the water might have been kerosene for all the good it did. Seeing it was useless to try to save the sleeping-shanty or the cook-shanty, which were only a few feet apart, we ran back to the barns, thinking to save them. This may sound dubious, but it all happened within twenty minutes of the time we first saw smoke four or five miles away. As quickly as we reached the barn I motioned to Miller to dump the barrels of water which we had placed there; those buildings, if you remember them, were each about sixty feet in length, standing parallel, with a hay shed between, which contained about ten tons of baled hay left over from the previous winter. While Miller ran to the far end of the barn, upsetting the six or seven barrels as he ran, Peterson and I were throwing water on the hay shed. I don’t suppose we had thrown more than ten or twelve buckets when the roof of the barn took fire. As I said before, the fire seemed to be in the very air, for strange as it may seem, the dry grass and leaves around the buildings were not yet burned. In less than a minute the roof was afire from one end to the other. I motioned to Miller to jump off. He did so and ran towards
me. When he got near enough so that I could hear, he yelled: “What in hell will we do now, and which way will we go?”
Then for the first time I realized the danger we were in. A glance around showed only one way open and that was due north towards a wall of virgin green timber, a distance of about 500 yards. The ground between us and the edge of the timber had been logged the previous winter, leaving treetops and brush piled up here and there in great heaps—you know how it would look after being logged. How we got to the edge of the timber I can hardly remember, but in the excitement I still had the empty water-bucket in my hand. We reached the timber to find that the fire had beaten us. Perhaps a burning brand from one of the buildings had dropped just at the edge of the timber among the dry leaves and had burned a strip of ground about 200 feet in width, leaving the ground perfectly bare. Luckily for us the timber was green, with no underbrush to hold the fire, for when we reached there, there was nothing left on the ground but the smouldering ashes of the leaves. We stopped to get our breath, and then it dawned upon us how useless it was to run. I said to Miller, “If we ever get out of this, it will be by staying right here.” He gave me one look, which I shall never forget, as much as to say, “Man, you are crazy,” and again started to run, Peterson following. I then turned and looked back whence we had come. There was a solid wall of fire similar to a great wave, extending as far to each side as one could see and mounting fifty feet in height. It is hard to express just what my feelings were, but I remember that I ceased to be afraid, knowing that our time had come, there being not a possible chance to come out alive. The main body of the fire by that time had reached a point about where the camps had stood. I was almost tempted to start to run, when I turned to find Miller and Peterson again at my side. They had run only a short distance into the tail end of the advance fire and had come back. I remember Miller lying on
his face on the ground with his head stuck into a hole that he had dug out with his hands. The ground at the roots of the trees was damp, and the only way we could breathe was by lying on the ground, for when we stood up the heat and smoke were so thick we could not breathe.
It is interesting to hear people relate their experiences and close encounters with death. After hearing them, I can judge just how close they really have been to real death. For as I see it, it has four stages—first, the excitement; then fear; then resolution; then death itself. At about this time we had reached the point of resolve; Miller and Peterson were on their knees praying, while as for myself, nothwithstanding I have lived a somewhat better life since, I concluded that as I had never asked God for anything prior to that, it was a very poor time to start in now that I was about to die. So I concluded to go just as I was, believing, as I still do, that a death-bed confession would avail me nothing. You can best realize our position when I tell you that we were never over four feet apart for at least four hours and during that period there was not one word exchanged among us. At the end of that time I was standing leaning up against a tree. Other trees were falling all around us, and as I stood there wishing one might fall on me and end it all, it started to rain. It must have poured, for before I realized what had happened I was wet to the skin. That brought me back to my senses and I realized that I was alive and that I still wanted to live. I ran a short distance and it came to me like a flash that I was going the wrong way to get out. I turned and ran back, and as I ran, stumbled over Peterson, who was still on his knees. The first word to break the dull silence of those hours was spoken then, when he said, “What in hell are you trying to do?” We made our way out to the old tote road, and after walking about a mile west, got out of the range of the fire.
We made our way back to camp to find Wirth all excited. His greeting was, “Gee, you ought to have been here this afternoon, for everything at the dam”—meaning Birch Lake dam—“has burned, camps and all, for I could see the hay stacks as they would catch fire and the flames shoot up in the air hundreds of feet.” Then the thought flashed upon me: The dam, suppose it should burn out. With an eleven-foot head of water on Birch Lake and Big Chetak, what would happen to the country below? Miller and Peterson being all in, I asked Wirth if he would go with me and try to make the dam. The rain had lasted only about half an hour and the fire, which had again got under way, but with no wind, was fortunately not burning as furiously as earlier in the day. The road to the dam took us back into the edge of the fire, but on making several detours we reached the dam to find both wings afire. Pete Null, and four or five men who had been stationed there at the Birch Lake Camp, were making a desperate fight to save the dam, but they were almost played out, having fought in vain all afternoon to save the camps.
One glance and I saw what to do. Wirth and I picked up a couple of peavies, and climbing down to the apron, ripped up four or five planks and stuck them on end down under the bed plates, or stringers, leaving them standing pointing up stream at an angle of forty-five degrees. We then climbed back upon the dam and raised the gate four or five inches. When the current struck those planks it threw a spray of water all over both wings of the dam and inside of ten minutes we had the fire completely out.