"Hank says that there's also a big smoke comin' up from the vicinity of Granite Basin, an' the old man he says some one better go over there an' see what's goin' on. Thar's a chap named Brown a-livin' in the Basin, an' the Super, he's afraid, mebbe so he'd get caught in the fire an' be singed some, the Basin bein' in the allfiredest lot of chapparal brush you ever see.
"This feller Brown, he's a sort of pet of them boys over that a-way, him bein' a lunger an' not able to do much but draw funny pictures for the Sunday supplements. Seems he broke down back East an' comes West to try an' git over it.
"There he sets a-drawin' pictures for them funny papers an' sendin' 'em in regular, while he ses he's jist a-walkin' around to beat the undertaker.
"Nobody else is a-livin' in the basin, there bein' nothin' but a little old cabin, what a bee-man put up once, an' a few hives of bees Brown bought along with the cabin. 'Them bees is jist to teach me habits of industry,' ses Brown, when some of the boys asked him if he calculated to git rich on the output of them hives.
"The old man he reckons he can't spare any of us old hands to go over there, an' so he says to the young tenderfoot: 'Son,' he says, 'do you reckon you can make it over there in the dark and find out what's doin' in Granite Basin an' come back an' let us know?'
"The boy he ses he reckoned he could, only he didn't know the trail all the way. Then Hank's wife she speaks up an' says she can go along as far as the top of the mountain, an' show him the trail down into the basin.
"It sort of hacked the kid to have a woman show him the trail, but the old man said it were the very idee, an' so she an' the boy struck off, leavin' us to take care of the fire ahead.
"There wa'n't but one way into the basin an' that was down a graded trail about two miles long from top to bottom that the bee man had made to git in and out on.
"The lower part of this basin was one great mass of brush, an' as thick as the hair on a dog's back, so you couldn't git through it only where the brush had been cut out.
"When they gits to the top an' could see over the basin there wa'n't any doubt but there was a fire all right an' it was mighty plain that if Brown wa'n't already out of there it was time he was startin'.