ece of recently ringbarked country, with
the dead leaves still on the trees, the fire will roar from bough to
bough--a fair imitation of a softwood forest fire. The bush-fire travels
through the scrubs for hundreds of miles, taking the grass to the roots,
scorching the living bush but leaving it alive--for gumbush is hardest
of any to kill. Where there is no undergrowth, and the country seems
bare as a road for miles, the fire will cross, licking up invisible
straws of grass, dusty leaves, twigs and shreds of bark on the hard
ground already baking in the drought. You hear of a fire miles away,
and next day, riding across the head of a gully, you hear a hissing and
crackling and there is the fire running over the ground in lines and
curves of thin blue smoke, snakelike, with old logs blazing on the
blackened ground behind. Did you ever _hear_ a fire where a fire should
not be? There is something hellish in the sound of it. When the breeze
is, say, from the east the fire runs round western spurs, up sheltered
gullies--helped by an "eddy" in the wind perhaps--and appears along
the top of the ridge, ready, with a change in the wind, to come down on
farms and fields of ripe wheat, with a "front" miles long.

A selector might be protected by a wide sandy creek in front and wide
cleared roads behind, and, any hour in the day or night, a shout from
the farther end of the wheat paddock, and--"Oh, my God! the wheat!"

Wall didn't mind this fire much; most of his sheep were on their way
out back, to a back run where there was young grass; and the dry ridges
along the creek would be better for a burning-off--only he had to watch
his fences.

But, about dusk, Mary came galloping home in her usual breakneck
fashion.

"Father," she cried, "turn out the men and send them at once. The fire
is all down by Ross's farm, and he has ten acres of wheat standing, and
no one at home but him and Bob."

"How do you know?" growled Wall. Then suddenly and suspiciously, "Have
you been there?"

"I came home that way."

"Well--let Ross look after his own," snarled the father.

"But he can't, father. They're fighting the fire now, and they'll be
burnt out before the morning if they don't get help--for God's
sake, father, act like a Christian and send the men. Remember it is
Christmas-time, father. You're surely not going to see a neighbour burnt
out."

"Yes, I am," shouted Wall. "I'd like to see every selector in the
country burnt out, hut