o work again?"

"Sure," Hollister replied. "This summer will just about clean up the
cedar here. You may as well help it along, if you want to work."

"It isn't a case of wanting to. I've got to," Mills said under his
breath. Already he was at his old trick of absent staring into space,
while his fingers twisted tobacco and paper into a cigarette. "I'd go
crazy loafing. I've been trying that. I've been to Alaska and to
Oregon, and blew most of the stake I made here in riotous living." He
curled his lip disdainfully. "It's no good. Might as well be here as
anywhere. So I came back--like the cat."

He fell silent again, looking through the trees out over the stone rim
under which Bland's house stood by the river. He sat there beside
Hollister until the bolt gang, moving out of the bunk house to work,
saw and hailed him. He answered briefly. Then he rose without another
word to Hollister and carried in his pack. Hollister saw him go about
selecting tools, shoulder them and walk away to work in the timber.

That night Hollister wakened out of a sound sleep to sniff the air
that streamed in through his open windows. It was heavy with the
pungent odor of smoke. He rose and looked out. The silence of night
lay on the valley, over the dense forest across the river, upon the
fir-swathed southern slope. No leaf stirred. Nothing moved. It was
still as death. And in this hushed blackness--lightened only by a pale
streak in the north and east that was the reflection of snowy mountain
crests standing stark against the sky line--this smoky wraith crept
along the valley floor. No red glow greeted Hollister's sight. There
was nothing but the smell of burning wood, that acrid, warm, heavy
odor of smoke, the invisible herald of fire. It might be over the next
ridge. It might be in the mouth of the valley. It might be thirty
miles distant. He went back to bed, to lie with that taint of smoke in
his nostrils, thinking of Doris and the boy, of himself, of Charlie
Mills, of Myra, of Archie Lawanne. He saw ghosts in that dusky
chamber, ghosts of other days, and trooping on the heels of these came
apparitions of a muddled future,--until he fell asleep again, to be
awakened at last by a hammering on his door.

The light of a flash-lamp revealed a logger from the Carr settlement
below. The smoke was rolling in billows when Hollister stepped
outside. Down toward the Inlet's head there was a red flare in the
sky.

"We got to get everybody ou