xcited cries, with brandished
weapons. They could not even see the enemy. They could hear him, they
could smell the resinous odor of his breath. That was all. They laid
their defenses against him with methodical haste, chopping, heaving,
hauling the steel cables here and there from the donkeys, sweating in
the blanket of heat that overlaid the woods, choking in the smoke that
rolled like fog above them and about them. And always in each man's
mind ran the uneasy thought of the west wind rising.

But throughout the day the west wind held its breath. The flames
crawled, ate their way instead of leaping hungrily. The smoke rose in
dun clouds above the burning area and settled in gray vagueness all
through the woods, drifting in wisps, in streamers, in fantastic
curlings, pungent, acrid, choking the men. The heat of the fire and
the heat of the summer sun in a windless sky made the valley floor a
sweat-bath in which the loggers worked stripped to undershirts and
overalls, blackened with soot and grime.

Night fell. The fire had eaten the heart out of a block half a mile
square. It was growing. A redness brightened the sky. Lurid colors
fluttered above the hottest blaze. A flame would run with incredible
agility up the trunk of a hundred-foot cedar to fling a yellow banner
from the topmost boughs, to color the billowing smoke, the green of
nearby trees, to wave and gleam and shed coruscating spark-showers and
die down again to a dull glow.

Through the short night the work went on. Here and there a man's
weariness grew more than he could bear, and he would lie down to sleep
for an hour or two. They ate food when it was brought to them. Always,
while they could keep their feet, they worked.

Hollister worked on stoically into the following night, keeping
Lawanne near him, because it was all new and exciting to Lawanne, and
Hollister felt that he might have to look out for him if the wind took
any sudden, dangerous shift.

But the mysterious forces of the air were merciful. During the
twenty-four hours there was nothing but little vagrant breezes and the
drafts created by the heat of the fire itself. When day came again,
without striking a single futile blow at the heart of the fire, they
had drawn the enemy's teeth and clipped his claws--in so far as the
flats of the Toba were threatened. The fire would burn up to that
cleared path and burn itself out--with men stationed along to beat out
each tiny flame that might spri