ng up by chance. And when that was
done, they rested on their oars, so to speak; they took time to sit
down and talk without once relaxing their vigilance.

In a day or two the fire would die out against that barrier, always
provided the west wind did not rise and in sportive mockery fling
showers of sparks across to start a hundred little fires burning in
the woods behind their line of defense. A forest fire was never beaten
until it was dead. The men rested, watched, patrolled their line. They
looked at the sky and sighed for rain. A little knot of them gathered
by a tree. Some one had brought a box of sandwiches, a pail of coffee
and tin cups. They gulped the coffee and munched the food and
stretched themselves on the soft moss. Through an opening they could
see a fiery glow topped by wavering sheets of flame. They could hear
the crackle and snap of burning wood.

"A forest fire is quite literally hell, isn't it?" Lawanne asked.

Hollister nodded. His eyes were on Bland. The man sat on the ground.
He had a cup of coffee in one hand, a sandwich in the other. He was
blackened almost beyond recognition, and he was viewing with patent
disgust the state of his clothes and particularly of his hands. He
set down his food and rubbed at his fingers with a soiled
handkerchief. Then he resumed eating and drinking. It appeared to him
a matter of necessity rather than a thing from which he derived any
satisfaction. Near him Charlie Mills lay stretched on the moss, his
head pillowed on his folded arms, too weary to eat or drink, even at
Hollister's insistence.

"Dirty job this, eh?" Bland remarked. "I'll appreciate a bath. Phew. I
shall sleep for a week when I get home."

By mid-afternoon of the next day, Sam Carr decided they had the fire
well in hand and so split his forces, leaving half on guard and
letting the others go home to rest. Hollister's men remained on the
spot in case they were needed; he and Lawanne and Bland went home.

But that was not the end of the great blaze. Blocked in the valley,
the fire, as if animated by some deadly purpose, crept into the mouth
of a brushy canyon and ran uphill with demoniac energy until it was
burning fiercely over a benchland to the west of Hollister's timber.

The fight began once more. With varying phases it raged for a week.
They would check it along a given line and rest for awhile, thinking
it safely under control. Then a light shift of wind would throw it
across their lin