robably, if this fire has a
real start," Dave told her. "We'll need food and coffee--lots of it.
Organize the women. Make meat sandwiches--hundreds of them. And send
out to the Jackpot dozens of coffee-pots. Your job is to keep the workers
well fed. Better send out bandages and salve, in case some get burnt."

Her eyes were shining. "I'll see to all that. Don't worry, boys. You
fight this fire, and we women will 'tend to feeding you."

Dave nodded and strode out of the room. During the fierce and dreadful
days that followed one memory more than once came to him in the fury of
the battle. It was a slim, straight girl looking at him, the call to
service stamped on her brave, uplifted face.

Sanders was on the road inside of twenty minutes, a group of horsemen
galloping at his heels. At the Jackpot locations the fire-fighters
equipped themselves with shovels, sacks, axes, and brush-hooks. The
party, still on horseback, rode up to the mouth of Bear Canon. Through
the smoke the sun was blood-red. The air was heavy and heated.

From the fire line Crawford came to meet these new allies. "We're holdin'
her here. It's been nip an' tuck. Once I thought sure she'd break
through, but we beat out the blaze. I hadn't time to go look, but I
expect she's just a-r'arin' over the hills. I've had some teams and
scrapers taken up there, Dave. It's yore job. Go to it."

The old cattleman showed that he had been through a fight. His eyes were
red and inflamed, his face streaked with black, one arm of his shirt half
torn from the shoulder. But he wore the grim look of a man who has just
begun to set himself for a struggle.

The horsemen swung to the east and rode up to the mesa which lies between
Bear and Cattle Canons. It was impossible to get near Bear, since the
imprisoned fury had burst from its walls and was sweeping the chaparral.
The line of fire was running along the level in an irregular, ragged
front, red tongues leaping ahead with short, furious rushes.

Even before he could spend time to determine the extent of the fire, Dave
selected his line of defense, a ridge of rocky, higher ground cutting
across from one gulch to the other. Here he set teams to work scraping
a fire-break, while men assisted with shovels and brush-hooks to clear
a wide path.

Dave swung still farther east and rode along the edge of Cattle Canon.
Narrow and rock-lined, the gorge was like a boiler flue to suck the
flames down it. From where he sat he sa