Their only way out now lay through that trackless wilderness behind
them.

Here was a situation far graver than the burning of Big Shanty. The
gray-haired man with his back against the hemlock realized this. He
still stood grimly watching the fire--his ashen lips shut tight.

Big Shanty burned briskly; it crackled, blazed, puffed and roared,
driven by a northeast wind. The northeast wind was in league with
the flames. It was on hand; it had begun with the stables--it had now
nearly finished with the main camp. The surrounding buildings--the
innumerable shelters for innumerable things--made a poor display; they
went too quickly. It was the varnish in the main camp that went mad
in flame--rioting flames that swept joyously now in oily waves. The
northeast wind spared nothing. It seemed to howl to the flames: "Keep
on--I'll back you--I'm game until daylight."

Walls, partitions, gables, roofs, ridge-poles, stuff in closets,
furniture, luxuries, rugs, pictures, floors, clapboards, jewels,
shingles, a grand piano, guns, gowns, books, money--in twenty minutes
became a glowing hole in the ground. The destruction was complete; the
heel of the northeast wind had stamped it flat. Big Shanty camp had
vanished.

The man braced against the trunk of the hemlock saw all this with the
old, weary, haggard look in his eyes, yet not a syllable escaped his
lips. He saw the northeast wind drive its friend the fire straight
into the thick timber of the wilderness; trees crackled, flared
and gave up; others ahead of them bent, burst and went under--the
northeast wind had doomed them rods ahead; it swept--it
annihilated--without quarter. It scattered the half-clad group of
refugees to shelter across Big Shanty Brook upon whose opposite shore,
as yet untouched, they re-gathered to watch--out of the way.

It began to drizzle--a drizzle of no importance, but it cooled the
faces of those who were ill.

In an hour Big Shanty Brook had sacrificed three miles of its shore
in self-defence. Its bend above the nodding cedars--where Thayor had
killed his deer--had succeeded in turning the course of the fire. The
shore upon which the refugees stood was untouched. The brook in the
chaos of running fire had saved their lives.

Still the fire roared on and although the torrent kept it at bay
it went wild in the bordering wilderness. The burned camp was now a
forgotten incident in this devilish course of flame. The northeast
wind had not failed. Th