e Tim O'Keefe to bring my
car here at once. And get Pat's and Tom's and the two at the hotel."

"Tools?" said Molly.

He nodded and called out to the men advancing with a rush on the car:
"There are hoes and shovels inside the power-house door. Better take
some axes too."

In four minutes from the time they had entered the village (Sylvia had
her watch in her hand) they were flying back, the car packed with men
in overalls and clustered thick with others on the running-board. Back
of them the whistle of the factory shrieked a strident announcement of
disaster. Women and children ran to the doors to stare up and down,
to cry out, to look and with dismayed faces to see the great cloud of
gray smoke pouring up from the side of the mountain. There was no soul
in that village who did not know what a forest-fire meant.

Then in a flash the car had left the village and was rushing along the
dusty highroad, the huge, ominous pillar of smoke growing nearer. The
men stared up at it with sober faces. "Pretty hot fire!" said one
uneasily.

They reached the place where the man had yelled to them--ten minutes
exactly since they had left it. Molly turned the car into the steep
sandy side-road which led up the mountain. The men shouted out in
remonstrance, "Hey, lady! You can't git a car up there. We'll have to
walk the rest of the way. They don't never take cars there."

"This one is going up," sang out Molly gallantly, almost gaily,
opening the throttle to its fullest and going into second speed.

The sound of the laboring engine jarred loudly through all the still,
hot woods; the car shook and trembled under the strain on it. Molly
dropped into low. A cloud of evil-smelling blue gasoline smoke rose
up from the exhaust behind, but the car continued to advance. Rising
steadily, coughing and choking, up the cruelly steep grades,
bumping heavily down over the great water-bars, smoking, rattling,
quivering--the car continued to advance. A trickle of perspiration ran
down Molly's cheeks. The floor was hot under their feet, the smell of
hot oil pungent in their nostrils.

They were eight minutes from the main road now, and near the fire.
Over the trail hung a cloud of smoke, and, as they turned a corner and
came through this, they saw that they had arrived. Sylvia drew back
and crooked her arm over her eyes. She had never seen a forest fire
before. She came from the plain-country, where trees are almost
sacred, and her first feel