stle overhead and saw the
branches sway. As yet the breeze had not touched the ground, but before
two strokes with the wet coat had been made, the last of the gusts of
the evening wind struck him. It caught the little tongue of flame Wilbur
had so manfully striven to overtake, swept it out upon the clearing,
and almost before the boy could realize that his chance was gone, the
grass was a sheet of flame and the fire had entered the forest beyond in
a dozen places.

Wilbur was but a boy after all, and sick and heart-broken, he had to
swallow several times very hard to keep from breaking down. And the
reaction and fatigue together stunned him into inertness. For a moment
only, then his persistent stubbornness came to the front.

"That fire's got to be put out," he said aloud, "as the Chief Forester
said, back in Washington, if it takes the whole State to do it."

He walked back to his horse and started for his little cabin home. How
he reached there, Wilbur never rightly knew. He felt like a traitor,
leaving the fire still burning which he had tried so hard to conquer,
but he knew he had done all he could. As he rode home, however, he saw
through the trees another gleam, and taking out his glasses, saw in the
distance a second fire, in no way connected with that which he had
fought. This cheered him up greatly, for he felt that he could rightly
call for help for two fires without any reflection on his courage or his
grit, where he hated to tell that he had tried and failed to put out a
blaze which perhaps an older or a stronger man might have succeeded in
quelling. He called up the Ranger.

"Rifle-Eye," he said over the 'phone as soon as he got a response,
"there's a fire here that looks big. In fact, there's two. I've been
after one all afternoon, and I nearly got it under, but when the wind
rose it got away from me. And there seems to be a bigger one pretty
close to it."

"Well, son, I s'pose you're needin' help," came the reply.

"All hands, I think," said the boy. "By the time I can get back there
the two fires probably will have joined, and the blaze will be several
miles long."

"Surest thing you know," said the Ranger. "Where do you locate these
fires?"

Wilbur described with some detail the precise point where the fires were
raging.

"You'd better get back on the job," said Rifle-Eye promptly, "and try
an' hold it down the best you can. I'll have some one there on the jump.
We want to get it under to-n