CHAPTER XIXFIRE
Everywhere men were working, driving themselves and others mercilessly. A hundred yards back of the fire some were digging a ditch while others hacked madly with hatchets at outstretching branches of trees.
Close to the fire line men fought grimly, resolutely beating at creeping tendrils of flame with the wet sacks, eyes bloodshot and wild in blackened faces, burned hands returning again and again to the attack.
Reinforcements were continually arriving, as well as fresh sacks and shovels from the ranger station. The Radio Boys, arming themselves with some of these, made their way as close as possible to the fire line.
One man, whose hands had been very seriously burned and who still refused to leave his post was carried off by two of his comrades, shouting and protesting wildly. The boys filled in the gap.
The smoke stung their eyes torturingly, flying particles of burning wood and leaves seared their flesh and the sweat poured from them. They only worked the harder.
“It’s this danged wind!” groaned a man next to them, stopping for a moment to wipe his tear-filled, smarting eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. “If it’d stop we might have a chance——” He paused, sniffed the air inquiringly while the expression of his face slowly changed. “Well, I’ll be hanged!” he said softly. “If it ain’t!”
It was then the boys noticed what in the fever of the fight they had overlooked, that the wind seemed indeed to have blown itself out. At least there was a lull.
The flames which, driven by the gale, had bent and writhed and twisted toward them, now darted straight upward.
“If we can keep it from reaching the gully,” the man beside them continued, “there’s a chance we can beat it.”
“What gully?” asked Bob, dashing the sweat from his eyes so he might see more plainly. “What do you mean?”
The man jerked a grimy thumb over his shoulder.
“Over there, son,” he said, as he fell to work with redoubled energy, “there’s a narrow little gully between the two mountains. If the fire reaches that there will be no stopping it. There’s a wind that sweeps through that place that will carry the flames ahead faster than we can beat ’em out. That means the blaze will have us surrounded.”
Surrounded! The phrase repeated itself over and over in the thoughts of the boys as they were gradually forced backward and upward by the advance of the flames.
True, the wind had stopped, but the fire had gained such tremendous headway that even now it would require all their energy to defeat it. But could they defeat it? That was the question.
Surrounded! Why, that meant—but it was impossible! They must concentrate all their force, all their men at the mouth of that gully. The fire must be checked.
Bob, starting back for a fresh sack, looked upward, and there, hovering directly over his head, was a sight that thrilled him.
Like two great birds with outstretched wings hovering over the scene of terror were the airplanes, the “eyes” of the Government rangers.
Bob well knew that the men up there were keeping the ether humming with reports, messages, orders, between the station and the ships themselves.
What was Payne Bentley thinking up there? Did he see victory or did he fear defeat? Did he, like the ranger who had worked beside him, see the danger in that narrow gully?
He did not have to wait long for an answer to that. As he took a wet sack and threw his dry, scorched one upon the ground he saw that men were being rushed to one point and that point the outermost edge of the blaze where it reached hungry fingers toward the gully. Bob gazed up, almost in awe, at the hovering planes.
“He’ll do it,” he exulted. “He’ll beat that blaze if anybody can.”
It did not take Bob very long to see that he had exulted too soon. Despite the heroic efforts of the men who fought to stem the tide of destruction, the fire crept steadily, relentlessly forward, forcing the workers foot by foot, inch by inch back toward the gully.
Side by side with the men, never faltering, though their lungs felt near to bursting and their smarting eyes tormented them, fought the Radio Boys.
Only once did Jimmy, naturally feeling the strain of it more than the other boys, fall back to get his breath. But not five minutes had passed before he was with them again, gallantly taking up the task where he had left it.
And all for nothing! The fire, feeding on the dry and crackling timber made brittle by weeks of drought, rushed onward like a destroying fiend, seeming to gather headway as it came.
Faster and faster the men retreated before it, back, back, back to the last line of retreat—a deep trench dug at the very mouth of the gully. If they were driven past that——
And they were driven past it, fighting for the last inch, gasping, struggling, sweating—down in the trench—on the other side—hacking frantically at branches, felling them to save them from the worse destruction of the fire.
No use! What could men avail against a force like this, a force mocking at their puny efforts, sweeping on, on——
It had leapt across the trench, caught the first draft from the treacherous gully, with a roar like a roar of a maddened bull it started up the mountainside, driving men before it, threatening to wind its deadly robes about them even as they ran——
“Back, back!” was shouted hoarsely from parched throats. “More trenches—more sacks—more—more——”
Choking, stumbling, gasping, the boys ran with the rest.
“Our radio!” cried Bob, in a rasping voice that he himself did not know. “We’ll have to get the set out of danger! Then we can come back!”
The boys nodded and turned their stumbling steps in the direction of the lodge. Blindly they made their way through heavy underbrush and over fallen trees, one thought uppermost in their minds—to get their radio set to a place of safety while there was yet time.
They had gone a considerable distance before they were out of reach of the flying embers of the fire, before they found relief from the suffocating smoke of it.
Then they paused for a moment, exhausted, and sank down upon the ground. They brushed the hair back from their hot faces, wiped the perspiration from their eyes and stared at each other. So begrimed were they, so soot-blackened and altogether disreputable, that it would have been hard to recognize them as the same boys that had left the lodge so short a time before.
Herb grinned with something of his old, unquenchable humor.
“I guess our own families wouldn’t be able to recognize us now,” he said. “We sure are some mussed up.”
“And we’re liable to be more so before we get through,” said Bob, getting stiffly to his feet. “Better keep going, fellows,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done yet.”
They started on again, knowing by the sound of the fire behind them that it was still gaining alarming headway.
“Lucky that wind quit just as it did,” panted Jimmy, his breath coming in short, labored gasps. “If the gale had lasted much longer it would have been all up with us, I guess.”
“If only we can check the fire before it has us surrounded we may have a chance,” said Bob. “But if that fire line meets——”
He left the sentence unfinished, and as they came in sight of the lodge he made a dash for it, flinging open the door. The boys worked feverishly, striving to do an hour’s work in a few minutes.
The set must be dismantled and carried to a place of at least comparative safety. The lodge was no place for it at all. It was directly in the path of the flames and there was every probability that the little house would have to go with all its contents.
It was characteristic of the boys that it never entered their heads to try to save anything but their beloved outfit. Millions of dollars’ worth of timber was endangered, to say nothing of men’s lives, and their one thought was to rescue the radio set and get back to the fight.
It was a nightmare that they would never afterward forget, pulling at bolts and wires with burned and trembling fingers. Everything seemed unfamiliar, unreal, to them, the very apparatus itself seemed to fight their frantic efforts to save it. They had moments of thinking they must give up in despair.
But they worked doggedly on and finally accomplished what they had set out to do. The radio was dismantled and ready for moving.
“But where shall we take it too?” asked Jimmy, helplessly. “There’s no place——”
“Down by the lake,” Bob broke in quickly. “That’s the safest spot just now. Later, if we have to, we can come back for it.”
So down to the shores of the lake they bore the apparatus, then turned and, once more, ran in the direction of the fire.
“If this timber burns up,” panted Joe, as the thickened smoke in the air told them they were getting close to the blaze, “it will be an awful loss to Doctor Dale and the Old First Church.”
A few moments more, and they plunged again into the thick of the fight.