Chapter II: Fighting the Fire

The three Patrols of the Troop had been nearly at full strength when the hike to the camping ground began, and Durland had at his disposal, therefore, when he led them across the open fields toward the burning mountain, about twenty quick, disciplined and thoroughly enthusiastic Scouts, ready to do anything that was ordered, and to do it with a will.

"What's it like over there, Jack?" asked Tom Binns, who was Jack Danby's particular chum among the Scouts, and the one who had really induced him to join the Crows.

"It's going to be pretty hot work, Tom," said Jack. "There's no water at all, and the only chance to stop that fire is by back firing."

"That's pretty dangerous, isn't it?"

"Yes, unless the man who's doing it knows exactly what he wants to do and exactly how to do it. But I guess Mr. Durland and Dick Crawford won't make any mistakes."

"It's lucky for these farmers that Mr. Durland knows a fire when he sees it, isn't it, Jack? If they let that fire alone, Bob Hart said it would sweep over the whole place and burn up the farmhouses."

"Sure it would! The trouble is they never believe anything until they see it. They think that just because there never was a really bad fire here before, there never will be."

"There have been fires on Bald Mountain before, though, Jack. I've seen them myself."

"That's true enough--and that's just the trouble. This is the trouble. There's been scarcely any rain here for the last two months, and everything is fearfully dry. If the brooks were full the fire wouldn't be so likely to jump them. But, as it is, any old thing may happen. That's the danger--and they can't see it."

Each Scout was carrying his Scout axe and stick, a stout pole that was useful in a hundred different ways on every hike. The axes were out now, and the sharp knives that each Scout carried were also ready for instant use. Durland, at the head of the little column in which the Scouts had formed, was casting his keen eye over the whole landscape. Now he gave the order to halt.

The Scouts had reached the edge of the fertile land. The course of the little stream was directly before them, and on the other side was the land that had been partially cleared of timber the year before, filled with stumps and dry brush.

"Go over and borrow a few shovels from the farmhouse over there," directed Durland. "Crawford, take a couple of Scouts and get them. I want those shovels, whether they want to lend them to you or not. It's for their own sake--we can't stand on ceremony if they won't or can't understand the danger."

"Come on, Danby and Binns," said Dick Crawford, a happy smile on his lips, and the light of battle in his eyes. "We'll get those shovels if they're to be found there, believe me!"

The farmer and most of the men, of course, were in the fields, still at work. If they had seen the advance of the Scouts they had paid no attention whatever, and seemed to have no curiosity, even when three of the Scouts left the main body, and went over to the farmhouse. There Dick and the others found a woman, hatchet faced and determined, with a bulldog and a hulking, overgrown boy for company. She sat on the back porch, peeling potatoes, and there was no welcome in the look she gave them.

"Be off with you!" she shrilled at them. "You'll get no hand-outs here! You're worse'n tramps, you boys be, running over honest people's land, and stealing fruit. Be off now, or I'll set the dog onto ye!"

"We only want to borrow some shovels, ma'am," explained Dick Crawford, politely, trying to hide a smile at her vehement way of expressing herself.

"What next?" she cried. "Shovels, is it? And a fine chance we'd have of ever seeing them ag'in if we let you have them, wouldn't we? Here, Tige! Sic 'em, boy, sic 'em!"

The dog's hair rose on his back, and he growled menacingly as he advanced toward them. But there Jack Danby was in his own element. There had never been an animal yet, wild or tame, that he had ever seen, with which he could not make friends. He dropped to one knee now, while the others watched him, and spoke to the dog. In a moment the savagery went out of the bulldog, who, as it seemed, was really little more than a puppy, and he came playfully up to Jack, anxious to be friendly.

"The dog knows, you see," said Dick. "A dog will never make friends with anyone who is unworthy, ma'am. Don't you think you could follow his example, and trust us?"

"You'll get no shovels here," said the woman, with a surly look.

"Oh, I don't know!" said little Tom Binns, under his breath. His eyes had been busy, darting all around, and he had seen a number of shovels, scattered with other farm implements, under a pile of brushwood. He leaped over to this pile now, suddenly, before the loutish boy who was helping with the potatoes could make a move to stop him, and in a moment he was dancing off, his arms full of shovels. Dick Crawford saw what had happened, and could not help approving.

"Thank you," he said to the enraged woman, who rose and seemed about to take a hand herself, physically. "I'm sorry we had to help ourselves, but it's necessary to save your home, though your own men don't seem to think so."

They were off then, with the woman shouting after them, and trying to induce the dog, who stood wagging his tail, to give chase.

"I don't like to take things that way," said Dick, "but if ever the end justified the means, this was the time. We had to have those shovels, and it's just as I told her--it's for their sake that we took them, not for ours at all."

"What will we do with these shovels when we get them?" asked Tom Binns, who had distributed his load so that each of the others had some shovels to carry. They made a heavy load, even so, and Tom couldn't have carried them all for more than a few steps without dropping from their weight.

"I guess Mr. Durland intends to dig a trench, and then start a back fire," said Crawford. "You see, the wind is so strong that if we started a back fire without precaution like that it would be simply hastening destruction of the property we are trying to save, and it would be better not to interfere at all than to do that. With the trench, you see, the fire we start will be quickly stopped, and the other fire won't have anything to feed on when it once reaches the part that we've burned over."

Crawford had guessed aright the reason for getting the shovels, for Durland, as soon as the three Scouts reached the stream with their precious burden of shovels, picked out the strongest Scouts and set them to work digging the trench. He took a shovel himself, and set the best of examples by the way he made the dirt fly.

They were working on a sort of a ridge. On each side there was a natural barrier to the advance of the fire, fortunately, in the form of rock quarries, where there was absolutely nothing that the fire could feed on. Therefore, if it hadn't been checked, it would have swept over the place where they had dug their trench, as through the mouth of a funnel, and mushroomed out again beyond the quarries.

The trench was dug in an amazingly short time. It was rough work, but effective, the ditch, about two feet deep and seven or eight feet wide, extending for nearly two hundred feet. On the side of this furthest from the fire Durland now lined up the Scouts, each armed with a branch covered with leaves at one end.

"I'm going to start a back fire now," he said. "I don't think it will be big enough to leap the trench, but to make sure, you will all stay lined up on your side of the ditch, and beat out every spark that comes across and catches the dry grass on your side. Then we'll be absolutely safe."

He and Crawford, skilled in the ways of the woods, soon had the brush on the other side burning. The rate at which the little fire they set spread, showed beyond a doubt how quickly the great fire that was sweeping down the mountain would have crossed the supposed clearing.

"Gee, see how it licks around those stumps!" said Tom Binns. "It's just as if they'd started a fire in a furnace or a big open fireplace."

"That's the wind," said Jack. "It's blowing pretty hard. I think the danger will be pretty well over by tonight, for the time being, at least. Unless I'm very much mistaken, there's rain coming behind that wind."

"It's hard to tell," said Bob Hart, Patrol Leader of the Crows, waiting with his branch for the time to beat out sparks. "The smoke darkens the sky so that all weather signs fail. The sun glows red through it, and you can't really tell, here, whether there are any rain clouds or not. But it's a wet wind, certainly, and I guess you're right, Jack."

"I don't see how you can tell about the weather as well as you do, Jack," said Pete Stubbs. "You never seem to be wrong, and since I've known you, you've guessed better than the papers two or three times."

"I've lived in the woods nearly all my life, Pete. That's why I can sometimes tell. I'm not always right, by a good deal, but the sky and the trees and the birds are pretty good weather prophets as a rule. In the country you have to be able to tell about the weather."

"That's right," said Bob Hart. "I've known farmers, when there was a moon, to keep men working until after midnight to get the hay in, just because they were sure there'd be a storm the next day. And they were right, too, though everyone else laughed at them."

"It means an awful lot to a farmer to get his hay in before the rain comes," said Jack. "It means the difference between a good year and a bad year, often. Many a farm has been lost just because a crop like that failed and the farmer couldn't pay a mortgage when he had expected to."

"Well, if they're all as stupid as this fellow, they deserve to lose their farms," said Bob Hart.

"Here he comes now, and he looks mad enough to shoot us!"

It was true. The irate farmer was coming, pitchfork in hand, with his two sturdy sons and a couple of farm hands, who grinned as if they neither knew nor cared what would happen, but were glad of a chance for a little excitement.

"Who gave you leave to dig your ditch here?" he shouted. "This is my land, I reckon. Be off with you now! And look at the fire you started!"

Indignantly he made for Bob Hart with his pitchfork. He was worked up to a regular fury, and it might have fared ill with the Patrol Leader had it not been for Jack Danby's quick leap to the rescue.

"You don't want to use that pitchfork," shouted Jack, springing forward. And, before the astonished farmer realized what the Scout was up to, the pitchfork had been seized from his hand.

"What's the trouble here?" cried Durland, rushing up just then. "Shame on you, my man! Can't you see that we've saved your farm?"

He seized the farmer by the shoulders and spun him around to face the sea of fire that was billowing down the slopes from the blazing mountain, that was now a real torch. The fire had passed beyond the stage of the slow burning circle that is so characteristic of wood fires. It was rushing relentlessly forward, and even now it was at the edge of the clearing.

"There!" cried Durland. "You can see now how it would have eaten that cleared timber lot of yours. See?"

The back fire had been started half way in the timber lot. It had traveled fast, and before the onrushing big fire was a space a hundred yards wide of blackened ground, where the saving flames Durland had lighted had had their will. As far as that space came the big fire. Then, because there was nothing left to feed it and the gap was too wide for it to leap, it stopped, and there was an open space, already burnt over, where only sparks and glowing embers remained.

"Jumping wildcats!" exclaimed the farmer, in awe. "That was a purty sizable fire! I say, stranger, I guess I was a leetle mite hasty just now. You've saved us from a bad fire, all right, though I swum I don't see how you thought to do it."

"This is exceptional for this part of the country," said Durland, with a smile. "But I have lived in countries where whole towns have been swept away by a sudden shift of the wind just because the people thought they were safe, and I have learned that the only way to fight fire is with more fire. Also, that you never can tell what a big fire is going to do, and that the only way to be on the safe side is to figure that the fire is going after you just as if it was human. It wants to destroy you, as it seems, and it keeps on looking for the weak spot that you haven't guarded."

"You come right back to the house, all of you," said the farmer, "and the wife will give you a supper that you don't see the like of in town very often, I'll warrant ye!"

Durland was glad to accept the invitation for the whole Troop, for the Scouts had had no time to cook their own supper. He felt, too, that his Troop had won a sturdy friend, and that pleased him.