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Gunsight Pass, a fiction by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 35. Fire In The Chaparral |
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_ CHAPTER XXXV. FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six called down to his mates: "Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke." The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the chaparral at this season of the year. "Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son. Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town. "I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said. He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it. "Fire in Bear Canon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'." "I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready." Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference between a winning and a losing fight. From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each one he gave also a gunnysack. The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills that led to Bear Canon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand. Crawford met them at the mouth of the canon. "She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin' there." The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke. The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks. "I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch." "Take the horse," Crawford called to him. One good thing was that the fire was coming down the canon. A downhill blaze moves less rapidly than one running up. Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed at these with the wet gunnysacks. The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames roared down the canon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage leaped to red flame. Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them. Bob galloped into the canon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled it up in its stride. "She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you reckon?" he said. "Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the sump holes." "Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too." The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee. It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake." "I'll remember." "And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out. Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary." The canon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting. Thunder could scarce have made itself heard. Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls, sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout for these. A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood. The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain. A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks. Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one. Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford." The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker." The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days. _ |
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