hey were doing
something. They shouted to each other when they had driven it back
even a foot. They fought it madly for the possession of a single tree.
They were gaining. They were turning the edge of it in. The hot sweat
began to streak the caking grime upon their faces. There was no air to
breathe, only the hot breath of fire. But it was heartsome work, for
they were surely pushing the fire in upon itself.

A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke
about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves
pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting for it to pass.

When they could look they saw a wall of fire bearing down upon them
from three sides. The wind had whirled the fire backward and sidewise
so that it had surrounded the meagre little space that they had
cleared and had now outflanked them. Their own manoeuvre had been
turned against them. There was but one way to run, straight down the
hill with the fire roaring and panting after them. It was a playful,
tricky monster that cackled gleefully behind them, laughing at their
puny efforts.

Breathless and spent, they finally ran themselves out of the path of
the flames and dropped exhausted in safety as the fire went roaring by
them on its way.

Their horses were gone, of course. The fire in its side leap had
caught them and they had fled shrieking down the hill, following their
instinct to hunt water.

The men now began to understand the work that was theirs. They were
five already weary men. All day and all night, perhaps, they must
follow the fire that travelled almost as fast as they could run at
their best. And they must hang upon its edge and fight every inch of
the way to fold that edge back upon itself, to keep that edge from
spreading out upon them. A hundred men who could have flanked the fire
shoulder to shoulder for a long space might have accomplished what
these five were trying to do. For them it was impossible. But they
hung on in desperation.

Three times more they made a stand and pushed the edge of the fire
back a little, each time daring to hope that they had done something.
And three times more the treacherous wind whirled the fire back behind
and around them so that they had to race for life.

Now they were down off the straight slope of the mountain and among
the broken hills. Here their work was entirely hopeless and they knew
it. They knew also that they were in almost momentary danger of being
cut