red, too tired to bear thinking,
almost too tired to feel. He was conscious of himself as a creature of
weariness sitting against a tree, his scarred face blackened like the
tired faces of these other men, wondering dully what was the sum of
all this sweat and strain, the shattered plans, the unrewarded effort,
the pain and stress that men endure. A man made plans, and they
failed. He bred hope in his soul and saw it die. He longed for and
sought his desires always, to see them vanish like a mirage just as
they seemed within his grasp.

Lawanne and Bland had gone home, dragging themselves on tired limbs.
Carr's men rested where they chose. They must watch lest the fire back
down into the valley again and destroy their timber, as it had
destroyed Hollister's. They had blankets and food. Hollister gave his
own men the freedom of the house. Their quarters on the hill stood in
the doomed timber. The old log house would be ashes now.

He wondered what Doris was doing, if she steadily gained her sight.
But concrete, coherent thought seemed difficult. He thought in
pictures, which he saw with a strange detachment as if he were a ghost
haunting places once familiar.

He found his chin sinking on his breast. He roused himself and walked
over to the house. His men were sprawled on the rugs, sleeping in
grotesque postures. Hollister picked his way among them. Almost by the
door of his bedroom Charlie Mills sprawled on his back, his head
resting on a sofa cushion. He opened his eyes as Hollister passed.

"That was a tough game," Hollister said.

"It's all a tough game," Mills answered wearily and closed his eyes
again.

Hollister went on into the room. He threw himself across the bed. In
ten seconds he was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XX

For another day, a day of brilliant sunshine and roaring west wind,
the fire marched up over the southern slope. Its flaming head, with a
towering crest of smoke, went over a high ridge, and its lower flank
smoldered threateningly a little above the valley. The second night
the wind fell to a whisper, shifting freakishly into the northeast,
and day dawned with a mass formation of clouds spitting rain, which by
noon grew to a downpour. The fire sizzled and sputtered and died.
Twenty hours of rain cleared the sky of clouds, the woods of smoke.
The sun lifted his beaming face over the eastern sky line. The birds
that had been silent began their twittering again, the squirrels took
up thei