d protect the north. For the present at least the
fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where
the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind
would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably save
the oil property.

Dave put his horse to a lope and rode back to the trench and trail his
men were building. He found a shovel and joined them.

From out of Cattle Canon billows of smoke rolled across the hill and
settled into a black blanket above the men. This was acrid from the
resinous pitch of the pines. The wind caught the dark pall, drove it low,
and held it there till the workers could hardly breathe. The sun was
under entire eclipse behind the smoke screen.

The heat of the flames tortured Dave's face and hands, just as the
smoke-filled air inflamed his nostrils and throat. Coals of fire pelted
him from the river of flame, carried by the strong breeze blowing down.
From the canons on either side of the workers came a steady roar of a
world afire. Occasionally, at some slight shift of the wind, the smoke
lifted and they could see the moving wall of fire bearing down upon them,
wedges of it far ahead of the main line.

The movements of the workers became automatic. The teams had to be
removed because the horses had become unmanageable under the torture of
the heat. When any one spoke it was in a hoarse whisper because of a
swollen larynx. Mechanically they dug, shoveled, grubbed, handkerchiefs
over their faces to protect from the furnace glow.

A deer with two fawns emerged from the smoke and flew past on the way to
safety. Mice, snakes, rabbits, birds, and other desert denizens appeared
in mad flight. They paid no attention whatever to their natural foe, man.
The terror of the red monster at their heels wholly obsessed them.

The fire-break was from fifteen to twenty feet wide. The men retreated
back of it, driven by the heat, and fought with wet sacks to hold the
enemy. A flash of lightning was hurled against Dave. It was a red-hot
limb of a pine, tossed out of the gorge by the stiff wind. He flung it
from him and tore the burning shirt from his chest. An agony of pain shot
through his shoulder, seared for half a foot by the blazing branch.

He had no time to attend to the burn then. The fire had leaped the
check-trail at a dozen points. With his men he tried to smother the
flames in the grass by using saddle blankets and gunnysacks, as well
as b