mes sweep over patches of the
shrub.

He rushed back into the station, seized the telephone and called again
the main office.

"For the Lord sake, hustle up here and do something!" he shouted
aggressively. "The whole blamed mountain's afire!" That, of course,
was exaggeration, but Jack was scared.

Out again on the rock, he swept the slope beneath him with his
telescope. He could not see anything of the girl, and the swirling
smoke filled him with a horror too great for any clear thought. He
climbed down and began running down the pack trail like one gone mad,
never stopping to wonder what he could do to save her; never thinking
that he would simply be sharing her fate, if what he feared was
true--if the flames swept over that slope.

He stumbled over a root and fell headlong, picked himself up and went
on again, taking great leaps, like a scared deer. She was down there.
And when the fire struck that manzanita it would just go _swoosh_ in
every direction at once.... And so he, brave, impulsive young fool
that he was, rushed down into it as though he were indeed a god and
could hold back the flames until she was safe away from the place.

CHAPTER TEN

WHEN FORESTS ARE ABLAZE

It seemed to Jack that he had been running for an hour, though it
could not have been more than a few minutes at most. Where the trail
swung out and around a steep, rocky place, he left it and plunged
heedlessly straight down the hill. The hot breath of the fire swept up
in gusts, bearing charred flakes that had been leaves. The smoke
billowed up to him, then drove back in the tricky air-currents that
played impishly around the fire. When he could look down to the knoll
where the hydrometer stood, he saw that it was not yet afire, but that
the flames were working that way faster even than he had feared.

Between gasps he shouted her name as Hank Brown had repeated it to
him. He stopped on a ledge and stared wildly, in a sudden panic, lest
he should somehow miss her. He called again, even while reason told
him that his voice could not carry any distance, with all that crackle
and roar. He forced himself to stand there for a minute to get his
breath and to see just how far the fire had already swept, and how
fast it was spreading.

Even while he stood there, a flaming pine branch came whirling up and
fell avidly upon a buck bush beside him. The bush crackled and
shriveled, a thin spiral of smoke mounting upward into the cloud that