However, there were the tiny flames, licking here and there,
insignificant, but nevertheless dangerous. Bob carefully laid his
canteens and the rake on a boulder, and set to work with his sharpened
hoe. It looked to be a very easy task to dig out a path around this
little fire.

In the course of the miniature fight he learned considerable of the ways
of fire. The brush proved unexpectedly difficult. It would not stand up
to the force of his stroke, but bent away. The tarweed, especially, was
stubborn under even the most vigorous wielding of his sharpened hoe.

He made an initial mistake by starting to hoe out his path too near the
blaze, forgetting that in the time necessary to complete his half-circle
the flames would have spread. Discovering this, he abandoned his
beginning and fell back twenty feet. This naturally considerably
lengthened the line he would have to cut. When it was about half done,
Bob discovered that he would have to hustle to prevent the fire breaking
by him before he could complete his half-circle. It became a race. He
worked desperately. The heat of the flames began to scorch his face and
hands, so that it was with difficulty he could face his work.
Irrelevantly enough there arose before his mind the image of Jack
Pollock popping corn before the fireplace at headquarters. Continual
wielding of the hoe tired a certain set of muscles to the aching point.
His mouth became dry and sticky, but he could not spare time to hunt up
his canteen. The thought flashed across his mind that the fire was
probably breaking across elsewhere, just like this. The other men must
be in the same fix. There were six of them. Suppose the fire should
break across simultaneously in seven places? The little licking flames
had at last, by dint of a malignant persistence, become a personal
enemy. He fought them absorbedly, throwing his line farther and farther
as the necessity arose, running to beat down with green brush the first
feeble upstartings of the fire as it leaped here and there his barrier,
keeping a vigilant eye on every part of his defences.

"Well," drawled Charley Morton's voice behind him, "what you think
you're doing?"

"Corralling this fire, of course," Bob panted, dashing at a marauding
little flame.

"What for?" demanded Charley.

Bob looked up in sheer amazement.

"See that rock dike just up the hill behind you?" explained Morton.
"Well, our fire line already runs up to that on both sides. Fire