leap to the rescue.

"You don't want to use that pitchfork," shouted Jack, springing
forward. And, before the astonished farmer realized what the Scout was
up to, the pitchfork had been seized from his hand.

"What's the trouble here?" cried Durland, rushing up just then. "Shame
on you, my man! Can't you see that we've saved your farm?"

He seized the farmer by the shoulders and spun him around to face the
sea of fire that was billowing down the slopes from the blazing
mountain, that was now a real torch. The fire had passed beyond the
stage of the slow burning circle that is so characteristic of wood
fires. It was rushing relentlessly forward, and even now it was at the
edge of the clearing.

"There!" cried Durland. "You can see now how it would have eaten that
cleared timber lot of yours. See?"

The back fire had been started half way in the timber lot. It had
traveled fast, and before the onrushing big fire was a space a hundred
yards wide of blackened ground, where the saving flames Durland had
lighted had had their will. As far as that space came the big fire.
Then, because there was nothing left to feed it and the gap was too
wide for it to leap, it stopped, and there was an open space, already
burnt over, where only sparks and glowing embers remained.

"Jumping wildcats!" exclaimed the farmer, in awe. "That was a purty
sizable fire! I say, stranger, I guess I was a leetle mite hasty just
now. You've saved us from a bad fire, all right, though I swum I don't
see how you thought to do it."

"This is exceptional for this part of the country," said Durland, with
a smile. "But I have lived in countries where whole towns have been
swept away by a sudden shift of the wind just because the people
thought they were safe, and I have learned that the only way to fight
fire is with more fire. Also, that you never can tell what a big fire
is going to do, and that the only way to be on the safe side is to
figure that the fire is going after you just as if it was human. It
wants to destroy you, as it seems, and it keeps on looking for the weak
spot that you haven't guarded."

"You come right back to the house, all of you," said the farmer, "and
the wife will give you a supper that you don't see the like of in town
very often, I'll warrant ye!"

Durland was glad to accept the invitation for the whole Troop, for the
Scouts had had no time to cook their own supper. He felt, too, that
his Troop had won a