at Jim Bridger and the Red Fox Scouts were
in those willows which we had saved because we had been ordered to!

Then, when just a few little blazes remained to be trampled and beaten
out, but while the timber further in was still aflame, Jed cried:
"Look!" and we saw a man coming, staggering and coughing, down through a
rocky little canyon which cut the black, smoking slope.

He fell, and we rushed to get him.

Blazing branches were falling, all about; the air was two hundred in the
shade; and in that little canyon the rocks seemed red-hot. But the fire
hadn't got into the canyon, much, because it was narrow and bare; and
the man must have been following it and have made it save his life. He
was in bad shape, though. Before we reached him he had stood up and
tumbled several times, trying to feel his way along.

"Wait! We're coming," I called. He heard, and tried to see.

"All right," he answered hoarsely. "Come ahead."

We reached him. Kit Carson and I held him up by putting his arms over
our shoulders, and with Jed walking behind we helped him through the
canyon and out to the fire line. He groaned and grunted. His eyebrows
were crisped and his hair was singed and his shoes were cinders and his
hands and face were scarred, and his eyes were all bloodshot, and he had
holes through his clothes.

"Fire out?" he asked. "I can't see."

"It isn't out, but it's past," said Jed.

"Well, it mighty near got _me_," he groaned. "It corralled me on that
ridge. If I hadn't cached myself in that little canyon, I'd have been
burned to a crisp. It burned my hoss, I reckon. He jerked loose from me
and left me to go it alone with my wounded leg. Water! Ain't there a
creek ahead? Gimme some water."

While he was mumbling we set him down, beyond the fire line. It didn't
seem as though we could get him any further. Kit hustled for water, Jed
skipped to get first-aid stuff from a blanket-roll, and I made an
examination.

His face and hands were blistered--maybe his eyes were scorched--there
was a bloody place wrapped about with a dirty red handkerchief, on the
calf of his left leg. But I couldn't do much until I had scissors or a
sharp knife, and water.

"Who are you kids?" he asked. "Fishin'?" He was lying with his eyes
closed.

"No. We're some Boy Scouts."

He didn't seem to like this. "Great Scott!" he complained. "Ain't there
nobody but Boy Scouts in these mountains?"

Just then Kit came back with a hat of water from a