Evening star., 1909-05-23

sides, day or night, he knows every foot of the
ground in his district If he is lucky enough to
be able to choose stream at the foot of hill
for line of defense, he sets his men to hew
down flrebreak on the fire side of the water
way and cautiously starts fire to eat its way
uphill and meet the one coming down.
As rule, however. the best the ranger can
do is to cut firebreak along the spine of
hill; for not only is the pace of the conhagra-
ton considerably slackened by the ascent. but
here is also terrific backdraft that blows the
flames back upon themselves making the de-
scent even more difficult High up on the crest
of the hill from fifty to five hundred men are at
work swinging glittering blades that hew
through the hearts of giant trees sent crashing
course Of the flames. With marvellous speed
men work cutting trail thirty, forty even
hundred, feet wide, time permitting, while
gangs follow with spades and mattocks and
root up belt of ground and cover leaves,
mulsh twigs, and all else inf1ammable
1t is during this sort of quick fires that deer,
bears, mountain lions, and other kinds of forest
creatures, dangerous and otherwise, lose all
fear of man in their one overbearing panic OF
| the fire and flee precipitately ahead OF the,
flames. At times some of the more timid men,
| those who never before have witnessed the
sublimity and terrifying grandeur of the forest
fires, desert their tools and flee. But most men
will stand for twenty-four, for forty-eight even
for seventy-two. hours, fighting an almost hope
less fight to the last ditch.
Effect of the Hardships
WHAT havoc seventy-two hours of this sort
" of work will wreak with men who have
fought in fever of excitement for lives in
collection of mud co1ored huts just over the
brow of the hill must actually be seen to be ap-
preciated. Their hands, their faces, the wet
cotton shirts clinging like rags to their backs,
are coal black. Their eyes are bloodshot from
smoke and want OF sleep: Their stomach IS
hollow for want of food. Their speech is thick
for want of drinking water They stagger
drunkenly as they walk and sway as if ready
to drop asleep as they stand erect. Not word
is spoken. There are no sounds save the ever
lasting peck of the axes and the scraping of the
blades and the mattocks welded in a last stand
of desperation by horny hands worn raw with
toll
1t is then that the ranger, himself almost
worn out, becomes doubly the leader of the
men Encouraging directing coaxing, and ca
joling, he is anywhere and everywhere along
the line of desperate men; and where the coax
ing fails, strategy comes in In a recent forest
fire in the Adiro..dacks ranger whose men
threatened to mutiny started fake forest
fire in a heap of brush in a clearing across
the line leading to the mems homes. The men
worked like cornered rats, stuck to their posts.
and conquered the flames in the end. In Ore
gon, ranger in similar predicament had the
horses of his men led eight miles away to pre-
vent the nre ngnLerS from Delng aDle 70 quit
and so the men stayed. thinking the ruse pre-
caution to take their animals out of the danger
zone.
Dynamite - an Agent
WHAT cripples the ranger most in his work
~ in sparsely settled districts is the scarcity
of men; but even this, if given half chance,
the ranger will overcome. In Idaho last sum-
mer forest fire that would have been one of
the most serious in the history of the country
was beaten back through the ingenuity of the
ranger, who, short OF men, enlisted the equiva-
lent of several thousand of these by the clever
use of case of dynamite
With bare handful of men from nearby
mine the ranger had tried to cut frebreak
along the spine of high hill. when bad wind
rose and it was seen that the flames would be
on the men before the break could be more than
half completed. Only one thing stood between
those flames and fortune represented by thick
forest that would be wiped out of existence