Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1915-12-10

sank on a pile of g~unnysacks beside
the improyised rollway of the upper
cutting.
When he awoke it was to find him
self under a light blanket of fanciful
weave which belonged to Siletz. The
shy, silent girl had been about him in
his sleep.
When he hurried to the work he
saw here and there groups of Indians.
The reservation had arrived in force.
But things were growing worse with
every hour.
The sound of the flames was as the
surf on a thousand miles of shore.
The pail of smoke shut out the light
of heaven, lending a lonesome, fear
giving darkness to the world-the
little world of the Dillingworth valley.
Long streamers of the gray moss that
hung from the branches high above
famed out in fantastic shapes and
banners.
The cutting at the valleys head had
changed in these few hours beyond
recognition, its close-packed, green
Businesses being now but ~blackened
spikes reaching high, its splendid,
straight trunks fallen like jackstraws
across another.
Fire was everywhere, in the earth
and in the heavens. 1t heated the
sweet winds to unbearable, %scorching
blasts. 1t illumined the dun dusk with
dull, crimson light. It. deserted the
Cutting and swept forward toward the
north, leaving ashes and ruin, sullen
brands and smoldering logs that
famed forth vindictively from time
to time.
But as it went it leaped and ex-
ulted, for 1t rushed to the embrace OF
heavier timber. The wind still held
by north-by-northeast, veering slightly
this way and that, threatening now
the reservation of the Siletz, in whose
basin there lay the finest body Of
standing timber in all the common
wealth of the states, now the magn1h-
cent East Belt that seemed to grip
the heart of Walter Sandry like a liv-
ing thing in danger.
So dawn found them on that hot,
grim day in August.
The lean, young ranger vas every
where, and Sandry, in amazed appre-
citation, saw a trench shut off a
ground-fire, and the telling of a single
pine change the trend of a flood of
flame that was going out of bounds.
But by twelve o'clock the. wind
turned and headed south. With ap-
noliinn vniUhf Tho Annd cnrpod I'm
the ridges, crept down into the dip
and joined the slow-burning menace
there.
At that the ranger fired three shots
into the air which brought one of his
aids running put of the smoke, pant.
ing and d~isheveled from fighting
hand-to-hand with a growth of young
spruce.
60 telegraph for the Vancouver
soldiers" he directed tersely, this
is going to beat all records"
"If we only had trails!" he rasped
to Daily, trails and telephones and
men and horsesi Damn a stingy gov
ernmenti And what fine timber it is!
Going up in smoke unless we get help
at OACO. NO CdA I Oub oAAO Aoot
enough to get in and work to advan-
tage. A straight fall through beyond
this hollow would head off that
branch" he waved an arm vehement.
ly, "but it'll beat the trail cutters!"
They called all the men they could
spare from the north and set them at
work in the rolling smoke ahead of
&ho Gr1 @hat ~n ho0innin0 fn oof
southwark.
In darkness, in a great heat that
seemed to tear the lining from lungs
that breathed it, without rest or food
they raced with the monster that
laughed at their puny efforts, raced to-
gether, Dillingworth and Siwash and
Yellow Pines, side by side, and there
was neither color nor enmity MOI per
sonality between them. Sandry pulled
a saw with the huge red-shirt he had
once tried to drag out of the fight at
the cabin in the East Belt, and Collins
worked ~savagely with Brady of the
Yellow Pines whom he had thrown
into the slough after the incident OF
the sawed rollway.
SO they to1led, hanging on grlmly,
while the world took fire about them
and it seemed as though no living
thing could escape its wrath. Birds,
flying across the canopy, fell futter'
ing to the earth, and once an antlered
buck and two does shot past the line
u~nhindered. AS the fire grew in vol.
ume and area many of the woods crea'
lures began to come down into the
valleys, headed for the sea.
Once Sandry stopped to go down to
the cutting for a cup Of coffee. realiz.
ing Mas warning that he must hus.
band his strength.
Siletz ran to meet him with it and
as he took the cup a young bobcat
Ioped swiftly by, not a hundred yards
aWay. IT'S frightened ears Ia1Q DacK ana