Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1916-03-01
CHAPTER XVI.
The splrlt of the East.


Company H, under Captain Donald
son, they trotted swiftly up with the
quickstep of hard-trained infantry
and stood in column of fours while
the officers sought the head of af-
fairs. Daily promptly sent for the
young forest ranger, and in less than
1t takes in the telling these two keen
witted Westerners, the woodsman
and the soldier. were ready to Crap
pie with the enemy. Light-marching
kits were dumped upon the ground
and the hard-muscled men took to
the hills and the timber under quick.
decisive orders. Two hours later
wagons arrived with commissary sup
plies and the smoky. blackened val
ley took on a military air.
II was Titan struggle, and it was
indicative of the force that has con
quered nature-the human atoms toll
ing in semidarkness beneath the
threatening forest. choked by the
smoke, fayed by the almost unbear-
able heat, menaced by the flames that
at any moment might sweep here or
there among the rocks and decliyities
of the uneven hills and cut off escape.
That was the great danger they
guarded against-the possibility Of
getting hemmed in. Guards were de-
tailed to watch the vanguards of the
foe, to note the speed of the flames,
the lie of the timber. the lines that
were likely to go fastest, following the
different growths. but in the mysteri-
GUS dusk and the silence of vast
mingled sounds they were impotent
and each man had to take care of him
self.
The mighty boom of falling patri-
archs of the forest. hoary with a thou.
sand years of age, crashing through
obstructing branches, shook the earth
each moment. With each such stu
pendous fall wealth and world-econ-
omy and prudence trembled at the
sacrilege. 1t was a carnival of waste,
a sacrifice of the gifts of God-and
among all those who fought it with
heart and hand and brain there was
none who knew its worldwide import
so well, who lamented it so keenly
as the lean, brown forest rangers
whose special foe ii was.
And to think a dozen miles of gov
eminent trails would have prevented
it," cried the leader with an oath
Out in the valleys beyond, the heavy
smoke had obs cured the setting sun
entirely. Over the crest of the Coast
Range it had spread up to the heav-
ems, drifted afar on the changing wind
and all the distant valley of the Will
lamette knew that the forest fires
were burning in the hills.
The papers throughout the state
told of it that day, and it awakened
no more interest than would have at
tended the announcement of heavier
run of salmon than was usual in the
Columbia.
They were too common, those fires
that sported with the national wealth
each year, too much part of every
day life, and they did not know that
this was to be a marker of time in
the coast country.
Time was when they were unknown,
these monsters of destruction-a long
past time it was, when those first for
est rangers, the silent Red Men of
the hills, had burned out the under
brush each year so that pony might
go anywhere unhindered.
The silent rangers had gone with
the years-passed to the Hunting
Grounds and the reservations, via civ
ilization, and now the great timber
had shed it's dry foliage and its pitch,
the little gtOwths had sprung up sea.
son after season, the vines had crept
between and man might not pene-
trate the Businesses without built
trails.
So Destiny took up the land and
played with it that hot, dry August.
All through the early hours of the
long night they labored, dirty black
ened, tattered scarecrows of men, run
ming here and there, digging like mad
in the wide trench that was to stop
the surface flames, saving unceas-
ingly at the towering trees, while the
guards brought twenty-minute tidings
of the approaching fire.
High against the dun, smoke-light-
ened sky the dark canopy of the East
Belt whispered and moaned as if in
fear. and from time to time Sandry, a
haggard, grim-lipped specter of man,
lifted his bloodshot eyes toward it. It
was still his own, his future of the
Dillingworth, despite the tangle of
Hampden's threats. the unrecorded
deed and the unfinished trail of the
Yellow Pines at the south. and 1t
pulled at his heart patheticGlly.
There was still stretch of almost