The Emmett index. [volume] (Emmett, Idaho) 1893-1925, 1916-01-06
above
apes and

named out In I. apes 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 one 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. 1t de5erted 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 it 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 magnifi-
cent East Belt that seemed to grip
the heart OF Walter Sandry like liy-
ing thing in danger.
So dawn found them on that hot,
grim day in August.
The lean, young ranger was every
rh N m
citation. saw a trench shut of
ground-fire. and the telling of single
pine change the trend OF flood OF
fame that was going out of bounds.
But by twelve o'clock the wind
turned and headed south. With ap-
palling might the food spread up
the ridges, crept down into the dip
ard joined the slow-burning menace
there.
AT that the ranger fired three shots
into the air which brought one of his
aids running out of the smoke. pant
ing and disheveled from fighting
hand-to-hand with growth of young
spruce
Go telegraph for the Vancouver
soldiers" he directed tersely, this
is going to beat all records"
IF we only had trails" be 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 once. We can't cut trails fast
70 IN n
tage A straight fall through beyond
this hollow would head of 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
the fire that was beginning to eat
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 nor FER
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 sayagely with Brady of the
Yellow Pines whom he had thrown
into the slough after the incident OF
the sawed rollway.
So they toiled, hanging on grimly
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 hutter-
ing to the earth, and once an antlered
buck and two does shot pact the line
unhindered. 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 cup of coffee, realiz-
ing Mas warning that he must bus-
band his strength.
Siletz ran to meet him with it and
as he took the cup young bobcat
loped swiftly by, not hundred yards