CHAPTER XXVIII
During those hot June days no cloud obscured the sun, but its light came hampered to the parched barrens through strata of smoke from many fires. Far and near the country was patched with blaze; flames running through brush and dry grass, hot and greedy for an hour, to be baffled by some sandy road which it could not leap, or a lake or marsh which balked it; other fires, in the depths of swamp, smouldered for days, sending up vast quantities of dense smoke; hot blazes in slashings licked up logging litter and reduced the soil itself to ash by the fierce heat.
The supervisors, who are local fire officers, met the situation with all the variability of mankind. "Let her burn," said some. "It'll make it easier to clear," while others slaved at the deadening drudgery of checking fires in cut-over land.
The district warden, red of eyes, skin grimed by smoke, voice hoarse from days in it, covered his counties in frantic drives to touch the worst spots and keep his deputies at the grind.
Fire! At once man's best servant and worst enemy! Ah, you city dwellers, who explain so casually the faint pall that drifts on roaming winds as smoke from burning forests! It is remote, it does not touch you; you know none of the terror men know who watch its crimson ring close on their forests, their homes, their future, their very lives!
