into denser smoke with each rod traveled; to the westward again and Helen fancied she could feel the heat of burning wood in her face.
"There she is!" cried Joe.
The brakes set and the car stopped in twice its length.
They were on the ground in an instant. Beauchamp and Joe tugging at the chemical tanks, running along the north-and-south fire line and then plunging into the forest to meet the advancing flames. A muffled shouting behind them; a thwacking of a stick on flesh, and a patrolman galloped up, bringing his apparatus.
"Get in there, Thatcher," Helen said shortly. "There are three others. Take two tanks."
A brass cylinder in either hand the man sped away, the girl behind him. The flames had started from the western boundary of the forest and on this fire line, a half mile in, they could feel their heat, could hear the snap and crackle. The smoke smarted the girl's eyes as she ran forward; it bit her throat and lungs and nostrils.
The forest was a weird company of indistinct tree trunks, the nearest swathed in flowing smoke, those a rod away barely distinguishable. A figure moved before Helen, crouched, going slowly toward the north: Black Joe his tank upended and nozzle playing on the angry tongues of red flame licking along the ground, feeding on dead needles and duff, going swiftly up the stems of small brush, leaping here and there for a hold on a tree trunk, falling back, trying again—the spit of the chemical blotted tongues out, the duff yielded dense smoke instead of flame, the fire sputtered angrily as it was torn loose from its hold on firm wood—
She moved beside Black Joe without speaking, straining
