We're a-comin'—we're a-comin'—we couldn't stop if we wanted to—we're a-comin'— a-comin'—now!"
"That's Raymer and help!" the girl cried and laughed excitedly.
They came clanking through the smoke, Raymer and Goddard, Thad Parker and four others from the mill. They clustered about the girl, but before they could question, she was giving orders. One by one she assigned them to their work, Goddard with a crew to backfire from the next fire line eastward, Black Joe to go on a horse and circle the entire burning area. Raymer to the northern flank. They scattered and Helen, relieved of actual labor, turned her car about and drove back a half mile to a vantage point.
The snapping became sharp reports, like pistol shots. A freakish wind, set up by the rising heat, eddied about, slapping downward and up, this way and that, scattering brands as it went. For a moment a strange silence, then the popping again. Along the line of advancing fire the men worked, shirts smoking as they played their chemicals. Their hair singed, their cheeks blistered; lungs became raw and eyes streamed water. They retreated slowly, always retreated. They could not advance, could not even make a stand. Checked here, the fire found an opening there and worked into fresh fuel; subdued in this place, it gathered strength elsewhere, and all the time it became more aspiring, leaping higher on trunks, clinging longer to dead branches, running up the lichen-covered bark, licking for the green needles, falling back, waiting, gathering strength and trying again. On the flanks the advance of flame was slower, the heat not so great, the smoke not so dense. They could hold the fire from
