It left the tops through which it had passed only singed but the brands it had lifted were snatched by the gale and swept along, falling, a thousand of them, into the balsam thicket!
A crackling followed, like a growing, harsh laugh. A million matches scratching; a thousand bull whips popping—A ripping, a tearing—The swale was afire and the flame, bursting from great puffs of thick, greenish smoke, exploding, leaping, swept on down the creek, melting all that stood in its path!
"Get Raymer!" Helen shouted, mouth close to Goddard's ear. "Send him to the top of the bluff—and come yourself—"
Again she sped with her car through the smoke, reckless of others who might be in her path. She went up a rising road, hot ashes falling about her and stopped, leaping out, calling aloud to Black Joe.
As well have whispered! From the crest of the ridge she looked down through the smoke-screened balsams sixty feet below to see the inferno beyond, sending up its torrent of triumphant sounds: the rip and tear of flame banners frazzled out by their own heat, the popping, the snapping, now and again a sound like a gun-shot; a mighty, breathy wailing—and all against the background of savage roar!
Joe was on his knees, driving his crow bar into the brink of the bluff. A half-dozen others were doing likewise, making parallel rows of holes among the roots of those pines that grew above the ladder of balsam tips on which that fire would mount.
Others took up the work and Joe, relieved, ran back to tear open the boxes of powder. His hands trembled and he had no ear for Helen. Now and then he glanced
