But just then Franklin came in with Sturgis.

“Pretty dry out that way,” he grinned, helping himself to an enormous slab of bread and a big hunk of cheese.

“How far west does the main fire extend?” Sturgis asked.

“Within about forty rods of Deming Lake.”

“Deming Lake!” Sturgis almost shouted. “That means that it may get on to section thirty-six.”

“Almost there now,” Franklin answered cheerfully. “We can stop it on that row of lakes if it just don’t come around from the southeast on the other side of them. That’s going to be the big trouble.”

“We’ve got to stop it,” Sturgis gritted between his clenched teeth. “If that fire ever gets into that young growth on thirty-six Professor Roberts will never forgive me.”

“The only way you can do it,” Franklin assured him cheerfully, “is to clean things up here tonight so that you won’t have to waste men on patrol and fight her face to face down there in the morning.”

“I guess you’re right,” Sturgis assented, “and we’d better be getting at it. You take the boys and start cleaning up from the south end of the lake here and I’ll go see what Dan is doing with the fire across the road.

“We’ve stopped the first rush now and there is no more danger tonight, but the wind is a little southeast and if the fire gets around us to the west and breaks away in the morning we’ll be worse off than we were before and all our work wasted. Now we have to clean up the edges of this fire for two miles. Bury the fire along the edges, cut down all the stubs which may throw sparks, and throw back into the fire all burning logs and rotten stuff.”

“Two miles,” Bill Price exclaimed, “and here I’ve been dreaming of home and mother. Come on, boys, for every one that dies there’ll be one more vacancy for the under classmen.”

They filed away around the lake and were soon scattered along the front of the fire intent on their gruelling work. The wind had gone down and the fire no longer ran readily, but it burned too fiercely to permit of close approach and they were forced to resort to the slow, tiresome process of trenching and allowing the fire to burn up to it. It was comparatively easy to keep it from crossing. Then they were able to go back and complete the cleaning up. As each man cleaned up the little patch assigned to him he passed on to another ahead of the foremost man. And so they worked one weary hour after another, slowly crawling along that crooked line. It became so dark and the line of the fire was so crooked that the boys had no idea where they were or where they were going. Each man was practically isolated in the darkness. Occasionally it happened a man toward the end of the line who had been delayed by some refractory stubs found himself deserted and became completely lost, unable to find the other workers.

At last at one o’clock they were allowed to rest and they fell asleep by the campfire like one man. At three o’clock Sturgis called them again.

They had to be shaken individually, some even required repeated applications, to bring them to their senses. Slowly they scrambled to their feet, still half asleep, groaning with the aches and pains which shot through their wracked bodies. They saw the men up and going silently about the morning preparations, realized that they had been favored with all the extra time there was for sleep, and choked down their troubles in silence. No one seemed to have anything to say, not even Bill Price, but it was the dogged silence of determination, not sullenness. The meager breakfast was soon over for they were running short of provisions, and they were ready to work once more.

“Are we working again or yet?” Bill asked musingly.

“Sorry I could not let you sleep longer, fellows,” Sturgis apologized, “but we can cover rods now to the feet we can make when the sun gets up. Dan will keep the men here to make breaks between the lakes and backfire as soon as it’s dry enough. The rest of us will go down to the south end of Josephine and see what we can do there. It’s a race for the north end of Niowa and we must win.”

The wind was already on the rise. On the rise and from the east, the worst possible direction. Sturgis placed his scattered line of workers, urging them to greater efforts, and took the trail he had come down that morning to rob Dan of two of his small force. They had already completed their short breaks across the narrow necks and were waiting for an opportunity to start the backfires.

“Can you do it with one man, Dan?” he panted. “It’s a race down to Nimashi Lake, and every man counts there.”

“I can try it,” Dan answered simply.

With his two recruits Sturgis hurried south once more, harried the poor weary workers to frenzied efforts and took up his own position at the south end of the line. Already the wind had fanned the fire to a heat that made close work impossible and they had to resort to the slow work of trenching and backfiring. There were still two hundred yards to go. Slowly the men began to come around from the rear to take up the new positions in front, and the gap was narrowed. Even at that it looked as though it would be impossible to head it at the lake, but at the last minute five men came up from the rear, Scott among them, and under Franklin’s lead fought the fire face to face. Clothes were burned and eyebrows singed, but they fought desperately. They beat the fire out of the last grass strip between the hill and the lake in one grand triumphal rush.

For the time that fire was safe. The reaction on the overworked boys was almost immediate. With one accord they lay down wherever they happened to be and went to sleep. Sturgis looked at them enviously. He had worked harder than they, and on considerably less sleep, but he knew that their apparent victory over the fire could be turned to a complete defeat by the passage of a single unwatched spark across that narrow fireguard. Only a weary patrol of the entire fireline for the rest of the day would make it safe.

He turned away with a weary sigh. “I guess it’s up to you and me and Dan, Franklin, to patrol this thing. I never saw a better working bunch of boys, but they are not used to it, and they are all in.”

“Well,” Franklin grinned, apparently as fresh as when he started, “the fire’s almost all in, too, and I guess we three can handle it.”

They had just started to trail away northward over that weary stretch of line, leaving the boys asleep where they were, when Professor Mertz, who had gone home the night before, strode over the brow of the hill with a big pack sack on his back.

“By George, Mertz,” Sturgis cried gratefully, “you’re the best-looking man, with that pack on your back, that I’ve ever seen.”

“How’s the fire?” Professor Mertz asked anxiously.

“It’s all over but the shouting,” Sturgis assured him, “if we can just keep awake long enough to patrol it for the rest of the day. It was pretty hot down there by that lake, but the boys fought like good fellows and stopped her. It can’t get by below.”

“Where are the boys?”

“Sound asleep right where they dug the last shovelful of dirt. They hit the ground and were snoring before the dirt fell.”

“Pretty tough one for a starter,” chuckled the professor. “You fellows look pretty tired yourselves. I brought five men down with me and put them to patrolling above here. Guess they can handle it all now. Dan was in a pretty tight hole back there.”

The strain relieved and the necessity for keeping at it removed, Sturgis and Franklin sat down with a thud, and would probably have joined the boys if the sight of the pack sack had not kept them awake. The professor soon had the coffee boiling and the supplies spread out temptingly. Getting the boys awake was a harder task, but the mention of something to eat aroused even the most weary and they fell to with a will.

It was agreed that the fresh men should be left to maintain the patrol until six o’clock that night, and all the rest should go back to camp in the wagon. It was a tired crew, but they kept their spirits buoyed up by the feeling that they had won a great victory and made good. They tuned up for the Lodge and sang lustily in answer to the cheers of the summer boarders who turned out to see them go by. The songs heralded their approach long before they reached the camp, and all the non-combatants were out to welcome them. They presented a begrimed and bedraggled spectacle, but they were supremely happy.

“Do I win that pop?” Sturgis called after them as they trailed away to the bunkhouse.

“You sure do,” Bill Price shouted back, “and I’ll bet you another case that I can sleep till tomorrow noon without waking up even to eat.”

Scott remembered how the fire swept roaring up that hill and dreamed all night that he was fighting just such fires sweeping up the mountain slopes of his own forest in New Hampshire. The fact that he might never get that forest made them seem none the less real.