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354 fork stab out, saw a solid wall of fire flutter and hesitate and then wrap about the topmost balsams, clinging there a split instant before it made its last leap—its leap into the pine above.

Through that bedlam of terror, Helen's voice cut like a knife: "Now Joe!"

She was thrown from her knees to her face because as that sheet of flame gathered itself for its jump into the pine tops, the whole bluff belched out to meet it! A thousand tons of loose sand were flung into the face of the fire. Outward and up and down, it struck, more vicious than the heat in its path, more powerful than the flame Trees on the brink rocked as the root holds that had endured throughout their life gave way. They swayed and twisted and three, one after the other, toppled over into that smoking maw!—

Smoking maw! The flame was gone. As a puff of breath will extinguish a candle, so that blast had blown life from the fire. For yards, the balsam that had blazed was smothered with dry sand. For rods, the fire was stripped clean from wood where it had found hold. The point of the fire was broken, gone. It was no longer in the balsam tops, no longer a menace to the pine above. It had consumed as it went; there was nothing left in the path of that which had escaped the full force of the explosion to feed upon. It would burn for days, perhaps, but it was down there, disorganized, where men could seize upon and fight it!

"Oh, God A'mighty!" cried Black Joe. "If Paul Bunion could 'a' saw that!"

"Herd back that crew!" choked Helen. "We can hold it, now!"