Page:Hugh Pendexter--The young timber-cruisers.djvu/163

 curiosity in his downcast eyes, “But what if it had got beyond our control for the moment, what would we have done?”

“Wal,” said Abner deliberately, “if it really was beyond our control we’d camped here and taken a nap.”

Bub nodded his head in affirmation, but Stanley could hardly believe the statement.

“It’s like this,” explained Abner; “you fight a fire in the early morning. The minute the fire warden on Hood mountain saw the smoke he’d telephone across to Crooked Hill and then it would be sent north and south and east and west. In each case the warden would call help, and when he asks help to fight a fire every mill owner and operator called upon must send crews. Some sixty or a hundred men would be rushed in here.

“Then they would organize and fight the fire in front, beginning at 3 o’clock in the morning, say, when the blaze is smouldering. The fire always grows with the sun and the wind and the fire-fighting day ends at 10 or 11 o’clock Then the men go to sleep and rest up for the next morning. If the case is desperate back fires are set at night.”

“That means the men in front set a fire and so control it that it can only spread towards