Chapter XXIX: The Fire
The shack was full of smoke when Weston awakened, coughing, and
drowsily looked about him. Somebody else was spluttering close by, and
in a moment or two he heard Devine relieve himself with a few
expletives. Then Weston got up from his lair of spruce twigs fully
dressed, for the night was chilly and the shack had only three sides
to it, while the men who live in such places not infrequently take off
their clothes to work and put them on when they go to bed.
"The wind has evidently dropped, and the smoke's drifting back. I
can't stand much more of this," said Weston.
Devine, it seemed, had lost his temper.
"Then why don't you get out, instead of worrying people?" he asked. "Anyway, it's only one of the little luxuries that Saunders and I are quite accustomed to. I've been eaten by mosquitoes, sandflies, and other insects of various kinds. You've 'most smashed my ankle, besides sticking a grub-hoe into me, and Saunders must work out a big stone just when I was under it. We've been living most of two months on his rancid pork and grindstone bread, and now you make a circus about a little smoke!"
He broke off in another fit of spluttering, and the storekeeper's
voice rose out of the vapor which seemed to be rapidly thickening.
"The wind's not dropped. It's shifted, and the fire's working back," he said.
In another moment Weston stood gasping in the doorway. A little chilly
breeze, such as often draws down from the ranges in early morning, met
him in the face, and the air was thick with drifting smoke. Hoarse
shouts rose out of it and a patter of running feet, and it became
evident that most of the men were departing hastily for the range or
the remoter forest. Weston, however, could not see them, and it was, indeed, a few seconds before he saw anything except a confused glimmering behind a dusky pall of vapor. Then, as the smoke thinned, a bewildering glare shot up, and ranks of trees were silhouetted against a sea of fire that flung itself upon the rearmost of them and ran aloft from spray to spray, while the snapping of the smaller branches resembled volleys of riflery. After that the smoke drove down again and blotted out everything.
Weston, however, was not unduly alarmed. He concerned himself most
about the possibility of their work being delayed during the next day
or two. As a rule, an active man has little difficulty in avoiding a
forest fire, unless it is of unusual extent, or is driven by a strong
wind, and there was a wide space already burned clear to which they
could remove their possessions. It appeared advisable to set about the
latter task at once, for the conflagration was by this time
uncomfortably close to them.
"Hand me the big flour-bag," he said.
Saunders hoisted it on his shoulders, and he stumbled away with it, coughing in the smoke, until he could deposit it in the cleared track where the fire had passed the previous afternoon. Then he went back for another load, and had some difficulty in reaching the shack, for the vapor filled his eyes and almost suffocated him. He fell down once or twice among the half-burned branches as he retraced his steps with his burden; but pork and flour and picks and drills were precious commodities in the bush, and he made a third journey, upsetting Saunders as he plunged into the shack. In the meanwhile, the other also had been busy, and at length they sat down gasping beside the pile of blankets, clothing, tools and provisions, with several other men who had hastily removed their possessions from adjacent claims.
"Where are the rest of the boys?" Saunders asked one of them.
"Some of them are in the workings, some of them on the range, but I
guess it was for Vancouver the Fraser crowd started out. Seemed to me
they meant to get there before they stopped."
Just then a shower of sparks fell about them and charred a hole or two
in Devine's clothes, while they had a momentary vision of the front of
the conflagration. It was not a reassuring spectacle, for the rolling
sea of fire flung itself aloft in glittering spray to the tops of the
highest firs, and the valley rang with the roar it made.
"Well," said Saunders, reflectively, "I don't know that I blame the
Fraser crowd, and one of the boys was telling me not long ago that the
settlement he came from was burned out. A thing of that kind makes a
man cautious. Anyway, it's quite hot enough here, and we'll hump this
truck along to the adit."