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They patrolled the line until they felt sure it was safe. "If we can put out the flames between our back-fire and the brook," said Lew, "it will make our job a great deal easier. We've already put out part of them." They began to work their way back to the brook, following the line of flame and beating out the fire foot by foot as they advanced. There were many things in their favor.
I'm very sorry for the fright I caused you. I'll not start my auto again until you drive on. Then, if it should happen to back-fire again, your horse will not mind it so much." "Thank you," the young lady said. "But I do not want to drive on right away. I came to see you," she announced to Grandpa Ford. "To see me?" and Mr. Ford was quite surprised. "You drove up here to see me?"
Little did any of them sleep that night; and it was not strange that the morning, which came on wet and showery, found them but little refreshed after the unusual fatigue of the preceding night. But the children were awake with the first light, and eagerly asking questions about the fire. "But what is a back-fire?" said Annie, when her father had finished telling them about the matter.
"A horse don't have much show when he's shut up, and Out there where that dry ditch runs, we'll back-fire. You take this sack and come and watch out my fire don't jump the ditch. We'll carry it around the house, just the other side the trail." He was pulling a handful of grass for a torch, and while he was twisting it and feeling in his pocket for a match, he looked at her keenly.
On the windward side of this base the back-fire is started and allowed to eat its way back against the wind until it meets the main fire which is rushing forward with the wind, and chokes it out for lack of fuel. A few men, stationed along a furrow or a trail, can keep the small back-fire from jumping it, although they would be powerless to check the momentum of the main fire.
He had distinctly heard two sharp reports, like pistol shots. Motors continued to hum past on Sheridan Road, and he could detect none of the unusual sounds which accompany a disturbance of any kind. As a result of having hundreds of cars pass his windows daily he was used to the crack of bursting motor tires, or the back-fire in mufflers.
The winding brook and the brown slope, comparatively bare of trees, brought me a sudden inspiration. "Back-fire! Back-fire!" I cried to my companions, in wild appeal. "We must back-fire. It's our chance! Here's the place!" Bud scowled and Herky grumbled, but Bill grasped at the idea. "I've heerd of back-firin'. The rangers do it. But how? How?"
But as she spoke they heard the detonations of a back-fire, and pictured, though they could not see, Melchard's avengers plunging away southward, past the end of the lane into which Dick had turned. This lane between two rows of blunt cottage-fronts soon proved itself not merely a refuge, but an avenue.
I know of one case in which a boy did not speak a word for twelve months, and when viewing the play "Under Fire" in Sydney suddenly found his speech return at the sound of a shot. Another man had just been pronounced by the medical officer as cured when the back-fire of a motor-car heard in the streets of Melbourne brought back all the symptoms of shell-shock again.
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