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Updated: May 19, 2025
I inquired of an officer near me, displaying my reporter's fire-line badge, more for its moral effect than in the hope of getting any real information in these days of enforced silence toward the press. "Black Hand bomb," was the laconic reply. "Whew!" I whistled. "Anyone hurt?" "They don't usually kill anyone, do they?" asked the officer by way of reply to test my acquaintance with such things.
"Your father, Bill, and one of his men, jumped down the steep sides where the fire was raging, and began to beat out the flames. They could see the two drunken miners just beyond the fire-line down the trail, but they seemed so overcome with whisky and smoke that they failed to respond to any shouts from the men, or to the fear of the on-driving fire.
It was the seventh hour of steady battle, and many of them were almost overcome by exhaustion; but those who faltered found their places taken by others, and the unequal struggle went on. At this point Smith, with his fire-line badge pinned to his coat in case of challenge, was turning his hand to anything which seemed to need the doing.
During such periods, Charley would walk back along the fire-line to make sure that the blaze was extinguished behind him. Darkness came quickly in the deep valley, and before Charley had the blaze half extinguished, he was unable to see distinctly.
Half-way down this, the ground yet hot beneath their feet, the vapor stifling, but with clearer breaths of air blowing in their faces, Brant tripped and fell. Mason beat out the smouldering sparks in his clothing, and assisted him to stagger to his feet once more. Then together they bore him, now unconscious, slowly down below the first fire-line.
I shouted to the men to save themselves; but Burnt Earth and Ringing Thunder had already gone off to skirt the near end of the fire-line. Little Fellow and La Robe Noire stuck staunchly by me. We all three paused, facing death; and the Indians' horses trembled close to my broncho till I felt the burn of hot stirrups against both ankles. Our buckskin was smoking in a dozen places.
No, it ain't over!" he explained, scornful of her inexperience. "They'll have to have a gang of men here watchin' it all night and maybe all tomorrow 'less we have some rain. But it won't go no further than the fire-line, and as soon as there're men enough to draw that all around, it's got to stop!"
But, like a tiger confined in its cage, it had reached out through its bars and claimed victims. Three stands of farm buildings were in ruins. Harlan Thornton, sooty and weary, left the fire-line as soon as he knew that the monster had been subdued. He rode about to reassure the owners that their losses would be made up by himself and his grandfather.
It lasts, however, only a few seconds, vanishing with magical rapidity, to be succeeded by others along the fire-line at irregular intervals for weeks at a time tree after tree flashing and darkening, leaving the trunks and branches hardly scarred. The heat, however, is sufficient to kill the trees, and in a few years the bark shrivels and falls off.
There, stooping not fifty feet away from Bruin he lapped thirstily until he had at last drunk his fill. Then, looking back once in the direction of the fire-line, he lay down, very daintily indeed, in shallow water; and prepared to enjoy his liberty.
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