Barlow laid the _Waterbug_ alongside the float. He had already told her
that Lefty Howe, with the greater part of Fyfe's crew, was extending and
guarding Benton's fire-trail, and he half expected that Fyfe might have
turned up there. Away back in the smoke arose spasmodic coughing of
donkey engines, dull resounding of axe-blades. Barlow led the way. They
traversed a few hundred yards of path through brush, broken tops, and
stumps, coming at last into a fairway cut through virgin timber, a
sixty-foot strip denuded of every growth, great firs felled and drawn
far aside, brush piled and burned. A breastwork from which to fight
advancing fire, it ran away into the heart of a smoky forest. Here and
there blackened, fire-scorched patches abutted upon its northern flank,
stumps of great trees smoldering, crackling yet. At the first such
place, half a dozen men were busy with shovels blotting out streaks of
fire that crept along in the dry leaf mold. No, they had not seen Fyfe.
But they had been blamed busy. He might be up above.
Half a mile beyond that, beside the first donkey shuddering on its
anchored skids as it tore an eighteen-inch cedar out by the roots, they
came on Lefty Howe. He shook his head when Stella asked for Fyfe.
"He took twenty men around to the main camp day before yesterday," said
Lefty. "There was a piece uh timber beyond that he thought he could
save. I--well, I took a shoot around there yesterday, after your brother
got hurt. Jack wasn't there.
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