Unexplored! Part 9

Norris was just returning with the triumphant fire-fighters. They had actually not missed them. When, four hours later, Ace awoke and responded to Pedro's "Come and get it!" as he ladled out the ham and beans, he found himself a hero, and Ted his press agent.

"This country would do well to emulate France," Norris was explaining.

"France offers a government subsidy to encourage commercial aviation. Our Congress has thus far refused to realize the need of appropriations. For it is by trade that aviation will develop.

"We need above all things more airplane fire patrols. We have the men, trained aviators left from the war,--we have the equipment, and the men could protect not only our National Forests, but at the same time keep a watchful eye on the millions of acres of state lands and timber privately owned, which lie adjacent to Government holdings.

"Do you fellows realize that in five years, areas have been burned that would more than fill the state of Utah! At that rate how long will our forests last? And think what a paper famine alone would mean!" He paused for lack of breath to express the intensity of his feeling.

"Hundreds of men have given up their lives in the service,--fighting fire."

"Yes," said Ace, "but Dad says there's a bigger fight to put up in Congress for forestry appropriations."

"Your father is doing good work," stated Norris.

"He's trying to, you bet!"

"These fire-fighting 'planes can sail over the highest peaks in the United States. They can travel 14 hours without a landing. They can communicate with those below by radio. And they don't have to have smooth landing places, merely ground that is free from stumps. We have over twenty million acres of National Forests alone, (not counting those in Alaska), and they are worth $220,000,000."

"Gee! And there's just as much risk as in dodging enemy 'planes," Ted enthused, "flying over fires, and finding landing places when your motor goes on strike." His eyes glowed across at Ace.

"Huh, you're safe enough above a thousand feet," minimized Ace, modestly.

"These accidents practically all happen below a thousand feet."

But by now supper was eaten, and it was time to get back to work. Norris, acting on Radcliffe's suggestion, had been stationing the men at intervals to back-fire as far down the ridge as they could stand the heat. If anything, the fire seemed bigger than it had the night before,--a maelstrom of the inferno.

They worked in pairs, Ace being his, Norris's, right hand man. He now a.s.sorted the six miners along the slope, planning himself to take the extreme Western post, where the ridge ran lowest and where the rocky crest dwindled to a dangerous line of mountain pines.

Ted and Pedro he directed to the opposite end of the ridge, where, like the tooth of a comb, it joined the main crest of the Sierra,--another strategic point.

"If worst comes to worst," his final words were, "take refuge in some cave. This is a limestone region,--as you may have noticed,--and it's likely riddled with caves. Keep an eye out for indications of cave mouths. I saw one yesterday, somewhere down there, when I didn't have time to investigate."

"All right," acquiesced the boys, though inwardly scorning the possibility.

Rosa remained at camp to have food ready for the men on their return.

She began by taking stock. There was flour and lard, but no bread. She would have to bake for eleven hungry men. There were rice, beans, onions and tomatoes, dried fruits and coffee, and fresh meat for one meal, and for the next, erbwurst and pickles, macaroni to be baked with cheese, and tea. She hoped--for more reasons than one--that the Ranger would bring more supplies. She got out the Dutch oven and the gallon coffee pot, and with the hatchet provided with the outfit, started getting in a supply of down-wood.

As on the day of the rodeo, she was attired in trim khaki riding breeches and high-heeled moccasin boots,--good on horseback but mighty hard to walk in, where the ground was rough. Her bobbed curly hair, red silk blouse and fringed sash added a touch of the Rosa that underlay her gritty side. She would surprise Radcliffe with her ability to cook for a fire crew.

The huge loaf safely ensconced in a Dutch oven buried in red coals, she sallied forth on a little exploring expedition. She wished she might find some fir sugar to cap the feast. She had, once, when camping in the Thompson River Valley. She had found the delectable sweet on a Douglas fir. Some of the dry white ma.s.ses had been all of two inches long, though most of it had been in the form of mere white drops at the tips of the needles. There had also been a quant.i.ty of it in a semi-liquid condition on the ground underneath the tree, where some rain had dissolved it from the branches.

Just where should she search? The Indians had told her that time to look on the dry Eastern slopes of the range, in open areas where the trees got lots of sunlight, but where the ground has not dried out too quickly after the spring rains, as moisture is necessary as well as sunlight,--(so long as it does not rain and melt off this excess of the tree's digested starch). She had a hunch that she could find some on the desert side of the Sierras, that being, of course, unattainable--unless Ace could take her over in his 'plane. It would do no harm to look on this side.

Neither did it do any good. She returned to camp empty-handed save for some cones of the sugar pine, which she proceeded to roast that the nuts might fall out of the spiny ma.s.ses.

She found the deserted camp over-run with chipmunks. The little striped rascals had ravaged all the food supplies they could nibble into. She watched a couple of them actually shoving on the tin lid that she had left insecurely loose on the syrup can. Finally sending it clattering to the stony ground,--as she watched from behind two trees that grew close together,--the wee things sat up there on the edge of the can, dipping out its contents with their hand-like paws and licking them. Then one tried to reach down and drink it outright, at which he fell in, and Rosa felt impelled to fish him out and launder him,--to his terror,--before turning him loose, then put the syrup on the fire to sterilize.

Meantime what of the fire fighters? Ted and Pedro, with their pick and shovel, had descended rapidly into that deathly silence of the doomed forest slopes, deserted alike by song birds and chipmunks, the hum of insects and sound of any living thing, save alone the never-ceasing roar of the ravenous flames.

The fire had been eating slowly through a stretch of manzanita chaparral, whose hard stems resisted them as the evergreens could not. Though the wind still blew up-canyon, they approached the river gorge at right angles, and were able to make their way to the lower levels in the shelter of the East side of a dry creek bed, where the hot blast could not reach them.

They were stooping to drink at a spring when the terrified neigh of a horse sounded from a clump of saplings almost behind them. In the same instant the stretch of seedling firs that clothed the creek bank, showering into sparks at the far end, shot toward them sky rockets of leaping flame. Turning in a panic to race out at right angles from this unexpected peril, they thought to make time on horseback. The animal was tied and hobbled with a rawhide lariat!

Frantically the hobbled horse jerked at the rawhide.

Pedro plucked Ted by the arm and tried to drag him on, for the fire was snapping through the underbrush at the speed of an express train. Its sound was that of many trains, and its wind hot as the breath of a blast furnace.

But as Ted had stooped to cut the thongs, his parched nostrils had caught a cooler breath. It seemed to issue from a cranny in the rocks behind the clump of saplings. Then it was too late: The shooting tongues of red were upon them. Dragging Pedro down beside him,--for the roar drowned his voice,--he waited, reasoning that the two- or three-foot seedlings would go like tinder, leaving a strip of ground hot, to be sure, but no longer flaming.

If they could but endure its pa.s.sing! He turned to press his scorched face against the rock wall.

To his amazement, he fell into a cave mouth, tripping Pedro, who stumbled after him. Quick as thought they dragged the horse in after them and held him, trembling and snorting, his eyes rolling wildly, during that blistering moment until the line of fire had pa.s.sed them.

"We're safer now than before," declared Ted. "This made a fine back-fire, didn't it?--Let's rest awhile." His nerves were taking toll of him.

"Ground's too _hot yet_ anyway."

For perhaps an hour they rested, flat on the floor of the cave,--after having tied the horse to a bowlder just outside. He was a fine animal, black as jet and as high-spirited as Spitfire himself. Ted appraised him with longing eyes, for he loved horses as Ace loved his s.h.i.+p. But who could he belong to, and how did he come to be there?

His bridle was embellished with silver. "Mexican handiwork, that!" Pedro thought. But the mystery was no nearer solution.

The answer came sooner than they expected.

CHAPTER VI

THE INCENDIARIES

The red glow of the sun on the snow-clad peaks of the main ridge had begun glinting through the smoke gloom when voices seemed to echo from within the very rock against which they were leaning. The boys crept to look behind it. Then their eyes rounded in astonishment. As Ted would have spoken, Pedro clapped his hand over his mouth with a look that bade silence. Crouched motionless at the side of the cave mouth,--for a deep cave it now disclosed itself,--the two boys peered at the spectacle that greeted their eyes.

Three Mexicans, aglitter with the silver b.u.t.tons of their native costume, appeared suddenly from some black depth, carrying torches.

With these one of their number kindled a bon-fire, whose flame revealed a couple of burros standing patiently under their packs, tied to a mammoth stalagmite. For the red flare behind the three figures of the Mexicans, showed a cave roofed with amber-tinted icicles of smoke-stained rock, beneath which up-rose for each a pyramid of the same formation.

The Mexicans might have been father and son and old servant, from their general appearance and from the fact that most of the work of supper-getting was performed by the shabby, white-haired one, while the fat middle-aged one struck the younger a blow that was not reciprocated.

They were talking in a tongue that Ted could not translate, though from the peppery tone of it, he judged they were quarreling. Pedro a.s.sured him later they were not. (He knew Mexican.) They were merely regretting that their horse had been burned.

The fat one, evidently too f.a.gged to move, was demanding that one of the others go see for sure, while they argued that it was no use, the animal could not have survived. They must have been exhausted, lame, besides, to judge from the creaky way they moved. The fat one poured some verbal vitriol on their heads for not having brought the horse inside, while the white haired one deprecated that they had not intended to be gone so long.

"It's the fat one's, and now he'll have to hoof it like the others; he'd sure break the back of a burro," translated Pedro in huge enjoyment, to his mystified companion. "Wonder if they're the fire bugs Rosa saw?"

"Let's listen and find out," said Ted.

As the blaze by which they dried their mysteriously muddy feet died down to red coals, from the pack of one of the burros the old peon extracted some ready-made tamales and proceeded to add the heat of cooking to the hotter peppers within their enwrapping corn husks. This fiery mixture they quenched from a round-bellied bottle pa.s.sed from lip to lip, though the fat one took his first and longest.

"They're the fire bugs, all right," said Pedro softly into Ted's ear. And it was agreed that they might safely creep in along the shadows till Pedro could hear more plainly.