CHAPTER IX.--THE CHAOS OF A BURNING WORLD.

That was a day long to be remembered in the Great Northwest. It is true that the destruction of life and property at that time by no means equaled the ruin wrought by the forest fires of August, 1910, but the conflagration was serious in its final results for all that.

In August of the previous year half a hundred persons lost their lives in the fierce fires which swept over portions of Idaho and Montana, and more than six billion feet of lumber were destroyed. At that time wild animals raced into the log houses of settlers in order to escape the flames. In one instance, placed on record by a forester, a mountain lion actually sought shelter under a bed.

In that case, too, the fire virtually held its ruthless way until it burned itself out, as there were no trails, no telephones, no provisions for the fire fighters. The men of the forest patrol were each guarding a hundred thousand acres. In the more civilized countries of Europe, a thousand acres is considered a large district for one man.

It was hot and close in the odd little valley on the mountain side. There seemed a premonition of greater danger in the very air--the lifeless air which seemed to dry the lungs beyond power of action. The wind, coming over the blazing forests, struck hot upon the face and scorched the lips, while the acrid smoke filled the eyes, the ears, the nostrils.

It seemed to Ned that everything east of the Kootenai river must be on fire. Now and then, drawn by some wayward current of air, the thick smoke lifted in the little cup-like valley, and the cowering wild animals could be seen, huddling together in the terror of the time, deer no longer afraid of lion or bear, lion and bear forgetting to mark their prey.

Finally, anxious to know the extent of the disaster, so far as it might be judged by a personal view of the country west of the valley, Ned left the boys in charge of the aeroplane and crept toward the rim of the cup. Jimmie saw him leaving and started on after him, but Jack drew him back.

"Let him go alone, for once," Jack said, "he's only going to find out where this menagerie of wild animals comes from."

Jimmie settled sullenly back by Jack's side, resolved to break away at the first opportunity and follow the patrol leader.

When Ned gained the elevation he sought, the procession of wild animals had come to an end, although birds, frightened and singed by the flames, were calling from the sky. Everywhere rolled billows of smoke, blown on ahead of the line of fire and in a measure concealing its fatal advance.

Now and then, however, a spurt of hot wind came over the burned waste and lifted the curtain for an instant. Then the boy saw that the fire was crawling up the slope, not racing as it had earlier in the day, but moving steadily, sweeping the earth of the undergrowth, but leaving many large trees.

The danger was decreasing there, but lower down the flames were consuming everything in their path, eating down great trees and leaving fiery, straggling columns to consume them to ashes. Ned thanked his stars that the growths on the slope were not dense enough to foster such a blaze as that which burned below.

It has been stated by those who know that ordinary care would have prevented most of the devastating forest fires which have raged in the Northwest. Experts claim that forests should be burned over under careful supervision, every three or four years. This, they say, will prevent the accumulation of inflammable material such as caused the terrible losses of August, 1910.

Ned saw at once the expediency of the proposed remedy. He knew that resinous spines, steeped in the drippings of pitch and turp from the overhead branches, had lain many inches deep around the trunks of the trees, beneath fallen boles, and at the roots of the undergrowth. This accumulation made the extinguishing of forest fires impossible. He understood that the government had virtually provided for what followed by permitting this material to accumulate year after year.

It is declared by foresters and others who strove to check that wall of fire that it advanced at the rate of a mile a minute between the Kootenai river and the foothills. Below where Ned lay was a burning furnace. It was so hot that he dare not lift his face a second time, and so he moved back to the aeroplane, which he found still safe from the flames, and the wild creatures crouching in the center of the valley.

"What are the prospects?" Frank asked, speaking with his lips close to the ear of the patrol leader, for the roaring of the flames rendered ordinary conversation difficult.

"There is safety here," Ned replied, "but everything to the west seems to be burning."

"Gee!" Jimmie cried, looking Ned in the face, "how would you like to meet a friend with a basket of ice?"

"Ice wouldn't last long here," Frank said.

"Not if I got hold of it!" Jimmie grunted.

As the line of fire came nearer to the top of the slope the air grew hotter, the smoke denser and more stifling. Pat remembered that a pail of water from a spring had been brought to the vicinity of the aeroplane soon after Ned landed, and the boys wet their handkerchiefs and bound them over their eyes and mouths.

As the heat increased the wild creatures crowding together ominously. When a feeble beast was trampled by a stronger one, or when a rattler struck at the leg of a bear or deer, there was a cry of pain and a quick milling of the pack.

"If this doesn't end soon," Frank shouted to Ned through his handkerchief, "there will be a stampede here. Then it will be all off for us."

Ned looked around the little circle before replying. The boys certainly looked like "white caps" with their sheeted faces.

"We'll have to wait and hope for the best," he said. "If the animals come this way, we must stop them, so far as we are able, with our guns and electric flashlights."

Presently night fell, and the wind quieted a little at the setting of the sun. In a short time the clouds rolled away in sullen, threatening groups, and the stars looked down on the forest tragedy. Later, there would be moonlight.

"I wonder if all the world is burned, except just this mountain?" Jimmie asked, taking the handkerchief from his face and wiping the smoke out of his inflamed eyes. "It looks that way."

"There seems to be enough left to hold a lot of heat," Jack said. "I don't believe it will ever be cool again."

"If we'd only saved that brigand steak!" wailed Jimmie.

With the half light and the cooler air there came a commotion in the mass of forest creatures in the center of the valley. It was night now, and they seemed to feel the mounting of their wild instincts to be up and away on the hunt.

Under the stars, one by one, they slunk away, bears and mountain lions turning sullenly toward the lesser beasts, but still too terrified by what they had passed through to feel the pangs of hunger. In half an hour the menagerie had vanished, some to the mountain, some over the slopes to the north and south. The boys drew long breaths of relief when the shambling figure of the last bear disappeared.

Once Jack drew his gun on a fat old buck who seemed desirous of investigating the aeroplane, but Ned saw the action and checked the slaughter.

"Let him alone," he said. "He's lived through this hell on earth, so give him one more chance."

The boys now began gathering up their scattered utensils, restaking the tents, and preparing supper. Jimmie proposed another brigand steak, but Pat insisted that he never wanted to get near enough to a fire to cook again, so they made an indifferent meal of biscuit and tinned pork and beans, not even going to the trouble to boil coffee.

While they were eating a gunshot came from the east, followed by the challenge of a chanticleer.

"What do you know about that?" demanded Jimmie.

"I suppose," Jack complained, "that we've been eating a picked-up supper within a few rods of a farmhouse, or cattle ranch!"

"You might pry open some of the rocks back there," Pat observed, with sarcasm, "and see if you can find the house you speak of. It was a human throat that crow came from."

"Sure it was!" cried Jimmie. "It was a Boy Scout call. Now just see me get him to talking."

"What's a Rooster patrol chap doing here!" asked Jack. "I guess we are all having bad dreams."

Jimmie did not reply. Instead he put his hands to his throat and in a second a long snarling wolf cry came forth, rising into a shrill call, as if summoning a pack at a distance.

"We'll see what he knows about that," the boy said.

As they listened the challenge of the chanticleer came once more. This time Jack answered it with the growl of a black bear, which seemed to Frank to be a great improvement on his practice stunts in the Black Bear Patrol club rooms in New York.

This odd exchange of greetings kept up for some moments, and then the figure of a boy of perhaps seventeen was seen in the uncertain light, making slow progress down the mountain, a short distance to the north. He carried a haversack on his shoulders and was dressed in the khaki uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.

"He must be used to mountain work," Jack remarked, as the boy leaped lightly from ledge to ledge and finally dropped into the valley. "I couldn't do that, even in broad daylight, to save my life!"

The stranger now advanced to the group of boys and gave them the half salute of the Boy Scouts, standing with right arm straight out from the shoulder, palm outward, three fingers standing vertical, the thumb crossing the palm to rest on the bent-in little finger. Ned replied with the full salute, which is made with the hand in the same attitude, only at the forehead.

"What does the badge say?" demanded Jimmie.

"Be prepared!" was the quick reply.

"For what?" was the next question.

"To assist those in distress."

"You're all right," Jimmie shouted. "What patrol?"

"Chanticleer, Denver," was the reply.

"That accounts for the way you lighted down from the mountain," laughed Ned.

"I've got used to climbing in walking the streets of my home town," smiled the other. "Is Ned Nestor here?" he added. "My name is Ernest Whipple; I'm looking for Mr. Ned Nestor."

"Here he is, the only good-looker in the bunch," Jack laughed, pushing Ned forward. "What do you want of him?"

"My father is connected with the Secret Service at Washington," was the reply, "and he posted me as to what was going on here. Said I might come out and join the party, if Mr. Nestor would permit it. What do you say?"

Of course the son of a man connected with the Secret Service at Washington--a man who undoubtedly knew all the plans of the men who had sent Ned into the Northwest--was not to be ignored, but at the same time Ernest would have been received into the party on the strength of his own engaging personality, his own frank manner. From the very first moment he was a favorite with all the boys.

"You're as welcome as the flowers of May!" Frank cried. "Been to supper?"

"Last night!" grinned Ernest. "My haversack is empty--also my stomach. I had to take to the mountain in order to keep out of the fire, and couldn't connect with a grub stake."

"Then there are fires east of the divide?" asked Ned.

"Sure," was the reply, "although they are nothing like the ones over here. The foresters are watching them, and there is little danger of their getting a big start."

"Where did you find foresters?" asked Ned, wondering if the men who had sneaked away from the cavern were not posing as foresters waiting to do further mischief.

"They are in camp beyond the summit," was the reply. "They told me they had patrols all through the lower levels."

Jack gave a description of the man who had visited the camp on the plateau, and was not at all surprised when Ernest identified the fellow as the apparent leader of the band of foresters he had passed on his way west.

"I see that you don't believe the men are foresters," Ernest said, looking into Ned's anxious face. "Well, to tell the truth, I doubt it myself. I heard some talk there that set me thinking, after I got away. There was a man there who had just arrived from San Francisco, they said, and he was doing a good deal of kicking about something that had been done, or hadn't been done. I don't know which."

"Can you describe the fellow?" asked Ned, a quick suspicion coming to his mind.

"Of course I can," was the reply, and the remainder of the answer gave an accurate word photograph of one Albert Lemon.

Ned was thinking fast. How had Lemon reached the eastern side of the divide so quickly. He, himself, had traveled swiftly from San Francisco, leaving soon after his exit from the bachelor apartment where the strange and not entirely satisfactory interview had taken place. He had left the man who claimed to be Albert Lemon half dazed and weakened from the effects of opium--still weary from a long and exhausting journey, as shown by his clothing, and yet the fellow had beaten him out in the race to the mountains.

Why? Certainly not to take charge of the body of his unfortunate friend, for the grave was not there, but in a little hollow away to the north and near the lake. His business seemed to lie with the outlaws who had, apparently, committed the crime. Why? Had the man been killed as the result of a conspiracy between the two interests?

This point was worth looking into, for the motive for the deed might also prove to be the motive for other crimes--among them the burning of forests.