FIRE 87 
sleep of every Forest Service man during the dry 
season. 
Those of us who had never fought fire in the woods 
—Wallace, Wetherby, Conway and myself, were 
much excited. We were anxious to meet this 
dreaded opponent. Tales that we had heard, legends 
of former conflagrations, buzzed in our brains. 
The interest we felt in the impending struggle over- 
came the fear of fatigue—the natural physical aver- 
sion for the gruelling task ahead. 
The older men, by contrast, were silent and seri- 
ous. They knew what the call meant. They remem- 
bered similar nights of toil with shovel or rake, wet 
sack or pine limb flail, by back fire or cleared line, 
long nights passed in a death struggle with the for- 
ests’ arch-enemy, sometimes conquering, crushing 
the red terror into the blackness of death, sometimes 
conquered, driven from the field by the fiery breath 
of the onrushing flames. These veterans did not 
lightly join issue again. Their gravity was impres- 
sive, portentous; their silent, swift preparation in- 
spired us with the feeling that our waiting foe was 
worthy of our most earnest efforts, that no man 
might with confidence foretell the outcome of the 
night’s work. 
There was no confusion, or hesitation, once the 
warning came. The packers and the cook, detailed 
to supply water to the fighters on the line, left at 
once to round up the burros. 
The rest of us started for the scene of action with- 
