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.  Most of the boys was at camp loadin’ gear on the scows.  They said Jack’s gone around to Tumblin’ Creek with one man.  He wasn’t back this mornin’.  So I thought maybe he’d gone to the Springs.  I dunno’s there’s any occasion to worry.  He might ‘a’ gone to the head uh the lake with them constables that went up last night.  How’s Charlie Benton?”

She told him briefly.

“That’s good,” said Lefty.  “Now, I’d go around to Cougar Bay, if I was you, Mrs. Jack.  He’s liable to come in there, any time.  You could stay at the house to-night.  Everything around there, shacks ‘n’ all, was burned days ago, so the fire can’t touch the house.  The crew there has grub an’ a cook.  I kinda expect Jack’ll be there, unless he fell in with them constables.”

She trudged silently back to the Waterbug.  Barlow started the engine, and the boat took up her slow way.  As they skirted the shore, Stella began to see here and there the fierce havoc of the fire.  Black trunks of fir reared nakedly to the smoky sky, lay crisscross on bank and beach.  Nowhere was there a green blade, a living bush.  Nothing but charred black, a melancholy waste of smoking litter, with here and there a pitch-soaked stub still waving its banner of flame, or glowing redly.  Back of those seared skeletons a shifting cloud of smoke obscured everything.

Presently they drew in to Cougar Bay.  Men moved about on the beach; two bulky scows stood nose-on to the shore.  Upon them rested half a dozen donkey engines, thick-bellied, upright machines, blown down, dead on their skids.  About these in great coils lay piled the gear of logging, miles of steel cable, blocks, the varied tools of the logger’s trade.  The Panther lay between the scows, with lines from each passed over her towing bitts.

Stella could see the outline of the white bungalow on its grassy knoll.  They had saved only that, of all the camp, by a fight that sent three men to the hospital, on a day when the wind shifted into the northwest and sent a sheet of flame rolling through the timber and down on Cougar Bay like a tidal wave.  So Barlow told her.  He cupped his hands now and called to his fellows on the beach.