How they stuck it out for that infernal half-hour Bob could not have told, but stick it out they did.  The flames gradually died down; the heat grew less; the danger that the shrivelled brush on the wrong side the fire line would be ignited by sheer heat, vanished.  The four men fell back.  Their eyebrows and hair were singed; their skin blackened.  Bob’s face felt sore, and as though it had been stretched.  He took a long pull at his canteen.  For the moment he felt as though his energy had all been drained away.

“Well, that was a good little scrap,” observed Charley Morton cheerfully.  “I certainly do wish it was always night when a man had to fight fire.  In a hot sun it gets to be hard work.”

Elliott rolled his eyes, curiously white like a minstrel’s in his blackened face, at Bob, but said nothing.

“We’ll leave Elliott here to watch this a few minutes, and go down the line,” said Morton.

Bob lifted his canteen, and, to his surprise, found it empty.

“Why, I must have drunk a gallon!” he cried.

“It’s dry work,” said Morton.

They continued on down the fire line, pausing every once in a while to rake and scrape leisurely at the heavy bark beneath some blazing stub.  The fierce, hard work was over.  All along the fire line from the dome of granite over the ridge down to Granite Creek the fire had consumed all the light fuel on its own side the defence.  No further danger was to be apprehended in the breaking across.  But everywhere through the now darkening forest blazed the standing trees.  A wind would fill the air with brands; and even in the present dead calm those near the line were a threat.

The men traversed the fire line from end to end a half-dozen times.  Bob became acquainted individually and minutely with each of the danger spots.  The new temporary features of country took on, from the effects of vigilance and toil, the dignity of age and establishment.  Anxiously he widened the path here, kicked back glowing brands there, tried to assure himself that in no possible manner could the seed of a new conflagration find germination.  After a long time he heard three shots from up the mountain.  This, he remarked, was a signal agreed upon.  He shouldered his blackened implements and commenced a laborious ascent.

Suddenly he discovered that he was very tired, and that his legs were weak and wobbly.  Stubs and sticks protruded everywhere; stones rolled from under his feet.  Once on a steep shale, he fell and rolled ten feet out of sheer weariness.  In addition he was again very thirsty, and his canteen empty.  A chill gray of dawn was abroad; the smell of stale burning hung in the air.