The work was at once begun.  In spite of the cruel throb of his injured hand, Bob found the labour pleasant by sheer force of contrast.  The air was cool, the shade refreshing, the frantic necessity of struggle absent.  He raked carefully his broad path among the pine needles, laying bare the brown earth; hoed and chopped in the tarweed and brush.  Several times Charley Morton passed him.  Each time the ranger paused for a moment to advise him.

“You ought to throw your line farther back,” he told Bob.  “See that ‘dead-and-down’ ahead?  If you let that cross your fire line, it’ll carry the fire sooner or later, sure; and if you curve your line too quick to go around it, the fire’ll jump.  You want to keep your eye out ’way ahead.”

Once Bob caught a glimpse of blue calico through the trees.  As he came nearer, he was surprised to see Mrs. Morton working away stoutly with a hoe.  Her skirts were turned back, her sleeves rolled up to display a white and plump forearm, the neck of her gown loosened to show a round and well-moulded neck.  The strokes of her hoe were as vigorous as those of any of the men.  In watching the strong, free movements of her body, Bob forgot for a moment what had been intruding itself on him with more and more insistance—­the throb of his broken hand.

In the course of an hour the fire line was well under way.  But now wisps of smoke began to drift down the tree aisles.  Birds shot past, at first by ones and twos, later in flocks.  A deer that must have lain perdu to let them pass bounded across the ridge, his head high, his nostrils wide.  The squirrels ran chattering down the trees, up others, leaped across the gaps, working always farther and farther to the north.  The cool breeze carried with it puffs of hot air.  Finally in distant openings could be discerned little busy, flickering flames.  All at once the thought gripped Bob hard:  the might of the fire was about to test the quality of his work!

“There she comes!” gasped Charley Morton.  “My Lord, how she’s run to-day!  We got to close the line to that stone dike.”

By one of the lightning transitions of motive with which these activities seemed to abound, the affair had become a very deadly earnest sort of race.  It was simple.  If the men could touch the dike before the fire, they won.

The realization of this electrified even the weary spirits of the fire-fighters.  They redoubled their efforts.  The hoes, mattocks and axes rose and fell feverishly.  Mrs. Morton, the perspiration matting her beautiful and shining hair across her forehead, laboured with the best.  The fire, having gained the upward-rising slope, came at them with the speed of an enemy charging.  Soon they were fairly choked by the dense clouds of smoke, fairly scorched by the waves of heat.  Sweat poured from them in streams.  Bob utterly forgot his wounded hand.

And then, when they were within a scant fifty yards of the dike which was intended to be their right wing, the flames sprang with a roar to new life.  Up the slope they galloped, whirled around the end of the fire line, and began eagerly to lick up the tarweed and needles of the ridge-top.