Unexplored!

by Allen Chaffee

  CHAPTER IV

  WITH THE AIR PATROL

  "Signal them!" chorused the three boys, acting on Norris's suggestion,(flashing their distress with their pocket mirrors), while Long Lesterstood measuring the flight of the aeroplane.

  His practiced eye also detected a faint bluish haze that rose behind theridge at the North,--a haze altogether unlike that which foretells astorm. In fact, the sun glinting from the wings of the giant wings andfrom the glacial-polished slopes beneath forbade that explanation.

  Like most backwoodsmen, the old prospector said the least when he feltthe most. His lean body suddenly grew tense. "It's a fire," he toldhimself. "An everlastingly big one, too."

  "That's a DeHaviland," decided Ace, as the huge bombing-plane camenearer. "Must be the Fire Patrol!"

  A moment more and the buzzing apparatus began sinking into a "pancake"landing,--fortunately, just above the wide sweep of the granite butte.Could it be engine trouble, Norris wondered, or had it seen theirsignals? Lucky they were on an elevation.

  With the sound like a saw-mill in full blast, the great ship jolted toterra firma, within shouting distance,--and hardly had she come to a fullstop than the boys had raced to her side.

  "I say!" exclaimed a familiar voice, as the observer climbed out. It wasRanger Radcliffe! "Where did _you_ folks drop from?"

  Norris explained the marooned camping expedition.

  Radcliffe's face was lined with fatigue and anxiety. "Big fire offthere!" he motioned. "Been directing a hundred men. Broke out in threeplaces, all within twenty-four hours, and not even an electric storm toaccount for it. Want to help?" And as the little party voiced unanimousconsent, he proceeded to draft them in, at the Government nine dollarsper day.

  He could have compelled their services, as he had that of a party ofcampers down towards Kings' River. In a few words, his voice vibrating tohis high nervous tension, the young forest officer had them all thrillingwith patriotic fervor.

  "Now get your things," he directed. "May have to fight it for a week! Youcan turn your burros out to forage for themselves, and I guess you'llfind them again when this is over. If you don't the Government willprobably square it with you."

  The chums swiftly retraced their steps to where the animals waitedpatiently, removing the packs and sending the little donkeys down thetrail to better pasturage. They might wander, but they would be safe.With their swift heels they could defend themselves from even a mountainlion. And they were apt to keep to the mountain meadows, where was foodand water.

  Their run at such an altitude had given Pedro a touch of mountainsickness, and he had to lie flat till his heart beat more normally andhis nose stopped bleeding.

  The big 'plane carried a relay of provisions for the fire fightersalready established, whom it had brought for the purpose from the ZuniMine. As corned beef and hardtack were distributed, the hungry campersthought they had never tasted anything so good in their lives. Not eventhe Thanksgiving turkeys of later years were ever spiced with suchappetites.

  This fire,--or rather, these three fires, so mysteriously concomitant,the Ranger explained when the boys returned, had broken so far from anyranch or work camp that they were hard pressed for men to fight it.

  "You fellows will have a mighty important part to play for the next fewdays," he assured them, "or I miss my guess."

  "Hurray!" shouted Ace. "Three cheers for the U. S. Airplane Patrol!" Forhe knew something of the work started at the close of the war. Followingregular daily routes, this patrol not only detects fires and follows upcampers or others who may have started them, (carelessly or otherwise),but in times of emergency carries the fire leader from one strategicpoint to another,--where as likely as not there are neither roads for himto go in his machine, nor even horseback trails,--till he has shown thevolunteer firemen how to trench and back-fire.

  They needed some one, the Ranger said, to hold the top of the nextridge,--between which and the boys lay that inaccessible canyon it wouldhave taken them days to have scaled afoot. By day they were merely towatch for flying brands. Their chief work would come at night, when thewind would turn and blow down canyon, and they might successfullyback-fire.

  The fire had started in two places on the opposite bank of the Kawa, andin one place this side of the river, and was eating its way along theslopes with the wind which swept them by day. It certainly looked likethe work of incendiaries.

  Ace begged permission to wireless for his little Spanish 'plane, in itshangar in Burlingame, that it might be employed in some volunteercapacity, and Radcliffe accepted his offer.

  The huge DeHaviland required all of the flat surface afforded by thebutte, for its preliminary run. They were off with a roar. As they glidedacross to the flat-topped ridge on the other side of the canyon, theycould see the ravenous flames climbing tall pines and firs, racing fromlimb to limb, through the forest roof, devouring the steeps, doubtlessrichly coated with underbrush and down-wood. The roar and crackle of itfilled their ears sickeningly, as they thought of the naked mountainsidesthat would be left,--mere skeletons of barkless tree trunks, where theyhad camped on brown pine needles,--smooth, silent, inches deep, softunder their tired feet, dry as tinder and aromatic with Nature's finestperfume.

  How the devourer would relish the pitch and resin oozing from the juicybark! How secure it must feel, on those slopes never climbed by man, withthe autumn rains months away, and the fire fighters like so many antstrying with axe and shovel to mark off on the hot forest floor a boundarybeyond which the fiery tongues must not lick.

  Had the wind not been in the other direction, they would have beenoverwhelmed with the smoke that billowed darkly till it could have beenseen 50 miles away, the red sun scarcely lightening the gloom. Even wherethey landed, an occasional hot breath scorched their faces and set theireyes to smarting, while their winged ship nosed frantically up and awayagain before she should meet Icarus' fate.

  "Some day," Radcliffe had told them that day at the rodeo, "the ForestService Air Patrol, which serves now to give warning of the tiniestsmoke, and so saves men and millions where every minute counts, willfight with glass bombs of fire extinguisher, whose trajectory fallingfrom a 'plane in rapid flight will have to be calculated to a nicety, butwhich, delivered while the fire is in its infancy, will do the work ofmany men."

  The worst difficulty would be at night, when though the fire showsplainer, the pilot would have to depend largely on his own sense ofequilibrium to tell him at what angle his ship was inclined. True,acetylene gas lamps properly protected from the wind could be made tolight up the ground below when alighting, but at an altitude of even amile, little can be seen of the landscape to guide one on one's course.The 2,000-foot firs of the Sierra slopes appear but as green-blackbillows.

  As the great ship raced toward the flaming forest, their talk at thebarbecue raced through the mind of the Senator's son. "Some day,"Radcliffe had challenged them, "you want to see Glacier National Park,with its ice-capped peaks and its precipices thousands of feet deep, itsglacier-fed lakes and Alpine scenery. And of course you must all see thegeysers of the Yellowstone, its petrified forests and mud volcanoes."

  "And bears?" Ted had laughed with a glance at Pedro.

  "Yes, all sorts of wild animals. And some time you want to explore thecliff dwellings in Mesa Verde and the 14,000-foot peaks in Rocky MountainNational Park. By that time you will be ready to go to Southern Alaskaand try Mt. McKinley, which is worth while not so much because it is thehighest mountain in North America, (Mt. Whitney is nearly as high), butbecause it stands the highest above the surrounding country of anymountain in the world. Mt. Whitney is just an easy climb above a sea ofsurrounding peaks; you don't realize the height at all.

  "Then you know we have a National Park in Hawaii?--But Roosevelt,--orGreater Sequoia Park,--is going to remain an unspoiled wilderness for agood many years to come, with three great canyons larger than that ofYosemite itself."

  "Kings' River and the Kern," Ace had agreed, "but what is the
third?"

  "Tehipite."

  "Oh, of course."

  "We wanted to go over the John Muir Trail right along the crest of theSierras to Yosemite."

  "You've hundreds of miles of almost unexplored country! Enough vacationplaces to last a lifetime! Rivers alive with trout! Bears! Cougars!" theRanger had commented.

  "And rattlers," Long Lester had added grimly.

  "And rattlers. And they're the only living thing we need fear."

  "Not excluding range cattle?" Pedro had wanted to be assured.

  "Not when you're all together. Of course if you were alone you mightbreak a leg or something that would leave you helpless, and you'd sure bea long way from anything to eat unless you had it with you.

  "But unless we look alive the Big Interests are going to wrest away thesebeauty spots that we have set aside for our National playgrounds,"Radcliffe had declared.

  "That's just what Dad says!" Ace had remembered.

  "And why? Not because they need the irrigation and water power of the bigfalls, for they can have it after the streams leave the parks, butbecause it would cost them a good deal less to secure these things ofUncle Sam than it would to build their projects outside Park limits.There isn't a beauty spot in the West that some commercial interesthasn't designs on."

  "That's one thing I mean to fight!" Ace squared his chin as theDeHaviland whisked them to their particular ridge, a table mountain, orbutte, where half a dozen recruits had already been landed with tools andgrub.

  "Sure seems as if these fires had been set," mused Long Lester, asRadcliffe bade them good-by,--for he had to be in a dozen places at once,that day.

  "But who did it?" demanded Ace fiercely.

  "No savvy dat kind feller," said a Canadian half breed, who was juststarting off with a pick. "'E's bad feller, dat!"

  "Sure is!" agreed Ace. "I don't savvy him either,--any one who woulddeliberately burn--_that!_" with a wave of his arm toward the forestedgorge, up which already rose a noticeable heat. The red tongues, racingthrough the spruce and cedar tops, shone through the smoke gloom, whenceissued a distant roaring which was the wind created by the super-heatedstretch of territory.

  To the left, a gleaming-eyed cougar crept through the shadows, himself ashadow. To the right, a huge, furry looking shadow ran clumsily,flat-footedly. A tiny shadow hopped from almost under their feet, andabove their heads flapped a small covey of lighter shadows. Writhingabove the dark tops of the doomed trees rose the yellow-gray smoke thatwas their departing shades.

  The faces of the fire-fighters were grimly blackened with smoke andgrime, their shirts clung wet with perspiration to their swellingmuscles, and their dry throats clacked when they tried to swallow.

  "I'd sure like to find the fellow that started _that!_" muttered Ace.