by John Benteen
But there it was. Roaring toward them from a mile away. Along a narrow front but spreading rapidly, already crowned. Rushing through the treetops like charging cavalry, leaping from tree to tree, turning the tops of ancient firs to fiery orange bombs. It hurtled toward them with incredible speed. And they were trapped. Men and mules alike, they were caught between two fires.
Fargo stood poised for one frozen second. Then he bellowed at Davis, “The mules!” He plunged into the narrow stream with Davis right behind. He heard men yelling as they saw the flames, realized their predicament. Within minutes the fire would be upon them and there was one hope and only one. The stream rushed around Fargo’s thigh’s as he made the crossing, climbed the farther bank. Then he was among the tethered mules, slashing ropes with his Batangas knife; Davis, with his long-bladed Case was doing likewise.
Horses would have run into the flames; mules were different, smarter. As each broke free, it thundered toward the stream. Now the flames were closer, not a quarter of a mile away. Fargo could feel the terrible heat that roiled ahead of a crown fire. It seemed to suck all oxygen from the air. The last mule, unleashed, pounded past him.
He whirled on Davis. “The river!” he screamed.
The animals that had crossed it, bear and deer and cougars, came charging back. Fargo and Davis ran for water with them, ahead of a blast that charred the shirt on Fargo’s back. When they reached the bank they plunged in. The rest of Fargo’s men had already done the same. The water came, here in this pool, to Fargo’s chest. He stood there for an instant, looking toward the oncoming crown fire. Now it was only yards away. It rushed with such force that it would leap the stream, devour all the timber they had cut, and, if they did not get beneath the water …
Fargo sucked in a breath of superheated air. Then he dived.
Beneath the surface, he bumped something; to his surprise it was a bull elk. Like himself, it submerged its head; he actually clung to its antler for anchorage. It did not seem to mind, seemed oblivious to him. Water swirled around him; the scene below here was dreamlike, the faces of men, the heads of animals, all, for this instant, made one by this common danger.
A half minute passed, and it seemed a century. Fargo felt the pressure building in his lungs. The gasp of air he’d taken, oxygen already burned out of it, had been insufficient. He needed more; his chest ached, his temples throbbed. But he dared not rear above the surface of the water.
Overhead now, there would be a fire storm. He could feel the water, usually icy cold with melting snow, heating around him. God help the man who tried to break the surface and breathe now; he’d die with seared lungs.
That was what happened to the elk. It convulsed, kicked upward, raised its muzzle above the surface. Then it began to thresh. Fargo, his own chest bursting, vision blurred, reeled clear of the threshing hooves. Then the elk died, settling to the bottom slowly, in an obscene, slow motion ballet.
He closed his eyes, gritted teeth.
His chest was near exploding. The water grew hot around him; he thrust a hand above the surface, pulled it back, its skin already blistered. Christ! he thought. Burn or drown —
Then he could stand it no longer. Two minutes had passed, more; he had to have air. He shielded nose with hand, broke the surface in heat that was almost unbearable. It seared his throat and lungs, but it did not kill him. He got enough air to hold him for another minute, got a glimpse, too, of bright flame leaping across the river. He sank back.
An eternity passed. Then, chest throbbing, he had to rise again. He came up into a backwash of heat. The fire had leaped the river, ignited all the trees they had cut, raced through them. Now it was beginning to falter where the backfire had already burned.
Fargo pushed up through the steaming surface of the river. It was littered with corpses; mostly, they were animals. But something bumped against him that was no animal; he looked. It was Davis, dead face contorted in the agony of having drawn in a chestful of super-heated air that had burned him alive inside.
Fargo retched into the river. Then he clambered out on the smoldering west bank—the bank from which help should have come. And from which, instead, had come the blaze that, with a bit more luck, would have trapped and burned them all.
The west bank was a shambles. Even as he watched, a great fir, now a charred hulk, gave up the ghost, crashed to earth in a shower of sparks. It was a black wasteland. Fargo’s mouth thinned, and he winced as blistered lips ground together.
He knew now, looking at that charred desert. It all fitted together. Oh, God, yes, he knew; and, automatically, his hand went to the shotgun, water-soaked, but still locked around his chest with its sling.
Then he turned, looked eastward.
The fires had met, all of them. Orange light flickered on the vast cloud of smoke. Then it faded. They had eaten up all the fuel and now the changing wind pushed them back against the barrenness their flames had made, crowded them off from progress toward the south, shoved them up against the barrier of the Wolf’s Head to the north. This fire could be contained now. If they went on working long and hard, if reinforcements came …
~*~
They came. Twenty-four men from the lumber camp, with MacKenzie and Duke Hotchkiss in the lead and wagons loaded with drag-pans, barrels of water, pressure pumps, and hose and all the fire-fighting equipment kept around a logging camp. MacKenzie’s face was sooty, blistered, his eyebrows and lashes burned away. But when he saw Fargo, his mouth twisted in a grin of surprise and pleasure. “Thank God,” he whispered, seizing Fargo’s hand. “You’re still alive.”
“Jesus, Fargo,” Duke thundered. “I don’t see how you did it!” He shaded eyes with a huge hand, stared eastward. “That fire’s almost out right now.”
“Yes,” Fargo said. “We thought you’d be here in a hurry. Instead, a crown fire came ahead of you. It damned near parboiled us all. It did kill some.”
MacKenzie shook his head. “I can’t understand it. We saw the smoke; then the messenger came. Every man in camp saddled up and we hit out hell-for-leather here. Then, not ten miles away we ran into fire on our side of the Fork. It had already crowned. The wind took it toward you. My heart stopped, thinking of all of you trapped in between. We had to hold back, come behind the fire ...”
“Sure,” said Fargo.
“Duke almost went crazy. He was ahead of us all the way, he was so upset. Like a madman ... ” MacKenzie rubbed his face. “Well, a lot of Wolf’s Head’s gone. But not so much that my lease will be cancelled. If we can pinch this quadrant out ...”
“You can do it,” Fargo said. “The wind’s with us. Of course, the winds wouldn’t have made any difference if Lasher’s men had been able to rub us out like they tried to. Then the fire could have burned on unchecked, eaten up more than a quarter of the Wolf’s Head ...”
Suddenly very tired, he sat down on a rock. It was hot, almost incandescently so, and he stood up again.
MacKenzie stared at him with concern. “Fargo,” he said, “you’re dead tired. You and your men take a rest. We’ll take care of the fire ...”
“No, we’ll help you, those of us that are left.”
“MacKenzie’s right. Rest,” Duke said. “Judas Priest, Fargo, you look like a drowned rat. How long were you under water? I’ll bet all your ammo’s soaked “
“It is,” said Fargo. “All right. We’ll rest. You and the others go ahead.”
“We’ll do that,” said MacKenzie, and he made a signal to move out. His cavalcade moved on into the burned land, with Duke riding beside him on a mule.
Chapter Ten
Fargo and his men, what was left of them, sat on the riverbank for an hour, all of them blistered and seared. Davis was not the only victim of the fire; in too shallow a pool, a man named Whipple had been cooked alive like a lobster when the water boiled around him. The rest of the survivors drank coffee and ate canned rations in stunned silence.
Finally Fargo stood up. “You men,” he said, “gather what mules are
left and head back to camp. You’ve all earned your pay and I’ll see that each of you gets a bonus—the head price promised for Lasher’s men. Christ knows, you’ve killed your share.”
One of them, a hulking giant named Trelawny, stared at Fargo. “Ain’t you goin’ with us?”
“No,” said Fargo, “I’m goin’ to join the fire-crew.”
Trelawny stood up. “Then we’ll ride with you.” He looked around. “Right? By God, we put our hands to this and we’ll not turn loose until the fire’s out.”
Fargo smiled. Touched in spite of himself, he shook his head. “No. Head back for camp. There’s no more danger of fire. Get some rest, I’ll join you there after a while.”
There was grumbling, but reluctantly, they departed. Fargo, with one saddle mule, was left alone in the smoking wilderness.
When they were out of sight he arose wearily. He opened the shotgun, jacked out the shells crammed in two more from his bandolier. He pointed the muzzles at the water, pulled the trigger. Nothing except the two dry clicks of firing pins.
His mouth twisted. He tried two more shells. As water-logged as the first, they failed too. The next pair of rounds yielded better results. One of them went off, but not with full thunder. Fargo judged the splatter they made on the surface. The water had got to the powder of that round, too.
He checked the bandolier. There were only three more rounds left in it. Probably they were as ineffectual as all the rest. He slung the shotgun. Then he tried the Colt.
The ammunition of that day was far from waterproof. The Colt failed thrice out of six rounds. Fargo nodded and sheathed the gun.
His Winchester had been left back on the slope where the battle had taken place. Later, he would retrieve it. For now, though, he could not depend on his guns.
That was all right. He knew what he could depend on.
He mounted the mule. Then he rode westward, toward the burn.
~*~
“Fargo!” MacKenzie looked at him out of eyes bloodshot with smoke. “Damn it, you ought to be back in camp.”
“I’ll go there when I’m sure the fire’s out.” Fargo’s eyes went to the double-bitted ax MacKenzie held. The lumberman had been working alongside his crew, stroke for stroke in the charred wilderness, clearing fire lanes.
Fargo reached out, took the ax from MacKenzie’s hand. “I want this,” he said. “Where’s the Duke?”
MacKenzie blinked. He gestured vaguely, south. “I don’t know. Out there somewhere.”
“I’ll find him,” Fargo said, and before MacKenzie could protest, vanished into the burn, moving carefully between smoldering firs which still dripped flaming branches.
He wound his way through the ruined forest, around charred trunks, stepping over the black-burnt bodies of game burned alive. He found working parties, inquired for Duke. They saw nothing wrong with that, directed him down the line. Fargo moved on, ax cradled in his palm, lips thin, boots making black puffs of charcoal as he walked.
Where the crown fire had passed it was like being on the moon. That desolate, that ruined. His gray eyes searched the barren reaches of what had once been lush wilderness, where everything was now black. Then he saw the Duke, hacking away with a double-bitted ax like Fargo’s own, to bring down a spark-laden stump.
Fargo stopped. “Duke,” he said.
Hotchkiss broke the ax’s swing. He turned, his right hand wrapped around the handle. “Fargo. I thought you’d headed for camp.”
“Not yet,” Fargo said. “You and I have got things to talk about first.”
Duke’s big, square-jawed face split in a grin. “Like what?”
“Like, how much did Lasher pay you?”
Duke stared at him. Then his eyes lit and his grin widened. “You figured it all out, huh?”
“I figured it,” said Fargo. “In Seattle you told me you had a full ticket. I had to fight you to sign on. But you signed Goodis.”
“Right,” said Duke, leaning easily on the grounded ax.
“Next, it was the Hoskins thing. Barbara played with his rope, sure, but you were the one that passed it to him around the trunk. She didn’t cut it. You were the one that palmed the razor blade, made the slash before Hoskins went up the spar tree.”
Duke’s grin did not diminish by one iota. “You think that, huh?”
“I know it,” Fargo said. “The clincher was when you sank that ax in Mannix—Morse, whoever—before he could talk. He knocked over that lamp figuring you would protect him. Instead, you killed him.”
“You’re smart, ain’t you,” Duke said.
“Smart enough to have started wondering after that. Then, today. You rode out with MacKenzie. Moved ahead, he said so. And set the fire that crowned and trapped us. That was tricky ...”
Duke laughed softly, not at all abashed. “Flamin’ arrows. The Injuns used to use ’em. As soon as I was out of sight of MacKenzie, I set the trees on fire, up high.”
“Yes,” said Fargo. “You’re Lasher’s man.”
“Right. He pays good. Damn good, more than a woods boss can make in a hell of a lot of seasons.” Duke’s heavy brows drew down. “I’ve worked for somebody else all my life, Fargo. I’ll come out of this with enough to set up for myself.”
Fargo said quietly, “You ain’t comin’ out of it.”
Duke smiled faintly, “My skirts are clean. Nobody’s got evidence against me. Except you.” Then he raised the ax. “And you ain’t gonna be in no condition to talk. This burn-out didn’t work because of your patrols, but there’ll be others. After you’re dead.”
Quickly, deftly, Fargo shifted his grip on his own ax. “Never cook your rabbit ’til you kill it.”
“Hell, man, you’re already dead. I cut my teeth on a double-bit.” Then, with terrible force, Duke swung the ax.
The two-edged head was a blur in the sunlight as it ripped toward Fargo. He ducked, felt it riffle his hair as it whistled past. Then he was up, caught the backswing with his own blade. Steel rang against steel with a force Fargo felt all through his body. The backstroke knocked his blade down, and he shortened his grip as Duke recovered, came at him again, chopping now, to split Fargo’s head.
Fargo caught Duke’s ax on the top of his own blade. Again that chiming of steel. But Fargo had been fighting men and fire for hours; the force of Duke’s blow drove the ax-handle down through his palms. Before he could get a fresh grip, Duke chopped once more.
The stroke would have split Fargo clean, from head to crotch, if it had landed. He turned his hands just in time, caught the blow on the length of handle protruding from beneath clenched hands. The blade sheared eight inches of the haft cleanly, but the impact deflected it just enough to miss Fargo.
Duke jumped back, laughing, confident. “Now you got a short ax—and I already had the reach on you. Git ready, Fargo, this is it.”
He edged forward like a boxer, balancing on the balls of his feet, weapon gripped by the very end of its handle. There was no way Fargo could get inside that swing, and he backed off and Duke came after him, pushing him, menacing him, waiting for the perfect moment, meanwhile savoring the advantage he had, the certainty it made him feel.
“Ha! Ha! Fargo!” He swung forward, then backward, then forward; the ax, blade parallel to the ground like a giant pendulum at the end of his long arms.
It glittered, whistled, seeking Fargo’s guts as he backed across the burn and Duke advanced. Fargo managed each time to stay just outside the arc of swing but that was because Duke was playing with him.
Then Duke’s face changed, eyes suddenly lambent. “Now!” he roared as he moved in fast and this time chopped straight at Fargo’s belly as if it were a tree trunk. The blade whistled at him from the left, and his own ax was in his right hand. It must have seemed to Duke there was no way he could fend the blow.
That was what Fargo had waited for. He flipped his right, caught the ax-handle with his left hand which was just as strong and deft, and caught Duke’s mighty, finishing blow in mid-swing.
Steel rang against steel with a loud, clear clang, and the force of Duke’s blow which would have driven the blade all the way to the handle in wood, much less flesh, nearly knocked Fargo’s weapon from his grasp and it spun him half around.
But the quick, unexpected block threw Duke even farther off balance. He had put everything he had into that swing; for an instant, as his blade sheered off of Fargo’s toward the ground, he staggered. Fargo, recovering like a cat, whirled, used that desperate advantage. For it was now or never, and he came in over Duke’s rising blade and swung his own, aiming high, putting every ounce of strength behind the blow.
He felt the ax-handle shudder in his hand. There was a sound almost exactly as if he had struck a tree trunk. Then the ax was free, moving on, finishing its swing.
Duke stepped back; his hand raised his weapon, his body poised, balanced on the balls of his feet.
Even headless, it seemed that he would continue to fight.
Then, spouting red, what was left of Duke fell forward, landed hard, kicked a half dozen times like a chicken with a wrung neck, lay still.
Fargo looked at the thing that had rolled from Duke’s shoulders, and now, ten feet away on the burned ground, stared at him with sightless eyes.
He sucked in a long breath, dropped his ax.
Then, massively, he vomited.
This part of it, anyhow, was over.
He was still sitting there, too weak from reaction and the day’s fighting to move, when MacKenzie came running to him.
Chapter Eleven
Alec MacKenzie himself took over as woods boss when the last spark had been extinguished, and Fargo put his men back out on patrol.
Weeks passed. Driving his men furiously, MacKenzie got the timber out. There were no more accidents, no more fires, no sign of anyone strange roaming the Wolf’s Head. The pond behind the dam filled with logs, and then it began to rain. At first the rains were small, insignificant, only a constant drizzle, and the men went on working. Then they set in full force, and the Wolf’s Head began to fill. Water rushed over the dam; the logs strained at their booms like horses eager for a race.