No red glow greeted Hollister's sight. There
was nothing but the smell of burning wood, that acrid, warm, heavy
odor of smoke, the invisible herald of fire. It might be over the next
ridge. It might be in the mouth of the valley. It might be thirty
miles distant. He went back to bed, to lie with that taint of smoke in
his nostrils, thinking of Doris and the boy, of himself, of Charlie
Mills, of Myra, of Archie Lawanne. He saw ghosts in that dusky
chamber, ghosts of other days, and trooping on the heels of these came
apparitions of a muddled future,--until he fell asleep again, to be
awakened at last by a hammering on his door.
The light of a flash-lamp revealed a logger from the Carr settlement
below. The smoke was rolling in billows when Hollister stepped
outside. Down toward the Inlet's head there was a red flare in the
sky.
"We got to get everybody out to fight that," the man said. "She
started in the mouth of the river last night. If we don't check it and
the wind turns right, it'll clean the whole valley. We sent a man to
pull your crew off the hill.
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