It would send the fire sweeping up the valley. There would be
no stopping it. There would be nothing left in its wake but the
blackened earth, smoking roots, and a few charred trunks standing
gaunt and unlovely amid the ruin.
So now they strove to create a barrier which the fire should not pass.
It was not a task to be perfunctorily carried on, there was no time
for malingering. There was a very real incitement to great effort.
Their property was at stake; their homes and livelihood; even their
lives, if they made an error in the course and speed of the fire's
advance and were trapped.
They cut a lane through the woods straight across the valley floor
from the river to where the southern slope pitched sharply down. They
felled the great trees and dragged them aside with powerful donkey
engines to manipulate their gear. They cleared away the brush and the
dry windfalls until this lane was bare as a traveled road--so that
when the fire ate its way to this barrier there was a clear space in
which should fall harmless the sparks and embers flung ahead by the
wind.
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