There, at this labor, the element of the spectacular vanished. They
could not attack the enemy with excited cries, with brandished
weapons. They could not even see the enemy. They could hear him, they
could smell the resinous odor of his breath. That was all. They laid
their defenses against him with methodical haste, chopping, heaving,
hauling the steel cables here and there from the donkeys, sweating in
the blanket of heat that overlaid the woods, choking in the smoke that
rolled like fog above them and about them. And always in each man's
mind ran the uneasy thought of the west wind rising.
But throughout the day the west wind held its breath. The flames
crawled, ate their way instead of leaping hungrily. The smoke rose in
dun clouds above the burning area and settled in gray vagueness all
through the woods, drifting in wisps, in streamers, in fantastic
curlings, pungent, acrid, choking the men. The heat of the fire and
the heat of the summer sun in a windless sky made the valley floor a
sweat-bath in which the loggers worked stripped to undershirts and
overalls, blackened with soot and grime.
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