woods. Whenever he possibly could, Charley avoided meeting them. Sometimes
Charley could not avoid a meeting. Then he always posed as a fisherman.
He never moved abroad these days without his rod. The rifle he had
temporarily laid aside. More than one little fire, started by careless
fishermen, Charley detected and extinguished.

One day he saw smoke at a considerable distance. By the time he could
reach the spot, the fire had a good start and had already burned over
several acres. It was blazing briskly and Charley was at first uncertain
as to whether he should attempt to fight it alone or call help. But night
was at hand, the wind was already falling, and Charley decided that he
could conquer the blaze single-handed. He judged that the best way to do
this was by beating it out with brush.

Quickly chopping a pine bough, Charley attacked the fire. It was not a
fierce blaze, though when the fitful wind blew strong it flamed up
savagely. Even the tiniest of forest fires is hot enough, and Charley
found it trying work. He had many hundreds of yards of flame to beat out.
The smoke and the heat were stifling and exhausting, and every little
while Charley had to turn away from the fire to rest and get his breath.
During such periods, Charley would walk back along the fire-line to make
sure that the blaze was extinguished behind him.

Darkness came quickly in the deep valley, and before Charley had the blaze
half extinguished, he was unable to see distinctly. Indeed he could hardly
have seen anything at all had it not been for the fitful light of the
flames; and this dancing light made objects appear uncertain and unreal.

In one of his trips back along the line, Charley came to a stump that was
ablaze. In beating out the flames just here, he had failed to extinguish