Steelman did not say it again. He pushed the bottle toward his guest and said other things. CHAPTER XXXV FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six called down to his mates: "Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke." The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the chaparral at this season of the year. "Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son. Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town. "I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said. He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it. "Fire in Bear Cañon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'." "I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready." Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference between a winning and a losing fight. From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each one he gave also a gunnysack. The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills that led to Bear Cañon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand. Crawford met them at the mouth of the cañon. "She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin' there." The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke. The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks. "I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch." "Take the horse," Crawford called to him. One good thing was that the fire was coming down the cañon. A downhill blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.