Oh boy, it didn’t take us long to have that shanty inside out. We found five axes. “All right,” Harry said; “now we’ve got just one slim chance and it all depends upon how fast we can work. We’ve got to chop down and tear up a line of brush and start a fire back to meet the other one. Everybody get busy-woman’s place is on the fire line; _hustle_!” Oh boy, you should have seen that girl who had been crying. She just grabbed an axe and wouldn’t give it up. Now this is the way we did, and all the while that line of fire was coming along, nearer, nearer, nearer. We chopped away the brush so as to make a long clear space about ten or fifteen feet wide. Harry and three of the scouts and one of the girls used the axes; because that girl just wouldn’t hand over the axe and we couldn’t make her. And didn’t she turn out to be a regular Mrs. Daniel Boone! The rest of us threw the brush over toward the fire as fast as we could. Some of the small bushes we just dragged up out of the earth. Some hustling! The fire was so near us now, that we could feel the heat good and strong and sparks kept falling among us, so we had to keep stamping them out. I don’t know how long it took us, but pretty soon we had a long, narrow space cleared. I know my hands were bleeding. As fast as the brush was chopped away, some of the fellows dragged it over toward where the fire was, as near as they dared. That girl would go almost up to the blaze and push a big clump of brush toward it and then run back. Her dress was all torn, but she didn’t care. Then we lighted the brush along the edge of the cleared space that was nearest to the fire. If the wind had been blowing that way, the fire would have moved right out to meet the other one. But it had to buck the wind and that was bad. Anyway, the clearing we had made prevented it from coming our way, but the sparks kept blowing across the clearing, and we knew that all we had done was to check the fire long enough to get another good head start away from it. Believe _me_, we didn’t wait long. Harry was panting so hard he could only just talk. “We’ve got to get down the other side of the mountain,” he said, “I figure it’ll be about ten minutes or so before the land this side of the clearing gets started. The sparks’ll start it. The clearing isn’t wide enough and the wind is wrong. Drop everything and follow me—quick.” Then Will Dawson spoke up. He never talked very much, but he was a good scout just the same. He was breathing so hard he just gulped. “Do either of you girls or fellows know where the man who lived here got his water? There must be water here somewheres or they wouldn’t have built the house here.” “We can’t stem this advance with spring water,” Harry said; “we’d need a reservoir. Come on!”