“Okeh. We’ll try that. Do you want to go down and back-fire from the creek?”
“Shore ‘nough.”
The torch on his back, Lew plunged into the brush toward the creek. John turned to Mel Crane.
“Mel, take five rake men and Wash Jampel for your axe man. Trench down to the head of that creek. Back-fire as fast as you think you’ve got enough trench dug to make it safe. I’ll let Tom axe for us and work back to Cattail. We should stop the fire here because the header’s blowing straight for Lew, and he’ll get that.”
Wash Jampel and Tom Rooney started in different directions with their axes swinging. Slow, easy-going men, even now they did not seem to be moving fast. But their axes rose and fell with the effortless efficiency born of a lifetime’s practice, and trees fell magically before them. John
