shafts, from whose shriveled sides bark was crackling, and lighted dead
limbs falling in all directions. The whole valley, the gully, the Bar,
the very hillside they had just left, were blotted out by a creeping,
stifling smoke-fog that scarcely rose breast high, but was beaten down
or cut off cleanly by the violent wind that swept the higher level
of the forest. At times this gale became a sirocco in temperature,
concentrating its heat in withering blasts which they could not face, or
focusing its intensity upon some mass of foliage that seemed to shrink
at its touch and open a scathed and quivering aisle to its approach. The
enormous skeleton of a dead and rotten redwood, not a hundred yards to
their right, broke suddenly like a gigantic firework into sparks and
flame.

The sheriff had grasped the full meaning of their situation. In spite of
his first error--the very carelessness of familiarity--his knowledge
of woodcraft was greater than his companion's, and he saw their danger.
"Come," he said quickly, "we must make for an opening or we shall be
caught."

The major smiled in misapprehension.

"Who could catch us here?"

The sheriff pointed to the blazing tree.

"THAT," he said. "In five minutes IT will have a posse that will wipe us
both out."

He caught the major by the arm and rushed him into the smoke,
apparently in the direction of the greatest mass of flame. The heat was