Most of all they fought to save the wooden driving shed behind the
church from which the fire could leap into the heart of Mariposa.
That was where the real fight was, for the life of the town. I wish
you could have seen how they turned the hose against the shingles,
ripping and tearing them from their places with the force of the
driven water: how they mounted on the roof, axe in hand, and cut
madly at the rafters to bring the building down, while the black
clouds of smoke rolled in volumes about the men as they worked. You
could see the fire horses harnessed with logging chains to the
uprights of the shed to tear the building from its place.

Most of all I wish you could have seen Mr. Smith, proprietor, as I
think you know, of Smith's Hotel, there on the roof with a fireman's
helmet on, cutting through the main beam of solid cedar, twelve by
twelve, that held tight still when the rafters and the roof tree were
down already, the shed on fire in a dozen places, and the other men
driven from the work by the flaming sparks, and by the strangle of
the smoke. Not so Mr. Smith! See him there as he plants himself firm
at the angle of the beams, and with the full impact of his two
hundred and eighty pounds drives his axe into the wood! I tell you it
takes a man from the pine country of the north to handle an axe!
Right, left, left, right, down it comes, with never a pause or stay,
never missing by a fraction of an inch the line of the stroke! At it,
Smith! Down with it! Till with a shout from the crowd the beam gapes
asunder, and Mr. Smith is on the ground again, roaring his directions
to the men and horses as they haul down the shed, in a voice that
dominates the fire itself.

Who made Mr. Smith the head and chief of the Mariposa fire brigade