Fire by George R. Stewart

Author:George R. Stewart [Stewart, George R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

On Second Street the loud-speaker was still blaring: men to fight forest-fire! Bo Fox, the insignificant man who disliked a closed door behind him, followed the drift. He was out of a job and nearly broke. In front of him a man said to his buddy:

“Well, why not? They feed you good, and you can sneak off to the woods and ditch a lot of work.”

They went in to sign up, and Bo Fox followed them, drawn along in their wake rather than swayed by his own decision . . .

The smoke of the fire had now drifted down over Reverse Ridge, and obscured the sun. The rabbit, assuming that twilight was at hand, emerged from a manzanita thicket, and began to hop here and there, nibbling at grass and the tips of low-growing branches . . .

Barney Zulik, the cat-skinner, was at a beer-parlor in Polkville when a foreman came looking for him.

“There’s a fire up in the Basin, Barney. They need you in there with your cat.”

“To hell with it!” said Barney. “Ain’t it my day off?” And he added some diversified comments.

But the foreman knew the next move.

“Say, Barney,” he said, “the guys that run those Forest-Service cats can’t cut bacon up in the woods. They need a real cat-skinner in there!”

“Set me up another!” Barney yelled at the bartender, but he already looked uncomfortable, as the workman’s sense of a job to be done began to stir within him. His bullet-head, set low on his shoulders, turned this way and that, as he glanced about to see what the others were thinking.

He began to speak again in expletives, but ended:

“O.K. I’ll be there. Only don’t try to rush me!” And with quick gulps he drained his glass of beer . . .

Dutch Harbor was now drying out in a chilly and raw north wind. Having moved some hundreds of miles eastward, the storm was now discharging its rain chiefly upon the churning waters of the Gulf of Alaska.

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