Jim looked and frowned. "Ah," he said, "I'd begun to think our luck was too good!"
Jake indicated the drift of the smoke from their cooking fire. As a rule, the valleys of British Columbia that open to the west form channels for the Chinook wind from the Pacific, but now and then a dry, cold current flows down them to the coast.
"It won't bother us unless the wind changes," he remarked. "In this country, however, the wind generally does change when you'd sooner it did not, and it's not safe to trust your luck much. Looks as if Nature had put up her shingle on the mountains, warning the white man off."
"But white men do live in the mountains," Carrie objected.
"Men who are strong enough. They must fight for a footing and then use the best tools other men can make to hold the ground they've won. We're scouts, carrying axes, saws, and giant-powder, but the main body must coöperate to defend its settlements with civilization's heavy machines. It's sure a hard country, and sometimes it gets me scared!"
Carrie laughed. "You're romantic when you talk about the North. Could the fire bother us?"
"That depends. It couldn't burn the line, though it might burn the posts. If it spread and rolled up the valley, it might put us off the ground and stop the job."
"While we waited the boys would have to be fed and wages would run on," Carrie said in a thoughtful voice. "How do the fires start?"
"Nobody knows. I allow it looks ridiculous, but my notion is some fires start themselves; you'll find them burning in belts of woods the Indians and prospectors leave alone. Some are probably started by cooking fires. The man who knows the bush is careful; the tenderfoot is not."
"Then you don't think somebody may have had an object for lighting this fire?"
"On the whole, I reckon not. The chances against its bothering us are too steep. For all that, I'd like it better if the blaze went out."
Carrie said nothing, and for a time they watched the light. Sometimes it leaped up and sometimes it faded, but it got larger, and when they went to bed a red reflection played about the sky. In the morning there was no wind and a heavy trail of smoke stretched across the hills. In places, a bright flicker pierced the dark trail, and Carrie noted a smell of burning when she filled the kettle. Then she saw Jim watching the smoke.