Yorkville Enquirer

A FOREST RANGER HERO.

Incident of the Big Fires of 1910 in Idaho Told by Overton W. Price.

Overton W. Price, vice-president of the National Conservation association, whose book, "The Land We Live In," appears this fall, tells this story of a heroic forest ranger:

"The summer of 1910," he says, "by reason of great drought and unusually high winds was the worst for forest fires that the west has ever known. In Montana, Idaho and Oregon the danger was greatest.

"On the Coeur d'Alene national forest in northern Idaho Ranger Pulaski had under him forty men, who after many hours of hard work had got a big fire practically under control. Suddenly the wind strengthened until it blew a gale. It immediately became a question of saving the lives of the men. The fire fighters were in deep forest many miles from a railroad and far from any clearing.

"Pulaski remembered that within a mile of where they were working there was an abandoned mine shaft running back about forty feet into the hillside. He rushed his men to the shaft as quickly as possible, and told them as they passed through their camp to catch up their blankets as they ran. The shaft reached, Pulaski hurried his men into it, and packed like sardines they filled it up. Pulaski placed himself at the opening, across which he stretched a blanket.

"Within a few minutes after the men were in the shaft the fire came. The blanket at the opening caught and Pulaski jerked it away and hung up another, which caught in its turn. The blanket caught again and again, and each time Pulaski replaced it, until toward the last he held the blanket across the opening with his bare hands.

"The shaft grew hotter and hotter and the smoke and fumes grew thicker and thicker until the men's sufferings were almost beyond human endurance. They began to break the opening. Pulaski, whose strength was great, like his courage, for a while forced them back. Seeing that he would soon be overpowered and that his men would rush to their certain death, he drew his revolver and said that he would kill the first man who broke away.

"In perhaps twenty minutes the worst of the fire passed by. Five of the men in the shaft were dead from suffocation; the thirty-five others were alive. Pulaski was blinded and seriously burned upon the hands and arms. It was three months before his sight was partly restored. Had not his heroism and presence of mind been what they were, he would have lost all of his men instead of five. That is the kind of men there are in the forest service."