noon
For three weeks there had been no rain . Even the nights were hot and dry . Each day the factors at their posts looked out with anxious eyes over their domains , and by the first of August every post had a score of halfbreeds and Indians patrolling the trails on the watch for fire . In their cabins and teepees the forest dwellers who had not gone to pass the summer at the posts waited and watched ; each morning and noon and night they climbed tall trees and peered through that palpitating gray film for a sign of smoke . For weeks the wind came steadily from the south and west , parched as though swept over the burning sands of a desert . Berries dried up on the bushes ; the fruit of the mountain ash shriveled on its stems ; creeks ran dry ; swamps turned into baked peat , and the poplar leaves hung wilted and lifeless , too limp to rustle in the breeze . Only once or twice in a lifetime does the forest dweller see poplar leaves curl up and die like that , baked to death in the summer sun .