The Blazing Forest

One night, during a wind storm, Jessie Crain, the owner of a Nevada timber ranch, catches her grown niece, Sharon Wilks, packing to leave. Sharon, whom Jessie and her recently deceased husband helped rear, protests that she is stifled by the forest and needs to move to the city. Jessie at first resents Sharon's restlessness, but then concedes that the ranch has little to offer. After agreeing to sell her timber and give half the proceeds to Sharon, Jessie runs into Syd Jessup, a former flame who has returned to the area after suffering injuries in a logging accident. Reminding him about the pledge he once made to her, Jessie asks Syd to help her harvest her timber. Syd demurs, however, citing his injuries and age, so Jessie offers Kelly Hanson, the logging expert for whom Syd was working when he was hurt, twenty-five percent of her profits to oversee her harvest. Although Kelly agrees, Jessie needs money to pay the lumberjacks' salary and asks Syd for a loan. By making him a partner, Jessie gets Syd to write her a check for $3,700. When he learns that he will be working with the hard-driving Kelly, however, Syd balks, but Jessie refuses to return his check. Forced to go through with the deal, Syd sets up camp, while Kelly hires his crew. Kelly immediately antagonizes some of the men with his tough work ethic, and irritates Sharon by suggesting that she will be an unwanted distraction. Kelly is unnerved by the arrival of a lumberjack named Joe Morgan, but nonetheless hires him. After three weeks of round-the-clock logging, Kelly announces that they need a quarter million more feet of timber by Saturday in order to earn enough money to pay their machinery rental costs. Kelly, who has grown closer to Sharon, storms out of her house when he sees Joe flirting with her and later admits that Joe, whose real name is Fred, is his brother. Kelly refuses to tell Sharon anything more about Joe and warns Joe to stay away from Sharon. Later, Kelly, determined to make the Saturday deadline, upsets the lumberjacks by insisting they work in a drenching storm. While the logs are being loaded onto trucks, a large stack, loosened by the rain, starts to tumble down a hill toward camp. Kelly manages to drive a caterpiller tractor into the path of the logs, saving Jessie and Sharon, but another lumberjack is injured and the camp is damaged. In the bunkhouse, Kelly apologizes to the men, and when some complain, Sharon and Jessie denounce them, pointing out that without Kelly, they would all be out of work. Sharon then cooks dinner for Kelly and admits her attraction. When Kelly leaves for his weekly train trip to nearby Auburn, Sharon, overcome with curiosity, follows and is dismayed to see him being greeted by an attractive woman. With the deadline met, logging continues at a brisk pace, and the men become anxious to attend a Saturday night dance in town. To Syd's surprise, Kelly allows them to drive the truck to the dance and encourages them to have fun. When Kelly declares he will see her at the dance after he returns from Auburn, Sharon becomes jealous and agrees to ride in the truck's cab with Joe. In Auburn, Kelly visits a lawyer and makes final restitution to a company from which Joe had embezzled money, explaining that he repaid the money in order to protect his family's name. Kelly then drives the woman from the train station to the dance and introduces her to Sharon as Grace Hanson, Joe's estranged wife. While Grace attempts a reconciliation with the drunken Joe, Kelly struggles to express his feelings to Sharon, kissing her on her doorstep. After Grace drives up and sadly announces that Joe has refused to change and she is giving up on him, the crew arrives at camp in a stranger's truck. When Kelly learns that Joe crashed their truck while driving drunk, he fires him, despite Joe's reminder that he once gave Kelly a life-saving blood transfusion. The next morning, Joe slips away from camp after learning that the sheriff is going to arrest him for another embezzlement. Syd, meanwhile, is provoked into driving an overloaded truck by a disgruntled lumberjack, who claims that Kelly told him that he was "carrying" Syd out of pity. Joe hitches a ride with Syd, and enraged, Syd speeds recklessly down the hill and causes the brakes to fail. The truck crashes and sets off a fire in the forest. Though injured, Syd manages to pull the semi-conscious Joe out of the truck and drag him to a creek. The blaze is spotted by the Forest Service and by Kelly, who, anxious to protect Jessie's timber, offers to start a backfire. While Kelly and his crew battle to control the flames, a helicopter pilot spots Joe and Syd in the creek. Guided by the pilot, Kelly drives his jeep to the creek, but arrives too late to save Joe. Kelly helps the apologetic Syd onto the helicopter, then drives Joe's body through flames and smoke. Seeing Kelly safe and sound, a relieved Sharon embraces him. The fire is contained, and later, while a recuperating Syd contemplates marriage to Jessie, Sharon and Kelly look forward to their own happy future.