ABSTRACT
It was late afternoon on August 15, 1949, in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana. Two young men raced toward the top of the northern ridge overlooking Mann Gulch. They were seventeenyear-old Robert Sallee and eighteen-year-old Walter Rumsey. Just below the crest of the ridge Rumsey collapsed in a juniper bush and was prepared to stay there, spent of energy and will to continue the climb. Sallee stopped too, looking down at his friend, waiting for Rumsey to get up before he would press on. Prodded by Sallee's gaze, Rumsey freed himself from the snarl ofbranches, and the two resumed their scrambling ascent. It was a simple gesture, Sallee's stopping for Rumsey. Under normal circumstan€es it would have been nothing more than an act of courtesy, a bit of fair play between young men, each measuring the other's endurance. But these were not normal circumstances and it was not each other they raced. "I guess I would be dead if he hadn't stopped," Rumsey would later recall. "Funny thing, though, he never said a word to me. He j~st stood there until I said it to myself, but I don't think he said anything. He made me say it." By pausing to wait for his friend, Sallee saved Rumsey's life. He also risked his own. On the heels of Rumsey and Sallee that day was a raging forest fire, the kind that smoke jumpers call a "blowup," the kind they fear most. The same fire claimed the lives of their fellow smoke jumpers and a park ranger who had hiked to the scene to lend a hand. Tragically, these others lost their lives precious seconds from escape. Seconds were precious that day, and the firefighters knew it. The heat searing their lungs as they fled up the face of the northem ridge of Mann Gulch made sure they knew it. Sallee knew, and yet he stopped to wait for Rumsey. He stopped to wait with a raging blowup mere seconds behind. 1
ThirteenfirefighterslosttheirlivesintheMannGulchfireof 1949.Afourteenthwouldlikelyhavejoinedthemhaditnotbeen foroneman'sheroicpause.Anditisinthis,theheroismofRobert Sallee,thatthestoryoftheMannGulchtragedyintersectsour discussionoftheproblemofevil.InreflectingonRobertSallee's actwehaveoccasiontowonder:Ifahumanbeingiscapableof riskingsomuchtopreventevil,whatpossibleexcusecouldGod havefornotdoingthesame?
