Employees on a south-bound freight train in north-central Louisiana carelessly disposed of a piece of burning waste from a hot box on a crisp January morning in 1938. The bit of flame landed in dead grass at the edge of the tracks inside the boundaries of the Kisatchie National Forest; 30 minutes later this small flame had grown into a forest fire with a perimeter of almost 4 miles (6.4 km) and had spread almost 2 miles (3.2 km) with the wind from the point of origin. A crew of four men, assigned by the Southern Forest Experiment Station to studies in fire behavior, was on the scene within 3 minutes after its start and an unusually complete record of this fire, including its rate of spread and resistance to control, was obtained. This fire record will be discussed and analyzed in detail with three objectives: 1) To indicate the rate of spread and behavior of fires burning under extremely critical conditions. 2) To describe the action that was taken to suppress the fire. 3) To use the experience gained from this fire as a guide in planning the action to be taken on other fires burning under similar circumstances. [Reprinted in 2003 in Fire Management Today, v. 63, no. 3, pages 29-41.]