It was not a thin haze now, but a blurring gray curtain, half
concealing the woods before which it hung. A pungent odor filled the
air, which had, too, a curiously irritating, smarting quality, trying
and painful to eyes and lungs. The boys, panting from their forced
march--the fast walk at which they had descended the hill had quickened
to a dog trot and then to a run--pulled up a little uncertainly. They
had reached the border of the wooded tract which extended to the lake
shore, and in which their camp was situated, and now they knew that the
dreaded danger of a forest fire was facing them. Just where it might
have started, or how much headway it might have gained, was still to be
determined, however; for, though there was smoke a-plenty, no line of
leaping flames showed.
Sam ran his eye along the front of the woods. Nowhere was the smoke
rolling forth in volumes. It was like the coming of a fog, not yet
thick but dimming everything. The breeze was light; so light, indeed,
that though he made the test of a wetted finger, he could be sure of
little except that the general direction of the air currents was toward
the spot where he was rather than toward the lake. So far as it went,
this was a hopeful condition. It meant that the spread of the fire
would be away from the shore and the tent.
He strained his ears as well as his eyes, hoping to hear the shouts of
men fighting the fire, but silence lay upon the woods. Plainly, the
alarm had not spread to the summer settlement. The smoke was lying low
and drifting away from the lake, and, presumably, had not yet been
observed by the men at work about the pavilion.
Sam gave his orders briskly, if a bit breathlessly:
“Spread out--in a line! Don’t get too far apart, though. First fellow
that sees anything, yell and yell loud! Now, start in, fellows!”
They obeyed, readily enough, in very open order, as he had directed,
and went crashing through the undergrowth.
Sam himself was near the middle of the line. The end man to the left
was Tom Orkney, while Herman Boyd had the corresponding place to the
right. Sam went straight forward, but the flankers edged out as they
advanced, so that they steadily increased the amount of ground covered.
As every one in the party knew, the tract was of the sort to favor a
quick spread of a fire. There was a great deal of dry stuff, and the
long period of fine weather had made much of it as inflammable as
tinder. Besides, the undergrowth was so dense and tangled in places
that flames would find abundant opportunity to move along, while the
difficulties of coping with them would be increased. Such were the
conditions that Sam began to wonder that the whole tract was not in a
blaze. The fire must have been going for two or three hours, at least;
that it had not made more progress was to be accounted for only by the
lack of wind. In the woods, indeed, there was no perceptible breeze,
and the air was still and heavy as well as smoke-laden.
Like his mates, Sam plowed ahead, making as much speed as he could. The
smoke grew denser, but not very markedly. He was beginning to believe
that his own course was not carrying him toward the fire, when a shout,
raised by Orkney, was repeated along the line.
Tom had made the looked-for discovery. Dipping into a hollow, which
two months before had been a swamp, he had been met first by a heavy
puff of gray fog, so to speak, and through it had caught the yellow
glint of flames. At his call the other boys hurried to him. No word of
command from Sam or from anybody else was needed to set them at the
work which was to be done. Breaking branches from trees, they began to
beat the burning brush in the rough and ready fashion which sometimes
is extremely effective in dealing with a fire of the sort. It was not
light work, nor was it pleasant. It seemed as if the smoke increased
even as the flames were checked; and now and again one or another
of the club had to drop back for a moment, coughing and choking and
gasping for air. A fine, dust-like ash, too, was raised in tiny clouds;
more disagreeable than the smoke itself and quite as penetrating of
throat and lung; while the heat of the fire was sufficient to blister
hands incautiously venturing too near it. Yet, as woods fires go, this
did not seem a hard one to deal with. The lack of breeze was in the
boys’ favor. They were helped, also, by the “lay of the land.”
As has been said, Orkney had come upon the fire in a swampy hollow.
Protracted as the drought had been, it had not sufficed to remove all
the moisture by the slow process of evaporation, so that there still
remained miry patches, which served as natural brakes on the advance
of the flames. A gale, of course, or even a brisk wind, would have
disposed of such handicaps quickly enough, but in a comparative calm
they made a great difference. To Sam it became evident very quickly
that the boys were not only checking the slow drift of the fire, but
also were beginning to get it under control. He paused for a moment
to watch his companions. Orkney was pounding away lustily. The Shark
was exerting less effort, but his arms rose and fell with mathematical
regularity. The others were performing, each in his own way, Step with
tremendous swings of his long arms, Poke with a swift succession of
queer little pats, the Trojan and Herman Boyd busily and steadily. Much
encouraged, Sam raised a cheery cry and fell to wielding his broom-like
weapon with fresh vigor.
It isn’t to be supposed, though, that with all the favorable
conditions, the club quickly finished the business in which it was now
engaged. The spread of the fire might be checked, but it still burned
stubbornly in the area over which it had extended. There were heaps of
rubbish, dead twigs and branches and rotting leaves, which smouldered
sullenly long after the flames had died down; there were patches of
glowing coals, potential danger spots, should a breeze spring up. The
boys worked back and forth, invading the burned-over tract, crossing
and recrossing it until they were satisfied that immediate danger was
over. Then came a sort of patrol for half an hour or more, with search
for points threatening a fresh start for the flames. At last, Sam spoke
the word for which the others had waited.
“Out! Guess we can knock off now.”
“Good--and a good job at that!” Poke declared.
“Well, I’m ready to call it half a day and quit,” said Herman. “I’ll
’fess up--I’m tired.”
“Yes; it’s hard work,” Sam observed.
Step thrust a finger almost into Poke’s face, and began to laugh.
“Ho, ho! Say, fellows, look at the boy beauty turned boy coal-heaver!”
Poke ran a grimy hand across a grimy cheek. “Huh! You’re no Spotless
Town exhibit yourself,” he retorted. “You look as if your home address
was ‘Care of any ash-barrel.’”
“What’s the odds, so long as we’ve put out the fire?” quoth Tom Orkney.
“But, I say! Anybody thought of the time? Sun’s down, but not one of us
noticed it!”
The boys glanced about them as curiously as if Tom had made some
remarkable discovery. They had paid no attention to watches or
sunshine, and now dusk was coming on. Poke tightened his belt with a
jerk.
“Supper time--and past,” he remarked. “Gee, now that I’m reminded of
eating, I could get away with about three square meals at once.”
By common consent the club started in the direction in which the camp
lay. They skirted the burned patch, but at the farther border Sam
halted. The others pulled up too.
“What’s on your mind, Sam?” asked Step.
Sam wrinkled his brow. “There are a few things I don’t quite figure
out. I suppose the fire started on this side; for this is the windward
side, if you can say there was breeze enough to make a windward and a
leeward. Now, what was there here to set it going?”
“I don’t see anything,” said Step, after a pause devoted to observation.
“Nor I,” chimed in two or three others.
“Probably somebody, going through, was smoking, and got careless with a
match or cigarette stub,” suggested Tom.
“Maybe,” said Sam, shortly.
“Well, what likelier explanation have you?”
Sam contented himself with shaking his head and saying, “It’s queer,
all the same.”
The fire, in spite of its leisurely progress, had extended over perhaps
two acres, nearly all of which would class as swamp land, though in
many places it was now as dry as any hill. Still, even where the mire
had hardened there were hummocks which made walking difficult, to say
nothing of the thick undergrowth on which the flames had fed. Anybody,
strolling through the woods, would be more likely to make a detour
about the hollow than to tramp across it.
“Oh, in a case like this you can’t find out half the time what caused
the trouble,” growled Poke. “Come on! Let’s get to the feed.”
“Hope it isn’t far to camp,” said the Trojan.
“Huh! No need to hope!” snapped the Shark.
“Meaning we’ve lost our way?”
“Meaning camp’s just ahead of us. Where are your eyes, anyway?”
“Cheer up, Shark! Don’t be a grouch,” counseled Poke.
The Shark gave a characteristic shrug. “It ought to grouch anybody to
see how you fellows don’t figure out things. Not that you ever will,
though! But if only you’d kept your wits working, you’d know the tent
can’t be an eighth of a mile from here.”
“Confound it! can’t you be exact?” Poke teased, with a wink at the
others. “Talking about things that grouch, what’s worse than a fellow
who deals in eighths of a mile, when he ought to say twelve hundred and
thirty-four ten-thousandths, plus? You vex me, Shark.”
“You--you----” snorted the Shark; then words failed him, and he set off
at a round pace.
The others followed, weariedly but willingly. Camp and supper were
pleasing thoughts; and the event proved that about the former, at
least, the Shark was right. In a moment or two the canvas of the tent
showed like a pale blur on the dark background. The rest quickened
their steps; but Sam, pausing, looked back.
After all, the fire had started uncomfortably close to the camp. It
was borne in upon him that it was a singularly fortunate circumstance
for the club that what little breeze there had been had blown in the
opposite direction. If some mischief maker had been at work----
Sam’s expression was grave, as he turned and resumed his way. With all
his desire to be fair in his judgments, an ugly suspicion was obtruding
itself upon him.