THE FIRE CALL.
“Hello, there, Hugh! Where away in such a rush?”
It was some two hours later, when the assistant scout master, mounted on
his bicycle and spinning along the road, heard a voice hail him after
this manner. As he slowed up, another boy, a bright-faced, wide-awake
fellow of about his own age, came speeding out of a side road and drew
alongside.
This was no other than Alec Sands, who had for a long time past been
Hugh’s most zealous rival and the cause of many tempestuous scenes in
the troop. All this was changed now, and the boys seemed to have become
very good friends. As to how this came about, certain incidents recorded
in previous stories of the series would doubtless explain to the reader.
“Why, I’m bound on an errand out to Farmer Doolittle’s place,” said
Hugh; “and if you haven’t anything better to take up your time, I’ll
invite you to go along, Alec. I’ve hit on a scheme that I’m expecting to
propose to the boys at the meeting to-night, and I’d like to have your
opinion about it.”
“I’ll be only too glad to give you that, if it’s worth anything,”
replied Alec; “but before you say a single word, I want to tell you that
I’m in favor of anything you hatch up. I never knew a fellow who could
plan like you do, Hugh. If I have to play second fiddle to anybody, I’m
glad it’s you. Now hit up the pace and tell me what you’ve got on deck.”
Accordingly, Hugh explained in as few words as possible. As we are
already well acquainted with the whole proposition, it will be quite
unnecessary for us to go into details again. Hugh started with the talk
that he and Billy had had while resting in the welcome shade of the big
oak, and then described the wild commotion that accompanied the
appearance of the wretched cur with that unwieldy tin pan fastened to
its poor tail.
“I’m glad Billy adopted the little kiyi,” declared Alec, as the story
was concluded; “but about this scheme for cleaning up the town, I’m
wondering whether it can be done.”
“Why not?” demanded Hugh, anxious to ascertain whether the same
difficulties would occur to Alec that he had mentioned to the other
comrade.
“Oh! well, lots of things would bother us like as not,” answered Alec.
“First place, perhaps the mayor and the city council mightn’t exactly
like to see it done. It would sort of put them to shame, you know,
because their consciences must convince them that they haven’t been
faithful to their duties.”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that,” Hugh remarked, “but if the women backed us
up, ditto the fathers of the scouts and some more business men, the
mayor and council wouldn’t say anything. They couldn’t stop us doing it,
anyhow, because there’s no law against a boy picking up waste paper and
chucking it into one of those tall cans on the corners. First of all,
we’d paint the cans a bright red so as to attract attention. Then we
might put the letters ‘T. I. A.’ on again, and underneath something to
read like ‘I Eat Trash!’ That would take with a lot of people, I think.”
“Sounds good to me the more you tell about it, Hugh; and no matter what
sort of trouble we meet, you can count on my standing back of you to the
end. If the scouts can’t clean up the town and help make it look like a
place people will be proud to claim as home, then it’s a hopeless case,
that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
“When nearly two score lively scouts get busy, there’s going to be
something doing, believe me,” commented Hugh, who had seen the troop in
action many times in the past and hence knew what the various patrols
were capable of accomplishing. “And I’m glad to know that you take so
kindly to my scheme in the start. It’s going to pull stronger the more
you think it over. Billy’s telling all the boys over the ’phone to bring
bags along with them to-night. You see he believes in rushing things.
And so I’m figuring on commencing operations right away, if a majority
are in favor of tackling the big job.”
“I’ll fetch a broom and you can bring a shovel; whatever we start to do,
we may need something like that, Hugh,” observed the practical Alec,
becoming, just as the other had expected, more interested in the scheme
the further he went.
“Listen! Wasn’t that a shout just then?” exclaimed Hugh, turning his
head as he slackened his pace by means of the pedal brake.
“Seemed to come from over in that clump of trees, too,” observed Alec,
almost immediately adding: “Look at all that smoke rising up, Hugh! I
honestly believe a house or barn must be on fire.”
“Come on, let’s head that way,” said Hugh quickly. “Here’s a road to get
in, and it must lead straight there.” While saying this, he threw
himself off his wheel to open a gate that stood in their way.
Together the two scouts pedaled along the wagon road that led from the
main highway toward the clump of trees, back of which doubtless lay the
house and barn connected with the farm.
“It’s the Ketchem place,” said Alec. “You know the family is related to
that good-for-nothing Lige Corbley you were just talking about. Queer
how things happen, isn’t it? You never speak of an angel but you hear
the quiver of wings; though I reckon Lige is far from being that kind of
a fellow. Hugh, it is a house afire! Hurry, and let’s help put the blaze
out. There are only a widow and her three children living here. She runs
the farm since her husband died last year.”
Both boys strained themselves to the utmost to reach the scene of the
excitement as speedily as possible. They could see a woman carrying two
buckets of water, and several children running back and forth, while the
smoke continued to ooze from the doors and windows of the farmhouse.
“But that was a man who shouted for us to come,” declared Alec. “Do you
see him anywhere around, Hugh?”
“Somebody’s up on the roof with a bucket of water,” replied the other
scout. “He has a ladder placed against the side of the house. Well,
would you believe it, Alec, it must be the very boy we were talking
about? I saw him look this way when he waved his hand just then, and it
was surely Lige Corbley.”
“Well, for once, then, we’ll have to give him a helping hand. This isn’t
a time to stand back for fear of getting contaminated. Come on, Hugh,
let’s find some buckets. We’ve just got to get this fire under control!”
Letting their wheels lie where they had dropped, the boys hurried
forward to the place where the almost distracted widow was standing.
Hugh took the empty buckets from her hand, and Alec, spying several tin
milk pails sunning on a picket fence near by, hastened to help himself
to a couple.
“To the well, and fill up!” he shouted, at the same time dashing off at
full speed.
The boy on the roof came down hastily, as though he realized that this
additional force might mean another method of attacking the fire.
“It’s in the kitchen,” he said. “I poured three buckets down around the
chimney because I reckoned it must have caught from a defective flue.
But a lot of rags and things are blazing inside and making all this
smoke now. Bring on the water, boys, and we’ll knock the stuffing out of
the old fire. Whoop!”
All of them were kept very busy for some ten minutes. The fire had
managed to get such a good start that it was only with difficulty
subdued; but as bucket after bucket of water from the well was poured
around the kitchen, by degrees it lost its grip; and in the end there
was not a live spark to be found.
“That settles it!” exclaimed Alec, almost out of breath with his recent
exertions.
The widow was shaking Hugh’s hand and thanking him with tears in her
eyes for the part he had taken in the saving of her home. Then she came
over to Alec and repeated her words of gratitude. The children only
laughed, as though they thought it more or less of a show gotten up for
their especial benefit, for they were too young to realize the horrors
of fire.
Hugh glanced out of the tail of his eye toward the stout boy who had
enjoyed of late the unenviable reputation of being the terror of the
town. He wondered what Lige Corbley thought of scouts now, after seeing
that they could meet an emergency like this without hesitation.
He could see that the other was hesitating, as though urged on to say
something, and yet finding it difficult to express his feelings.
Finally, however, Lige walked forward and looked at Hugh in a peculiar
way.
“Huh!” he grunted. “I never thought I’d see the day when I had to thank
one o’ you scouts for lendin’ a helpin’ hand! But you’ve saved my aunt’s
place, and you did pretty well, if I do say it. P’raps after all there
may be two halfway decent fellers in your crowd. ’Pears like you
mightn’t _all_ be a set of sissies and cowards!”
That was a strange sort of compliment, Alec thought, and he immediately
turned his back on the sneering speaker, as though wishing to let him
understand that he meant to have nothing to do with a fellow of his
stamp.
As for Hugh, he was better able to understand what the real feelings of
the rough boy might be. He believed that Lige was secretly forced to
respect them after what he had seen, and in saying what he did, he had
intended to compliment them. It was pretty hard for him to utter
anything that might sound like praise for the scouts, whom he had long
derided as milk-and-water boys, following a leader as a flock of sheep
follow the bellwether.
Hugh must have thought that Lige had a strange idea of what constituted
a coward. According to some people, it would mean any boy mean enough to
torment a helpless animal or to pick upon a lad smaller than himself.
“Oh, that’s nothing, Lige,” Hugh remarked lightly, as he turned away.
“We were glad to be on hand to help out, though I guess you’d have
smothered the fire yourself, even if we hadn’t happened along.”
“I don’t know ’bout that,” muttered Lige, frowning. “When I tackled her
one place, she got boomin’ again in another; and I didn’t know how on
earth I was goin’ to manage. Anyhow, my aunt, she’s obliged to both of
you fellers. So-long!”
As he and Alec rode along the road again, after washing the smut from
their faces at the well, Hugh found himself wondering whether this
little incident might have any bearing on a change of heart on the part
of Lige Corbley. He knew what a consistent hater the other could be, and
how deep-rooted, though unreasonable, his detestation of the Boy Scouts
was.
“I’m afraid it will take a lot more than that to make him alter his mind
about scouts,” he said. And Alec, quick to understand what must be
passing through his mind, was not at all slow to remark:
“Yes, that’s what I think, too, Hugh. He’s been nursing this feeling for
the lot of us so long that he actually believes he is right, and that
we’re a silly bunch. What he said was forced out of him unwillingly, I
could see. He kept watching you out of the corner of his eye, as though
he couldn’t just make you out. Nothing will come of the little affair.
We’ve had an adventure, and there’s some satisfaction in knowing we had
a chance to do a good deed. Somehow I haven’t turned my badge to-day,
and now I think I’ve got a good right to do it.”
“I should say you had,” laughed Hugh. “I make it a regular practice to
find something to do for somebody right early in the morning, so as to
get it off my mind. Though for that matter, there’s no reason we
shouldn’t perform twenty kind acts during each day, and we will, too, if
the thing has become real to us, and not just a meaningless service to
carry out a set rule. But it’s good to start right. It gets to be a sort
of clock-work performance with you, once you fall into the rut. But
let’s talk now about what we mean to do to-night if the majority is in
favor of it. I never felt more stirred up than I do right now; for this
town needs purging if any city ever did, in more ways than one. Mark
what I say, Alec, once we get started there will crop up all sorts of
openings through which the place can be improved. If my plan takes with
the boys of the troop to-night, the good people around will have
something to talk about at breakfast time to-morrow morning.”