water. He vaguely recalled one of the fire fighters mentioning that a
stream ran around the east side of the hill. He continued on until he
felt the ground rise sharply beneath his feet. Then he stopped and
called out to the dog.
“Prince! Where are you, boy?”
Ahead of him, to the left, he heard loud barking. He followed the sound
and broke out of the trees onto the abandoned fire line. Glancing to the
left and right along the ten-foot strip, he saw a solid wall of fire on
both sides where the flames had jumped the line. Roughly 1200 feet
separated the twin fronts, but as the flames raced through the trees
behind the hill, the gap was closing fast.
Sandy started as Prince’s head burst out of a thicket across the path
from him. “There you are!” he said with relief. “What are you doing way
over here? Come on, we’ve got to get out of the woods fast.”
Prince barked and backed into the thicket again.
“You stupid dog! _Come here!_” Sandy yelled. In a frenzy of anger, he
dropped down on his hands and knees and charged into the thicket after
the dog. He had gone about five feet when he came upon Prince standing
over the still form of Quiz Taylor sprawled out on the ground. From the
fire line he had been completely hidden by the thick foliage.
Sandy had a moment of overwhelming panic and confusion. Behind him, he
heard Jerry calling to him. “Over here, Jerry,” he shouted as he stood
up in the waist-deep brush.
Jerry stared at him incredulously from the center of the path. “What are
you doing?”
“It’s Quiz,” Sandy said weakly. “He’s unconscious. Give me a hand. We’ve
got to carry him out.”
Jerry turned pale. “Good night!” He struggled through the bushes to
Sandy’s side and stared bug-eyed at Quiz. “Is he alive? What happened to
him?”
“I think he’s alive. But I don’t know what happened to him. If it hadn’t
been for Prince—” He didn’t finish the statement, but Jerry knew what he
meant.
The boys managed to get Quiz on his feet, and by slinging one of his
arms around each of their necks, they were able to drag him along
between them. Their progress was painfully slow. Every few feet, vines,
bushes and other impediments would snag on Quiz’s feet. And both Jerry
and Sandy were physically exhausted from the night before. They had only
gone as far as the stream when it became obvious to Sandy that the dead
weight of the stout boy was too much for them.
“We’ll never make it, Jerry,” he gasped. “The fire will get us for
sure.”
Jerry was on the verge of panic. “What’ll we do? We can’t leave him
here.”
Sandy looked around frantically. “We’ve only got one chance. The hill.
Maybe we can signal to the helicopter from the top.”
Jerry shook his head in despair. “They’ll never spot us through all this
smoke.”
“Just the same,” Sandy insisted. “It’s our only chance. I heard one of
the rangers say that forest fires often leave one side of a hill
untouched.” Abruptly, his eyes fell on Prince, who was standing in the
shallow water, whimpering and trembling. “Say, I’ve got an idea!” He
rummaged in his pockets until he found the stub of a pencil. “You got
anything I can write on, Jerry?”
“Here’s a piece of paper that’s blank on one side.” Jerry handed him a
folded sheet on which Dick Fellows had scribbled a message the night
before.
Sandy crouched down, and spreading the paper flat on his leg, he began
printing in big block letters:
TRAPPED ON HILL. SEND HELP. SANDY
When he had finished the message, he sat down and began to unlace one
boot.
“What the heck are you doing?” Jerry asked.
“I need the lace to fasten this note to Prince’s collar. The way he
travels, he can make it out of here easily. If the note gets to Uncle
Russ—or anybody for that matter—maybe they can notify the ’copter pilot
that we’re on the hill. You’ve seen how they perform air rescues in the
movies, haven’t you?”
Jerry’s voice wasn’t too hopeful. “Sure. They drop rope ladders or
slings. But by the time they get this note—if they _ever_ do—we’ll be
fried to a crisp.”
It took all of Sandy’s will power to force a feeble grin. “We’ll come
out of this, pal. The most important thing to remember when you’re in a
tight spot, Uncle Russ says, is to stay calm and cool; if you use your
head there’s mostly always a way out.”
“Save your breath, Sandy. I’m so scared I could blubber.”
Sandy folded the paper several times until it was a tight little wad.
Then he called the dog over to him. Wedging the paper into the leash
ring on Prince’s leather collar, he bound it securely in place with the
long thong from his boot. He took the Doberman’s slender muzzle between
his two hands and looked straight into the intelligent brown eyes.
“Prince,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Go ... to ... Uncle
Russ ... Uncle Russ ... Understand? ... Find Uncle Russ ... That’s the
boy.” He turned Prince around in the opposite direction and gave him a
pat on the rump. “Go, boy!”
With a parting yelp, Prince streaked out of sight into the forest.
The crackle of the fire was louder now, and they could see it advancing
through the treetops on both sides of them. The sky was completely
blotted out by smoke, creating an artificial dusk.
“We’d better get back to the hill,” Sandy said.
“What do you say we soak ourselves in the stream?” Jerry suggested. “I
heard somewhere that you can protect yourself from the heat and flying
embers that way.”
“Good idea,” Sandy agreed. “Maybe the cold water will revive Quiz too.”
The two boys stretched out full length in the sluggish stream, turning
over and over until their clothing was soaked back and front. Last of
all, they pulled Quiz into the stream, splashing water on his face and
head.
For the first time since they had found him, he showed signs of life—a
soft moan and a fluttering of his eyelids.
“He’s got a lump the size of an egg on his head,” Sandy pointed out. He
scooped up a handful of wet mud from the bed of the stream and plastered
it on the swelling.
“Look, he’s coming to,” Jerry said.
Gradually, the injured boy’s eyes opened; they stared blankly into space
for a few moments, then focused on the anxious faces hovering over him.
“Sandy ... Jerry ...” he said weakly. “Was I asleep?”
“You were out cold,” Sandy told him. He touched the lump on Quiz’s head
gingerly. “Something must have conked you.”
Recollection flooded back to Quiz. “I climbed a tree to see if I could
get a better look at the fire. A branch broke and that’s about all I
remember.”
“Do you feel strong enough to walk?” Sandy asked him.
“I think so.” Suddenly his hands went to his eyes. “My glasses! Where
are they? I can’t see two feet ahead of me without my glasses.”
Sandy winced. “I picked them up, Quiz. But I don’t think they’re going
to do you much good.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a
pair of woeful-looking eyeglasses. The frames were twisted like a
pretzel and the lenses were spiderwebbed with tiny shatters.
Quiz accepted them glumly. By twisting and bending the pliable frames,
he was finally able to wear them, though they perched on his nose at a
rakish angle. In spite of their predicament, Sandy and Jerry had to
laugh.
“You look like a cockeyed owl,” Jerry said.
“Nobody asked you,” Quiz growled. He squinted through the shattered
lenses. “It’s like looking through cheesecloth. But it’s better than
nothing.”
A blast of scorching air hit Sandy on the side of his face. Because of
the smoke and the thickness of this portion of the woods, it was
impossible to tell exactly how far away the fire was, but he knew it
couldn’t be too far.
“Come on, boys, we’ve got to get back to the hill.”
Quiz’s mind was still a bit hazy. “Hill?” he demanded. “You mean the
ridge?”
Briefly Sandy described how the fire had out-flanked them.
“We’re cut off,” Jerry said with a note of doom in his voice.
“Surrounded by fire.”
Quiz swallowed hard. “There must be _something_ we can do.” He snapped
his fingers as a thought hit him. “Wait a minute! Macauley’s men left a
pile of shovels, hoes and picks behind when they were relieved by the
Canadians. We can clear a line in the grass on this side of the hill and
start a backfire.”
“What are we waiting for?” Sandy said. He led the way out of the forest,
which ended about ten yards beyond the abandoned fire line. Directly
ahead, the hill rose up like an oversized haystack.
Quiz pointed to a stack of digging implements off to one side. “There’s
the stuff I was telling you about. But first let’s go up to the top and
have a look around.” He started up the steep, grassy slope that ran up
about 200 feet to the summit.
The top of the hill was littered with rocks of all sizes and shapes. The
boys scrambled up on an enormous boulder, where they had a bird’s-eye
view of the surrounding countryside. Up here, the force of the wind was
so great that they had to crouch on hands and knees to keep from being
toppled over. On the west slope, a slow but determined grass fire was
burning all around the base of the hill. But they had never seen
anything to match the fury of the crown fire raging all around them. A
quarter of a mile behind the hill, the twin fronts had finally united,
sealing off the last corridor of escape. They were now literally
isolated on an island in the midst of a sea of flame. A shifting current
of air sent a hail of hot coals and blazing twigs raining down on the
hill.
“Ouch!” Jerry beat out a spark that was sizzling on the wet material of
his pants.
Smoke spiraled up from several spots on the grassy slope away from the
fire.
“Come on!” Sandy yelled, leaping off the boulder. “We’ve got to beat
those out before they really get started.” He ran down the slope to the
nearest place where the grass was smoldering and stomped on the sparks
with his boots.
Jerry went to another danger spot farther down the slope, while Quiz
spotted one in a patch of heavy brush far to the left. As Quiz leaped
feet-first into the bushes, Sandy, who was looking in that direction,
was startled to see his friend unexpectedly disappear as if the earth
had swallowed him. He heard the rattle of falling earth and stones,
followed by a cry of pain.
“Quiz!” he shouted in alarm, and started over in that direction.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
An Unexpected Find
With relief, he heard Quiz’s voice. “Watch your step! There’s a big hole
over here.”
Sandy advanced cautiously to the rim of a crater hidden in the high
brush. “Good night!” he said anxiously, as Quiz’s head poked into view.
“This is your unlucky day. Did you hurt yourself?”
“I think I sprained my ankle.” The other boy held up his hand. “Give me
a lift, will you?”
Jerry came up and the two of them dragged poor Quiz out of the hole.
“Now, how do you suppose that got here?” Sandy said.
Quiz shrugged. “Looks like a meteorite crater. Anyway, it really wasn’t
such bad luck my falling into it. It’s the perfect place for us to wait
out the fire.”
“How do you mean?” Jerry demanded.
“We build our fire line right around the circumference. Clear a strip
about two feet wide out from the edge and start a backfire. It’s deep
enough so that even if the whole hill goes up, we’ll be protected from
the heat.”
“That’s a great idea, Quiz!” Sandy exclaimed, pounding him on the back.
“You wait here while Jerry and I go down and bring up some of those
shovels and stuff.”
Leaving Quiz to nurse his injured ankle, the other two boys hot-footed
it down the slope to the mound of equipment the fire fighters had left
behind. Sandy gathered up a shovel and two picks. “Grab a couple of
those Pulaski hoes,” he told Jerry. Tears streamed out of his eyes from
the smoke, and Jerry was seized with a coughing spell that almost choked
him. The heat was unbearable as the fire closed in on the hill.
Staggering up the slope again with their load, they dumped the tools at
the edge of the crater. For a few minutes, they were too breathless to
work.
“I’ve never been so pooped in my life,” Jerry gasped. “Even after four
quarters of football.”
“Lack of oxygen,” Quiz theorized. “The fire steals it out of the air.”
Sandy remembered a dreadful story he had heard about a dozen men who had
taken shelter in a cave in the midst of a forest fire. The fire hadn’t
touched them, but they had all died nevertheless. The fire had exhausted
all the oxygen in the cave in the same way that a candle will when it
burns under a glass bell in a laboratory experiment. He was glad that
this was an open pit high on the side of a hill.
“We had better get started,” he said. “Quiz has a bad leg, Jerry, so you
and I will do the heavy work. Quiz do you think you can follow us up
with a hoe?”
“Sure thing,” Quiz said promptly. “I think the old ankle will hold up.”
They worked in a frenzy, fear and desperation lending them strength and
endurance that Sandy had never realized they had. Only minutes before,
he had felt he was too weary to lift an ax, much less swing one in such
tireless fashion. In less than twenty minutes, they had cleared a broad
ribbon around the rim of the crater.
The hill was ringed in flames now. Below them the fire swept through the
grass from the wood line and started up the slope. The sparse growth on
the crest was ablaze, and on either side a dozen little spot fires,
ignited by flying embers, spread and merged.
Sandy jumped down into the loose sand and gravel of the crater. “C’mon,
you guys! Let’s shovel this stuff up all around the edges to form a
barricade.”
Grabbing a shovel, he plunged it into the sand. There was a dull _clank_
of metal jarring against metal, about two inches below the surface.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, feeling the impact vibrate through the handle into
his hands. “What did I hit?”
“Maybe a chest of pirate gold,” Jerry suggested, leaping into the hole
after Sandy.
“Bright boy,” Quiz said sarcastically. “Maybe Captain Kidd sailed all
the way to Red Lake to bury his booty.”
Sandy and Jerry dropped to their knees and began scooping the loose
earth away from the spot with their hands. Quickly they uncovered the
edge of what seemed to be a flat sheet of metal. They continued digging
until they had uncovered enough of the object for Sandy to get a grip on
it. He pulled and tugged, but it was immovable.
“This is only a small piece of whatever it is,” he said finally. “It’s
buried pretty deep.”
Quiz, who had come up behind them, was studying the exposed metal with
keen interest. “Dig some more,” he told them.
As the boys pawed away at the earth like dogs, the strange object began
to assume form—a vaguely familiar form, Sandy thought. It was coated
with a heavy, dull green paint.
“Oh, good night!” Quiz whispered suddenly. “You know what that looks
like?”
At that instant the same idea must have struck both Sandy and Jerry, for
they stopped digging and looked up with stricken expressions.
“It looks like a fin—a fin on the tail of a bomb!” Sandy said
tremulously.
“It couldn’t be!” Jerry’s voice cracked. “Or could it?”
Quiz adjusted his smashed glasses and peered more closely at the
mysterious object. “It could be and it _is_! That’s a fin all right. I
saw a newsreel once showing a demolition squad removing a dud bomb from
a meadow in England; it had been there ever since World War Two. And it
was lying half-buried in a crater just like this one.”
Jerry began to back away as if he were confronting a poisonous snake.
“Imagine sitting on an A-bomb, fellows! We gotta do something!”
Sandy looked around grimly at the flames converging on them. “Right now
we’re in a lot more danger from that fire than we are from any bomb.
Come on, Jerry, let’s get busy with the shovels. Quiz, you start
lighting the backfires. I picked up a signal flare down below along with
these tools. It’s over by the hoes. You should be able to ignite this
dry grass easily with that.”
With the backfires blazing strongly around the parapet of earth that
Sandy and Jerry had erected along the rim of the pit, the boys arranged
themselves in a prone position in the center of the pit. Its sides
shielded them from the direct blast of the flames, and the earth they
were lying on was cool and comforting. As an added precaution against
flying embers, they covered themselves from foot to neck with sand.
“Now I know how a mole feels,” Sandy said.
“I wish I were a mole,” Jerry answered. “I wouldn’t stop burrowing until
I reached China.”
Quiz heaved a handful of sand at a burning brand that had dropped a few
feet away. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. We’re as snug and
safe here as three bugs in a rug.”
“Four bugs in a rug,” Jerry amended gravely. “You forgot the bomb. For
all we know that baby might be all set to blow this very minute.”
“Don’t be silly,” Quiz scoffed.
“It’s not so silly,” Jerry defended his position. “You heard what
General Steele said. Anything is possible. Even he couldn’t predict what
might happen.”
“Gee, I wonder what Uncle Russ is doing right now. He’s probably
wondering how he’s going to break the news to our folks,” Sandy said.
“You think Prince got to him with that note?” Jerry wanted to know.
Sandy shrugged. “Even if he did, Uncle Russ must think we’re fried to a
crisp by now.”
Quiz gazed affectionately at the exposed tip of the bomb’s fin. “We
might have been too, if it hadn’t been for this lovely hole. We never
could have dug it ourselves.”
Sandy raised his head and sniffed. “I wonder how the fire is coming?
Doesn’t it sound as if it’s letting up a little?”
“The smoke’s not so thick,” Quiz admitted. “Want to take a look?”
“I’ll go.” Sandy sat up, dumping the dirt off himself. “You fellows stay
in your cocoons.” Slowly he got to his feet and looked around.
On all sides of the crater, the ground was black and smoking and
littered with glowing embers. But only in a few places were there still
tongues of flame licking up. The hill had been burned clean, but the
danger was over. Sandy felt his knees go wobbly with relief. The forest
was still blazing fiercely all around them, but they were safe now.
“I think we’ve made it, fellows,” he said. “All we’ve got to do now is
wait for somebody to come and rescue us.”
For the next half hour, the boys watched the fire spreading through the
forest to the east. Several times Sandy ventured out of the pit, but the
burned ground seared his feet even through his thick-soled boots.
“How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?” Jerry asked
impatiently.
“I have no idea.” A new thought struck Sandy. “You know, maybe they
don’t even know we’re missing. There must be so much confusion back at
headquarters, that Uncle Russ probably hasn’t had time to give us a
thought. He may think we’re somewhere along the road working with one of
the crews.”
“Do you think they’ll be able to stop her at the road?” Jerry said.
“Oh, they’ll bottle her up between the two big firebreaks,” Quiz said.
“But it’s still going to be a major catastrophe. All that beautiful
timber going up in smoke—enough wood to build an entire city, Macauley
says.”
“Well, just so _we_ didn’t go up in smoke,” Jerry said. “Along with our
friend back there.... Doesn’t it give you the cold shivers to think that
you’re sitting on top of an atomic bomb?”
“Not in the least,” Quiz denied. “As a matter of fact, I’d like to dig
the thing out and see what it looks like. We can’t tell anything about
it from that little tip of the fin.”
Jerry stared at Quiz as if he were crazy. “You’ll dig alone, friend. And
wait until I’m at least a thousand miles away.”
Quiz shook his head despairingly. “Jerry, where’s your scientific
curiosity?”
“You know what curiosity did?” Jerry said.
Sandy motioned for them to be quiet. “Listen; hear anything?”
The throb of engines came to them through the smoky overcast.
“Sounds like a chopper,” Jerry said.
Soon it was directly overhead and building up in volume. Unexpectedly a
big helicopter broke out of the smoke less than fifty feet above them.
The boys leaped up and down, waving their arms and shouting. Even Quiz
hopped about on his one good leg. The figures in the glass-enclosed
cockpit were clearly visible.
“There’s Uncle Russ!” Sandy yelled.
The great rotor blades churned the air like the wings of a giant bird as
the ship braked its descent about twenty-five feet above the pit and
hung motionless in air.
“They’re not going to land, are they?” Jerry looked concerned. “It will
squat right on top of us.”
In answer to his question, a hatch in the underside of the plane slid
open and a Jacob’s ladder was let down slowly. A man’s voice blasted out
of the ’copter’s special loud-speaker system:
“This is Russ Steele.... Are you all okay?... Just nod your heads, I
can’t hear you.” The boys nodded vigorously. “Good! Think you can all
make it up the ladder?... Still too hot down there to try a landing.”
Sandy and Jerry nodded, then pointed to Quiz’s ankle with elaborate
gestures. “Quiz can’t make the climb?... Well, Quiz, do you think you
can hold on while we reel you in?” Quiz nodded his head affirmatively.
“Fine. Sandy and Jerry, you two come on up first.”
The ladder was dangling right before their noses now. Sandy took a long
breath and put his left foot on the first wooden rung, grasping the rope
sides firmly. “Here I go,” he said.
And go he did! Without warning, a gust of wind caught the ’copter and
lifted it ten feet in the air. Sandy, clinging for his life to the
ladder, went sailing up and out in a wide arc. Back and forth he swung
like an acrobat on a high trapeze. Below him the ground swirled
sickeningly and he squeezed his eyes tight shut. Uncle Russ’s voice rang
in his ears.
“_Hold tight! You’ll be all right._”
He swung and spun in diminishing circles until finally the ladder was
still. Then he began to climb as fast as he dared, praying that the wind
wouldn’t play any more tricks on him. At last, strong arms reached down
to pull him through the hatch into the plane, and he collapsed on the
floor, temporarily speechless. The most he could manage was a weak smile
of assurance for his uncle.
Russ Steele had aged ten years since Sandy had seen him earlier that
afternoon. He put both hands on Sandy’s shoulders and squeezed so hard
the boy winced. “Thank God you’re safe,” he said gratefully. “When I
read that note—” His voice choked. “Prince was nagging at me for over an
hour before I spotted that paper in his collar. Look, we’ll talk about
it later. I’ve got to get those other boys up here.”
Within a few minutes, Sandy had recovered sufficiently to crawl over to
the hatch and watch Jerry make the precarious ascent. This time the
’copter behaved itself, but Jerry had a great deal of difficulty
mastering the Jacob’s ladder. Every time he raised a foot and placed it
on another rung, foot and ladder would swing out and up and Jerry would
find himself hanging parallel to the ground. Russ Steele yelled to him
through the loud-speaker.
“Jerry, use your arms! Lift with your arms and push with your feet at
the same time. They’ve got to work together.”
“Lucky thing I’ve been on those ladders before,” Sandy observed
sympathetically. “Poor Jerry.”
But Jerry was eventually pulled aboard without any accident and lay
puffing and wheezing on the floorboards like a beached whale.
Quiz had the easiest ascent of all, standing on the bottom rung of the
ladder while it was hauled up to the plane.
Then the ’copter’s engines roared and it went leaping into the sky like
a big grasshopper.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Rains Came
Because of this latest emergency, Fire Boss Landers had moved his
headquarters about two miles down the road to the junction of the two
big firebreaks. Over four hundred smoke-eaters were strung out along
this line. Twice they had fought the fire on its own terms in the thick
forest and had had victory within their grasp—only to see it get away
from them. Now, tired and discouraged, they had retreated to strong
defensive positions established years before for just such an emergency.
They would wait until the fire came to them, hurling itself against the
firebreaks as a wild beast throws itself against the bars of its cage.
They would watch its struggles become weaker and weaker until, at last,
it would burn itself out. But in some vague, intangible way, they felt
that the fire had really won the battle. For it would be hundreds of
years before man and nature could rebuild what the fire had destroyed.
The remarkable escape of the boys was the only heartening note in camp
that second night of the forest fire. Time and time again, they had to
repeat the dramatic story for new audiences.
“They ought to strike medals for the lot of you,” Paul Landers declared
enthusiastically.