FIGHTING THE FLAMES.
Out of the tent crawled Thad, utterly regardless of the fact that he was
not altogether warmly clad for a cold night. And what met his eyes when
he reached the open was enough to excite him still further.
The wind was blowing pretty stiffly, and the fire had already jumped
into the brush surrounding the camp. If given its head for even a short
time it seemed bound to get started in the dead pine needles; and once
it spread there, all the desperate efforts of a dozen fire-fighters
would be wasted.
Several figures could be seen, bounding here and there, and slashing at
the red flames with anything they could get hold of that would answer to
bring about a halt in their spread.
Of course these must be the late guardians of the sleeping camp, who
were now shouting so strenuously, and begging the rest of the campers to
come to their aid--Step Hen and Davy Jones; besides, there were the
guides, hard at work, having been aroused with the first cries; for they
still persisted in sleeping under a rude shelter they had made out of
branches and weeds.
Thad rushed into the fray, and began to do his very utmost to keep the
dreaded fire in check. He saw that the others were also crawling forth,
Bumpus, Giraffe and Allan, all occupants of the first tent. And
realizing the importance of concerted action, they lost not a second in
getting busy.
Bumpus, in particular, was a sight to behold, and had he been less busy
Thad felt that he must have doubled up with laughter to see him. He
persisted in donning a most stunning red-checked suit of pajamas; for
being so stout he did not suffer from the cold as much as some of the
others. And as his simple heart was wrapped up in the business that just
then engaged his full attention, Bumpus was prancing around, looking
more like a clown from the circus than anything Thad could think of. But
all the same the fat boy fought, tooth and nail, at the spreading fire.
He had on his shoes, as had the others, so that he could jump on the
creeping flames when all else failed; and using an extra piece of canvas
that sometimes had done duty as a tent floor, Bumpus sailed into the
fray like a hurricane.
Indeed, they were all as busy as beavers for a short time. Every scout
seemed to feel that it would be a lasting disgrace on the name of the
Silver Fox Patrol if that fire got away into the woods. They had assumed
the responsibilities of assistant fire wardens; and it would be a sorry
joke indeed if, instead of putting out a conflagration they themselves
were the cause of one that swept the whole adjacent territory.
"Give it thunder!" shouted Giraffe, as he threshed wildly at every head
of fire he could see near his boundary of action.
"Hit him again, boys!" shrilled Bumpus, as he continued to do his great
act of working with both hands and feet at the same time, all serving to
quench the threatening flames.
But Step Hen and Davy were strangely silent, though they worked as hard
as any one. They knew that they were to blame for all the trouble; for
they had slept on their post, and with this sad result.
Finally success came to the hard working scouts, and their allies, the
two guides. The fire was completely routed, bag and baggage, before it
managed to get a good foothold in the dry woods. And perspiring as
though it were the good old summer time, the boys hastened to get more
clothes on them, for fear of catching cold.
The fire was resurrected, and they sat down to have a powwow.
"Oh! you needn't all look at us that way," grunted Step Hen. "We're
guilty, all right. Knock us all you want to, because I just guess now we
deserve it. But we never meant to go to sleep there by the fire, did we,
Davy?"
"Well, I should say not," replied the other culprit, looking quite
dejected. "We kept atellin' each other that we mustn't sleep right
along; and then to think that after all we did drop off, and both
together."
"First thing I remember," said Step Hen, as if resolved, after pleading
guilty, to open up, and throw himself on the mercy of the court; "I
heard a queer crackling noise, and openin' my eyes, my stars! the whole
world seemed like it was afire. I gave Davy a punch in the side, and
then jumped for it. We thought at first we could get her under control;
then I saw it was no go, for the old fire kept extendin' all the while.
So I started to wake you all, and Davy, he joined in. After that Eli and
Jim joined us, and then the rest of you came. And believe me, fellers,
Davy and me'll never forget it. You did handsome by us, and we've been
saved from disgrace that would have sent us into an early grave, hey,
Davy?"
"Just so," grunted the other, who was licking several burns he had
received on his bare hands during the fierce little engagement just
ended, though he made no complaint, seeming to think he had gotten off
pretty easily, considering the serious offense of which he had been
guilty, that of sleeping on his post, and which might have cost him his
life in war times, had he been a soldier.
Thad noticed this fact, and quietly getting out some salve he carried
for just such occasions forced Davy to let him attend to his hurts,
though the other insisted that they "did not amount to much, anyway."
"How do you think it started?" Giraffe asked, and in so doing he really
voiced the thoughts of everybody.
"Huh! I reckon that's an easy one to answer," replied Step Hen,
promptly. "Anybody c'n see at just a single look that the wind must have
picked up a live coal from the fire, and carried it into a bunch of
stuff to leeward. After that it was fanned, till it spread wider and
wider. That was going on while Davy and me snoozed away like a pair of
sillies. No use talking, boys, I'm ashamed of myself; and let me tell
you, it'll be a long time before I ever go to sleep on duty again--not
if I have to keep jabbing a pin into my leg every minute or so, to make
me jump."
"Does that explanation go, Thad?" asked Bumpus, still breathing hard
after his recent violent exertions.
"Well, it looks that way, for the fire was actually to leeward of the
camp when I first saw it," answered the patrol leader; but there must
have been something in his manner rather than his speech that caught the
attention of Giraffe.
"But you ain't _quite_ satisfied, are you, Thad?" he remarked,
pointedly. "You just keep athinkin' that perhaps it _wasn't_ an
accident after all? Am I right, now?"
"Wow! what does that kind of talk stand for?" burst out Bumpus. "Are you
hinting that it was all a part of a dark scheme to burn us out of camp?"
"Wait till Eli and Jim come back," Thad went on. "You've noticed that
they're not with us right now. Fact is, they took the lantern, and went
off about the time we were finishing our dressing. But before they went,
Jim gave me to understand what they had some reason to suspect."
"The work of big Cale Martin and his crowd? Is that what you're aiming
to tell us, Thad?" demanded Giraffe.
"Here they come!" was all Thad said.
"Oh! my, I thought you meant the game poachers!" exclaimed Bumpus, who
had made a half movement in the direction of his gun, standing
conveniently near.
The two guides joined the circle around the fire. Eli held his hands out
to the blaze, as though they felt cold in that nipping night air. Jim
simply caught the inquiring eye of the scoutmaster, and immediately
nodded his head in the affirmative. And Thad knew from that they had
surely made some sort of important discovery.
"What is it, Jim?" he asked.
"They've been around here; we found ther tracks lots o' places," came
the reply.
"Do you mean Cale and Si and Ed?" asked the other.
"On'y Si and Ed," answered Jim. "Cale he wa'n't thar 'tall. We'd sized
up his big tracks ef he'd be'n. They was two men in thet canoe larst
night, ye seen; wall them must a be'n ther lot as fired the brush. I
guess as haow Cale, he muster gone back tew his shack by naow."
"But what on earth could they expect to get by burning us out?" demanded
Bumpus.
"Fust place they never oxpected tew burn ther camp," observed Jim; "ef
they hed, doan't yew believe they'd agone tew windward tew start thet
blaze? Wall, they hed a game wuth tew o' thet up ther sleeve."
"Tell us what it was, Jim," urged Thad, though he himself had already
jumped to a conclusion in the matter.
"I guess as haow they thort we'd hev tew make off a long distance away
frum the camp tew fight the fire; an' then they'd hev plenty o' time tew
clean her aout; but yeou see, we didn't get fur away 'tall, so they hed
all ther work fur nawthin'. But them tracks was as plain as anything,
wa'n't they, Eli?" Jim went on.
"They be," was the conclusive testimony of the older guide; and every
one of the scouts understood that Eli had set the seal of his approval
on all that Jim had said.
It was certainly very unpleasant to realize that they were objects of
desire on the part of even a pair of unscrupulous scamps, granting that
big Cale Martin had retired from the combination. The boys seemed to get
more indignant the longer they discussed the situation.
There was Bumpus, usually so mild and peaceful, fairly palpitating with
a desire to draw a bead upon those two unprincipled rascals.
"We don't stand for much nonsense from outsiders, do we fellers?" he
appealed to the other five. "Once before on this trip some bad men
thought to get fresh with the Silver Fox Patrol. You all know what
happened to Charley Barnes, the leader of that bunch of yeggs that broke
into the bank. Didn't we make the capture though, and astonish Sheriff
Green? And ain't we going to get ever so much money for recovering the
stolen stuff? Well, that's what's going to happen to those husky chaps
if they get too gay with us. They'd better go slow. If they can read,
they'll see we're marked 'dangerous, handle with care!'"
"Yes," said Giraffe, "we'll just have to get busy, and hand these
sillies over to the head game warden. They're trying to interfere with
our having the time of our lives up here in Maine; and we don't stand
for anything like that."
None of them felt like getting back to their blankets in a hurry, after
all that scare; so they just sat there around the fire, some of them
with the blankets thrown over their shoulders, and compared notes all
along the line; for what the guides had just told concerning the scheme
of the unprincipled poachers filled the scouts with both indignation and
anger.
And more than one of them resolved that when his time came to watch, he
would make sure to keep a loaded gun close to his hand, to be used to
give the prowlers the fright of their lives.