[Illustration: The Forester, Charley and Lew Crossed to the Brook Where
the Battle with the Flames Had Begun]
The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol
or
<i>The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol</i>
By
Lewis E. Theiss
Illustrated by
Frank T. Merrill
W. A. Wilde Company
Chicago Boston
<i>Copyright, 1921,</i>
By W. A. Wilde Company
<i>All rights reserved</i>
The Young Wireless Operator--As A Fire Patrol.
This book is dedicated to
Gifford Pinchot
sometime forester for the United States of America, and now Commissioner
of Forestry for Pennsylvania, whose ceaseless and undiscouraged efforts to
save from spoliation the vast timber stands and other natural resources of
America have inspired this story
Foreword
Boys and dogs go well together. So do boys and trees. When a boy gets to
love the forest and can live in it, that is best of all. For the forest
makes real boys and real men.
Not only does the forest do that, but it keeps the Nation alive. No one
can eat a meal without the help of the forest, for it takes more than half
the wood cut every year in the United States to enable the farmer to grow
the food and the fibres to feed and clothe the Nation. No one can live in
a house without the help of the forest, for whether we speak of it as a
wooden house, a brick house, a stone house, or a concrete house, still
there is wood in it, and without wood it could not have been built.
We are apt to think of the city dwellers as people who are not dependent
on the forest. As a matter of fact, they are the most dependent of all,
for the cities would be deserted, the houses empty, and the streets dead,
except for the things which could not be grown nor mined nor manufactured
nor transported without the help of wood from the forest.
Pennsylvania--Penn's Woods--is the greatest industrial commonwealth in the
world. Without its woods, it could never have been made so. Unless its
woods are restored, it cannot continue to be so, and unless forest fires
are stopped, there is no way to restore Penn's Woods.
I have read "The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol" with the
keenest interest, not only because it is about the forest, but because it
is a thrillingly interesting story of a real boy and the real things he
did in the woods. I like it from end to end, and that is why, when Mr.
Theiss asked me to write this foreword, I gladly consented.
No one loves the woods more than I, as boy and man, or loves to be in them
better. One of the things I want most is to see more and better forests in
our great State of Pennsylvania, and in the whole United States. Without
our forests we could not have become great, nor can we continue to be so.
For the men and boys who love the forest and understand it are of the kind
without whom great nations are impossible.
Gifford Pinchot.
Contents
I. Vacation Plans
II. What Came of Them
III. Off to the Mountains
IV. In the Burned Forest
V. A Lost Opportunity
VI. Trout Fishing in the Wilderness
VII. The Forest Afire
VIII. Making an Investigation
IX. Charley Becomes a Fire Patrol
X. An Encounter with a Bear
XI. The Secret Camp in the Wilderness
XII. On the Trail of the Timber Thieves
XIII. Spying Out the Land
XIV. The Trail in the Forest
XV. The Telltale Thumb-Print
XVI. Good News for the Fire Patrol
XVII. An Accident in the Wilderness
XVIII. The First Clue to the Incendiary
XIX. The Forester's Problem
XX. Charley Wins His First Promotion
XXI. A Trouble Maker
XXII. Charley Finds Another Clue
XXIII. A Startling Discovery
XXIV. Checkmated
XXV. The Crisis
XXVI. More Thumb-Prints
XXVII. Trapped
XXVIII. Victory
The Young Wireless Operator--As a Fire Patrol
Chapter I
Vacation Plans
Charley Russell sat before a table in the workshop in his father's back
yard. In front of him were the shining instruments of his wireless
outfit--his coupler, his condenser, his helix, his spark-gap, and the
other parts, practically all of which he had made with his own hands.
Ordinarily he would have looked at them fondly, but now he gave them
hardly a thought. He was waiting for his chum, Lew Heinsling, and his mind
was busy with the problem of his own future. Charley was a senior in high
school and was pondering over the question of what the world had in store
for him. While he sat meditating, Lew arrived. In his hand was a copy of
the <i>New York Sun and Herald</i>. He held it out to Charley and pointed to
the marine news.
"The <i>Lycoming</i> reaches New York to-day," he said. "Roy will send us a
wireless message to-night. Gee! I wish we had a battery strong enough to
talk back."
But Charley paid slight heed to the suggestion. Instead he said: "Roy
Mercer's a lucky dog. Think of being the wireless man on a big ocean
steamer when you're only nineteen. I wish I knew what I am going to do
after I graduate from high school."
Roy Mercer, like Charley and Lew, was a member of the Camp Brady Wireless
Patrol. With his fellows he had taken part in the capture of the German
spies who were trying to dynamite the Elk City reservoir and so wreck a
great munitions centre during the war; and with three other members of the
Wireless Patrol, especially selected for their skill in wireless, he had
later gone to New York with their leader, Captain Hardy, to assist the
government Secret Service in its search for the secret wireless that was
keeping the German Admiralty informed of the movements of American
vessels.
His fellows both envied and loved him. Roy warmly returned their
affection, and his vessel never came into port that he did not, regularly
at nine o'clock in the evening, flash out some message of greeting to his
former comrades of the Wireless Patrol. It was always a one-sided
conversation, however, because none of the boys in the Wireless Patrol
owned a battery powerful enough to carry a message from Central City to
New York. Just now each lad was engaged in trying to earn money so that
the club could buy a battery or dynamo strong enough for this purpose. So
each boy was working at any job he could pick up after school, and saving
all he earned. Both Charley and Lew had already earned more than their
share of the purchase money.
"You never can tell what will happen," said Lew presently. "Who ever
expected Roy to get the job he has? You may land in another just as good.
You stand pretty near the head of your class, and everybody knows you're a
corking good wireless operator."
"I can tell well enough what will happen, Lew. The minute I'm out of high
school, I'll have to go to work with Dad in Miller's factory. Gee! How I
hate the place! Think of working nine hours a day in such a dirty, smoky,
noisy old hole, where you can't get a breath of fresh air, or see the sky,
or hear the birds. Just to think about it is enough to make a fellow feel
blue."
"But maybe you won't have to go into the factory at all," argued Lew.
"Maybe you can find some other job you like better."
"No, I shall have to go into the factory," repeated Charley sadly. "Dad
says I've got to get to work the minute I've graduated, and earn the most
money possible. And there's no other place where I can get as much as they
pay at Miller's. Dad says I can get two-fifty a day at the start and maybe
three dollars."
Charley paused and sighed, then added, "What's three dollars a day if you
have to be penned up like an animal to earn it? I'd rather take half as
much if I could work out in the open and do something I like."
"Why don't you tell your father so?"
"I have--dozens of times. But he says it isn't a question of what I want
to do. It's a question of making the most money possible and helping him.
He says he's supported me for more than eighteen years and now I have to
help him for a year or two anyway."
"That's a shame!" cried Lew.
"No, it isn't, Lew," explained Charley. "It's all right about helping Dad.
He's been mighty good to me, and he's in the hole now. You see, Dad and
Mother have been married twenty years and Dad's worked hard all this time
and saved his money to build a house. And just about the time Dad was
ready to begin building, prices began to go up. Dad held off, thinking
they would drop. But they got higher instead, and finally Dad told the
carpenters to go ahead, lest prices should go higher still. Now the house
is going to cost almost double what Dad expected it would, and the awful
prices of everything else take every cent Dad can earn. With such a big
mortgage on the place, Dad says he's just got to have my help or he may
lose the house and all he has saved in those twenty years. It's all right
about helping Dad, Lew. I want to do that, but I can't bear to think of
going to work in that factory."
"It's too bad, Charley. I had hoped so much that we could go to college
together."
"Lew, if I could go to college I'd work my head off to do it. You know
that. If only I could go to college and learn about the birds and flowers
and rocks and trees and animals, I'd be willing to do anything--even to
work in Miller's factory for a time. But Dad will need every cent I can
earn until I am twenty-one, and I can't see how I can possibly go to
college."
"Never mind, Charley. You never can tell what will happen. Look at Roy. He
was worse off than you are, for his father died suddenly and Roy had to
care for both himself and his mother. And see what came of it. He isn't
much older than we are, yet he's got a fine job. Just keep your eyes open
and you may pick up something, too."
"It'll have to come quick, then," sighed Charley. "Here it is almost
Easter vacation, and I am to graduate in June. This will probably be the
last vacation I shall have in a long time."
"Then let's enjoy this vacation. I've been thinking what we could do, and
it occurred to me that it would be lots of fun for the Wireless Patrol to
make a trip up the river to that old camp of ours. It won't be too cold to
camp out if we take out our tents and our little collapsible stoves.
Suckers ought to be running good and we can catch a fine mess of fish,
take a hike or two, and have a bully trip up the river and back. Let's go
tell the rest of the fellows."
Lew jumped up and started for the door. Then he stopped suddenly and a
look of disappointment came over his face. "I'll bet none of 'em can go,"
he said. "They've all got jobs for the vacation. I'm glad we've got our
money earned."
"I just thought of another difficulty," sighed Charley. "Not one of us
owns a boat."
"We can borrow one," said Lew.
"I hate to borrow things," replied Charley. "You remember how I borrowed
old man Packer's bob-sled and broke it and then had to pay to have it
remade. No more borrowing for me."
"Why can't we make a boat? There's plenty of time between now and
vacation. If we do the work ourselves, it oughtn't to cost more than two
or three dollars and then we'd have a boat of our own."
"Bully!" cried Charley. "We can make it as good as anybody. We'll do it."
"All right. I'll go down-town and find the price of oars and rowlocks, and
you go over to Hank Cooley's and find out how his father made that boat of
his. It's a dandy and just what we need."
The two boys rushed off in opposite directions, each full of enthusiasm
over the plan to build a new boat and make a trip up the river during
their Easter vacation.