THE END OF EVERYTHING
“Come on, fellows!” cried Jerry.
He was struggling to get out of the seat where three of them were
rather a tight fit, considering Chunky’s plumpness. But Jerry managed
it, at the same time thumping Bob on the back to dislodge the bit of
doughnut that had gone down the hungry lad’s “wrong throat.”
The boys had arrived at a most critical time. The blaze had quite a
start at the rear of the farmhouse, the flames flickering out of a
first story window--evidently the kitchen--and eating their way up to
the second story.
“I wonder if they’ve telephoned in an alarm?” cried Ned, for though
there were no “pull boxes” on the country road that far out of
Cresville, nearly every farmer had a telephone.
“Sounds like the new motor engine coming,” said Bob, with a cough, to
dislodge the last remaining particles of the doughnut, which, by this
time, he had managed to swallow.
“Yes, there she is!” added Ned, as they caught the sound of the siren
horn on the new motor apparatus, recently purchased by the town.
“But it won’t get here in time to save them! Look!” shouted Jerry.
He pointed to a window about eight feet above the one-story extension
of the house where could be seen a woman and two children. From another
window on the left of these frantic and screaming ones smoke was
pouring, showing that the fire was close to them.
“We’ve got to save them!” cried Ned.
“That’s right!” added Bob. “We can do it from that low roof. They can
drop down and we can help them get to the ground. Or if we could find a
short ladder----”
“There’s one!” yelled Ned, pointing to one leaning against a fruit tree
at the side of the house. “Come on!”
“We’re just in time!” added Jerry. “It’s a good thing we drove out this
way!”
The boys dashed to the rescue of the fire-trapped ones, while they
could hear the motor engine approaching; and as they watched neighbors
came running across the fields to aid, having seen the pall of smoke.
While the Motor Boys are hastening on their errand of mercy I shall
take just a moment to introduce my new readers more formally to the
youths who are to be the heroes of this story.
In the first volume of this series, entitled “The Motor Boys,” the
reason for this name being given Jerry Hopkins, Ned Slade and Bob Baker
was very fully set forth. Ned Slade’s father was a wealthy department
store owner in Cresville, and Bob Baker’s father was president of the
richest bank in that section. Jerry Hopkins’ father was dead, but had
left his widow, Mrs. Julia Hopkins, very well off, and Jerry managed to
keep up his end with his two chums.
Jerry, the tallest of the three lads, was a rather quiet and thoughtful
youth, destined to be a leader. Ned was the best dresser of the three,
if that is any compliment, and Bob Baker--well, when it is said that
his nickname was “Chunky,” more has been told than could be divulged in
several pages. Of his appetite, sufficient testimony has been given.
The home of the Motor Boys was in Cresville, in one of the New England
states, but from there the boys had traveled to many other parts of
their own country and foreign lands. As you know, they had recently
come back from the great war.
But before this, when they were not circumventing tricks of the
notorious Noddy Nixon and his crony, Jack Pender, the boys had traveled
overland, to Mexico, and across the great plains in a motor car. They
had been afloat on the Atlantic and in strange waters, voyaging at
times in a motor boat, and the various volumes tell of their activities.
As if the earth was not wide enough for them, the lads had even
ventured into the clouds in aeroplanes and balloons, and when they had
a chance to go in a submarine they did not hesitate. Part of their time
they spent at school--Boxwood Hall--but after the war they had voted
unanimously that they could not take up their quiet studies again; at
least, not at once.
The volume immediately preceding this present one is entitled “The
Motor Boys Bound for Home; or, Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Wrecked
Troopship.” They had some strenuous times, in part with their old
friend, Professor Snodgrass, and they had not long been at home when
the letter came from their officer friend, written from his western
mining camp.
However, all thoughts of gold mines were now driven from the heads of
the lads as they saw the immediate necessity of quick action if they
were to save the woman and the two children now appealing for help in
the burning farmhouse.
“Get the ladder!” cried Jerry. “We can easily help them down to the
roof of that one-story extension. Then they can jump to the ground if
they have to.”
“They won’t have to--we can move the ladder!” shouted Ned, as he dashed
for it.
“Help us! Save us!” screamed the woman.
“We’re coming! Don’t jump!” warned Jerry.
Being tall and athletic, he had managed, with the aid of a drain pipe
and clinging vine, to scramble up to the flat roof of the one-story
extension before the ladder was brought up. Ned could do the same, but
Bob was too fat. He had to ascend by the ladder. However, after he was
on the roof, he helped pull the ladder up so that it could be raised to
the window.
The house appeared to be on fire in the vicinity of the kitchen, and
the boys guessed that the woman and girls had been cut off from the
front and back stairs.
While the motor engine was chugging its way nearer and while friends
and neighbors were gathering to do what they could, the ladder, now on
the roof of the extension, was raised to the window at which the three
stood frantically calling.
“We’ll get you down in a minute!” shouted Jerry encouragingly, as he
ran up the ladder, which was steadied at its foot by Ned and Bob. “Come
on!” he cried to the youngest girl, who was crying.
“I--I’m afraid!” she sobbed, leaning out of the window.
“You needn’t be,” Jerry assured her. “I won’t let you fall.”
“Go on with him, Mary!” urged her mother. “Then take Helen next. And
there’s a lame man in here.”
“We’ll get you all out,” declared Jerry, with more confidence when he
had looked through the window and saw no flames in the room behind the
three. “You’ve got plenty of time.”
He helped the two girls down to the flat roof of the one-story
extension, where Ned and Bob took charge of them, calming them and
telling them they would soon be on the ground.
“Can you save Mr. Cromley?” gasped the woman, when Jerry went back to
assist her. “He’s lame and he’s in that room where the smoke is. The
girls and I were up there talking to him when the fire broke out.”
“I’ll get him as soon as you get down,” cried Jerry. “How lame is he?
Will he have to be carried?”
“Oh, no, he just walks with a limp--that’s all.”
“Then I guess I can get him down the ladder. But you must come now,”
and the mother was soon on the low roof. “I’m going after the lame man,
fellows!” Jerry then called to his chums. “Keep the ladder here until I
get him to the window.”
“Corporal” Jerry Hopkins was giving orders as he had done on the
battlefields of France, and his chums “snapped into” obedience as they
had done in those terrible days.
Up the ladder the tall lad raced, to meet a limping man stumbling
toward the window from which Jerry had already assisted the woman and
girls to the roof.
“I--I must have swallowed some of the smoke!” the man coughed. “I
didn’t know where I was for a minute!”
“Can you get down the ladder if I help you?” asked Jerry, entering the
room.
“Sure! I’m not as helpless as all that, even if I have a game leg. I’m
spry yet! Where’s the ladder? Is the whole house afire?”
“No, only part of it. I think they’ll save most of it. Here’s the
ladder,” and Jerry led the man to the window, for now a cloud of smoke
blew into the room, making them both cough and obscuring their vision
for a moment.
Mr. Cromley, to give him the name mentioned by the woman, proved that
he was no weakling in spite of his age and lameness, and he went down
the ladder almost as spryly as did Jerry.
“Oh, Uncle Bill, I’m so glad you’re saved!” cried one of the girls.
“But we aren’t on the ground yet!” sobbed her sister.
“You soon will be,” said Bob. “Come on, let’s move the ladder!” he
cried.
“Any more up there?” asked Jerry, pointing to the window from which
smoke was now pouring more thickly.
“No, we’re all out!” answered the woman.
It was but the work of a few seconds to shove the ladder over the edge
of the low roof, and down it the rescued ones, including the lame man
and the Motor Boys, soon made their way to the ground.
By this time the fire apparatus had arrived and with it many men and
boys to help. In addition to the chemical stream turned into the
blazing kitchen, volunteers dashed on the flames as many pails of water
as they could.
So quick and efficient was the work that the fire was confined to one
wing of the house and it was out in half an hour, the kitchen being
about the only room burned, though all through the place was the smell
and black soot of the smoke.
“My kettle of lard that I was heating to fry doughnuts must have boiled
over,” explained the woman--a Mrs. Gordon--when something like calmness
had been restored. “I left the grease boiling for a minute while I ran
upstairs to see if my brother wanted anything,” and she nodded toward
Mr. Cromley. “All of a sudden I heard a sort of explosion, and when I
tried to get down the stairs I couldn’t. The girls were up in their
room, and they ran back to where brother Bill and I were, and so we
were all trapped. If you boys hadn’t come along when you did we might
all have been burned to death,” she concluded.
“Oh, I guess some one else would have saved you,” said Jerry. “The
alarm got in quickly enough, anyhow.”
“Yes, we have an extension telephone upstairs, and I called from
there,” explained Mrs. Gordon. “But I didn’t see how we were going to
get out in time.”
“Well, it’s all right now,” said Bill Cromley, limping about to inspect
the damage done. It was not as much as seemed at first, though it was
bad enough.
“My husband will feel terrible when he comes home and sees that I can’t
cook a meal,” sighed Mrs. Gordon.
“You can use my kitchen,” offered one neighbor kindly.
“And mine! And mine!” came other proffers.
While plans were being made to help the Gordon family, Bill Cromley
moved about, limping painfully, and, speaking to the Motor Boys, he
said:
“Seems like it’s one accident after another with me. Guess I must have
run into a streak of bad luck.”
“Why, what else happened?” asked Ned.
“Well, just before I came away from the West I was in a sort of
premature explosion and got this game foot. Then I come to visit my
sister and her house catches fire.”
“Are you from the West?” asked Jerry, thinking of Tinny’s letter.
“Yes, I’m a gold miner out there, or I was. Why? Are you fellows from
the West?” Bill Cromley inquired as he saw looks of interest on the
boys’ faces.
“We’ve been out there,” admitted Bob. “And we may go again. We’ve got
an offer to help develop a mine at a place called Thunder Mountain----”
Before Ned or Jerry could offer any objection to the stout lad blurting
out this rather personal information, Bill Cromley exclaimed:
“Thunder Mountain! Why, I know where that is!”
“Any gold there?” Ned wanted to know.
“Sure there is--if you can find it. It’s in Montana, and Montana is a
good gold region. I’ve panned out some pretty good stuff there myself.
Course, it wasn’t anything like Blue Rock.”
“What’s Blue Rock?” asked Bob. “That’s the kind of soil they find
diamonds in, isn’t it?”
“You’re thinking of Africa,” remarked Jerry.
“Blue Rock is the name of a mine,” resumed Bill Cromley. “I never got
a chance at it, but some lucky fellows did, and they took out a whole
chest full of gold. But, no--I won’t call them lucky,” he added, with a
shake of his head.
“Why not?” inquired Ned.
“Because of what happened to ’em,” and Bill Cromley shook his head
dolefully.
“What happened?” demanded Jerry.
“The worst that could happen to anybody. They lost their lives, and the
gold, too. The miners had about cleaned out the mine--taken a fortune
in gold from it. They packed it in a chest and set out for the East,
putting the chest of gold on a stage coach.
“But the stage horses ran away on the worst part of the trail, the
coach was upset and went over a cliff, horses, driver, passengers,
chest of gold and all. It was just the end of everything!”