“It’s blowing into the valley,” Tom said concernedly; “this is going to
be bad.”
Scarcely had he said the words when the cabin door blew shut and the
loose window rattled alarmingly.
“Maybe the swamp will stop it,[2]” said Brent.
“It’s this side of the swamp,” Tom answered, gazing intently; “why, it’s
right in the valley. _Boy_, that’s bad! It’s going to sweep right
through here.” He paused for just three or four seconds, thinking.
“Do you suppose we could head it off?” Brent asked.
“Either that or it’ll clean out the place,” Tom said. “I doubt if that’s
seen anywhere else than here. The gang over at the dam might see it, at
that.”
“They’ve stopped work by now,” said Brent.
“Yep, that’s the trouble. Looks to me as if it might just be starting.
Here, I tell you what you do,” he added, in a kind of hurried
uncertainty; “no, just let me think a second--here--give us that pail.
The best thing for you to do, old man, is to beat it down through the
valley and pull up all the brush you can--David and Goliath.”
“David got the decision, you know,” said Brent.
“Yere, well it’s all you can do. Hustle down that way and yank up all
the brush you can--yank it up in a kind of channel right across the path
of the fire--see? Here, take a knife--and take this other pail. Thank
goodness, the brook runs through down here. After you get a channel
cleared, souse it with water all the way across--you won’t get far, I’m
afraid. Half an hour ago we could have stopped it--blame it all.
Here--here’s your spectacles--hurry up--and go like a fireman, not like
a philosopher!”
“It shall not pass,” said Brent.
“I wish I could believe it,” Tom said. “Anyway, hurry up, for the love
of goodness! I’m going to send a signal from the hill. So long, I’ve got
the money all right.”
Brent hurried along through the dry brush of the valley while Tom with
frantic haste crowded some dried brush down into the pail and hurriedly
grabbed old Buck’s threadbare corduroy jacket which still hung on a peg
in the cabin. This he soaked in water at the spring and wrung it out.
Then he started pell-mell for the nearest flanking hill.
It was a terrible climb, especially with one arm embarrassed by the
pail; in places he had to lift himself from one rock or projecting tree
to another, like a monkey. He might have made an easier ascent to a
lower eminence, but every inch of altitude he could gain was needed now.
From the hilltop he saw, to his comparative relief, that the flames had
not spread over a very large area. It might be that the country beyond
the narrow valley was not in great danger. The fire, so it seemed to
Tom, had its beginning in the widening mouth of the big gulch and was
being carried in by the rising wind.
Looking north from where he stood, he could see a few scattered specks
of light. He believed that these were at the camps about Kanawauke
Lakes. He knew he could not see the lights (if any there were) at Scout
Headquarters because of the intervening eminence known as Pine Hill. But
he could see the western end of the larger lake; that is, he could see
little flickers of light which he thought were on or about the lake. It
was now quite dark.
He set the pail upon a high rock and set fire to the contents. As soon
as it was blazing prosperously, he poked it so as to get the whole mass
of fuel to burning. Then he squeezed the old corduroy jacket into it as
one wrings out a washed garment, and quickly spread the damp jacket over
the pail. It is pretty skilful work getting just the right amount of
water into a confined fire. You may make a smudge too voluminous to
handle, or on the other hand, you may put the fire out. Tom knew the
proportions for his signal fuel. When he pulled the jacket suddenly from
over the pail a straight column of black mounted into the air. If a
solid shaft had been raised it could hardly have been more readily
discernible at a distance.
He watched the column piercing the sky, then looked into the pail as a
chemist might do, pleased with an experiment. He let the column rise for
perhaps a quarter of a minute, then spread the jacket over the pail.
Just then the moon edged out from behind a wind cloud and lit up the
hilltop. For perhaps a quarter of a minute Tom waited, long enough for
the column to dissolve completely, then shot another dense pillar of
blackness into the moonlit sky. Again, and still again he pierced the
starry depths of heaven with this ghostly arm, rising out of a tin pail
of smothered fire. So it was that water, the enemy of fire, was allied
with the monster here to print a single word upon the open pages of the
sky--H-E-L-P.
“That’s the worst of this signal business,” Tom said aloud, as he
prepared to spell the word again. “One camp has one sign, another camp
has something else, and you never know what reading they’ll get.”
He rolled up his sleeves, looked over to the north, then scrawled his
urgent summons once again upon the firmament. “If it was at Temple Camp
they’d know, all right,” he muttered.
-----
[2] Meaning Green Swamp.