Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
Boy Scout Series Volume 4
The Boy Scout Fire Fighters
OR
Jack Danby's Bravest Deed
BY
Major Robert Maitland
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO ---- AKRON, OHIO ---- NEW YORK
Copyright, 1912
By
The Saalfield Publishing Co.
CONTENTS
Chapter
I AT THE EDGE OF THE FIRE
II FIGHTING THE FIRE
III WHAT THE SPY SAW
IV THE DOUBLE HEADER
V TOM BINNS' BAD LUCK
VI THE ATTACK ON THE STATION
VII JACK DANBY'S PERIL
VIII THE RESCUE
IX A SWIMMING PARTY
X THE BURNING LAUNCH
XI THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
XII AN UNGRATEFUL PARENT
XIII THE MOVING PICTURES
XIV A FOOLISH STRIKE
XV THE DYNAMITERS
XVI OFF ON A LONG HIKE
XVII A TIMELY WARNING
[Transcriber's notes:
Two chapters in the source book were misnumbered. Chapters in this
ebook have been renumbered.
The last numbered page in the source book was page 168, but damage to
the book indicates that a number of pages were missing after that
point. Since the original book did not have a table of contents, it is
unknown what may be missing.]
The Boy Scout Fire Fighters
CHAPTER I
AT THE EDGE OF THE FIRE
A pall of smoke, dark, ugly, threatening, hung over a wood in which the
Thirty-ninth Troop of the Boy Scouts had been spending a Saturday
afternoon in camp. They had been hard at work at signal practice,
semaphoring, and acquiring speed in Morse signaling with flags, which
makes wireless unnecessary when there are enough signalers, covering
enough ground.
The Scout camp was near the edge of the woods. Beyond its site
stretched level fields, sloping gradually upward from them toward a
wooded mountain. The smoke came from the mountain, and in the growing
blackness over the mountain a circular ring proclaimed the spreading
fire.
"Gee, that looks like some fire, Jack," said Pete Stubbs, a Tenderfoot
Scout, to his chum, Jack Danby, head office-boy in the place where he
and Pete both worked.
"I'm afraid it is," said Jack, looking anxiously toward it.
"I never saw one as big as that before," said Pete. "I've heard about
them, but we never had one like that anywhere around here."
"We used to have pretty bad ones up at Woodleigh," returned Jack. "I
don't like the looks of that fire a bit. It's burning slowly enough
now, but if they don't look out, it'll get away from them and come
sweeping down over the fields here."
"Say, Jack, that's right, too! I should think they'd want to be more
careful there in the farmhouses. There's some of them pretty close to
the edge of the woods over there."
Scout-Master Thomas Durland, who was in charge of the Troop, came up to
them just then.
"Danby," he said, "take your signaling flags, and go over toward that
fire. I want you to examine the situation and report if there seems to
be any danger of the fire spreading to the lowlands and endangering
anything there."
"Yes, sir," said Jack at once, raising his hand in the Scout salute and
standing at attention as the Scout-Master, the highest officer of the
Troop of Scouts, spoke to him. His hand was at his forehead, three
middle fingers raised, and thumb bent over little finger.
"Take Scout Stubbs with you," said the Scout-Master. "You may need
help in examining the country over there. I don't know much about it.
What we want to find out is whether the ground is bare, and so likely
to resist the fire, or if it is covered with stubble and short, dry
growth that will burn quickly."
"Yes, sir!"
"Look out for water, too. There may be some brooks so small that we
can't see them from here. But I'm afraid not. Every brook around here
seems to be dried up. The drought has been so bad that there is almost
no water left. A great many springs, even, that have never failed in
the memory of the oldest inhabitants, have run dry in the last month or
so. The wind is blowing this way, and the fire seems to be running
over from the other side of Bald Mountain there. From the looks of the
smoke, there must be a lot of fire on the other side."
No more orders were needed. The two Scouts, hurrying off, went across
the clear space at the Scout pace, fifty steps running, then fifty
steps walking. That is a better pace for fast travelling, except very
short distances, than a steady run, for it can be kept up much longer
without tiring, and Boy Scouts everywhere have learned to use it.
"Why do they call that Bald Mountain, I wonder?" said Pete, as they
went along. "It isn't bald any more'n I am. There are trees all over
the top."
"I don't know, Pete. Places get funny names, sometimes, just the same
way that people do. It doesn't make much difference, though, in the
case of a mountain."
"Nor people, either, Jack," said Pete Stubbs, stoutly. He had noticed
a queer look on his chum's face, and he remembered something that he
always had to be reminded of--the strange mystery of Jack's name.
He was called Jack Danby, but he himself, and a few of his best
friends, knew, that he had no real right to that name. What his own
real name was was something that was known to only one man, as far as
his knowledge went, and that one a man who was his bitter enemy, and
far more bent on harming him than doing him the favor of clearing up
the mystery of his birth and his strange boyhood at Woodleigh. There
Jack had lived in a cabin in the woods with a quaint old character
called Dan. He had always been known as Jack, and people had spoken of
him as Dan's boy. By an easy corruption that had been transformed into
Danby, and the name had stuck.
He had come to the city through the very Troop of Boy Scouts to which
he now belonged. They had been in camp near Woodleigh, and Jack had
played various pranks on them before he had struck up a great
friendship with one of them, little Tom Binns, and so had been allowed
by Durland to join the Scouts. More than that, Durland had persuaded
him to come to the city, and had found a job for him, in which Jack had
covered himself with glory, and done credit both himself and Durland,
who had recommended him.
"Gee, it's getting smoky," said Pete, as they reached the first gentle
rise at the foot of the mountain, though it had seemed to rise abruptly
when viewed from a distance.
"A woods fire always makes this sort of a thick, choking smoke.
There's a lot of damp stuff that burns with the dry wood. Leaves that
lie on the ground and rot make a good deal of the smoke, and then
there's a lot of moisture in the trees even in the driest weather."
"Sure there is, Jack! They take all the water there is when the rain
falls and keep it for the dry weather, don't they, like a camel?"
"That's a funny idea, Pete, comparing a tree to a camel, but I don't
know that it's so bad, at that. It is rather on the same principle,
when you come to think of it."
Men were working in the fields as they approached the fire. They
seemed indifferent to the danger that Durland feared. One boy not much
older than themselves stared at the carroty head of Pete Stubbs, and
laughed aloud.
"Hey, Carrots," he cried, "ain't you afraid of settin' yourself on
fire?"
"You ain't so good lookin' yourself!" Pete flamed back, but Jack put a
hand on his arm.
"Easy there, Pete!" he said. "We're on Scout duty now. Don't mind
him."
A little further on they met an older man, who seemed to be the farmer.
"Aren't you afraid the fire may spread this way?" asked Jack, stopping
to speak to him.
"Naw! Ain't never come here yet. Reckon it won't now, neither."
"There always has to be a first time for everything, you know," said
Jack, secretly annoyed at the stolid indifference of the farmer, who
seemed interested in nothing but the tobacco he was chewing.
"Tain't no consarn of your'n, be it?" asked the farmer, looking at them
as if he had small use for boys who were not working. He forgot that
Pete and Jack, coming from the city, might work almost as hard there
through the week as he did on his farm, without the healthful outdoor
life to lessen the weariness.
"Sure it ain't!" said Pete, goaded into replying. "We thought maybe
you'd like to know there was a good chance that your place might be
burnt up. If you don't care, we don't. That's a lead pipe cinch!"
"Come on, Pete," said Jack. "They'll be looking for a signal pretty
soon. If we don't hurry, it'll be too dark for them to see our flags
when we really have something to report."
The fields nearest the mountain and the fire were full of stubble that
would burn like tinder, as Jack knew. The corn had been cut, and the
dry stalks, that would carry the flames and give them fresh fuel to
feed on, remained. Not far beyond, too, were several great haystacks,
and in other fields the hay had been cut and was piled ready for
carrying into the barns the next day. If the fire, with a good start,
ever did leap across the cleared space from the woods it would be hard,
if not impossible, to prevent it from spreading thus right up to the
outhouses, the barns, and the farmhouses themselves. Moreover, there
was no water here. There were the courses of two little brooks that in
rainy weather had watered the land, but now these were dried up, and
there was no hope of succor from that side.
As they approached the woods, too, Jack looked gravely at what he saw.
Timber had been cut here the previous winter, and badly and wastefully
cut, too, in a way that was now a serious menace. The stumps, high
above ground, much higher than they should have been, offered fresh
fuel for the fire, dead and dry as they were, and over the ground were
scattered numerous rotting branches that should have been gathered up
and carried in for firewood.
"Looks bad, doesn't it?" Jack said to Pete.
"It certainly does," rejoined his companion. "Now we've got to find a
place where we can do the signaling."
"I see a place," said Jack, "and I think I can reach it pretty easily,
too. See that rock up there, that sticks out from the side of the
mountain? I bet you can see that a long way off. You go on up to
where the fire's burning. Get as near as you can, and see how fast
it's coming. Then work your way back to the rock and tell me what
you've seen."
"Right, oh!" said Pete. "I'm off, Jack!"
Though the smoke was thick, now, and oppressive, so that he coughed a
good deal, and his eyes ran and smarted from the acrid smell, Jack made
his way steadfastly toward the rock, which he reached without great
difficulty. He was perhaps a mile from the Scout camp, and there, he
knew, they were looking anxiously for the first flashing of his red and
white flags to announce that he was ready to report.
He stood out on the rock, and, after a minute of hard waving of his
flags, he caught the answer. Thus communication was established, and
he began to make his report. He had no fear of being misunderstood,
for it was Dick Crawford, the Assistant Scout-Master and his good
friend, who was holding the flags at the other end, and not some novice
who was getting practice in signaling, one of the pieces of Scout lore
in which Jack had speedily become an adept.
"Bad fire," he wig-wagged back. "Seems to be spreading fast. Ground
very bad. Likely to spread, I think. Fields full of stubble. No
water at all. Brooks and springs all dried up."
"Mr. Durland says have you warned men working in the fields?"
"Not yet," was the answer from Jack. "But they think it's all right,
and seem to think we're playing a game."
Then Jack dropped his flags in token of his desire to stop for a
minute, and turned to Pete Stubbs, who had come up.
"It's burning mighty fast," said Pete. "The woods are awfully dry up
there. There's no green stuff at all to hold it in check. If those
people on the farm down there don't look out, they'll be in a lot of
trouble."
Jack sent that information, too, and then came orders from Dick
Crawford.
"Return to camp," the Assistant Scout-Master flashed. "Warn farmer and
men of danger. Suggest a back fire in their fields, to give clear
space fire cannot jump. Then report, verbally, result of warning."
The warning was a waste of breath and effort.
"Think you can learn me my business?" asked the farmer, indignantly.
"I don't need no Boy Scouts to tell me how to look after my property.
Be off with you, now, and don't bother us! We're busy here, working
for a living. Haven't got time to run around playing the way you do."
Jack felt that it was useless to argue. This farmer was one who
believed that all boys were full of mischief. He didn't know anything
about the Boy Scout movement and the new sort of boy that it has
produced and is producing, in ever growing numbers. So Jack and Pete
went on to camp, and there Jack made his report to Durland.
"It would serve him right to have his place burned," said Durland, "but
we can't work on that theory. And there are others who would suffer,
too, and that wouldn't be right. So we'll just go over there and stop
that fire ourselves."
There was a chorus of cheers in reply to that. The idea of having a
chance to fight a really big fire like this awoke all the enthusiasm of
the Scouts of the three Patrols, the Whip-poor-wills, the Raccoons and
the Crows, this last the one to which Jack and Pete belonged.
So off they went, with Durland in the lead.