THE BOY SCOUTS
AS
FOREST FIRE FIGHTERS
BY
SCOUT MASTER ROBERT SHALER
AUTHOR OF “BOY SCOUTS OF THE SIGNAL CORPS,” “BOY SCOUTS OF
PIONEER CAMP,” “BOY SCOUTS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY,” “BOY
SCOUTS OF THE LIFE SAVING CREW,” “BOY SCOUTS ON PICKET
DUTY,” “BOY SCOUTS OF THE FLYING SQUADRON,” “BOY
SCOUTS AND THE PRIZE PENNANT,” “BOY SCOUTS OF
THE NAVAL RESERVE,” “BOY SCOUTS IN THE SADDLE,”
“BOY SCOUTS FOR CITY IMPROVEMENT,” “BOY
SCOUTS IN THE GREAT FLOOD,” “BOY SCOUTS
OF THE FIELD HOSPITAL,” “BOY SCOUTS
WITH THE RED CROSS,” “BOY SCOUTS
AS COUNTY FAIR GUIDES,” ETC.
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1915,
BY
HURST & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Oakvale’s One Wise Man 5
II. What Presence of Mind Meant 16
III. The Threatening Peril 27
IV. The Call of Duty 39
V. Carried to the Front 48
VI. The Burning Forest 59
VII. As Busy as Beavers 73
VIII. Back-firing 85
IX. Peter, the Bound Boy 96
X. At the Dry Spring 105
XI. Babes In the Woods 116
XII. When the Rain Came Down 130
XIII. Right-about Face! 142
The Boy Scouts as Forest Fire Fighters.
CHAPTER I.
OAKVALE’S ONE WISE MAN.
“Don’t believe in it, I tell you! All a humbug! No boy of mine will ever
fool away his time strutting around and wearing soldiers’ clothes when
he ought to be doing his chores at home! Take that from me, young
fellow!”
“But Mr. Prentice, if you care to ask any one of the best citizens of
Oakvale——”
“Foolish of them to be so blind, I tell you, boy!”
“There’s Mr. Hayward, the minister, sir!”
“A good man, but an easy mark all the same!”
“And Judge Marshall!”
“Surprised to hear that a long-headed man like the judge should allow
his name to be used in connection with such utter foolishness. If he had
boys of his own instead of three girls he might see things in a
different light.”
“There’s Dr. Kane, and—well, the father of every one of the thirty boys
in the troop. In fact, Mr. Prentice, I think you’re almost the only
prominent man in or around Oakvale who hasn’t enthusiastically endorsed
the local scout troop, which they believe has made good.”
Perhaps this little shaft of flattery told. At any rate the man called
Mr. Prentice allowed a glimmer of a grim smile to flit across his stern
face as he observed:
“All I can say then, Hugh, is that the prominent men of this section are
a short-sighted lot when they allow themselves to be so easily led by
the nose, and humbugged by a parcel of prank-loving boys!”
Billy Worth nudged the leader of the Wolf Patrol, Hugh Hardin, in the
side. He acted as though it might be on the tip of his tongue to say
something saucy; but for fear he might thus injure the cause Hugh was so
manfully representing, Billy managed to remain silent.
Hugh made a final appeal, as he saw the man was about to leave them.
“But surely, Mr. Prentice, you must have heard _some_ good things said
about the scouts, haven’t you?” he asked, with one of his most
persuasive smiles; which, however, in this case, seemed to be wasted on
the one-idea man.
“Oh! yes,” carelessly replied the other, gathering up his lines
preparatory to starting his horse, “a lot of _won_derful stories have
come floating over to my house, but I set most of them down as
exaggerations. When I was a boy I read the ‘Arabian Nights,’ ‘Baron
Munchausen,’ ‘Sindbad the Sailor,’ and ‘Gulliver’s Travels.’ I know how
proud fathers like to boast of their smart sons. I’ve had my eye-teeth
cut, Hugh. You’re a clever lad, I know, but if you talked until doomsday
you couldn’t change _my_ mind about the folly of this Boy Scout game.”
He spoke to his horse, and the two boys saw him go down the road in a
cloud of dust, for it was the driest fall ever known about Oakvale.
Billy Worth—who was a pretty ample sort of a boy—a good-natured
expression on his face most of the time, doubled up like a hinge, so far
as his girth allowed, and seemed to be quivering with mirth.
Hugh Hardin was shaking his head as though he fancied he had run across
about the hardest _nut_ to crack of all his experience.
“What is there so funny about it, Billy?” he asked, for he was thinking
how sorry he would be to report an utter failure to poor Addison
Prentice, who was really wild to join the scouts, and had begged Hugh to
intercede with his parent for him.
“I’ll tell you,” gasped Billy, trying hard to catch his breath. “When
you said he was the only _prominent_ man around here who didn’t think
the scouts worth their salt, he had _nerve_ to say he pitied them all
for disagreeing with him. He made me think of a story I heard long ago.”
“Well, go on and tell it,” said Hugh, “for I know you’ll not be in shape
to talk straight again until you get it out of your system.”
“Oh! it was only that chestnut about an Irishman who was on a jury that
had to be discharged because they could not come to any agreement after
being out ever so long. When some one asked him what was the matter he
vowed he had never run across eleven such pig-headed men in his life;
and that he was the only sensible member of the whole jury. Hugh, that
stubborn Irishman is Mr. Prentice.”
“I guess you’re pretty nearly right, Billy; but don’t think I’ve given
up trying to influence him on that account. Opposition only makes the
game more worth playing. Something seems to tell me that we’ll make Mr.
Prentice see a great light one of these days.”
“That’s the ticket, Hugh! ‘Never give up the ship!’ is our motto. We’ll
try and get up some scheme to prove to Addison’s dad that he’s barking
up the wrong tree when he thinks the scouts are a shiftless lot, who’ve
got a reputation that hasn’t any foundation in fact.”
The boys were some little distance outside of the town of Oakvale when
they had this conversation with Mr. Prentice, who owned the big quarry
toward which he was heading when stopped on the dusty road by the chums.
Oakvale was proud of its troop of Boy Scouts, and justly so. If you do
not know why this should be, it may pay you to secure a few of the
previous volumes in this series and read what some of those boys had
done to gain such an enviable reputation among the thinking people of
the neighborhood.
Even a glance over the titles of these books will show the extent of
their activities in the time that had elapsed since the troop was first
organized. As Hugh and his comrades went steadily on their way as the
weeks and months crept by, they were constantly finding numerous
opportunities to add to the esteem in which they were held by the
community.
Well had they proved the vast advantages which scouts have over
ordinary, unattached boys in a country town. Organization had done
wonders for many of the members of the troop. There was really not a
single family in Oakvale a member of which wore the khaki of the troop
but stood ready to openly declare that a most radical change for the
better had followed since “Tommy joined the scouts.”
Hugh had received the proper credentials from Headquarters to be an
assistant scout master; and sometimes during the temporary absence of
Lieutenant Denmead, a genial, retired army officer who had willingly
assumed that office because of his love for boys, Hugh filled his place
acceptably.
If Mr. Prentice had not been one of the most stubborn men alive, and if
he had been open to conviction, he certainly would never have closed his
ears to the stories that were told of the doings of these Oakvale
scouts, and proven to be absolutely true.
Why, only on the preceding spring several of them chancing to visit
Lawrence, a town many miles away, during the great freshet which
culminated in a disastrous flood, had aroused the dormant local scout
troop, almost dead from lack of appreciation, and performed prodigies in
the way of saving distressed families caught in their homes by the
rising waters.
Then Hugh, on that same visit, had actually saved the life of a reckless
boy who ventured onto a bridge threatened by the flood, snatching him
off after he had fallen and become senseless just before a floating tree
carried the structure down amidst the boiling waters of the torrent.
Later on when they were in camp near a large cement works it happened
that there was a strike by the hundreds of foreign workmen, and the
guards who had been brought from the city to defend the strikebreakers
fired upon them.
As a result a dozen and more men, yes—and women, too—among the ignorant
foreigners received serious gunshot wounds. Hugh and some of his chums
hurried to the spot, organized a rude field hospital, and looked after
the injuries of the wounded in a manner that called for high praise from
the Red Cross surgeon coming on the field later on at the summons of
Hugh Hardin.
For this great service, and for saving lives at the same time, every
scout who had taken a part in that work now proudly displayed the
coveted bronze medal which is sent from Scout Headquarters in New York
City to any boy wearing the khaki who saves a life. Hugh was also the
possessor of a gold medal, because he had saved that lad from the doomed
bridge at the extreme risk of his own life.
Then, to come down to a period only a short time back, in the early days
of the present dry autumn, the scouts had served as guides at the yearly
County Fair in the vicinity of Oakvale. They had met trains, directed
visitors to boarding places, answered innumerable questions, run
errands, taken telegrams, and last but far from least, rendered first
aid to the injured to a considerable number of persons who came to grief
among the jostling throngs that visited the Exposition grounds.
(What else Hugh and some of his nearest and dearest chums managed to do
during that time will be found narrated in the pages of the preceding
volumes; and they should afford interesting reading to all who are
concerned with the education of boys along other lines than those
connected with ordinary school life.)
Hugh and Billy walked slowly on after their meeting with Mr. Prentice,
which had been an accidental one. They saw that he had stopped his horse
a little further along the road, and appeared to be examining some part
of the hillside, since his extensive quarry ran for a quarter of a mile
along the road.
The boys had climbed up the slope and were standing by the little
narrow-gauge track down which cars loaded with stone were allowed to
drop, checked by a brake, to the base of the hill, where wagons came and
went.
This track crossed the county road at a certain place below where the
two boys were standing. In reality it was a dangerous thing to allow,
but during working hours the quarry company always kept a signal man
there to see that vehicles were warned to keep back, whenever a car came
down the almost level incline. An overhead trolley drew the empty car
back up the rise again.
“Why, isn’t that a queer thing how that wagonload of children has gone
and stopped right on the track of the stone chute!” exclaimed Billy,
suddenly. “My stars! they must have got a wheel caught in the track
somehow, for the horses don’t seem able to drag it off worth a cent. It
would give the children a bad scare now if one of those stone cars
started down the hill, eh, Hugh?”
“It’s to be hoped nothing of the kind happens,” said Hugh, “though with
the brake set the man on the car could stop it easily enough. I was just
wondering who those children are, and I’ve guessed it. They come from
the orphan asylum.”
“Yes, that’s Sim Reeves’ rig, of the town livery stable, and he’s a
good-hearted man, so I guess he loaned the wagon and driver just to give
the poor kids a little outing on this fine Saturday afternoon. But I
wish they’d hurry and get that wagon moving, for as sure as you live
there’s a car loaded with stone starting slowly down the incline now.”
“Yes, you’re right,” said Hugh, thrilled by the thought of a catastrophe
overtaking those innocents below.
“The man on it can’t see that there’s anything wrong down at the
crossing,” cried Billy in great excitement. “He will soon, and put on
the brakes.”
While Billy continued to keep his eyes glued on the coming car, Hugh on
the other hand allowed his gaze to roam around. He even took several
steps over to one side as though measuring the distance separating him
from the track at a certain place.
All at once Billy gave a shriek.
“Hugh! look! look! the brake’s given way! There goes the man jumping for
his life, and listen to the children screaming, will you? Hugh, can’t we
do something? It’ll get going faster and faster, and—oh! Hugh, the poor,
poor kids!”