FOREST RADIO
“I’ll say this is the life,” said Herb, as he rambled happily about
the lodge which Dr. Dale had turned over to the Radio Boys for a
temporary camping place. “Say, fellows, did you ever hear that one
about——”
“Shoot him, someone,” interrupted Jimmy, hard-heartedly. “That’s the
fifth near joke he has tried to work off on us this morning.”
“Yeah, come and help with this bacon,” added Joe, who was struggling
manfully to keep a panful of the aforementioned article from burning
to a crisp. “If I don’t eat pretty soon I’m going to drop dead.”
“Same here,” groaned Bob, and went to the rescue just in time to
save the bacon.
The lodge was a picturesque, rambling little building with small,
many-paned windows and a steeply slanting roof. At some time or
other someone had planted vines about its foundations, and these had
flourished until the walls were almost completely covered with
bright green foliage.
Inside there were three small rooms furnished roughly—the one or two
tables and scattered chairs looking as though they had been put
together by hand.
The one main room of the little house served as kitchen, living room
and dining room all in one but it was large and rambling and
comfortable with its great open fireplace at one end and tiny oil
stove for cooking at the other.
There were trophies on its rough-beamed walls also and these the
boys regarded with interest—old rifles that looked as though they
had seen a good deal of service, a horn or two and, in a conspicuous
place directly over the fireplace, the great, antlered head of a
buck.
This, together with the fact that there were four fairly comfortable
cots in the two small rooms adjoining the main one and that there
were enough battered utensils in which to cook their meals, was
enough to satisfy the boys; especially as the lodge was not more
than a stone’s throw away from the headquarters of the forest
rangers.
“I hope we’ll meet some of those boys to-day,” said Bob, referring
to the rangers.
“We’re sure to, if we go up to the station,” returned Joe, as he sat
down at the table, preparatory to eating the bacon and eggs of his
own preparing. “Probably Mr. Bentley will show us the works and
introduce the boys as we go along.”
“Say, give me some more of everything, will you?” asked Jimmy
hungrily. For that moment Jimmy’s mind was on one thing only—and
that thing, food. “I never tasted anything half so good as that
bacon.”
Flattered, Joe helped him to a double portion.
“You never knew what a fine cook I was before, did you, Doughnuts?”
he asked complacently. Jimmy grinned wickedly at him.
“Huh,” he said. “It isn’t the cooking—it’s my appetite!”
“Say, you crook,” cried Joe, making a dive for Jimmy’s plate, “come
back with that grub!”
But it was too late. The food had already disappeared.
They had finished breakfast, had scraped up the pots and pans and
were preparing to leave the cabin before they remembered that this
was the day Dr. Dale had promised to “drop in on them” to see if
everything was all right.
“Oh, well, he won’t be here before noon, anyway,” reasoned Bob. “And
we’ll have time to say howdy to Mr. Bentley and get back before
then.”
“Let’s go,” cried Herb exuberantly. “I want to find out if those
forest rangers are the kind of fellows Mr. Bentley pictured ’em.”
“We won’t have to stay long to-day,” said Bob, as he locked the door
of the lodge and turned with the others down the woods path that led
in the direction of the station. “There will be plenty of other days
when we can stay as long as we like.”
“You sure said it that time, Bob,” cried Joe, joyfully. “Something
tells me we’re going to have the time of our lives in this neck of
the woods.”
But little did Joe guess when he uttered the careless words what
kind of excitement they were destined to meet in that “neck of the
woods.”
They soon came upon the camp of the rangers, a long low building,
situated close to the banks of the lake. Above the station, shooting
straight up through the trees to the cloudless blue of the sky,
towered the mast to which the antenna of the powerful radio
apparatus was attached.
The sight of that huge mast with the attached wires stretching
sensitive fingers into the vibrating ether thrilled the boys, fired
their imaginations. For those slender lines of wire, seemingly so
frail, were, in reality, more powerful than a host of men in
guarding the safety of the forest. For, where a man could see only
as far as his eyesight permitted, the eyes of radio searched for
scores, for hundreds of miles, ever on the alert to catch the first
faint hint of danger. One small flame shooting through the dried
underbrush of the forest, and immediately, through the warning of
the radio, countless men were put upon the defensive, intrepid,
fearless rangers rushing to the scene of danger to meet the dreadful
menace and subdue it.
For several seconds the boys stood still upon the edge of the
cleared space, gazing upward, awed by the power of their beloved
radio.
Bob, perhaps unconsciously, summed up all their thoughts when he
said: “Wherever it is, it does the trick!”
At that moment Mr. Bentley, attired in his aviator’s suit and in
company with two or three other men, stepped out on the porch of the
building.
He saw the boys and came toward them at once, his hand outstretched
in cordial greeting.
“Well, well, well!” he said, heartily. “If I’m not glad to see you
boys! Come on in and make yourselves at home.”
The three men who had been in conversation with Mr. Bentley were
introduced by the latter as fellow rangers, and it was not long
before the Radio Boys felt as though they had known these rugged
fine fellows all their lives.
Then Mr. Bentley showed them through the station himself,
“introducing them” as he said, “to the whole works.”
The boys were intensely interested in everything, feeling, since Mr.
Bentley’s memorable talk to them at Bob’s house on that day when
they had first met the forest ranger, as though the whole place were
familiar to them.
They were shown the “quarters” of the rangers. These were fitted up
quite comfortably, considering the rough work of the men. And there
also was the apartment where were stored the weapons used in the
fighting of that great forest enemy, fire.
But, needless to say, interested as they were in other departments
of the station, the one that interested them most powerfully was the
radio room.
The huge dynamo absorbed them and the tremendously complicated
mechanism of the set itself held them rapt and awed. The operator, a
nice young chap with crisp curling red hair, was instantly won by
the boys’ admiration of the apparatus and, led on by their
intelligent eager questions, he gave them many technical details
which fascinated them.
“No wonder,” Bob breathed at last, “you have been so successful in
the fighting of forest fires. With a set like this——”
“Yes, it’s a wonder,” broke in the red-haired chap quickly. “There’s
no denying that our apparatus is the best of its kind. But even at
that, we, here at the station, wouldn’t be able to do very much
without the cooperation of our radio-equipped air force. They are
the real eyes of our organization. We merely receive information
from them and act upon it. Mr. Bentley here,” he turned with a smile
to the latter, “will tell you how important the air service is.”
Payne Bentley grinned good-naturedly.
“Sure,” he said, “we aviators think it’s pretty classy. Just the
same,” he added seriously, “an air force without a base to work from
would be pretty much like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. The two
branches of the service are absolutely dependent one upon the other.
Apart, neither branch would be effective. Together—well,” he ended
with a boyish grin, “I’ll tell the world, we’re pretty good.”
As the boys said good-by to the curly-haired operator, promising to
return in a day or two, and followed Payne Bentley down the stairs,
they were ready to agree heartily with the latter in his estimate of
the worth of the Forestry Service.
Bob said as much to Mr. Bentley as they stopped on the porch for a
moment or two of talk. He added, with a laugh:
“But now that we have a perfect firefighting system—where are the
fires?”
Mr. Bentley laughed, the fine lines radiating from the corners of
his eyes.
“That’s a pretty sound question,” he said. “But one to which we
luckily have no answer just at present. With the exception of two or
three small outbreaks not worthy of mention, there have been no
fires for a considerable time. Our boys are getting lazy from light
work.”
“Perhaps,” said Bob with a laugh, “the fires are scared.”
“Forest rangers got ’em bluffed, eh?” asked Mr. Bentley, with a
twinkle in his eyes.