ALONG THE FLOOR
Placing both hands on the sideboard of the dray, Bunny vaulted lightly
to the ground. From where Bonfire stood, the thin eddy of smoke could
be seen looping over the tree tops at the corner.
"It's Peterson's house!"
Bonfire shook his head. "The smoke shows too far north for that. It's
either Crawford's or some shed near there."
For a long moment Bunny watched the white wreath tail up above the
highest leaves; then, abruptly, he raced after the jogging dray.
"Stop that team!" he shouted.
Mr. Langer pulled up deliberately, hastened a little in the process,
perhaps, by Roundy, who seemed on the point of taking the reins into
his own hands.
"Everybody out! We can't leave a fire like that with nobody in town."
"Oh, rats!" snapped Sheffield. "We'll turn in an alarm at the station.
What's the fire department for? Let it burn!"
Mr. Langer seemed in doubt. "Wal, I dunno." He scratched his head
thoughtfully. "I dunno. Mebbe, now--"
"You're hired to get us down to the station," Sheffield reminded him.
"The best thing for you to do is to hurry up and make that train."
Bunny hesitated. The welfare of the baseball team which he captained
demanded that no time be lost. On the other hand, if a serious fire had
started, it was more important to check it than to play any game.
"If there is a real blaze--" he began.
"It doesn't matter whether it's a real blaze or not," Sheffield
interrupted. "We are on our way to play for the high-school
championship of the State. That's more important than anything else."
"No, Sheff," disagreed Bunny; "no, it isn't. Winning a baseball
championship wouldn't be as important as saving Lakeville from a bad
fire. Now, would it?"
"Oh, it's probably only a smudge," urged Sheffield. "How about it,
Langer? Didn't you see a bonfire over there?"
Mr. Langer scratched his head again. "I dunno if I did and I dunno if I
didn't. But--"
Bunny made up his mind. "Drive ahead, Langer. Sheffield, you see that
the stuff gets to the station on time and tell Professor Leland that we
will catch the 11:30 train. That will bring us to the Belden field by
just three o'clock. Scouts over here!"
Almost before Mr. Langer could get under way, his dray was lightened of
its load of Black Eagles, who scrambled to the ground, following Bunny
and Bonfire at a dead run.
"It's not a little blaze," panted the observant Bonfire. "Look how that
smoke hangs in a cloud over the trees. It's coming from the top of some
building."
"It's the Crawford house!" Specs urged, as he sprinted up to the two
leaders. "You can tell it's the Crawfords', because--No, it isn't
either. It's--"
Bunny, Bonfire and Specs came to a paralyzed halt. In one voice, they
finished the sentence:
"--Grady's barn!"
Already that building had loomed into sight. From an opening near the
peak of the roof, smoke was leisurely twining into the air, as if it
had a perfect right to be doing that sort of thing in that sort of a
place. No one else in town seemed to have noticed the warning, and a
thicker puff of smoke brought no answering cry of "Fire!"
"Let her go!" said Specs spitefully. "We will turn in an alarm and keep
it from burning anything else, but we might just as well let the old
shack go up in smoke. Grady has it insured."
"But Sheffield's automobile is in there," protested Bonfire, "and that
isn't insured. I heard Roy say so."
"That's what I thought," Specs agreed calmly. "But Mister Royal
Sheffield thinks we haven't any business monkeying with fires this
morning, and I vote we go back to the station and tell him that we
were mistaken and that he was right."
Bunny frowned. "We'll go right on being Scouts and living up to the
Scout law, just as we did before we ever knew Sheffield. Jump and S.
S., you two pike down to the fire department and hustle Dave Hendershot
up here with the hose cart. Prissler, you chase downtown and rouse
people. Roundy, break into the schoolhouse and ring the bell for all
you're worth. Nap, you take the school telephone and call Central and
the fire department. The rest of us will do what we can right here."
However much the Scouts would have preferred to stay at the scene of
action, they hesitated not at all in obeying these necessarily curt
orders. Three runners scurried away toward Main Street; two others made
a bee line for the janitor's entrance of the high school.
"Oh, all right!" grunted Specs. "Now we can go ahead and be heroes and
save dear old Roy's car for him. I'd certainly like to see the blamed
thing saved--that is, all except the tires and the motor and the tool
box and the lights and a few other things."
Whenever Specs reached this particular mood, it was best to let him
talk his way out of it. Bunny ignored him completely and ran toward the
burning building.
Grady's barn was the usual two-story structure, its peaked roof topped
by an old-fashioned cupola. At the front, two swinging doors were
locked by a wooden bar within, a smaller side entrance being used for
ordinary comings and goings.
"Locked with a big padlock," said Bunny, testing the side door while
Bonfire and Specs hurried to the west side of the building.
Bi returned from an excursion to the rear. "Back door's nailed fast,"
he reported. "There are iron bars across the inside of that back
window, too."
Through this latter opening, Bi had seen the smoke thickening inside,
but he had failed to discover any way of breaking through to smother
it. It was evident that when Mr. Grady had turned over his horseless
barn to Royal Sheffield, he had made it thoroughly burglar proof.
"If I had an ax," Bi muttered wistfully, "I'd smash through that door
in a hurry."
With a common impulse, Bunny and Bi picked up a long board, to use as
a battering-ram against the sagging double door. Under the blows, the
barn resounded, but the doors remained as tightly shut as before.
"Got to break through pretty soon or stop trying," Bunny gasped, as
they halted the attack to regain wind. "If we once get inside anywhere,
we can open those double doors and roll out the car. After that, we
might save the barn. But if the gasoline ever explodes--well, that will
finish everything."
"Let's try it again!" Bi lunged against the door with fierce energy.
"Maybe the big wooden bar that holds across the middle will jump loose
if we jar it enough. Ugh!" He grunted as the board struck the door.
"All together, Bi! Once more! I think I felt it move." They hammered
the wood home, but in spite of the whirlwind of blows the door did
nothing but sag a little and stick fast.
"Thank goodness!" ejaculated Bunny, as they halted after this assault.
"Roundy's found the bell, anyhow."
"_Dang! Bang! Dang! Bang!_" The clapper of the high-school bell was
swinging wilder and harder against the metal sides than ever before in
its short life.
"Now, if that brings help, and if Nap gets a little action over the
telephone, and if Jump and S. S. bring up the hose cart, we have a
chance even yet. Where's Bonfire? And where's Specs?"
As if in answer to his name, Bonfire appeared, red-faced and
breathless, holding a short two-by-four in his hand.
"Looked all over Peterson's woodshed for an ax, but couldn't find
a thing except this. You can see the fire through the little stall
window. It's just beginning to wake up. Didn't Specs find anything?"
"Specs! Isn't he with you?"
"With me? No!" Bonfire's eyes opened wide.
"He started with me. He was going to the Crawfords' and--let's see--he
turned and--" The boy stopped speaking. Fumbling the plank in his
hand, he dropped it and then scooped it from the ground in a rush
toward the door.
"Come on!" he shouted, attacking the barn in a wild burst of frenzy.
"We've got to break in! We've got to! Specs is inside!"
Bunny caught him by the arm. "We can't break through here. It's solid.
How do you know Specs is inside?"
The other Scout was quivering with excitement. "I know it. I looked
through the stall window. There was a board loose in the floor, near
the fire. I pointed it out to him. For a joke, I told him a thin fellow
might crawl underneath the barn, pry it loose, and come up inside. And
he's done it! We've got to get him out!"
The school bell still clanged at top speed. Far down the street, Bunny
could see two men running. He fancied he could hear galloping hoofs and
the rumble of the hose cart. But if Specs was wallowing in that smother
of smoke, all this help would come too late. He pounded on the side of
the barn with his futile fist.
"Specs! Specs!" he shouted.
Bi ground his fingers into his palms. "If he can only get to the door,
he can open it, but--"
There was no answering sound from within.
Bonfire, who had disappeared, darted suddenly from one side of the
barn.
"He's in there," he said. His face was white, and he spoke jerkily.
"You can see his tracks. I crawled under. The board has been lifted up,
but the blaze is all over the hole and I couldn't get through."
Something cried to be done. Something must be done. As Bunny tried to
collect his thoughts, his eye glimpsed a tiny gap between the base of
the door on the right and the top of the ramp. It stretched near the
hinge side, high enough to take the end of a plank. With a shout of
relief, he slapped the end of the board into the crevice. Using the
two-by-four as a fulcrum, he began levering the door upward and outward.
"All together now! Smash that hinge!" he gulped, choking from a whiff
of smoke that puffed into his face from the crack.
This command was unnecessary. Already the other two were throwing all
their weight and strength on the long end of the lever.
"Hard! Everybody, hard!"
Came a creaking, groaning, splintering of the wood. It was the signal
of the break to come. The Scouts were bracing for a last effort when,
quite without warning or effort on their part, the bar stretched across
the inside of the double door swung upward, the sides flew open, and
out stumbled Specs. Himself, he had unloosed the holding bar and opened
the doors.
"I'm all right!" he gagged. "Not burned! Get the car out quick! Leave
me alone! I'll be O. K. in a minute, I tell you!" He staggered over to
a plot of grass.
While Specs lay flung on the ground, blinking his smoke-reddened eyes
and breathing heavily, the other three wheeled the car into the open
just as the hose cart, carrying S. S. and Jump and a crew of four
others, drew up at the hydrant.
"Prissler ran down the street and yelled 'Fire!' at the top of his
voice," explained S. S. "That's how these men happened to know about it
and run to the fire house. He--There he comes now, with another bunch
he's roused."
Fortunately, except for a little scorched paint, the car was undamaged.
As for the fire itself, within ten minutes the volunteer workers
gathered by bell and telephone and little Prissler's Paul Revere race
through the village had the flames changing into a welter of thick,
white smoke. The barn had suffered, but it was not beyond repair.
"I got in all right," Specs explained to the boys, "and I had a wet
handkerchief tied over my face, and I crawled along the floor as if
I was looking for a needle, and I generally acted the way a fireman
ought to act. I'd been all right, too, if I hadn't bumped my elbow and
then stuck my head up to see what did it. I must have swallowed some
smoke or something, because I had to lie quiet till I could get enough
strength back to finish the job. That was when I heard you calling to
me."
"But I thought you didn't care about saving Sheffield's car," teased
Roundy, who had come back from his bell ringing.
"I don't!" Specs flared indignantly. "But if I hadn't tried to help,
I'd have been breaking about half the Scout laws. Just the same," he
added a little viciously, "I'm going to tell Royal Sheffield that I
wish it had been somebody else's car."
At this characteristic fling, the Black Eagles rolled merrily on the
grass, winding up in an informal pyramid, of which Specs was the bottom
layer.
"Look here!" said Bunny, suddenly piling off. "We had better find out
about that later train."
It was Nap, arriving on the scene from his telephoning, who capped this
remark.
"I called up the station," he said. "That's what kept me. The team was
gone. The second train--the one we thought we were going on--was taken
off this week. There isn't another on the schedule that will get us to
Belden in time for the baseball game!"