A SCOUT AMBULANCE.
All of them crouching there listened eagerly.
“There it comes again!” exclaimed Arthur, excitedly.
“And it is a groan as sure as anything!” added Billy.
“Yes, the poor fellow must have fallen over here, and been hurt so badly
that he wasn’t able to get up again,” Hugh announced, and then crawling
forward to the verge of the precipice he took an observation.
“See him, Hugh?” questioned Billy.
“Yes, he’s down there in a heap,” came the reply. “Looks as if he might
have tried again and again to work his way up, and had to quit through
weakness. Come on, let’s work our way around, boys. I think there must
be some easier path down there than the one he took.”
“Gee whiz! I should hope so!” muttered Billy, who had also ventured to
take a peep over the edge, though without seeing the fallen master of
the bear.
They skirted the precipice and as Hugh had predicted, soon discovered
that it was possible to make the descent by means of a shelving path,
which doubtless the wretched man had not found out. Presently they had
reached the place where he lay.
He was looking terribly gaunt and haggard, more from the result of his
intense pain and anxiety than because he had been imprisoned so long in
that trap. When the trio of scouts came upon him, the man’s face lighted
up with new hope. He held out his hands eagerly toward them, bursting
into a torrent of words, most of which they failed to understand because
they may have been Russian, and like so much gibberish in their ears.
If the poor fellow was in any doubt as to their pacific and kindly
intentions, the reassuring smiles on the faces of the scouts must have
soon allayed his fears.
Hugh tried to tell him that they had found his bear, and followed his
trail all the way along the side of old Stormberg Mountain to this place
where he had met with his accident. He also gave the man to understand
that they would stay by, and get him to a place of safety.
First of all the young scout master started to make an examination so
that he might understand the extent of the man’s injuries.
“Isn’t it queer how history likes to repeat itself?” remarked Billy
while he and the third chum stood there watching Hugh go through with
this examination. “Just the other day it seems we saw our leader look
over another party who had met with an accident, only in his case it was
a fractured arm and not his leg.”
“Yes,” added Arthur, “an aeronaut in one case, and the owner of a
dancing bear this time. They say extremes meet, and I guess that’s so
with us. But it makes no difference who’s in pain and trouble, a scout
has got to stand by him; isn’t that right, Hugh?”
“Every time,” replied the scout master promptly. “I find that this man
has broken a bone in his left leg. I can feel it grate when I press it,
even if it hasn’t come through, like some do when the fracture is extra
bad. But he’s been trying to stand on it, and drag himself up here, only
to fall back again and again, so that it’s pretty badly inflamed by now.
Want of attention has hurt him more than the original break. I’m going
to fix that leg as best I can, and wrap it up with the fresh surgeons’
tape I happen to be carrying with me.”
There was really no “happen” about it, for Hugh always made it a point
to carry a small supply of that useful bandage tape with him all the
time. It is one of those things which when required at all is needed
badly. On several previous occasions the scout master had found cause to
thank his forethought in thus going prepared for emergencies. Boys take
so many desperate chances in their rough play that they are in constant
danger of meeting with some accident.
The man seemed to understand that he was in the hands of Good
Samaritans, though it doubtless hurt him keenly when Hugh worked; he
stifled many a groan, he gritted his teeth, and managed to keep from
fainting under the strain.
“There, that’s all done, and as good a job as anything I ever tackled,”
Hugh finally declared, as he arose and stretched his cramped limbs. “And
now the next thing is to get him up out of here. Suppose both of you try
taking him by the shoulders while I look after his legs. I know how to
handle him with as little pain as can be done. We can move him a little
way, and then rest, till we’re up on the level again. Ready, boys?”
The others understood what Hugh had in mind. They had practiced carrying
a helpless person in some of their “first aid to the injured” lessons;
and hence were quite competent to attend to their end. Hugh knew that
the wounded man was in for more painful experiences, but then there was
no other way of getting him out of that deep gully.
Resting as many as half a dozen times, the three scouts finally reached
the level ground again. All of them were panting heavily, for the man
was no light weight, and climbing the steep side of the ravine under
such conditions was a much more difficult task than they had found when
descending.
“And now what?” asked Billy as he looked to Hugh to lay out a plan.
“We must make a litter or stretcher, just as we’ve done more than a few
times when practicing this game of carrying a wounded comrade,” the
scout master told them.
“That would be easy enough if only we had some sort of hatchet along,”
Arthur declared, “but you see, none of us dreamed we’d need such a
thing. Now, I’ve got an old one hidden near where my wireless masts
stand up on the top of Cedar Hill, if only you’d wait till I could go
there and back.”
“No need,” observed Hugh, who had as usual been keeping his eyes on the
alert, and made a few discoveries. “Here are all the poles we’ll need,
lying in a bunch. Probably some fellow had been gathering them for bean
poles or something like that, and then forgot to take them away.”
“Talk to me about luck, we get it in hunks, don’t we?” cried Billy.
“Why, where could we have run across better poles to make a stretcher?
All we want is some stout cord to fasten the ends together, so they
won’t slip.”
“Here’s a piece of rope the bear man seemed to have been carrying along
with him for some purpose or other,” said Hugh. “I picked it up near
where he lay, knowing we might make use of it some way. By unwinding
these strands we’ll have more than all the cord we need to tie the poles
across each other.”
All of them immediately busied themselves, and so well had their lesson
been learned that in a very short time they had fashioned a splendid
litter. The wounded man watched them work with a sparkle of gratitude in
his eyes. He must have realized by now that those khaki uniforms which
these boys wore meant succor for him, and it is greatly to the credit of
Boy Scouts everywhere that seldom does this confidence in their
willingness to give aid in times of distress meet with disappointment.
After the litter had been finished, they laid enough hemlock browse upon
it to make a pretty soft mattress. As Billy felt of that and scented the
delightful piney odor, he nodded his head and remarked:
“I only hope that if ever I break a leg and have to be carried to the
doctor’s, I’ll be lucky enough to lie on as fine a stretcher as this,
that’s all I can say.”
Hugh took hold of one end, and Billy started at the other. They meant to
take turns and in this way “rest up,” as Billy called it.
“You’re heading so as to reach the road, I take it?” remarked Arthur
presently.
“Just what I’m doing,” the scout master replied. “We ought to make use
of our wheels in some way to take off most of the strain of carrying
this man to town.”
“Who’d ever have thought of that but you, Chief?” cried Billy, who was
looking a little tired. The task of stumbling along, bearing half of
that weight over rough ground, was far from an easy one.
When they reached the spot where the bicycles had been hidden these were
brought out, and it was found that the stretcher could be rested on the
handle bars of two of the wheels. By taking care, there was little
danger of an upset. So presently a queer procession was passing along
the road. Everything seemed to work so nicely that while they met
several farmers going home from market, the boys declined the offer when
they proposed turning back so as to carry the wounded Russian to the
hospital.
Perhaps there was a little vein of pride about it, and the scouts wanted
to let scoffers see how well they were able to manage when a sudden
emergency confronted them. They were only boys after all, and felt that
they had a perfect right to be proud of the way they had managed.
Hugh at such times as they paused—once to rest and again to give the
injured man a drink from a spring that bubbled up near the road—managed
to converse a little with the grateful fellow. He told the boy, whom he
now looked upon as a good and tried friend, that he did have a little
_cache_ among the rocks on the side of Stormberg, where he kept his
savings, being afraid to trust banks, and knowing what danger there must
always be of his being robbed if he carried all his money along with him
in his erratic wanderings. For three years he had come back here late
every summer and in the early spring to add secretly to his hoard.
On the present occasion it had been his intention to carry his
accumulations away with him, for he meant to sail across the sea to his
old home, where he could live in what he considered comfort on the
amount he had saved. Misfortune had overtaken him, however, and with a
broken leg he must delay his departure a long time.
They reached the town limits at length, and great was the surprise of
the good citizens when this queer ambulance took its way along the main
street, headed for the hospital. As the excitement spread, people rushed
out of stores and dwelling houses, and upon every tongue could be heard
praises of the Boy Scouts.
“What won’t they be doing next?” men asked each other as they noted how
splendidly Hugh and his two chums had made that stretcher for the
wounded man, and how cleverly they were utilizing their wheels in place
of a wagon in order to convey him from a distance to the town hospital.
“It certainly was the best thing that ever happened for the boys of this
country when that scout movement started here, and it has spread like
wildfire. Why, it was only lately that they rescued that aeronaut, and
the doctor said they’d fix his broken arm about as well as he could have
done the job himself under the same conditions. If your boy doesn’t
belong already, you can’t coax him to be a scout any too soon, believe
me, neighbor.”
Having seen the wounded man safely cared for, and received his thanks,
uttered in broken English it is true, but just as heartfelt for all
that, Hugh next thought of the bear, left there in the hills. He hunted
up a lot more of the scouts who were of a stripe to enjoy any lark of
that kind, and armed with plenty of rope they started forth.
In the end they succeeded in bringing the trained bear all the way back
to town, and as Hugh had been thoughtful enough to take along a supply
of food for the animal, the task proved much easier than any of them had
anticipated. All they had to do was to keep him well roped from several
quarters, and then tempt him to shuffle along by holding some of the
food so he could see it.
Their arrival created another furore. People once more came flocking to
the streets to watch the little procession pass by. They were telling
each other that nowadays there hardly seemed to arise any sort of
necessity but what somehow the Boy Scouts were being counted on to meet
and overcome the difficulty,—from finding a lost child to rescuing a
wrecked balloon pilot or saving the life of a poor foreigner who had
fallen over a precipice and broken his leg.
All of which must have been so intensely gratifying to Hugh and his
chums that the fatigue caused by their strenuous exertions was for the
time being quite forgotten.