THE FIRE
“Ted,” Dean turned to the boy, “I should like to go through that part
of the city in which you live. I want to see the streets around there
and what is on them.”
Ted wondered why anyone should want to see that part if they did not
have to do it. But he did not question; after all, it was for his
friend to say what to do and where to go.
So they walked that way. After fifteen minutes or so, Ted turned to
Dean and said:
“This is my street.”
They walked a few more blocks and Ted added, “I live a little way
further up.” The man continued observing and made no comment. He was
thinking--thinking hard. He turned to the boy and was about to speak.
“Ted, how long--”
Even as he spoke came the distant, insistent clang of bells, the blare
and blast of many whistles, shrieking their warnings. It seemed but
a second later when a belching fire-engine, followed by a stream of
trucks, dashed perilously through the crowded street, while in their
wake came a mob of hurrying people pouring from the dark doorways of
the tenements. From a side street came a police patrol.
The boy climbed to the top of a stand and from that vantage point he
saw a cloud of smoke issuing from a tenement building a couple of
blocks away. As he looked a tongue of fire shot from one of its windows
and licked its way up the side of the building.
“That’s down near where I live,” John Dean heard the boy say, as he
leaped down from the box and started on a run. The rancher hastened
after him, threading his way through the crowd. Back of them came
another newsboy.
“Your house is burning up, Ted,” he shouted, but Ted had already seen
the disaster that had come upon his home. It was a poor one indeed, but
a home, nevertheless, that sheltered his mother. Ted wondered where
she was. He knew that Helen at least was not there.
The cattleman had never seen a city fire. Before they arrived at the
burning building, the police had driven back the fighting crowds and
had drawn ropes across the street, past which no one dared go. Helmeted
firemen rushed through doorways, drawing long lines of hose, while now
and then, through the smoke and fire pouring from the windows, heroic
men could be seen clinging to the face of the dingy building, pushing
upward from ledge to ledge with their line of ladders.
Some of the men entered through the broken windows, only to appear
again suffocated and choking from the smoke and flames, then returning
to risk life and limb for those who might still be in the house, cut
off from escape.
John Dean saw little of this, however. Back and forth he tramped
through the crowds, never losing sight of his little newsboy friend.
Ted’s face was white and tense.
“Has anybody seen Mrs. Marsh? Anybody seen mother?” he inquired on
every hand, and the man took up the question, “Has anyone seen Mrs.
Marsh?” But no one had.
They pressed their way to the rope, searching the faces of the long
line of spectators.
“Move back there!” commanded the officer, and pushed the crowd from the
straining rope. Ted scarcely heard the warning. He was standing gazing
at a certain curling line of flame eating its way up the casement of a
fourth floor window, and as the heated pane cracked and fell shattered
to the pavement below, a sob broke from his lips. An instant later
he darted beneath the rope, past the officer and toward the burning
building.
“Stop that boy!” shouted the officer. “The little fool! Heaven help him
get out of there,” for Ted had slipped past the clutching hands of the
firemen and had entered the burning building.
People who had seen the boy rush in, shuddered with apprehension. A
second officer stood threatening big John Dean, forcing him back into
the crowd.
“You go after that kid and I’ll arrest you,” he said, flourishing his
club. “His mother isn’t in there, anyhow. The firemen will take care of
the boy.”
The restless, surging crowd, after a time, became hushed and silent.
Only the hissing engines and the captain’s orders could be heard above
the crackling flames, except as shattering glass and falling brick told
how surely the fire was gaining headway.
As moment followed moment and Ted failed to appear, the officer took
the anxious cattleman by the arm.
“Stay where you are,” he admonished. “You couldn’t get the boy if
you went in. I have a youngster of my own,” he added. Then excitedly
they pointed to an upper window. “They’ve got him,” he cried, and all
through the crowd went a ripple of expectancy.
But the form that was slung across the fireman’s shoulder, as he
climbed through the window onto the ladder, was not that of the little
newsboy. It was the limp body of a brother fireman rescued from the
smoke, the last of the firemen who had followed Ted into the seething
tenement. A waiting ambulance hurried the unconscious man to a hospital.
Presently a warning cry from the chief caused the firemen to retreat
hastily, withdrawing their lines of hose, as their attention was called
to a long, widening crack zigzagging its way across the face of the
building.
“The wall is going,” the officer told Dean, and the words struck a
chill into the heart of the big Westerner. He turned his back. For
what seemed to him hours he waited for the impending crash that meant
the destruction of his heroic little friend. Suddenly a resounding
cheer broke from the crowd. Dean turned and saw, high upon the edge
of the building, battling his way along through the smoke, appearing
for an instant and then lost to sight, Ted’s figure creeping along the
cornice. One arm was held tightly to his bosom.
“Easy, lad, easy,” the chief called up encouragingly through his
megaphone to the boy. A dozen firemen had seized a blanket and stood
with it outspread, waiting for Ted to jump. “Are you afraid?” the
chief shouted, and he glanced anxiously at the widening crack. “All
right, boy. One--two--” Ted straightened up slowly. A cloud of smoke
enveloped him, but through it, five stories above, the crowd saw his
little form hurl itself through the air and drop into the blanket
below. A crashing wall drowned their cheers.
All up and down the rope barrier the officers were forcing back the
excited spectators, but out of the crowd came a little pale-faced,
anxious woman. She hastened to the side of the doctor, who bent over
Ted as he lay in the blanket. John Dean hurried after her unmolested,
and as he saw what Ted had held so tightly to his breast, he uttered an
exclamation.
“By George! Now what do you think of that!” he cried, for there,
whining and nosing about the boy’s feet stood a weak-limbed, helpless
little puppy. The doctor was making a hasty examination.
“No, Mrs. Marsh,” he repeated again and again, “your boy is not dead.
He will come around soon; pretty much shaken up. No bones broken. Yes,
of course he is breathing. Hospital? Yes, but don’t you worry about
the expense; arrangements can be made.”
“Doctor, see that he has the best there is; I will foot the bills, for
Ted is a friend of mine,” Dean broke in impulsively.
A waiting ambulance, which the doctor beckoned, drew up and cut off any
further conversation. As they placed Ted on the stretcher, John Dean
hailed a taxi and helped Mrs. Marsh in. “Follow that ambulance,” he
directed, as he stepped in beside the little mother.
A few moments later they were seated in the waiting room of the
immaculate hospital. Mrs. Marsh sat opposite the doorway watching
anxiously each trim, white-capped nurse as she sped noiselessly down
the hall, and feeling strangely out of place in the fine surroundings,
so different from the sordid tenement she had called home.
“I hope my daughter has not heard of this as yet. She would be so
worried. I wish I could get a message to her, so that she will know
things are not so bad,” said Mrs. Marsh anxiously.
“If you will give me the address I will attend to that,” said Dean.
Mrs. Marsh gave him the address. He summoned a messenger boy and wrote
a reassuring message to the girl and added that she should come to the
hospital when she could.
“You are all so good,” the woman said, gratefully. “I do not know what
I would have done without you, sir, and I do not know how I can ever
thank you.”
“That will be all right, Mrs. Marsh,” the man answered. “I know Ted; he
and I are friends.”
Very briefly, he explained his acquaintance.
“Mrs. Marsh,” he added quietly, “you need not worry because of the fact
that Ted is in the hospital. Do you know what you are going to do? No?
Well, I am going to tell you. There is good stuff in that boy of yours,
Mrs. Marsh, and I feel sure that he won’t always be a newsboy. I am
going to loan to you, through him, one hundred dollars. No, I won’t
listen to any objections. I tell you it is only a loan. And out of that
hundred dollars you can buy such things as you must have at once.”
With that he removed the broad leather belt he wore and from it drew
an astounding roll of bills of large denomination. He thrust five of
them into Mrs. Marsh’s hands with an air of finality that gave her no
reason to refuse.