The Safety First Club fights fire

It occurred to Poke, subsequently, that his appearance on the scene produced upon Zorn and Hagle an effect even more marked than might be accounted for by the extraordinary manner of his approach. The pair were not merely startled; there was an alarm, a consternation hinting at something more than surprise or fear of physical harm. It was odd, too, that they seemed to have difficulty in finding tongue; and it was Poke who spoke first.

“Hul—hulloo, there!” he said, faintly.

Neither answered. Zorn gave a start, and Hagle cowered like a whipped dog; but the lips of neither moved.

With some difficulty Poke got upon his feet.

“Hul—hulloo!” he repeated. “Say, but you fellows must be thinking a lot to say so little!”

At that Zorn, with a warning glance at Hagle, loosed his grip on the latter’s collar.

“Eh? Say so little? There’s a lot to say and ask.” Zorn, having found his tongue, could employ it briskly. “Great Scott! but what have you been up to? You come smashing into us, almost, and then want to know why we don’t make speeches? Look here! What have you been doing? What in the name of all crazy cats is that thing you were riding on?”

Poke turned to glance ruefully at the wreck of the Saracen.

“Oh, that? That’s a—a—er—er—that’s a machine I’ve been fooling with.”

“Umph! Looks more as if it had fooled with you.” Zorn came forward, and gazed with undisguised interest at the ruin. “Umph! Guess I know what this is—or was. Somebody tipped me off the other day that you were monkeying with a flying machine. But I didn’t think you had gumption to do anything with it. But you didn’t fly here, did you?”

“Not exactly,” Poke told him with a degree of dignity. “I—I—well, I came on wheels, as you might say.”

“But—but you aren’t hurt, are you?” Hagle asked tremulously.

“No; not to speak of.”

“I’m glad of that!” said Hagle so heartily that Poke glanced at him wonderingly.

Zorn scowled, and kicked at a broken plane. “You’re lucky to save your neck!” he growled. “Funny the things that don’t kill idiots! But if you aren’t damaged, this contraption of yours is, all right! Mighty few pieces left to put together, I should say!”

Poke was relieved of the need of making reply; for just then Lon Gates came upon the scene, having left his automobile in the road. It took him but an instant to grasp the situation.

“Well, I guess you’ve done it now,” he remarked, having satisfied himself that Poke had come to no great harm. “Way you was scootin’ along—you and your Scary Hen—say, but you was jest playin’ tag with the high places! And as for monopolizin’ things—son, I never see such a road-hog as you was. You wanted everything between the fences, and by jiminy, you was takin’ it! But I’d kinder like to know the end o’ the story. What happened in the last chapter?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Poke confessed. “It—it ended mighty suddenly.”

“But it didn’t end you—that’s the main p’int.”

“No; I’m all right,” said Poke pluckily. A little stream of blood was trickling from a gash in his cheek. He wiped it away with his sleeve. Hagle stepped up to him, and pulling out his handkerchief, fell to dabbing at the wound. It was a most kindly meant attention, but Poke shrank back, in embarrassment. And Lon came to the rescue.

“Well, I guess I may have to find you a barrel to go home in. Them pants o’ yourn is what an artist feller I know would call sorter impressionistic. But, seein’ as how you ain’t killed, I dunno’s there’s any great cause for complaint. And now, with your kind permission, I’ll take a peek at the remains o’ the Scary Hen.”

“Scary Hen!” Zorn repeated, and laughed jeeringly. Nobody, however, paid any attention to him. Poke, closely observed by the pitying Hagle, inspected his scratched hands and rent garments. Lon made the circuit of the wrecked flying machine, uttering an exclamation now and then as he came upon fresh evidence of the completeness of its ruin. And while these things were doing, Sam and the rest of the club, panting from their long run in pursuit of the Saracen, came up.

Broken and hurried queries rained upon Poke, but resulted in slight increase in the general stock of knowledge.

“I don’t know what was the matter; I guess everything was,” he declared. “Nothing worked right. The controls wouldn’t control, and the rudder wouldn’t steer, and the safety things weren’t safe. So I——”

“Hold on there!” Step broke in. He strode up to Poke and shook a finger in his face. “Don’t you go to blaming the apparatus! It was you—you did it all!”

“Eh? I—I did it? Why, I——”

“Yes you did!” cried Step, hotly. “You ought to have known that none of the rigging was really ready, and the safety device was disconnected, and——”

“You didn’t tell me that, and you let me risk my life!” shouted Poke in a rage.

“How’d I know you’d gone crazy?”

“Me crazy!”

“Huh! You look it.”

“Do I? Then it’s your fault! If you hadn’t been making your fool experiments and monkeying with things that were all right, I wouldn’t be in this fix or the Saracen, either. But I’ll show you!”

“Do it—if you’re man enough!” taunted Step, in a fury at the aspersions cast on his mechanical skill.

Poke needed no second invitation. He hurled his ragged and grimy self at his partner, who, on his side, met the charge half-way. There was a wild exchange of unaimed blows, and then they came to a clinch. Sam sprang forward. So did Orkney. By their united efforts they separated the combatants and dragged them apart.

“Stop this scrapping!” Sam commanded, with a gruffness which was not lessened by knowledge that Zorn was grinning widely at the spectacle of discord in the club.

“Quit it!” Orkney ordered, still more curtly.

“Then make him take back what he said,” Step protested.

“It’s true!” shrilled Poke. “Way he left everything, ’twas like trying to drive a horse without reins or bridle!”

“Then you ought to have known enough not to try to ride the Saracen,” Step countered.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Why didn’t you have sense enough to ask? If you’d had your eyes open as wide as your mouth——”

Two things helped to end this abusive debate. One was the action of Sam and Orkney, each of whom shook his captive, not too gently. The other was the appearance of adult investigators of the disaster to the Saracen. A runabout came to a stop in the road, and two men, leaving the car, crossed to the group.

“Whew! This looks like the end of a real joy ride!” said the leader of the pair. “Smashed, and smashed for fair! But what kind of a——Say, Zorn!” he turned to his companion, a stout, middle-aged man. “By the great horn spoon, but here’s what’s left of a make of machine that beats my time!”

Mr. Zorn ran his eye over the tangle of planes and machinery.

“For a guess it’s a flyer of some sort. But where’s the aeronaut?”

Poke, released by Sam, stepped forward. “I—well, I was running it, or trying to run it, sir. And—and—well, things miscued, somehow.”

“But did it fly?”

“Yes, sir, it did—once. And it moved a whole lot.”

From the other side of the wreck Lon contributed his bit: “Speakin’ o’ movin’, this affair made me think of a canal boat—’twas so different.”

Mr. Zorn smiled. “Well, there’s evidence enough here that it didn’t precisely crawl through the bushes. But nobody’s killed, I infer.”

“Not permanently,” chuckled Lon. “Still, clothes suffered—yes, clothes and feelin’s. Pretty solid bump at the last, you see.”

“So I imagine,” said Mr. Zorn. “Lucky the motor didn’t set the scrap-heap afire. But it must have been quite a machine to start with.” And with that he began an observation tour about the Saracen, very much as Lon had made one. His companion appeared to be less interested; for, after fidgeting for a moment, he called out, impatiently:

“Let’s be getting along, Zorn! There’s nothing we can do here, and we’ll be late for our appointment, as it is.”

Mr. Zorn turned, and walked toward his car; but Sam, reminded of the errand he had proposed to do, quickly overtook him.

“Can you give me a minute, sir?” he asked. “It’s about the camp—the place where we’ve pitched a tent, I mean. We hear that it is on your land, and we’d like to get permission to stay there, or rent a little ground, or—or do whatever you think right.”

Ed Zorn had followed Sam. “It’s the squatter business I told you about,” he said to his father, meaningly. “A whole crowd has moved in, bag and baggage.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Zorn; his tone was not encouraging. “So you’re the camping party, eh? H-m-m! I don’t know about it, young man. The woods are mighty dry, and a little carelessness might cost me a pretty penny.”

“We’ll be careful,” Sam urged. “We understand the danger of starting a brush fire.”

“Umph!” said Mr. Zorn doubtfully.

“But we’ll promise——”

“What good are promises?” Ed interrupted.

There he made a mistake. “I think I can attend to my own affairs,” his father said testily. “Suppose you devote yourself to your own, Ed.” Then he turned to Sam. “I’m not ready to say yes or no, definitely. I’ll have to have a look at your place first. It isn’t a matter of rental, but is a matter of safety; I want to see how you are doing things. I’ll come over in a day or two.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Sam.

“Umph! Better wait for results,” quoth Mr. Zorn drily, and resumed his march to the runabout, in which his companion was already seated.

As the little car shot away, Ed Zorn caught Sam, roughly, by the shoulder.

“Look here! You’ll pay for this!” he cried. “You may think you can get around my father with your slick palavering, but it won’t work. Your case will be attended to, soon enough!”

Sam shook himself free. “Keep your hands off me, Zorn!” he said sharply.

“Huh! Let’s see you make me keep ’em off!”

“I’m ready to try. Get that straight—I’m ready to try, right now!”

Sam’s voice was not raised, but there was a note in it that hinted at readiness to meet trouble half-way. Truth to tell, the head of the Safety First Club was beginning to feel the time was ripe for the personal reckoning he meant to have with this enemy.

Zorn’s face darkened. He cast a swift glance at the other boys in the background, and shook his head.

“No; I’m no fool,” he declared. “I’d take you on and never bat an eyelash, but you and your whole gang, all at once? No. I’ll attend to you later on, when you haven’t all your heelers along.”

“I promise you they won’t interfere.”

Zorn snapped his fingers. “That for your promises! I know what I’m going to do, and when I’m going to do it—and this isn’t the time or the place. But when I’m ready, then you want to look out for me, Parker!”

Sam laughed in his face. “Bosh! You’ve been doing us all the harm you can.”

Oddly enough, Zorn laughed in return, but the laugh had no mirth in it. “Think so, do you? Well, you’ll have a chance to change that opinion. I tell you——” Then he checked himself, and called to Hagle, who had been hovering near by. “Here, Jack, come along! Say! get a move on, can’t you?”

Hagle obeyed, though with an air of reluctance.

“Er—er—good-bye, you fellows,” he quavered, and shuffled after Zorn, who already was striding away.