The Safety First Club fights fire

Ever since Lon had recited the tale of Old Man Freeman’s William Trout he had been much importuned by the boys for information about the stream in which the big fish lived and grew mighty. He had chosen to make a great mystery of the matter, but under repeated questioning had dropped a hint here and spoken an inadvertent word there, until Sam, putting one thing with another, was able not only to form an opinion of the direction in which the brook lay, but also to make a shrewd guess at the whereabouts of the hermit’s cabin, or what might be left of it.

Sam had been planning an expedition of exploration and discovery, and the disaster to the Saracen quickened his purpose. Poke took the wreck very much to heart. In imagination he had pictured himself sailing gaily above the heads of admiring crowds; but, to do him justice, he had counted more upon the money returns of his enterprise than upon the attendant glory. Poke was a thoroughly honest chap, and it irked him to be in debt. He had hoped to repay his friends, and now that hope was dissipated, to say nothing of sundry new obligations incurred in the construction of the airplane. Naturally, therefore, he was temporarily taking a gloomy view of life, and was in sore need of soothing diversions.

Step, too, was grieved by the calamity, though his disappointment was not so keen. After all, he was not the originator of the Great Idea; that melancholy honor belonged exclusively to Poke. Hence, when he had reached a more amicable understanding with his partner in regard to the condition of the Saracen’s gear, it was easier for him to take the view that there was no virtue in shedding tears over spilt milk. But Step as well as Poke would be the better for new interests, Sam decided; and quest of the Freeman brook suggested a desirable opportunity.

Mr. Zorn had spoken of inspecting the camp in a day or two, but the week wore away with no word from him. On Friday afternoon the club, in full force, hiked to the lake, prepared to remain there until Monday morning, when Lon was to appear with the big car and whisk them back to town in time for school. The evening passed pleasantly and quietly, their night’s rest was undisturbed, and early Saturday morning Sam marshaled the clan for the march across country. All carried fishing tackle, though it was admitted that angling would be a mere incident of the day.

“I don’t know just how far we’re going, but I’ve got a general idea of the direction,” Sam told the others, who appeared to be willing enough to follow his lead and take chances. So they set out, with Sam at the head of the straggling line, laying his course in part by aid of a pocket compass he carried, and in part by certain landmarks known to all of them.

The route scorned roads, mostly, crossing fields and woods, climbing low hills and dipping into little valleys, edging away from the lake and carrying the party into a region with which they had slight acquaintance. They passed a few farmhouses, but most of the time were out of sight of habitations; for the country thereabouts was thinly settled. The pace was leisurely. The boys had all day before them, and there was plenty of opportunity for Sam to have a confidential word or two, now with one of his friends and then with another.

Orkney, for example, was beginning to worry about the Trojan, in coaching whom he had been especially active of late.

“It’s getting harder to keep him up to the mark,” he explained. “No; I don’t call it a case of quitting—it’s more of a case of not caring. You see, down at bottom the Trojan feels that he wasn’t given a square deal, and the thing rankles. He appreciates the trouble the club is taking for him, and has tried to do his part; but, somehow, he’s no real heart for the job. He doesn’t care—there’s the rub; and that sort of thing makes a difference, when you’re in for a long pull like this one. Oh, I guess he’ll stick it out in a way—go through the motions, anyway, you know—but if we’re to hold him with the class, there’s got to be something to spur him up, and it’s got to come pretty quickly.”

Sam nodded, and his expression grew serious. His opinion was much like Tom’s. The Trojan needed a mental bracer of some sort, but how it was to be found he could not conjecture. As for himself, he had Lon as counselor in seasons of depression, but Lon had not tried to deal with Walker.

Then Tom fell back, and presently Poke drew up with the leader. He was still in his mood of depression, and Sam had to make talk without marked response for a time. At last, though, Poke showed some animation. Curiously, it was mention of Jack Hagle which stirred him.

“It’s a funny thing to say,” he remarked, “and maybe you’ll think I was jarred off my trolley, but when the machine crashed into the bushes and I came that cropper through them, what impressed me most was the way Zorn and Hagle acted. Now, so far as the suddenness of it went, I might have dropped a couple of miles from the clouds; but that pair behaved as if the thing that bothered ’em was not the question whether I was killed or not, but how much I noticed of the thrashing Zorn was giving Jack. I figure if they were so anxious I shouldn’t know about it that, somehow, we were mixed up in whatever caused their row.”

“Isn’t that rather a far-fetched notion?”

“It might be, if Zorn wasn’t in the game. That fellow’d do anything! And he has Hagle completely under his thumb.”

“It’s true,” Sam admitted. “And it’s true, too, that Hagle has shown a sort of friendliness for us once or twice.”

Poke wagged his head sagely. “I tell you, Sam! Mark my words, Hagle knows something about that business of the Trojan’s, and it’s worrying him! And Zorn is terrorizing him, to keep him quiet.”

“But——” Sam began.

“But what?”

“But Zorn said he could clear the slate for us, and I don’t think he’d do it by incriminating himself.”

“Neither would Hagle, would he?”

“It may not sound reasonable, but he might, I think—that is, he’d be more likely than Zorn to weaken.”

“But it was Zorn who spread all the stories through the school. And it was Zorn who cooked up things at the class meeting.”

“I admit that. I also admit I don’t understand the situation, so far as those fellows are concerned.”

“I don’t either,” said Poke. “I’m perfectly sure, though, they’re both in the scheme, somehow. And it almost startled both of ’em out of a year’s growth to see me shooting at them through the bushes. Beyond that it’s all guesswork with me.”

“Same here,” Sam agreed, thoughtfully.

Just then Herman Boyd overtook the leaders and interrupted their talk. Herman was beginning to be skeptical about Sam’s mental mapping of the brook; and one or two of the others expressed doubts as the hours wore away. Sam, however, maintained unruffled composure. He might be wrong, but even if he were wrong, no harm would be done; and so he held his way, declined to halt beside any of the little streams they crossed, and at last pointed out a brook of considerable size, flowing through a valley which was like a gash in the hills.

“That’s it—or it’s my guess, anyway,” he said. “And I think Freeman’s cabin and the pool are a little higher up.”

Poke proposed a halt for luncheon before pursuing their explorations, and the idea met with favor. It was well after noon when their baskets had been emptied, and the quest was resumed. Again the party straggled. It was a go-as-you-please stroll for everybody. Sam and the Shark, who cared little for fishing, were in the van, the others pausing now and then to drop a hook, though with small reward for their trouble. Probably an hour slipped away before Sam came to a pool generally answering Lon’s description of the home of William Trout, and some time passed before his followers began to overtake him. Meanwhile, with the Shark’s aid, he had been searching for the site of the cabin; and had come upon traces of a building of some sort. Evidently there had been a fire, and after that the woods had come in, so that it was by no means easy to estimate the size of the building which once had stood there.

The Shark was not greatly impressed, nor was he inclined to regard the proof as positive.

“Huh! Maybe it’s the place, and, then again, maybe it isn’t. May have been a farmhouse that was abandoned; may have been somebody’s camp.”

“And so it may have been Old Man Freeman’s,” Sam pointed out.

The Shark shrugged. “Huh! ‘Maybe’ doesn’t get you anywhere. I don’t take much stock in these calculations with no given quantities. And Lon may have been fooling you.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sam. “Lon likes to make a good story, but we’ve always found some basis for his yarns.”

“Same as there was basis for Poke’s Saracen, eh? I could have told him, offhand, that he’d get enough push from his propeller to trundle him down-hill, but I had to do a lot of precise calculation to find out that he couldn’t fly far.”

It was on the tip of Sam’s tongue to remind the mathematician that his exact knowledge was reached a trifle late to save Poke from disaster, but he refrained from controversy. Step and the Trojan came along; then Orkney and Poke. Sam pointed out the ruins; there was animated discussion. The majority stood with Sam, and opined that pool and cabin site had been found. Then arrived Herman, highly excited and displaying a ten-inch trout he had caught a quarter-mile down-stream. In a jiffy the anglers were scattered along the brook, fishing as for dear life.

Given half a dozen healthy youngsters making holiday, you have a combination which does not make for haste. No more trout were taken, but much time was occupied. The afternoon was half gone, when Sam, reminded of the long tramp home, called the clan together.

As was to be expected, there was less fun and more work about the return journey. Partly for variety and partly because he believed he could save distance, Sam chose a new route, a short cut, as he supposed, and one taking advantage of a long stretch of country road. The grass growing between the wheel tracks showed that it was not much traveled, but when the boys had followed it for some distance they met a farmer jogging leisurely homeward. From him they learned that they were still far from the lake—or the “pond,” as he preferred to call it.

“It’s risin’ three mile,” he said. “Shortest way’ll be for you to stick to the road till you come to a steepish hill off to the left. Climb it, and you’ll be able to see an end of the pond—that is, if the woods ain’t growed up so’s to hide it. I hain’t been sightseein’ for a good while, and I don’t know whether the water shows or not.”

Sam thanked him for the directions. The “steepish hill,” in fact, was one of the landmarks by which he intended to steer, and as the hike was resumed, he kept a sharp lookout for the abrupt slopes. Estimates of distance, though, are seldom accurate, and the boys had tramped on for fully an hour before the hill was reached. From its top the lake was not visible, the woods having grown sufficiently to hide the water, but Sam had no difficulty in placing the depression in which it lay. But lake and camp were still far away, three or four miles at the least.

There was a little mild grumbling.

“Huh! Guess you must have taken the longest way ’round, Sam,” Poke suggested.

“Gee, but I feel as if my legs were doing double duty!” Poke chimed in.

“That’s because you’re built for low gear, Poke,” chuckled Herman.

“Low gear yourself!” snapped the plump youth. “I’m built on modern lines—regular safety bicycle idea. You fellows are like the old-style high wheels—all show and headers!”

Something in the distance had caught Orkney’s attention, and he was studying it intently.

“What’s that yonder—low down; just above the tree tops; sort of hanging over them? Think it’s a dust cloud?”

There was a thin haze in the air, more suggestive of autumn than of late spring. It faintly blurred the horizon, but Sam could make out the thickening, so to speak, to which Tom referred.

“Dust?” he repeated. “I don’t know. Might be, of course, but——”

“But it looks to me more like smoke,” the Trojan interrupted.

“That’s my idea, too,” said Sam sharply.

He started at a rapid pace down the hill, and his club-mates hurried after him.