“Peter sent us out to fetch you,” Hugh explained. “Peter would have come along but we wouldn’t let him, because he was tired out, and burned in a good many places. You’re going to come with us, of course. Jack, you take the little one. Put your arms around his neck, honey, for he wants to carry you. Bud, do the same with the second one. Don and myself will look after this fine manly little chap here; and when you get tired just let us know, for we mean to spell you playing nurse.”
Hugh said this in his kindest tone, and it had always been a notorious fact that children took to the leader of the Wolf Patrol as though they knew instinctively that he was a good friend.
The oldest boy did not hesitate after once looking into Hugh’s face. He immediately put out his little hand confidingly, and allowed the scout master to take it in his. Don offered support on the other side, and thus flanked, what was there to fear further? Let the forest smolder and blaze as it would, with such staunch allies between him and danger he could rest stout of heart and undisturbed.
Nor did the other two show any sign of rebellion when Jack and Bud offered to lift them up in their stout arms. “Any port in a storm” must have appealed to the babes in the woods just then. Besides, these boys looked kind, and they had promised to go straight to where Peter was, Peter in whom the kids seemed to have unbounded confidence.
So they started back.
Hugh and Don led the way, with the little chap between them. If the boy gave any sign of being tired out either of the scouts stood ready to lift him up, “toting” him part of the way.
The forest looked just as gloomy and fearful as before, only none of them seemed to mind it now. They had accomplished their errand, and the suspense that had weighed so heavily on their minds had taken wings and flown away.
“It was a lucky thing all around,” said Hugh as he picked his way along, taking the easiest course possible more on account of those tender little feet than for his own benefit, “that the kids didn’t think of straying off.”
“We would have had a dickens of a time finding them if they had,” agreed Don.
“Shows that someone must have taught them the spirit of obedience,” suggested Jack. “I reckon now these two boys will grow up to make extra fine scouts one of these days.”
“Must have been their mother, then,” declared Bud, “because from all I’ve heard about their dad he’s a pretty poor stick; bad enough while his wife was living, but a heap worse since he was left alone.”
“All but this boy here were too young to know anything about their mother when she left them,” observed Hugh. “So I imagine we’ll have to look somewhere else to see where they’ve been influenced.”
“Now I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you were right there, Hugh,” admitted Don, “and that it was Peter’s work.”
“He struck me as an uncommon sort of a boy,” continued Hugh. “He certainly was faithful to his trust with these kids.”
“What do you suppose will become of them all?” questioned Bud.
“Oh! Mrs. Heffner will be only too glad to look after them until their dad can come after them,” Hugh informed him.
“What a shock the man will get if he makes his way this morning to his home and finds it a heap of ashes,” suggested Jack.
“He’ll think his babies have all perished there,” added Bud. “It’ll serve him right. A shock like that might set him to thinking, and to reform. I can remember that years ago before he took to drink Alec Barger used to be reckoned a fine-looking man, with a future before him. It isn’t too late yet for him to undo the past if only he sets his foot down hard on his failings.”
“I wonder what the damage done by this forest fire has been?” queried Don.
“When they go to count up,” replied Hugh, “there will be a pretty heavy toll to pay in the way of farms ruined and wood burned. Plenty of them may have escaped, something like Mrs. Heffner’s place did, but others went up in smoke.”
“That isn’t the whole story by a good deal,” declared Jack. “It’s been so terribly dry this fall that I reckon there are fires burning in dozens of places all through the East, from the Adirondacks to the Maine coast.”
“If only it would rain,” sighed Don, “what a wonderful amount of good an hour’s soaking would do everywhere.”
“I thought I felt a drop strike me a minute ago!” admitted Bud. “I was half afraid to say anything about it, for fear I’d frighten it away. One thing you can see for yourselves, though, fellows.”
“What’s that?” demanded Don.
“The sun has gone in!” announced Bud, as seriously as though that event might be the most important on the calendar; which to tell the truth was a fact, since the whole country was in danger of burning up.
“That’s a fact!” exclaimed Jack, as he turned an eager look upward. “I noticed it was getting somewhat gloomy, but thought it must come from the smoke. But, Hugh, clouds have come up and covered the sky. Oh! why don’t it start in to sprinkling right away. I’m half choked with the dust that’s in the air.”
“So say we all of us,” added Don, as he started to raise his canteen to his lips and then suddenly paused to add: “Why, what’s the matter with us, boys; if we’ve been wetting our throats every little while, don’t you think these kids would like a drink of fresh water, too?”
“Careless of us, I must say!” muttered Jack, as he stopped, got down on one knee and then hastened to unscrew the cap of his canteen, adding: “Take a drink, little one, a nice cool drink of water. It’ll make you feel better, and when you get to where Peter and Mrs. Heffner are, you will have some bread and milk.”
All of the children drank eagerly, showing how they must have been suffering. Peter, being only a small boy, could not have had the forethought to provide any means of carrying water along with them on their flight, and the forest rills were all dried up from the long-continued drought.
As soon as the little girl was through, she put her chubby arms around Bud’s neck again, and rested her soft cheek against his. It was plain that the scouts had already quite won the confidence of the youngsters. Children, no matter how small, quickly size up those who are their real friends; instinct takes the place of reason with them.
Jack and Bud even began to sing one of their school songs as they ambled along in the wake of the leaders. The obstacles they had met no longer impeded their path, and being young and free from cares it did not take much to start them going.
“This sure is a queer experience for us to have, Hugh,” Don was remarking as he looked around at their strange surroundings, with the many columns of smoke rising from stumps, half-decayed logs and deposits of dead leaves, which, being somewhat damp underneath, had not burned as readily as other batches.
“Well, it counts with a lot of others we’ve passed through in our time,” the other told him. “When you stop to think of it, Don, we’ve been a pretty lucky bunch of scouts to go through with all we have since the troop was first formed.”
“I often have to smile when I think how queer it seems that our fine scout master, Lieutenant Denmead, is nearly always away on some trip whenever these big things are pulled off. This time we’ll have another adventure to tell him, of how we were called by duty up into the burning forest, and what a glorious time we had of it beating the fire away from the widow’s farm buildings and hay-stacks.”
“Yes, and bringing in these tots who were the waifs of the fire,” added Hugh, as he looked fondly down at the sturdy curly-headed chap who was so manly trudging alongside, with not a single murmur, though the way was far from easy for his little feet.
“If we didn’t do a single thing besides this,” Don asserted in a way that told how he meant every word of it, “I’d feel that it was worth our trip up here ten times over. I never ran across such a fine little bunch of kids before. No wonder Mrs. Heffner turned white in the face when she thought of them being left there in charge of only little Peter.”
“Everything is all right now, it looks like,” remarked Jack, who, of course, had been listening to what the others said, for he was close behind them.
“There, I felt it!” burst out Bud, and when they turned to look at him he was found to be holding his face upward as though searching the bare treetops for something.
“Another drop of rain, do you mean, Bud?” asked Don, with considerable eagerness.
“It certainly was,” came the reply. “Oh, why does it wait to be squeezed out in driblets that way? There’s a heap of wet due us by now, and the old weather clerk up yonder had better give it to us from the bung-hole and not by way of the spigot. We want it, and we want it bad.”
“Hold your horses, Bud,” Hugh told him. “I’ve got an idea we’re going to get all we need before a great while. Half an hour’s drenching rain would put out nearly every fire there is. Even if a few old stumps did smoulder afterward they couldn’t do any more damage, things would be so well soaked. By the time we get to the farm-house it ought to be starting in.”
“Huh!” grunted Bud, “I’d be willing to stand the worst kind of a ducking if that would hurry things up any.”
“Well, nothing that we can do or promise will make the least difference,” Hugh went on to say, with a laugh, “so we might as well keep our coats dry and be comfortable.”
“We’re much more than half way there now, I should say, wouldn’t you, Hugh?” Don wanted to know.
“Two-thirds of the distance you had better put it,” added Jack.
Hugh nodded, and then surprised them both by saying:
“I’ll see what I can do to help things along. I remember that leaning birch over there on the left. We struck it after we had left the stone wall just five minutes, so you see by that time we ought to be back there, which would mean the farm-house in as many more. So we’re over the worst of the journey, and three-quarters of the way back.”
“Every little helps,” admitted Jack, “and I’m going to keep a bright lookout for that old stone wall. It’ll sure seem like a good friend to me; and the kids will be glad to get in a house again after all they’ve passed through.”
“That’s queer now!” Don was heard to say, half to himself.
“What did you think you saw, Don?” asked Hugh, noticing that the other seemed to be staring straight ahead.
“There was something or other moving off yonder, and in this gully, too, where the creek used to run,” the scout explained. “I saw it just as it went behind a clump of rocks. Watch and see if it comes out on this side, fellows; over there, I mean.”
“Then it must have been heading this way, Don?” remarked Hugh.
“Which it surely was, and as it stands to reason that no wild animal, a fox or anything else, could have stuck it out through all that fire, I take it I must have seen—there, look!”
“Why, it’s certainly somebody coming this way!” ejaculated Bud, as they stood and stared.
“If that smoke would only blow away we could make out who it was,” muttered Don.
“We’ll soon know,” ventured Hugh. “He’s headed up the gully, you see.”
“I wonder now if it could be their daddy?” reflected Bud.
“Well, hardly,” the scout master told him. “He would be coming from our rear, heading for the Heffner place to find out if they knew anything of his babies. I’ve got an idea I could guess who it is.”
Just then the smoke did blow away and they could see the approaching figure very distinctly. It was a boy, and he was limping painfully along as though his feet had been bruised by the cruel stones. No sooner did the oldest child set eyes on that figure steadily drawing near and nearer than he burst out into a shrill cry.
“Peter, oh! Peter, here we all are!” was what he sent out; and at that, the bound boy forgot to limp as he started on a run toward them.
“Well, what do you think of that for devotion?” said Don Miller, as the bound boy came toward them, his face shining with happiness when he found that his fears were groundless, and that all his charges were safe in the care of the scouts.
“It’s sure a lesson for every one of us,” muttered Jack, who possibly realized then and there a few of his own shortcomings, and felt reproved.
“I told you the boy was a diamond in the rough,” said Hugh, winking very hard, as though the smoke may have been wafted into his eyes just then, or for some other reason. “When we get back home I’m meaning to have the entire troop working to better his condition somehow. He deserves the best there is.”
“That’s right,” said Jack. “Look at that little chap run to meet him, and how Peter takes him up in his arms? Now he’s coming to the other two, and their eyes are dancing with joy. You bet they think a heap of Peter.”
“What made you start back again when you were nearly played out?” asked the scout master, after they had seen the greeting the smaller children had for the boy who had come from the poor house to work for Farmer Barger.
Peter looked half frightened as though he feared he had done an unwise thing in disobeying orders.
“I just couldn’t help a-comin’,” he said. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t find ’em, or else that they’d stray away, though they did promise me solemn they wouldn’t budge a foot. But oh! I’m right glad to see ’em all agin, I am.”
He limped along beside them after another start was made, and persisted in holding the chubby hand of the smallest Barger youngster. Apparently a great load had been lifted from Peter’s faithful heart, and his own pains were utterly forgotten in his new happiness.
“There’s the wall!” announced Bud suddenly.
“Looks like an old friend to me,” said Don. “I know the farm-house isn’t far away now, and that means shelter from the rain in case it comes down—course I’m thinking of the kiddies here when I say that, you understand. A veteran scout has no need to be afraid of a little sprinkle, or even a ducking in the line of duty.”
Hugh was feeling unusually proud of his three chums. Perhaps it was partly on account of the fine way in which Jack and Bud persisted in “toting” those two babes, and declining to let either of the others “spell” them even once.
“It’s coming down faster now, boys!” declared Don.
There could be no doubt about that, for they could feel the drops pattering on their campaign hats. But then the farm-house with its attendant outbuildings could be plainly seen now, and the chances were they would soon be under shelter.
A rousing cheer attested to the fact that their approach had been discovered by some keen-eyed scout, who had communicated the pleasing intelligence to the others. There was good-hearted Mrs. Heffner waving her hand to them also, and evidently eagerly waiting to “mother” the children.
So, presently the boys arrived, and just in good time, too, for as they passed in at the kitchen door of the farm-house, the rain commenced to fall in good earnest. It beat an increasing tattoo upon the roof of that kitchen, and the sound was sweet music to the ears of those boys. They knew what an invaluable ally that downpour would prove to be to those farmers whose property would otherwise soon have been threatened by the forest fires.
“Go it, old rain!” shouted Monkey Stallings as he capered about after his usual nimble manner. “Do the thing right while you’re about it. We need lots and lots of that stuff right now! Don’t be a miser! Act generous! That’s something like it.”
“Gee! listen to it come down, will you?” burst out Billy, as he pushed forward to join the circle around the three children, for Billy was unusually fond of all little ones.
Mrs. Heffner had taken each of them in her motherly arms. Then, thinking they must be hungry, she hurried off to get some bread and milk, the latter to be warmed, for the air now began to feel chilly, since the rain had come.
“It’s a lucky thing it’s rain and not snow,” said Hugh, “though that would have helped some, I suppose. But after this there’s going to be no more fire fighting for Oakvale Troop, you can understand, this season, anyhow.”
“We’ve had our fill of it, all around, I should say,” remarked Ned Twyford.
Hugh cornered Arthur Cameron.
“How did you come to let Peter get away from you?” he asked the amateur surgeon.
At that Arthur chuckled.
“I guess he was a little too smart for me that time, Hugh,” he started to explain. “I looked after his burns, and eased them with some of that lotion that is so fine to draw the fire out. Then I happened to turn my back for just three minutes. When I came around again I missed Peter, and one of the boys told me he had seen him slip away.”
“Did you guess where he had gone?” asked the scout master.
“Well, it didn’t take me long to do that,” came the answer. “I had seen how nervous he was, and heard him saying to himself over and over: ‘I sure hope they find the kids.’ So I could size it up. Peter had disappeared and no one saw him go, but I felt pretty sure he’d come back with you; and I was right. He thinks a heap of the kiddies, Hugh.”
“Yes, and they do of Peter,” added Hugh. Whereupon he began to tell Arthur just what he and some of the others had decided they must do to try and make the bound boy’s path in life less thorny.
Unnoticed by either of the scouts, someone had drawn closer to them at the time they began chatting. It was the “hired man,” he whose face was so streaked with grime from the smoke and cinders that his best friend might have had more or less difficulty in recognizing him.
Evidently he had been drawn there by some subtle attraction. The subject of the boy’s conversation must have deeply interested him, too, for he could be seen to nod his head in the affirmative every time one of them made some remark that did him credit.
When finally the two boys moved away the man stood there for some time as though lost in reflection. Then he laughed softly to himself as though he considered that there was a joke on somebody.
It was just then that the kitchen door was flung wide open and a dripping figure of a man came staggering into the room. Hugh instantly guessed who it must be even before he heard one of the children cry out:
“Daddy!”
Immediately the man was passionately kissing the babes of the woods, only refraining from taking them in his arms because of his soaked condition. Hugh saw that Mr. Barger was still a fine-looking man. He also noticed that Mrs. Heffner seemed strangely moved at seeing him, though at the time he did not exactly understand why.
Later on Hugh learned the whole story of how years before Mr. Barger had been courting Sally Slavin, but an unfortunate quarrel had separated them. Both had married and lost their partners. Since the death of Mr. Heffner, the widower had tried to renew his attentions. Though Mrs. Heffner cared for him, she had resolutely declined to encourage him as a suitor on account of his bad habits, which he seemed loth to give up.
The man was trembling like a leaf. Hugh believed he had had a serious shock, and so he was not surprised to hear him say to Mrs. Heffner:
“When I heard about the fire up this way I hurried my team as fast as a whip could make them tear. Leaving the horses on the road I made my way through the fire to where my house had stood. It was a heap of ruins. Money can replace that, but my terrible fear was that my children had perished. Sally, right then and there I got down on my knees and promised Heaven that if only I could find those babes again unharmed, never would a drop of the vile stuff pass my lips again. Sally, I mean to keep that vow as long as I live, you understand?”
Hugh wondered why the widow should blush so, and snatching up the smallest of the waifs press the little one to her heart. He knew all about it later on, and could rejoice in that those motherless babes would no longer lack the care they needed.
“Things seem to be turning out first-class, eh, Hugh?” remarked Billy, as he and the scout master stood watching all this transpiring. “It’s too bad Mr. Barger lost his house, though. Perhaps Mrs. Heffner will shelter the kids till he can put up another one.”
“She’s got plenty of room for them all here in her house,” remarked Hugh, with something so suggestive in his manner that even Billy noticed it and managed to give a guess as to what it meant.
“Whew! is that the way the tide sets, do you think?” he muttered. “Well, he’s a pretty fine looking fellow, and she’s as good as gold. Say, that must have been what he meant when he told about giving up his bad habits. Well, it would be a fine thing all around. This farm requires a man’s care; and his babes need a mother to look after them, though Peter tries to do the best he can.”
“If it does turn out that way,” remarked Hugh, with a low laugh, “what becomes of all our big plans to better Peter’s condition? He could find his home here and be well looked after, besides staying with the children he loves so much.”
“It’s all coming out like one of those old fairy tales we used to read when we were kids,” remarked Billy, as though that time were ages and ages ago in place of a very few years; but then when a boy dons the khaki of a scout he jumps far ahead of his years, and the dim past seems to be spanned by a bridge longer than any ever built with mortal hands.
“Peter looks pleased enough, you can see,” said Hugh.
Indeed, the bound boy was smiling all over as he stood back and watched. When Mr. Barger hearing what wonderful good care Peter had taken of his babies, came over and squeezed his hand, the boy’s happiness knew no bounds. If his life had not been all that it might in the past, he realized now a new day had dawned on his calendar, and that the future promised much.
“I suppose we’ll be getting down home some time to-day,” suggested Billy. “Though if this rain keeps up, we’ll be a pretty well soaked lot of scouts when we strike Oakvale. But who cares for expenses? Haven’t we all got on our oldest duds, and what’s a wetting to a scout, anyway?”
“No use bothering about that yet awhile,” Hugh assured him. “The rain may let up, and we’ll get back with dry jackets. Then again I noticed a big wagon with a canvas waterproof top out there in the barn. If it comes to the worst perhaps Mrs. Heffner might have her horses hitched to that, and we could all pile in like sardines.”
“Well, there’s another way,” said Billy. “You know some of the people up along the road have got telephone communication with Oakvale. Now a scout could make his way over to the road and call up the livery at Oakvale, so as to have covered rigs come up after us. Mr. Prentice said he’d stand for the expense, if there was any.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Hugh. “Why do you say Mr. Prentice, I’d like to know?”
“Well, I declare!” cried Billy, “I clean forgot that you were away when he told us who he was. I never would have known him with all that black on his face, and his clothes burned in ever so many places. Why, the one we took for the hired man is Mr. Prentice, you see! He had come up here to fetch the last note for Mrs. Heffner to pay on her mortgage, when the fire coming closer kept him here. Then he had to help her fight it off, which I reckon he did all right.”
“Mr. Prentice!” repeated Hugh. “To think that it should be Addison’s father of all men who happened to be up here when we were showing what scouts were made of!”
“Yes, and Hugh,” said one, coming up behind the two boys, “I want to confess right here and now that I never was so glad of anything in my life!”
Hugh caught his breath as he realized what all this meant for Addison Prentice. Here was the one prominent man in all Oakvale who had positively refused to believe there could be any good thing come out of this scout movement that was sweeping like wild fire all over the country. In a wonderful manner he had been placed in a position to witness a practical demonstration of the efficiency of scout tactics and organization.
“This certainly is a surprise to me, Mr. Prentice,” Hugh told him. “I never dreamed it was you. Several times I found myself looking your way, and wondering why something about you seemed so familiar; but before I could mention it to any of my chums something would come up to put me off.”
“I don’t wonder you didn’t know me,” laughed Mr. Prentice, “and I think my wife would try to chase me out of the house with a broom if she saw me entering. But, Hugh, would you mind shaking hands with me; and you, too, Billy. In fact, I want to humbly apologize to every member of Oakvale Troop for the mean estimation in which I’ve been holding them up to this wonderful day, when I’ve had the scales lifted from my eyes.”
It can readily be understood how joyously first Hugh and then Billy each gripped a hand of the quarry owner. Really, for the time being they considered that this amazing change of front in Mr. Prentice even dwarfed all the other surprising events of this record trip.
“The seed,” explained the gentleman, “was sown on the occasion of your wonderful presence of mind, Hugh, in throwing that log in front of the runaway stone car, and shunting it off the track. In doing that you possibly saved a number of lives, and me from a feeling of guilt that I never could have survived.”
He still held Hugh’s hand while saying this, and gave it a grip that told how deeply his feelings were stirred.
“I said to myself, when I could get my wits to working after the feeling of numbness over my narrow escape had passed away, that if being a scout could teach a boy to show such wonderful presence of mind in the face of a sudden peril, there must be something about this movement that I should never condemn without having investigated further. And, Hugh, ever since then I have been making quiet inquiries and getting opinions from some of our leading men without letting them know what my object was.”
“That was only what I asked you to do in the first place, sir,” said Hugh.
“Yes, I know it was,” the gentleman continued, “but I am an obstinate man, and persisted in shutting my eyes to the facts. But I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I was making the greatest mistake of my life in going against such a great development of the American boy, when I started up here this morning. Well, what I have seen done and heard spoken of you and your brave boys since coming here has utterly overwhelmed me with confusion and regrets.”
“I’m more than glad, sir—for Addison’s sake!” said Hugh, softly and meaningly.
“Yes,” the other went on to remark, “there’ll be no difficulty about his getting permission to join your troop after this. Why, if he showed any hesitation I’d be three times more bent on making him don the khaki than I was before in refusing to grant that favor. I can plainly see what a great list of possibilities opens up before a scout. If Addison can, in time, become as sensible a boy as most of your companions—I might easily say all of them—are, I will be grateful every day of my life that Fortune took me up here to see Mrs. Heffner at just the time the forest was burning, and your troop came up to render first aid to the afflicted.”
Really, there did not appear to be anything lacking, for it all seemed to have come out just right. If Hugh himself could have had the planning, he doubted whether he could have improved on what had happened.
“Then you give me permission to tell Addison that he can put in his application to join the scouts, do you, Mr. Prentice?” Hugh asked.
“You’ll hardly have the opportunity, Hugh,” he was told, “because as soon as I get home I will issue orders that he must join at the very first meeting!”
“It will make him pretty happy, I think, sir, for he has set his heart on being one of us.”
“And let me tell you it will make his father doubly happy when that time comes, for I have seen and heard things I never would have believed possible a week ago. It just goes to show how foolish men can be to judge without knowing what they are talking about. But, Hugh, I shall try and make amends for what injury I have unwittingly done the cause in the past by booming it in the future. You see, it’s a case of right-about face with me. They do say that I’m pretty sure to go to extremes when my mind is made up.”
“The boys will all be glad to know that you’ve reformed, sir,” said Billy, boldly, but Mr. Prentice only chuckled.
“Yes, you hit the nail squarely on the head when you call it that, Billy,” he frankly declared. “In a case like mine nothing short of a reformation would fill the bill. You’ll never understand how much I’ve enjoyed being here and watching the way you boys went about saving the farm buildings. It seemed as if you knew just what to do and how to work it. I had a lesson I’ll never forget. The boys of to-day are in a class by themselves when compared with my time. I can see now how they owe most of it to the teachings of the scout organization.”
As it was getting on toward noon, and boys are known to have ferocious appetites, especially when they have been working very hard, Mrs. Heffner busied herself in getting a luncheon. Like most of her class she always had a great abundance of good food in the house, which was a fortunate thing for that army of voracious lads.
Such a jolly time they had of it, everybody trying to lend a helping hand until in the end Mrs. Heffner had to chase the lot out of the kitchen while she completed her arrangements. But she was looking very happy, Hugh thought; perhaps it was because a good fortune had spared her possessions; or again there may have been still another reason which she did not choose to share with any one.
And that was a meal not soon to be forgotten. All sorts of good things were forthcoming, so that no scout could rise from the table and claim that his appetite still clamored for more. Cake, pies, jams and jellies, sandwiches, milk, coffee with rich cream, hard-boiled eggs by the score, even several cold chickens which she had been intending to take to town for the Woman’s Exchange table—all these and much more were placed before the boys, until even Billy sighed and humbly confessed that he had undone the last button of his vest, and could not eat another bite.
About two in the afternoon it was discovered that the rain had ceased. No one regretted this fact, for it had come down so heavily that every fire must have been long since extinguished.
“Now’s our chance to go home, boys,” announced Hugh, at which there was a decided scurrying around, as hats were looked up, and good-byes said.
“I’m going to town with the horse and wagon Mrs. Heffner has loaned me,” said Mr. Prentice, “and if any of you scouts want to ride, say the word.”
There was not a single answer; apparently the boys looked forward to such a fine time hiking it for home that they did not care to be separated. Hugh considered this a compliment to the leaders of the troop, for it might be thought that a few out of the dozen and more would prefer to ride home.
“I’ve an idea we may find the other half of the troop waiting for us on the road,” he mentioned, “and if so we’ll all go back together.”
Everybody was sorry to see them depart, even the three little Barger youngsters who had become quite friendly with the scouts during the short time they had known them. Jack, Don and Bud would always look back to their association with the “babes of the woods” with a feeling of keen pleasure.
Sure enough, there was Alec and his detachment waiting for them at the pre-arranged rendezvous. When the two sections sighted one another there was more or less calling back and forth, and cheering.
Apparently Alec’s crowd could not have had anything like the serious time that came the way of Hugh and his chums. This was to be seen in the fact that their uniforms, unlike the others, did not bear signs of hard usage, with holes burned here and there, besides being pretty well water soaked.
Of course both sides were wild to hear what had been accomplished by the other detachment.
“Who’s going to take the floor first and spin the yarn?” demanded Billy Worth, who was really anxious to know just how far Alec’s supporters had gone in the way of fire-fighting.
Alec and Hugh exchanged looks, and smiled.
“I reckon we’ll have to toss up for it, then, seeing that each wants to be last,” remarked the Sands boy, taking out a coin.
“That suits us,” said Billy; “and Hugh can say whether it’s heads or tails.”
“Whichever falls upward means the last to tell the story, doesn’t it?” asked Hugh.
“Yes, and you call out while the quarter is in the air,” Alec told him.
So he sent it whirling upward, and about the time it reached its highest point Hugh sang out:
“Tails for me!”
The coin fell to the ground, and numerous heads were craned in the effort to see what the result would turn out to be.
“You win, Hugh,” remarked Alec, laughingly. “Tails it is, face up. I’m only sorry I’ve got so little to tell, because our work wasn’t so fast and furious as you had come your way, if signs count for anything,” and as he said this Alec pointed to numerous small holes burned in the clothes of Hugh and some of those who had fought the flames with him.
“All the same,” Hugh told him directly, “we know mighty well it was only the want of a chance that kept you from showing your mettle. We happened to be lucky that way. So long as you did your part the best you knew how, what odds does it make how much of a result followed?”
That was characteristic of Hugh. He tried to minimize his own acts, while at the same time eager to enlarge upon anything a fellow scout had been able to accomplish. It was this brotherly trait that had made him the best-liked fellow in or around Oakvale. Selfishness and Hugh Hardin had little in common, as every boy understood who knew the young scout master.
“Well,” began Alec, “it isn’t going to take me long to cover the ground of our activities. We got to the squab and chicken farm, and found Old Zeke pretty nearly out of his seven senses, because he expected he was going to be caught by the fire, and lose his whole plant, which you know would about kill the poor chap, for he’s got every cent he owns in the wide world invested there.”
“And I’ve heard,” interrupted Billy Worth, “that it’s the apple of Zeke Ballinger’s eye, that squab plant. He ships a box of plucked baby blue-rock pigeons to a big hotel in the city every week, and gets cracking good prices for them.”
“Yes,” added Ralph Kenyon; “I’ve been up at his place, and he nearly gave me the squab fever, too. I could see good money in the game; but it takes a lot of time to look after things; and what with school duties, as well as scout matters, I couldn’t see my way clear to make the start. But go on, Alec, please.”
“You can be sure,” continued the narrator of the story, “he was pleased when we broke in on him. I never saw a man so happy. I guess Old Zeke has heard a heap about what the scouts of Oakvale have done in times gone by, for he just up and said he knew now his place wasn’t going to be burned to flinders.”
Somehow every fellow looked proud when Alec said that. It seemed to them worth while to have worked so hard in the past, if by so doing a reputation for accomplishing things had been earned among the people of their native town and the surrounding country.
“We started in to get ready for business,” continued Alec; “such as locating the water supply, gathering all sorts of buckets, pans, and anything that could be used for carrying the stuff when the sparks came sailing over, and threatening to set fire to the roofs of the chicken and pigeon houses.
“First we began to soak the roofs as well as we could, and all the while the fire was getting nearer. As luck would have it, there was an open space between the woods and the buildings. Old Zeke didn’t have any straw stack, or hay worth mentioning, to start going, which I counted in our favor.
“Then finally we saw the flames begin to pick up over to windward. The fire had been carried through the thick woods. It was eating up all the dry stuff on the ground, and some dead trees were beginning to look like great big burning torches or candles.
“So we worked harder than ever, with Zeke keeping on our trail, doing great stunts carrying water and helping out. Every bucket thrown gave us more hope that we’d be able to keep things safe and sound; but pretty soon we saw that here and there the roofs were beginning to smoke.
“We’d made sure to have what ladders there were about the place handy. So keeping a bright lookout, whenever a little flame was discovered on the roof of a building some of the boys hustled there with a ladder, and one went up to throw a bucket of water over it.
“That was about what our work amounted to, all the way through. None of the buildings were burned down, though we did have a few scares, and several times it took the liveliest jumping anybody ever saw to manage all the little fires that sprang up.
“And in the end the fire had swept past, the heat gradually grew less and less, so that we knew we had saved the place for the old squab raiser and chicken farmer.”
“Is that all, Alec?” asked Hugh.
“Not quite,” replied Alec, with a bright smile, as he glanced toward Dale, “we did have just one little adventure worth mentioning.”
“Stow that, can’t you, Alec?” hastily remarked Dale, who seemed to suddenly flush up, as though more or less confused; for he was known to be an exceptionally modest fellow, who neither went about “blowing his own horn,” nor liked to have any of his chums do the same for him; “it wasn’t worth mentioning in the same breath with the splendid things I’m sure Hugh and the rest have been doing.”
“We’re the ones to judge of that, old fellow,” said Don; “so please let’s hear what it was, Alec, will you?”
Dale immediately fell back, for they were at the time walking along the road in the direction of distant Oakvale, forming quite a lively bunch as they clustered around Hugh and the leader of the Otter Patrol.
“Why, it was like this,” the latter proceeded to explain; “there was one tall building with a steep roof that had a pitch of fully forty-five degrees. I think it was the main pigeon plant; but then that doesn’t matter.
“Right in the midst of the fiercest of the fight to save the frame buildings, when the red sparks were falling thick and furious, one of the boys shouted out that the roof of that particular building was afire.
“Now, I had been afraid of that right along, you see. It was so much higher than any of the others, and that sloping roof made it doubly hard to get around. As soon as I hurried to the spot I saw that the chances were we’d have a tough job getting that little blaze under control, and it even looked as if the crisis of the whole business had come around.
“A big spark had dropped in just the worst place it could go, and there must have been some dry leaves and trash in that cavity, for a blaze sprang up right away. It was going right merrily when I got there.
“As soon as the ladder was slapped against the side of the tall building Dale went up it like a monkey. The boys pushed another ladder up so that he could lay it on the roof. Then they handed him a bucket of water.
“I wish you could have seen him hunch along that ridge of the roof, Hugh. It was as fine a thing as any city fireman ever did, I’m dead sure. And all the while Dale had to carry that heavy pail of water along, trying not to spill a drop if he could help it.