CHAPTER XVI
ALONG THE FLOOR
Placing both hands on the sideboard of the dray, Bunny vaulted lightlyto the ground. From where Bonfire stood, the thin eddy of smoke couldbe seen looping over the tree tops at the corner.
"It's Peterson's house!"
Bonfire shook his head. "The smoke shows too far north for that. It'seither Crawford's or some shed near there."
For a long moment Bunny watched the white wreath tail up above thehighest leaves; then, abruptly, he raced after the jogging dray.
"Stop that team!" he shouted.
Mr. Langer pulled up deliberately, hastened a little in the process,perhaps, by Roundy, who seemed on the point of taking the reins intohis own hands.
"Everybody out! We can't leave a fire like that with nobody in town."
"Oh, rats!" snapped Sheffield. "We'll turn in an alarm at the station.What's the fire department for? Let it burn!"
Mr. Langer seemed in doubt. "Wal, I dunno." He scratched his headthoughtfully. "I dunno. Mebbe, now--"
"You're hired to get us down to the station," Sheffield reminded him."The best thing for you to do is to hurry up and make that train."
Bunny hesitated. The welfare of the baseball team which he captaineddemanded that no time be lost. On the other hand, if a serious fire hadstarted, it was more important to check it than to play any game.
"If there is a real blaze--" he began.
"It doesn't matter whether it's a real blaze or not," Sheffieldinterrupted. "We are on our way to play for the high-schoolchampionship of the State. That's more important than anything else."
"No, Sheff," disagreed Bunny; "no, it isn't. Winning a baseballchampionship wouldn't be as important as saving Lakeville from a badfire. Now, would it?"
"Oh, it's probably only a smudge," urged Sheffield. "How about it,Langer? Didn't you see a bonfire over there?"
Mr. Langer scratched his head again. "I dunno if I did and I dunno if Ididn't. But--"
Bunny made up his mind. "Drive ahead, Langer. Sheffield, you see thatthe stuff gets to the station on time and tell Professor Leland that wewill catch the 11:30 train. That will bring us to the Belden field byjust three o'clock. Scouts over here!"
Almost before Mr. Langer could get under way, his dray was lightened ofits load of Black Eagles, who scrambled to the ground, following Bunnyand Bonfire at a dead run.
"It's not a little blaze," panted the observant Bonfire. "Look how thatsmoke hangs in a cloud over the trees. It's coming from the top of somebuilding."
"It's the Crawford house!" Specs urged, as he sprinted up to the twoleaders. "You can tell it's the Crawfords', because--No, it isn'teither. It's--"
Bunny, Bonfire and Specs came to a paralyzed halt. In one voice, theyfinished the sentence:
"--Grady's barn!"
Already that building had loomed into sight. From an opening near thepeak of the roof, smoke was leisurely twining into the air, as if ithad a perfect right to be doing that sort of thing in that sort of aplace. No one else in town seemed to have noticed the warning, and athicker puff of smoke brought no answering cry of "Fire!"
"Let her go!" said Specs spitefully. "We will turn in an alarm and keepit from burning anything else, but we might just as well let the oldshack go up in smoke. Grady has it insured."
"But Sheffield's automobile is in there," protested Bonfire, "and thatisn't insured. I heard Roy say so."
"That's what I thought," Specs agreed calmly. "But Mister RoyalSheffield thinks we haven't any business monkeying with fires thismorning, and I vote we go back to the station and tell him that wewere mistaken and that he was right."
Bunny frowned. "We'll go right on being Scouts and living up to theScout law, just as we did before we ever knew Sheffield. Jump and S.S., you two pike down to the fire department and hustle Dave Hendershotup here with the hose cart. Prissler, you chase downtown and rousepeople. Roundy, break into the schoolhouse and ring the bell for allyou're worth. Nap, you take the school telephone and call Central andthe fire department. The rest of us will do what we can right here."
However much the Scouts would have preferred to stay at the scene ofaction, they hesitated not at all in obeying these necessarily curtorders. Three runners scurried away toward Main Street; two others madea bee line for the janitor's entrance of the high school.
"Oh, all right!" grunted Specs. "Now we can go ahead and be heroes andsave dear old Roy's car for him. I'd certainly like to see the blamedthing saved--that is, all except the tires and the motor and the toolbox and the lights and a few other things."
Whenever Specs reached this particular mood, it was best to let himtalk his way out of it. Bunny ignored him completely and ran toward theburning building.
Grady's barn was the usual two-story structure, its peaked roof toppedby an old-fashioned cupola. At the front, two swinging doors werelocked by a wooden bar within, a smaller side entrance being used forordinary comings and goings.
"Locked with a big padlock," said Bunny, testing the side door whileBonfire and Specs hurried to the west side of the building.
Bi returned from an excursion to the rear. "Back door's nailed fast,"he reported. "There are iron bars across the inside of that backwindow, too."
Through this latter opening, Bi had seen the smoke thickening inside,but he had failed to discover any way of breaking through to smotherit. It was evident that when Mr. Grady had turned over his horselessbarn to Royal Sheffield, he had made it thoroughly burglar proof.
"If I had an ax," Bi muttered wistfully, "I'd smash through that doorin a hurry."
With a common impulse, Bunny and Bi picked up a long board, to use asa battering-ram against the sagging double door. Under the blows, thebarn resounded, but the doors remained as tightly shut as before.
"Got to break through pretty soon or stop trying," Bunny gasped, asthey halted the attack to regain wind. "If we once get inside anywhere,we can open those double doors and roll out the car. After that, wemight save the barn. But if the gasoline ever explodes--well, that willfinish everything."
"Let's try it again!" Bi lunged against the door with fierce energy."Maybe the big wooden bar that holds across the middle will jump looseif we jar it enough. Ugh!" He grunted as the board struck the door.
"All together, Bi! Once more! I think I felt it move." They hammeredthe wood home, but in spite of the whirlwind of blows the door didnothing but sag a little and stick fast.
"Thank goodness!" ejaculated Bunny, as they halted after this assault."Roundy's found the bell, anyhow."
"_Dang! Bang! Dang! Bang!_" The clapper of the high-school bell wasswinging wilder and harder against the metal sides than ever before inits short life.
"Now, if that brings help, and if Nap gets a little action over thetelephone, and if Jump and S. S. bring up the hose cart, we have achance even yet. Where's Bonfire? And where's Specs?"
As if in answer to his name, Bonfire appeared, red-faced andbreathless, holding a short two-by-four in his hand.
"Looked all over Peterson's woodshed for an ax, but couldn't finda thing except this. You can see the fire through the little stallwindow. It's just beginning to wake up. Didn't Specs find anything?"
"Specs! Isn't he with you?"
"With me? No!" Bonfire's eyes opened wide.
"He started with me. He was going to the Crawfords' and--let's see--heturned and--" The boy stopped speaking. Fumbling the plank in hishand, he dropped it and then scooped it from the ground in a rushtoward the door.
"Come on!" he shouted, attacking the barn in a wild burst of frenzy."We've got to break in! We've got to! Specs is inside!"
Bunny caught him by the arm. "We can't break through here. It's solid.How do you know Specs is inside?"
The other Scout was quivering with excitement. "I know it. I lookedthrough the stall window. There was a board loose in the floor, nearthe fire. I pointed it out to him. For a joke, I told him a thin fellowmight crawl underneath the barn, pry it loose, and come up inside. Andhe's don
e it! We've got to get him out!"
The school bell still clanged at top speed. Far down the street, Bunnycould see two men running. He fancied he could hear galloping hoofs andthe rumble of the hose cart. But if Specs was wallowing in that smotherof smoke, all this help would come too late. He pounded on the side ofthe barn with his futile fist.
"Specs! Specs!" he shouted.
Bi ground his fingers into his palms. "If he can only get to the door,he can open it, but--"
There was no answering sound from within.
Bonfire, who had disappeared, darted suddenly from one side of thebarn.
"He's in there," he said. His face was white, and he spoke jerkily."You can see his tracks. I crawled under. The board has been lifted up,but the blaze is all over the hole and I couldn't get through."
Something cried to be done. Something must be done. As Bunny tried tocollect his thoughts, his eye glimpsed a tiny gap between the base ofthe door on the right and the top of the ramp. It stretched near thehinge side, high enough to take the end of a plank. With a shout ofrelief, he slapped the end of the board into the crevice. Using thetwo-by-four as a fulcrum, he began levering the door upward and outward.
"All together now! Smash that hinge!" he gulped, choking from a whiffof smoke that puffed into his face from the crack.
This command was unnecessary. Already the other two were throwing alltheir weight and strength on the long end of the lever.
"Hard! Everybody, hard!"
Came a creaking, groaning, splintering of the wood. It was the signalof the break to come. The Scouts were bracing for a last effort when,quite without warning or effort on their part, the bar stretched acrossthe inside of the double door swung upward, the sides flew open, andout stumbled Specs. Himself, he had unloosed the holding bar and openedthe doors.
"I'm all right!" he gagged. "Not burned! Get the car out quick! Leaveme alone! I'll be O. K. in a minute, I tell you!" He staggered over toa plot of grass.
While Specs lay flung on the ground, blinking his smoke-reddened eyesand breathing heavily, the other three wheeled the car into the openjust as the hose cart, carrying S. S. and Jump and a crew of fourothers, drew up at the hydrant.
"Prissler ran down the street and yelled 'Fire!' at the top of hisvoice," explained S. S. "That's how these men happened to know about itand run to the fire house. He--There he comes now, with another bunchhe's roused."
Fortunately, except for a little scorched paint, the car was undamaged.As for the fire itself, within ten minutes the volunteer workersgathered by bell and telephone and little Prissler's Paul Revere racethrough the village had the flames changing into a welter of thick,white smoke. The barn had suffered, but it was not beyond repair.
"I got in all right," Specs explained to the boys, "and I had a wethandkerchief tied over my face, and I crawled along the floor as ifI was looking for a needle, and I generally acted the way a firemanought to act. I'd been all right, too, if I hadn't bumped my elbow andthen stuck my head up to see what did it. I must have swallowed somesmoke or something, because I had to lie quiet till I could get enoughstrength back to finish the job. That was when I heard you calling tome."
"But I thought you didn't care about saving Sheffield's car," teasedRoundy, who had come back from his bell ringing.
"I don't!" Specs flared indignantly. "But if I hadn't tried to help,I'd have been breaking about half the Scout laws. Just the same," headded a little viciously, "I'm going to tell Royal Sheffield that Iwish it had been somebody else's car."
At this characteristic fling, the Black Eagles rolled merrily on thegrass, winding up in an informal pyramid, of which Specs was the bottomlayer.
"Look here!" said Bunny, suddenly piling off. "We had better find outabout that later train."
It was Nap, arriving on the scene from his telephoning, who capped thisremark.
"I called up the station," he said. "That's what kept me. The team wasgone. The second train--the one we thought we were going on--was takenoff this week. There isn't another on the schedule that will get us toBelden in time for the baseball game!"
Boy Scouts of Lakeville High Page 17