Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 28

"Bet you!" declared Tom. "Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamed place may be in flames. Must warn folks and get out the fire guard."

"But the rain will put out the fire, Tom," said Nan, who could not understand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.

"Look there!" yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as she sat behind him on the wagon tongue.

With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart of the hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given free ingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flames directly up the tall chimney the tree made.

The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain as though they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, and second by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain was almost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now broken cover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.

Tom hastened his team toward the main road that pa.s.sed through the tamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction, after pa.s.sing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadway came out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad.

Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat down the fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephone line there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the news of the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along the railroad line.

But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as the horses neared the road.

"Tom! For goodness' sake!" she gasped.

"What's the matter now?" her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for his burns were painful.

"Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?"

"What d'you mean?" asked Tom, aghast.

"That poor cripple! They can't get away, he and his grandmother. Perhaps Toby hasn't come home yet."

"And the wind's that way," Tom interrupted.

It was indeed. The storm had come up from the west and the wind was still blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew from the top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carried toward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brand fell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust.

Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the few other dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. As they looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began to send long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark.

The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire would secure great headway.

"Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow," admitted Tom. "I wonder if he's got a good wide fire strip ploughed?"

"Oh! I know what you mean," Nan cried. "You mean all around the edge of his farm where it meets the woods?"

"Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily cross ploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire will jump half a mile!"

"Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?"

"Yes, I do," said her cousin, gloomily. "Tobe's in a bad place. You don't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'm right troubled by old Tobe's case."

"But there's no danger for Pine Camp, is there?" asked the girl, eagerly.

"Plenty of folks there to make a fire-guard. Besides, the wind's not that way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around so soon, neither. I, don't, know"

"The folks at home ought to know about it," Nan interrupted.

"They'll know it, come dark," Tom said briefly. "They'll be looking for you and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree will look like a lighthouse for miles 'n' miles!"

"I suppose it will," agreed Nan. "But I do want to get home, Tom."

"Maybe the storm's not over," said her cousin, c.o.c.king an eye towards the clouded heavens. "If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due about this time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the fire down, put it out entirely, maybe. But we can't tell."

Nan sighed and patted his shoulder. "I know it's our duty to go to the island, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on."

Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headed away from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not have thought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only people likely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousins might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the wood-road.

They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Over a quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers, shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the interstices as the horses put down their heavy feet.

"An awful lot of water fell," Tom said soberly.

"Goodness! The swamp is full," agreed Nan.

"We may have some trouble in reaching Toby's place," the boy added. "But maybe--"

He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down to a willing stop. "Hark-a-that!" whispered Tom.

"Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat," said Nan, with a vivid remembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told to any member of the family.

"It's somebody shouting, all right," observed Tom. "Up ahead a way.

Gid-ap!"

He hurried the horses on, and they slopped through the water which, in places, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted the logs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely.

Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood up and sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:

"We're coming! Hold on!

"Don't know what's the matter with him," he remarked, dropping down beside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. "S'pose he's got into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe."

"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud."

"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Never heard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in some slough."

They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great tree had been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmire beside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touched the road line and Tom could get his team around them.

Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw him immediately. He was in the middle of the shaking mora.s.s waist deep in the mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprooted tree.

"Hickory splits!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tom, stopping the team. "It's old Tobe himself! Did you ever see the like!"

Chapter XXVIII. THE GIRL IN THE HOLLOW TREE

Just why old Toby Vanderwiller was clinging to that branch and did not try to wade ash.o.r.e, neither Nan nor Tom could understand. But one thing was plain: the old lumberman thought himself in danger, and every once in a while he gave out a shout for help. But his voice was growing weak.

"Hey, Tobe!" yelled Tom. "Why don't you wade ash.o.r.e?"