The Circus Boys Across the Continent Part 40

All at once he understood what had happened. He staggered to his feet holding to a man standing beside him.

"Why don't you do something?" cried Phil. "Don't you know there are people in that car?"

"It's burning up. n.o.body dares get in till the wreckers can get here and smash in the side of the car," was the answer.

"What?" fairly screamed Phil Forrest. "n.o.body dares go in that car? Somebody does dare!"

"Come back, come back, Phil! You can't do anything," shouted a fellow performer.

But the lad did not even hear him. He was leaping, falling and rolling down the bank, regardless of the danger that he was approaching, for the flames already showed through a broken spot in the roof of the car, which was lying half on its side at the foot of the embankment.

Without an instant's hesitation Phil, as he came up alongside, raised a foot, smashing out the remaining pieces of gla.s.s in a window. Then he plunged in head first.

The spectators groaned.

"Dimples! Dimples!" he shouted. "Are you alive?"

"Yes, here. Be quick! I'm pinned down!"

Phil rushed to her a.s.sistance. Her legs were pinioned beneath a heavy timber. Phil attacked it desperately, tugging and grunting, the perspiration rolling down his face, for the heat in there was now almost more than he could bear.

With a mighty effort he wrenched the timber from the prostrate woman, then quickly gathered her up in his arms.

"I knew you'd come, Phil, if you were alive," she breathed, her head resting on his shoulder.

"Do you know where Teddy is?" he asked, plunging through the blinding smoke to the window where voices already were calling to him.

"At the other end--I think," she choked.

The lad pa.s.sed her out to waiting arms.

"Come out! Come out of that!" bellowed the stentorian voice of Mr. Sparling. But Phil had turned back.

"Teddy!" he called, the words choked back into his throat by the suffocating smoke.

"Wow! Get me out of here. I'm--I'm," then the lad went off into a violent fit of coughing.

By this time two others, braver than the rest, had climbed in through the window.

"Where are they all?" called a voice.

"I don't know. You'll have to hunt for them. I'm after you, Teddy.

Are you held down by something, too?"

"The whole car's on me, and I'm burning up."

Phil, guided by the boy's voice, groped his way along and soon found his hands gripped by those of his little companion.

"Where are you fast?"

"My feet!"

It proved an easy matter to liberate Teddy and drag him to the window, where Phil dumped him out.

Mr. Sparling had climbed in by this time, and the wrecking crew were thundering at the roof to let the smoke and flames out, while others had crawled in with their fire extinguishers.

There were now quite a number of brave men in the car all working with desperate haste to rescue the imprisoned circus people.

"All out!" bellowed the foreman of the wrecking crew. "The roof will be down in a minute!"

"All out!" roared Mr. Sparling, himself making a dash for a window.

Others piled out with a rush, the flames gaining very rapid headway now.

"Phil! Phil! Where's Forrest?" called Mr. Sparling.

"He isn't here. Maybe--"

"Then he's in that car. He'll be burned alive! No one can live five minutes in there now!"

The fire department had arrived on the scene, and the men were running two lines of hose over the tracks.

"Phil in there?"

It was a howl--a startled howl rather than a spoken question.

The voice belonged to Teddy Tucker.

Teddy rushed through the crowd, pushing obstructors aside, and hurled himself through the window into the burning car.

He looked more like a big, round ball than anything else.

No sooner had Tucker landed fairly inside than he uttered a yell.

"Phil!"

There was no answer.

"Where--"

Teddy went down like a flash, bowled over by a heavy stream of water from the firemen's hose.

As it chanced he fell p.r.o.ne across a heap of some sort, choking and growling with rage at what had befallen him.

"Phil!"

"Yes," answered a voice from the heap.

"I've got him!" howled Teddy, springing up and dragging the half-dazed Phil Forrest to the window. There both boys were hauled out, Teddy and Phil collapsing on the embankment from the smoke that they had inhaled.

"Phil! Teddy!" begged Mr. Sparling, throwing himself beside them.