CHAPTER THIRTEEN

An Unexpected Find

With relief, he heard Quiz’s voice. “Watch your step! There’s a big hole over here.”

Sandy advanced cautiously to the rim of a crater hidden in the high brush. “Good night!” he said anxiously, as Quiz’s head poked into view. “This is your unlucky day. Did you hurt yourself?”

“I think I sprained my ankle.” The other boy held up his hand. “Give me a lift, will you?”

Jerry came up and the two of them dragged poor Quiz out of the hole.

“Now, how do you suppose that got here?” Sandy said.

Quiz shrugged. “Looks like a meteorite crater. Anyway, it really wasn’t such bad luck my falling into it. It’s the perfect place for us to wait out the fire.”

“How do you mean?” Jerry demanded.

“We build our fire line right around the circumference. Clear a strip about two feet wide out from the edge and start a backfire. It’s deep enough so that even if the whole hill goes up, we’ll be protected from the heat.”

“That’s a great idea, Quiz!” Sandy exclaimed, pounding him on the back. “You wait here while Jerry and I go down and bring up some of those shovels and stuff.”

Leaving Quiz to nurse his injured ankle, the other two boys hot-footed it down the slope to the mound of equipment the fire fighters had left behind. Sandy gathered up a shovel and two picks. “Grab a couple of those Pulaski hoes,” he told Jerry. Tears streamed out of his eyes from the smoke, and Jerry was seized with a coughing spell that almost choked him. The heat was unbearable as the fire closed in on the hill.

Staggering up the slope again with their load, they dumped the tools at the edge of the crater. For a few minutes, they were too breathless to work.

“I’ve never been so pooped in my life,” Jerry gasped. “Even after four quarters of football.”

“Lack of oxygen,” Quiz theorized. “The fire steals it out of the air.”

Sandy remembered a dreadful story he had heard about a dozen men who had taken shelter in a cave in the midst of a forest fire. The fire hadn’t touched them, but they had all died nevertheless. The fire had exhausted all the oxygen in the cave in the same way that a candle will when it burns under a glass bell in a laboratory experiment. He was glad that this was an open pit high on the side of a hill.

“We had better get started,” he said. “Quiz has a bad leg, Jerry, so you and I will do the heavy work. Quiz do you think you can follow us up with a hoe?”

“Sure thing,” Quiz said promptly. “I think the old ankle will hold up.”

They worked in a frenzy, fear and desperation lending them strength and endurance that Sandy had never realized they had. Only minutes before, he had felt he was too weary to lift an ax, much less swing one in such tireless fashion. In less than twenty minutes, they had cleared a broad ribbon around the rim of the crater.

The hill was ringed in flames now. Below them the fire swept through the grass from the wood line and started up the slope. The sparse growth on the crest was ablaze, and on either side a dozen little spot fires, ignited by flying embers, spread and merged.

Sandy jumped down into the loose sand and gravel of the crater. “C’mon, you guys! Let’s shovel this stuff up all around the edges to form a barricade.”

Grabbing a shovel, he plunged it into the sand. There was a dull _clank_ of metal jarring against metal, about two inches below the surface.

“Wow!” he exclaimed, feeling the impact vibrate through the handle into his hands. “What did I hit?”

“Maybe a chest of pirate gold,” Jerry suggested, leaping into the hole after Sandy.

“Bright boy,” Quiz said sarcastically. “Maybe Captain Kidd sailed all the way to Red Lake to bury his booty.”

Sandy and Jerry dropped to their knees and began scooping the loose earth away from the spot with their hands. Quickly they uncovered the edge of what seemed to be a flat sheet of metal. They continued digging until they had uncovered enough of the object for Sandy to get a grip on it. He pulled and tugged, but it was immovable.

“This is only a small piece of whatever it is,” he said finally. “It’s buried pretty deep.”

Quiz, who had come up behind them, was studying the exposed metal with keen interest. “Dig some more,” he told them.

As the boys pawed away at the earth like dogs, the strange object began to assume form—a vaguely familiar form, Sandy thought. It was coated with a heavy, dull green paint.

“Oh, good night!” Quiz whispered suddenly. “You know what that looks like?”

At that instant the same idea must have struck both Sandy and Jerry, for they stopped digging and looked up with stricken expressions.

“It looks like a fin—a fin on the tail of a bomb!” Sandy said tremulously.

“It couldn’t be!” Jerry’s voice cracked. “Or could it?”

Quiz adjusted his smashed glasses and peered more closely at the mysterious object. “It could be and it _is_! That’s a fin all right. I saw a newsreel once showing a demolition squad removing a dud bomb from a meadow in England; it had been there ever since World War Two. And it was lying half-buried in a crater just like this one.”

Jerry began to back away as if he were confronting a poisonous snake. “Imagine sitting on an A-bomb, fellows! We gotta do something!”

Sandy looked around grimly at the flames converging on them. “Right now we’re in a lot more danger from that fire than we are from any bomb. Come on, Jerry, let’s get busy with the shovels. Quiz, you start lighting the backfires. I picked up a signal flare down below along with these tools. It’s over by the hoes. You should be able to ignite this dry grass easily with that.”

With the backfires blazing strongly around the parapet of earth that Sandy and Jerry had erected along the rim of the pit, the boys arranged themselves in a prone position in the center of the pit. Its sides shielded them from the direct blast of the flames, and the earth they were lying on was cool and comforting. As an added precaution against flying embers, they covered themselves from foot to neck with sand.

“Now I know how a mole feels,” Sandy said.

“I wish I were a mole,” Jerry answered. “I wouldn’t stop burrowing until I reached China.”

Quiz heaved a handful of sand at a burning brand that had dropped a few feet away. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. We’re as snug and safe here as three bugs in a rug.”

“Four bugs in a rug,” Jerry amended gravely. “You forgot the bomb. For all we know that baby might be all set to blow this very minute.”

“Don’t be silly,” Quiz scoffed.

“It’s not so silly,” Jerry defended his position. “You heard what General Steele said. Anything is possible. Even he couldn’t predict what might happen.”

“Gee, I wonder what Uncle Russ is doing right now. He’s probably wondering how he’s going to break the news to our folks,” Sandy said.

“You think Prince got to him with that note?” Jerry wanted to know.

Sandy shrugged. “Even if he did, Uncle Russ must think we’re fried to a crisp by now.”

Quiz gazed affectionately at the exposed tip of the bomb’s fin. “We might have been too, if it hadn’t been for this lovely hole. We never could have dug it ourselves.”

Sandy raised his head and sniffed. “I wonder how the fire is coming? Doesn’t it sound as if it’s letting up a little?”

“The smoke’s not so thick,” Quiz admitted. “Want to take a look?”

“I’ll go.” Sandy sat up, dumping the dirt off himself. “You fellows stay in your cocoons.” Slowly he got to his feet and looked around.

On all sides of the crater, the ground was black and smoking and littered with glowing embers. But only in a few places were there still tongues of flame licking up. The hill had been burned clean, but the danger was over. Sandy felt his knees go wobbly with relief. The forest was still blazing fiercely all around them, but they were safe now.

“I think we’ve made it, fellows,” he said. “All we’ve got to do now is wait for somebody to come and rescue us.”

For the next half hour, the boys watched the fire spreading through the forest to the east. Several times Sandy ventured out of the pit, but the burned ground seared his feet even through his thick-soled boots.

“How long do you think it’ll be before they find us?” Jerry asked impatiently.

“I have no idea.” A new thought struck Sandy. “You know, maybe they don’t even know we’re missing. There must be so much confusion back at headquarters, that Uncle Russ probably hasn’t had time to give us a thought. He may think we’re somewhere along the road working with one of the crews.”

“Do you think they’ll be able to stop her at the road?” Jerry said.

“Oh, they’ll bottle her up between the two big firebreaks,” Quiz said. “But it’s still going to be a major catastrophe. All that beautiful timber going up in smoke—enough wood to build an entire city, Macauley says.”

“Well, just so _we_ didn’t go up in smoke,” Jerry said. “Along with our friend back there.... Doesn’t it give you the cold shivers to think that you’re sitting on top of an atomic bomb?”

“Not in the least,” Quiz denied. “As a matter of fact, I’d like to dig the thing out and see what it looks like. We can’t tell anything about it from that little tip of the fin.”

Jerry stared at Quiz as if he were crazy. “You’ll dig alone, friend. And wait until I’m at least a thousand miles away.”

Quiz shook his head despairingly. “Jerry, where’s your scientific curiosity?”

“You know what curiosity did?” Jerry said.

Sandy motioned for them to be quiet. “Listen; hear anything?”

The throb of engines came to them through the smoky overcast.

“Sounds like a chopper,” Jerry said.

Soon it was directly overhead and building up in volume. Unexpectedly a big helicopter broke out of the smoke less than fifty feet above them. The boys leaped up and down, waving their arms and shouting. Even Quiz hopped about on his one good leg. The figures in the glass-enclosed cockpit were clearly visible.

“There’s Uncle Russ!” Sandy yelled.

The great rotor blades churned the air like the wings of a giant bird as the ship braked its descent about twenty-five feet above the pit and hung motionless in air.

“They’re not going to land, are they?” Jerry looked concerned. “It will squat right on top of us.”

In answer to his question, a hatch in the underside of the plane slid open and a Jacob’s ladder was let down slowly. A man’s voice blasted out of the ’copter’s special loud-speaker system:

“This is Russ Steele.... Are you all okay?... Just nod your heads, I can’t hear you.” The boys nodded vigorously. “Good! Think you can all make it up the ladder?... Still too hot down there to try a landing.” Sandy and Jerry nodded, then pointed to Quiz’s ankle with elaborate gestures. “Quiz can’t make the climb?... Well, Quiz, do you think you can hold on while we reel you in?” Quiz nodded his head affirmatively. “Fine. Sandy and Jerry, you two come on up first.”

The ladder was dangling right before their noses now. Sandy took a long breath and put his left foot on the first wooden rung, grasping the rope sides firmly. “Here I go,” he said.

And go he did! Without warning, a gust of wind caught the ’copter and lifted it ten feet in the air. Sandy, clinging for his life to the ladder, went sailing up and out in a wide arc. Back and forth he swung like an acrobat on a high trapeze. Below him the ground swirled sickeningly and he squeezed his eyes tight shut. Uncle Russ’s voice rang in his ears.

“_Hold tight! You’ll be all right._”

He swung and spun in diminishing circles until finally the ladder was still. Then he began to climb as fast as he dared, praying that the wind wouldn’t play any more tricks on him. At last, strong arms reached down to pull him through the hatch into the plane, and he collapsed on the floor, temporarily speechless. The most he could manage was a weak smile of assurance for his uncle.

Russ Steele had aged ten years since Sandy had seen him earlier that afternoon. He put both hands on Sandy’s shoulders and squeezed so hard the boy winced. “Thank God you’re safe,” he said gratefully. “When I read that note—” His voice choked. “Prince was nagging at me for over an hour before I spotted that paper in his collar. Look, we’ll talk about it later. I’ve got to get those other boys up here.”

Within a few minutes, Sandy had recovered sufficiently to crawl over to the hatch and watch Jerry make the precarious ascent. This time the ’copter behaved itself, but Jerry had a great deal of difficulty mastering the Jacob’s ladder. Every time he raised a foot and placed it on another rung, foot and ladder would swing out and up and Jerry would find himself hanging parallel to the ground. Russ Steele yelled to him through the loud-speaker.

“Jerry, use your arms! Lift with your arms and push with your feet at the same time. They’ve got to work together.”

“Lucky thing I’ve been on those ladders before,” Sandy observed sympathetically. “Poor Jerry.”

But Jerry was eventually pulled aboard without any accident and lay puffing and wheezing on the floorboards like a beached whale.

Quiz had the easiest ascent of all, standing on the bottom rung of the ladder while it was hauled up to the plane.

Then the ’copter’s engines roared and it went leaping into the sky like a big grasshopper.