Chapter 4

For Bruce was the man who, more than all the others put together, was responsible for keeping Safety First work out of the mills in his line of business. Hundreds of men were killed and thousands injured every year in the great string of mills of which Bruce's was the head. Over and over it had been pointed out to him that the same Safety First work which had saved thousands of lives in other lines would save them in his line as well. But he was stubborn, iron-willed.

"You're wasting your time," was all he would say. "No theories or new-fangled notions in _my_ mills."

Because Bruce said this, all the other mills hung back, too. There were reasons. They knew Bruce.

All this Bob knew from talks he had had with his father about the risks of working in Bruce's mills. He understood it better, now that he was face to face with Bruce himself.

All too soon, to the twins' way of thinking, the automobile drew up in front of Bruce's big stone house. The mill owner wasted no words. Jumping out, he waved his hand to the three, said to Jennings, "Take them wherever they want to go," and hurried up the walk.

The eager face pressed against the big bay window disappeared, the front door flew open, and a sweet little fair-haired girl threw herself into Bruce's outstretched arms. "Daddy! What made you so late? Here I've been waiting and waiting--"

"Bonnie!" That was all the twins heard as the big automobile bore them away toward home. But the way he said it, and the way he caught his little daughter to his big, broad chest, told Bob and Betty all they needed to know about the soft spot in the millionaire's heart.

What did his great house and his mills and all his money amount to, after all? He would gladly have thrown them all aside rather than have the slightest harm come to his Bonnie; for her mother had died when Bonnie was only a baby, and the little girl was all Bruce had left in the world.

ADVENTURE NUMBER ELEVEN

"JUST FOR FUN"

The twins missed Chance Carter during the next few weeks. The boy had been a regular nuisance in some ways, for he was always getting into scrapes; but he was a clever lad and had a way of making up games that nobody else seemed able to think of.

"It does seem lonesome without Chance," Bob told Sure Pop when the broken leg had kept their friend tied up indoors for a week or more. "And yet we don't get into half as much trouble when he isn't round."

Sure Pop looked wise. "Perhaps it's because Chance hasn't learned that he must play according to the rules," he said. "The fellow who is always taking chances isn't playing up to the rules of the game."

"Anyhow," said Betty, "Chance has had his lesson now. By the time he's able to run around again, he will be ready to quit taking chances."

Sure Pop changed the subject, though a shrewd twinkle seemed to say that it would take more than one lesson to teach Chance how to play life's game according to the rules. "How'd you like to take a trip with me today?"

"Fine!" exclaimed Bob and Betty. "Where?"

"To a kind of moving picture show," answered Colonel Sure Pop. "Let's start right away, then. And be sure you wear your Safety First buttons."

The twins couldn't help smiling at the idea of going anywhere without their magic buttons. They boarded the crowded street car with Sure Pop and stood beside the motorman all the way to the railroad yards. It seemed as if somebody tried to get run over every block or two, and the way people crossed the crowded streets in the middle of blocks was enough to turn a motorman's hair gray.

"How'd you like to be the motorman, Bob?"

"Well, I tell _you_, Sure Pop, I don't believe it's as much fun as it looks from the outside. If fellows like Chance and George would ride beside the motorman for just one day, seeing what he has to see right along, they'd be Safety workers forever after. Look at that, now! Those chaps have no business to cross in the middle of the block."

"Nobody has," agreed Sure Pop, with a keen glance at Bob. The boy flushed as he remembered what he himself had been doing when he first felt the warning touch of the Safety Scout's hand.

He and Betty noticed, too, how carefully Sure Pop looked all around him before leaving the car, and they did likewise. Two short blocks more and they were in sight of the railroad roundhouse. The Safety Scout stuck his head inside the great doorway and peered around at the smoking engines that impatiently awaited their turn. "There she is!" he exclaimed. "There's old Seven-Double-Seven!" And he waved his hand at the engineer up in the cab.

The three climbed into the engine cab, where the fireman stood waiting with his eye on the steam gauge. From the way the engineer shook hands with Sure Pop, the twins decided they must be old friends.

"Got my orders?" asked the engineer. He ripped open the envelope Sure Pop handed him, glanced at the message, nodded to the fireman, and gently pulled open the throttle. The big, powerful engine answered his touch like a race horse. With a warning clang of the bell, they slipped down the shining track, through the crowded yards, and toward the city limits.

"Bob, what are you looking for?" asked Sure Pop.

Bob went on looking in all the corners of the cab as if greatly puzzled. "Looking for the moving picture machine," he said with a grin. "I thought I heard you promise us a moving picture show."

"You just wait. Be ready to rub your magic buttons when I say the word, both of you, and you'll see some moving pictures you'll never forget--pictures of what _might_ happen to boys and girls like yourselves. The pity of it is, it does happen, every day of the year."

Sure Pop paused to call their attention to some little blurry patches of blue scattered along the track. "Wild flowers," he said. "Pretty things, aren't they? If we weren't going so fast, we'd stop and get some."

The engineer scowled. "Pretty? They don't look pretty to me any more. Look there, now!"

The brakes jarred as he spoke, and the shriek of the whistle scattered a group ahead. Several young couples, going home from town by way of the railroad track, had stopped to gather wild flowers. One couple were walking hand in hand over the railroad bridge, deaf at first to whistle and bell and everything else. Suddenly they heard, looked up, and turned first one way and then another, uncertain whether to jump off the bridge or stand their ground.

"Is it any wonder that I don't like the flower season?" grunted the engineer in disgust. "It's the worst time of all, seems to me. Now you'd think those young fellows and girls were old enough and would have sense enough to keep off the railroad's right of way, wouldn't you? But look at 'em!"

He mopped his forehead and glared ahead at the frightened couple, holding the panting engine at a standstill till they could scramble off the bridge.

"They act as if we had nothing to do but just watch out for 'em," he went on, getting under way again. "They got off scot-free this time, but imagine what old Seven-Double-Seven would have done to 'em if this had been my regular run! Forty miles an hour on schedule--and where would they be now?

"It's the same old story, day after day--boys riding bicycles down the tracks, when the road's ten times smoother and a million times as safe! Boys playing on the turntables and getting crippled for life, one by one!

"They'll run like mad to get across the track ahead of a fast train--and then stand and watch it go through! I ought to know--I did it myself when I was a boy, but little I knew then of the way it wrecks an engineer's nerves!

"They flip the cars and try to imitate the brakemen without the least idea of how many thousands of brakemen have lost their lives just that way. They crawl under cars, instead of waiting or going around. Why, Colonel, the railroads kill thousands and thousands of people every year--you know the figures--dozens every day, week in and week out. And somebody's badly hurt on the railroads every three minutes or less--_and a third of them are boys and girls and little children_! That's what I can't stand--the little folks getting hurt and getting killed, when just a bit of common sense would save them! Oh, if their fathers and mothers had any idea--"

The big engineer choked up for a moment. "Even on the trains," he added, "when they're safe inside the cars, they get hurt. I'm not the only one that worries on my run--ask the conductor. He'll tell you how they run up and down the aisle, till a sudden jar of the brakes throws 'em against a seat iron or into the other passengers. They get out into the vestibules, which is against the rules, and when the train takes a sudden curve they get smashed up."

Three minutes later he slowed down for the twins to watch the fast mail thunder past. It was near a village crossing, and a little group of boys stood waiting. As No. 777 came to a stop, the twins saw that most of the boys had stones in their hands.

On came the fast mail, tearing past the little village as if it were not even on the map. The mail cars--the smoker--the long rows of glass windows, a head beside each--

Smash! The flying splinters of glass told of one stone that had found its mark. The boys ran like scared cats around the corner into a lumber yard.

"Little cowards!" The fireman glared angrily after them. "They may have killed somebody on that train--_they_ don't know!"

"Rub your buttons!" whispered Sure Pop, whose eyes were still fixed on the fast mail, now disappearing in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Bob and Betty rubbed. At their first touch of the magic buttons the disappearing train took on a queer, unreal look, like a film at the "movies."

They seemed to be inside one of the cars. They seemed to be watching a sweet-faced old lady--somebody's grandmother--snowy haired, kind, gentle, not used to traveling, as even the twins could see. She kept looking first at the time-table and then at an old key-winding silver watch she wore on a quaint little chain around her neck.

Her lips were moving, smiling. "Only two stops more," she seemed to be saying, "and then I shall see little Jim." She took a kodak picture out of her handbag and looked at it long and lovingly. She glanced out of the window and saw a group of boys standing by the village crossing "to watch the fast mail go through." She liked boys. She smiled at them--she did not see the stones in their hands.

Smash! The other passengers sprang to their feet as one of the stones, thrown at random, shivered the car window into bits and struck the kind old face, full between the eyes. A quick, startled cry--a pitiful fumbling of kind old hands before shattered spectacles and eyes suddenly blinded--and the moving picture seemed to fade away. The twins were left with the sickening fear that perhaps little Jim's grandmother might never see him after all.

"Oh! oh!" gasped Betty, rubbing her eyes. "How terrible!" Bob caught Sure Pop by the arm.

"Did we imagine it, Sure Pop--or was it true?"

"Too true," said Sure Pop, sadly. "It happens almost every day somewhere--where boys throw stones at the cars 'just for fun'!"

ADVENTURE NUMBER TWELVE

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

"And just to think," said Bob, as the three sat on the home steps talking over their exciting trip on old No. 777, "just to think of how many boys and girls are killed on the railroad tracks every day!"

"Every day," echoed the little Safety Scout, "and all over the world. Go into any village graveyard along any railroad, and you'll find the grave of some boy or girl who has been killed trespassing on the railroad tracks. No way to save them, I'm afraid, till folks wake up to the fact that it's not so much the tramps who are being killed this way--it's the children!"

"It's just awful," said Betty, puckering up her brow in a thoughtful scowl. "I think we ought to do something about it."

"What, for instance?" Sure Pop was watching her sharply.

"Well, something to put a stop to it. Surely we could find _some_ way of teaching the boys and girls how to play safely; and then when they grew up they'd be in the habit of _thinking_ Safety. Then they'd teach _their_ boys and girls--and all this awful killing and crippling, or most of it, would be ended."

"The trouble is," said Bob, "in going at the thing in too much of a hit-or-miss style. We could do some good by talking to the few boys and girls we could reach, but not enough. Why can't we organize?"

Sure Pop's eager face lighted up, overjoyed at the turn Bob's thoughts were taking. "You can," he said quietly.

"Why, sure!" went on Bob, getting more and more excited as the idea took hold. "Let's get busy and organize an army of Safety Scouts right here. We've already got the biggest thing in the Safety Scout Law at work--don't you see?--our 'One Boost for Safety' every day. We can get some more Safety Scout buttons made, and as fast as a boy earns his--"

"--Or a girl earns hers!"--interrupted Betty, so seriously that Bob couldn't help smiling.

"Yes, of course--girls too--why, as fast as boys and girls earn the right to wear Safety Scout buttons, we can form them into patrols. It wouldn't be long before we could have several troops hard at it. I tell you, Sure Pop, if we go at it that way we can do big things for Safety just as sure as you're a foot high!"

Sure Pop gave Betty a droll little wink. "It's a go, then," he said cheerfully. "Well, where are you going to begin?"

Bob looked up at him with a sudden idea shining in his eyes. "Why not begin by organizing in patrols and then in troops, just about like the Boy Scouts? First, we can get a few of our friends interested, and let each one of them get eleven others interested--that will make a patrol of twelve, commanded by the one who got them together."

"Spoken like a Scout and a gentleman!" cried the little Colonel, giving him a sounding thump on the shoulder. "Go on, Bob--what next?"

"Well, just as fast as we get four new patrols, we can form them into a troop, with a Scout Master for their leader."

"Good," said Sure Pop. "It will take some lively work to pick your Scout Masters and get them trained in time, but the difference in their efficiency will be worth your while."

"I suppose," said Betty, "we'll have to choose only boys and girls who have good records for Safety?"

Bob looked doubtful. "What do you think about that, Sure Pop?"

"I think it would be a mistake, Bob. You'll find too few who have even learned to think Safety. A better plan will be to take in those who seem most in earnest over the idea, especially those who have been taught a hard lesson through accidents which care would have avoided."

"Go on, please. Tell us more--how would you work out the details?"

"Bob, I would--but I believe I've told you enough. You and Betty go ahead in your own way and work out the details yourselves. Let me see you get your Safety Scouts together, if you really do mean business, and I'll show you about the work that's already been done among the factory hands and mill-workers of America.

"Let me tell you this much, though: you'll find, when you get your Safety Scouts of America organized, that the good work will go ahead by leaps and bounds. All this talk about 'efficiency' is really part of the same movement, though very few realize it; it's nothing more or less than cutting out guess work and waste--and what else, after all, is our Safety work?"

"That's so. It really is all working in the same direction, isn't it?" agreed Bob. "Chance Carter's oldest brother is studying to be an efficiency engineer--perhaps he can give us some ideas."

"Then--you really do mean to get busy and organize the Safety Scouts of America?"

"Mean it!" Bob and Betty fairly shouted the words in their eagerness to get to work. And as Sure Pop said good night to them, there was a joyous light in his eye which showed his plan was working out just as he had thought it would.

He smiled a satisfied smile as the door closed on the excited Dalton twins. "And now," said Colonel Sure Pop to himself, "_now_, we're getting down to business!"

_Enlist now! We fight to save life, not to take it._ --SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER THIRTEEN

DALTON PATROL

The next few weeks were busy ones for Bob and Betty Dalton. The plan was a big one--the Safety Scouts of America. Growing out of an idea planted by Colonel Sure Pop, it sprouted and grew surprisingly fast. Already the news was spreading like wildfire among the boys and girls all over the city.

Joe Schmidt was out again, his head as good as ever. George Gibson, always brim full of energy and enthusiasm, had set his heart on becoming a Safety Scout Master and heading a troop of his own. Even Chance Carter, hobbling about on crutches, had caught the fever of Safety Scouting and was making all sorts of plans as to what he would do when his broken leg got well.

Chance really had changed, somehow. The twins supposed it was all due to his accident, but the real reason was Colonel Sure Pop. Chance seemed almost magnetized by the little Colonel and never lost a chance to be near him.

"Honestly now, Colonel," he owned up to Sure Pop one day, "I'd read so many stories about reckless heroes and all that, I got in the habit of thinking I had to be reckless. Story books seem to make out that it's a brave thing to risk your life--and wasn't that exactly what Bob did when he found that live wire?"

Sure Pop laid an understanding hand on Chance's shoulder.

"Listen, Chance! You've caught only half the point, that's your main trouble. It _is_ a manly thing to take a risk--_when it's necessary_. When somebody's life is in danger, it's the manliest thing on earth to take a risk for the sake of saving it. That's why Bob's act in patrolling the live wire earned him a Safety Scout button--the lives of those smaller boys were in danger, to say nothing of anybody else who might blunder across the wire just then--that's where the difference comes in."

"That's so. I never thought of it in just that way."

"I know you haven't. When you stop to think it over, you see it's a fellow's plain duty to take a chance when it's necessary, but it's downright foolish to do it on a dare. One thing about Bob's live-wire adventure I don't believe even he realizes," added Sure Pop. "It was that hurry-up patrol of small boys that he threw out around the live wire which really gave him the idea of how to organize the Safety Scouts of America. I knew the idea would strike him and Betty sooner or later."

Chance looked admiringly at the little Colonel. What a wise Scout he was, sure enough, as keen and clever at reading signs of the trail as any Indian fighter that ever stepped in deerskin!

The boy looked longingly after the Safety Scout Patrol, which was just starting off on an "observation hike," as Bob called it. Part of the training Bob had laid out for his men was an hour's brisk walk, after which each Safety Scout wrote out a list of the unsafe things he had noticed while "on the trail."

"There's one thing that stumps me, though," said Chance. "How did Bob _know_ that was a live wire?"

"He didn't. He simply had sense enough to treat _all_ fallen wires as if they _were_ alive. See? Better safe than sorry. Just the same in turning on an electric light: it _may_ not harm you to touch an iron bedstead with one hand while you turn the light on with the other--but it's taking a chance. Same's the fellow who turns an electric bulb on or off while standing in a bathtub: he _may_ go on with his bath in safety--and then again he may drop lifeless in the water.

"It's a good deal like the gun that isn't loaded, Chauncey. There _was_ a lad, you know, who found a gun was dangerous without lock, stock, or barrel--his father whipped him with the ramrod! A real Scout knows how to take care of himself--and of others. And that's especially true of Safety Scouts."

"Well, Colonel," said Chance, reaching for his crutches and rising painfully to his feet, "I'm _for_ it! Perhaps if I make good, the fellows will quit calling me Chance and call me either Chauncey or Carter, I don't care which--but Chance makes me sick!"

"Here's _to_ you, Carter!" said Sure Pop, with a hearty handshake. Again came that smile of satisfaction as he watched the boy hobble off on a slow "observation hike" of his own. In Carter's mind, too, the big idea was taking root.

Ten days later, Colonel Sure Pop was reviewing Dalton Patrol.

"Safety Scouts," he said, saluting the even ranks drawn up before him, "your Colonel is proud of the work you're doing. These 'observation hikes,' as your Scout Master calls them, show better than anything else how much more alert you are to danger signs than you were a month ago.

"Now, I've been sizing up these risks as covered by your patrol reports. They seem to be of three kinds--home, street, and railroad risks.

"Nobody can study these reports without seeing that our work is plainly cut out for us for the next few months. Charity and every other good work begin at home--though they end there only with the weak-minded! So our work in Safety patrolling will naturally begin in our homes and with ourselves, and will begin with the risks which these reports show to be most common. Let me read you a few of the common risks reported by the Scouts of this patrol:

Matches: left on floor where they may be stepped on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the last spark is out.

Celluloid things: brushes and combs handled near the gas jet, where they may burst into flame.

Kerosene: poured on the fire to make it burn faster (three bad cases of burns reported from this cause alone).

Gasoline: left near a flame, or anywhere except clear outside the house.

Gas: lighting oven of gas stove without first opening oven door; leaving gas jet burning near window, where breeze may blow curtains across (five fires started that way during last month).

Electric wires: loose wires crossing, which often cause fires.

Bathers: venturing too far out in deep water. In nearly every case, it is the rescuer who drowns. Never take a chance that may cost another's life.

Safety pins: left open within baby's reach. You all know what happened to Mrs. Fuller's baby girl two weeks ago, all through an open safety pin.

Hot water and grease: left standing where children may get into them.

Dogs: left unmuzzled and running loose.

"These are only a few of the common dangers shown in your scouting reports. So far, our work has been hunting out these risks and listing them. From now on, we'll fall to with a will and set them right as fast as we can, in our own homes first and next among our neighbors.

"Just one word of caution before we take up this new patrol duty. Let's be careful how we go about setting these things right. Remember, we can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so let's not give people the idea we are criticizing them--just suggesting.