CHAPTER XI.

BABES IN THE WOODS.

“One, two, three! All there!” whooped Jack Durham.

“We’re in great luck, fellows!” Hugh assured them, for truth to tell he had felt fear gripping his heart as with an ice-cold hand.

If they had failed to discover the children where Peter had left them after they could walk no further through the smoky forest, it would have been very much like looking for a needle in a haystack to have tried to find them. Following a trail by eyesight alone over that burned ground must have proved well-nigh impossible, even for practiced scouts.

But here were the children, ready and willing to be saved. Indeed, they were already stretching out their little hands entreatingly toward the boys, as though begging Hugh and his trio of chums not to forsake them.

Hurrying forward, the scouts were quickly on the spot.

They found the reason why Peter had been forced to temporarily leave his charges while he went in search of help. The oldest child could not have been much more than five, the second three, and the youngest less than two.

Later on they learned that Peter had carried the little one pretty much all the way, but when the second child broke down and was unable to walk any further Peter just knew he had to do something different.

“It’s all right, little ones,” said Bud Morgan, with one of his reassuring smiles that made all youngsters like him. “We’ve come to take you to the house of your neighbor, Mrs. Heffner. She’ll keep you till daddy comes.”

“But Peter said we must stay here,” remarked the oldest child, a boy who looked as though later on in life he would be able to hoe his own row much better than, according to common talk, his father was doing.

“Peter sent us out to fetch you,” Hugh explained. “Peter would have come along but we wouldn’t let him, because he was tired out, and burned in a good many places. You’re going to come with us, of course. Jack, you take the little one. Put your arms around his neck, honey, for he wants to carry you. Bud, do the same with the second one. Don and myself will look after this fine manly little chap here; and when you get tired just let us know, for we mean to spell you playing nurse.”

Hugh said this in his kindest tone, and it had always been a notorious fact that children took to the leader of the Wolf Patrol as though they knew instinctively that he was a good friend.

The oldest boy did not hesitate after once looking into Hugh’s face. He immediately put out his little hand confidingly, and allowed the scout master to take it in his. Don offered support on the other side, and thus flanked, what was there to fear further? Let the forest smolder and blaze as it would, with such staunch allies between him and danger he could rest stout of heart and undisturbed.

Nor did the other two show any sign of rebellion when Jack and Bud offered to lift them up in their stout arms. “Any port in a storm” must have appealed to the babes in the woods just then. Besides, these boys looked kind, and they had promised to go straight to where Peter was, Peter in whom the kids seemed to have unbounded confidence.

So they started back.

Hugh and Don led the way, with the little chap between them. If the boy gave any sign of being tired out either of the scouts stood ready to lift him up, “toting” him part of the way.

The forest looked just as gloomy and fearful as before, only none of them seemed to mind it now. They had accomplished their errand, and the suspense that had weighed so heavily on their minds had taken wings and flown away.

“It was a lucky thing all around,” said Hugh as he picked his way along, taking the easiest course possible more on account of those tender little feet than for his own benefit, “that the kids didn’t think of straying off.”

“We would have had a dickens of a time finding them if they had,” agreed Don.

“Shows that someone must have taught them the spirit of obedience,” suggested Jack. “I reckon now these two boys will grow up to make extra fine scouts one of these days.”

“Must have been their mother, then,” declared Bud, “because from all I’ve heard about their dad he’s a pretty poor stick; bad enough while his wife was living, but a heap worse since he was left alone.”

“All but this boy here were too young to know anything about their mother when she left them,” observed Hugh. “So I imagine we’ll have to look somewhere else to see where they’ve been influenced.”

“Now I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you were right there, Hugh,” admitted Don, “and that it was Peter’s work.”

“He struck me as an uncommon sort of a boy,” continued Hugh. “He certainly was faithful to his trust with these kids.”

“What do you suppose will become of them all?” questioned Bud.

“Oh! Mrs. Heffner will be only too glad to look after them until their dad can come after them,” Hugh informed him.

“What a shock the man will get if he makes his way this morning to his home and finds it a heap of ashes,” suggested Jack.

“He’ll think his babies have all perished there,” added Bud. “It’ll serve him right. A shock like that might set him to thinking, and to reform. I can remember that years ago before he took to drink Alec Barger used to be reckoned a fine-looking man, with a future before him. It isn’t too late yet for him to undo the past if only he sets his foot down hard on his failings.”

“I wonder what the damage done by this forest fire has been?” queried Don.

“When they go to count up,” replied Hugh, “there will be a pretty heavy toll to pay in the way of farms ruined and wood burned. Plenty of them may have escaped, something like Mrs. Heffner’s place did, but others went up in smoke.”

“That isn’t the whole story by a good deal,” declared Jack. “It’s been so terribly dry this fall that I reckon there are fires burning in dozens of places all through the East, from the Adirondacks to the Maine coast.”

“If only it would rain,” sighed Don, “what a wonderful amount of good an hour’s soaking would do everywhere.”

“I thought I felt a drop strike me a minute ago!” admitted Bud. “I was half afraid to say anything about it, for fear I’d frighten it away. One thing you can see for yourselves, though, fellows.”

“What’s that?” demanded Don.

“The sun has gone in!” announced Bud, as seriously as though that event might be the most important on the calendar; which to tell the truth was a fact, since the whole country was in danger of burning up.

“That’s a fact!” exclaimed Jack, as he turned an eager look upward. “I noticed it was getting somewhat gloomy, but thought it must come from the smoke. But, Hugh, clouds have come up and covered the sky. Oh! why don’t it start in to sprinkling right away. I’m half choked with the dust that’s in the air.”

“So say we all of us,” added Don, as he started to raise his canteen to his lips and then suddenly paused to add: “Why, what’s the matter with us, boys; if we’ve been wetting _our_ throats every little while, don’t you think these kids would like a drink of fresh water, too?”

“Careless of us, I must say!” muttered Jack, as he stopped, got down on one knee and then hastened to unscrew the cap of his canteen, adding: “Take a drink, little one, a nice cool drink of water. It’ll make you feel better, and when you get to where Peter and Mrs. Heffner are, you will have some bread and milk.”

All of the children drank eagerly, showing how they must have been suffering. Peter, being only a small boy, could not have had the forethought to provide any means of carrying water along with them on their flight, and the forest rills were all dried up from the long-continued drought.

As soon as the little girl was through, she put her chubby arms around Bud’s neck again, and rested her soft cheek against his. It was plain that the scouts had already quite won the confidence of the youngsters. Children, no matter how small, quickly size up those who are their real friends; instinct takes the place of reason with them.

Jack and Bud even began to sing one of their school songs as they ambled along in the wake of the leaders. The obstacles they had met no longer impeded their path, and being young and free from cares it did not take much to start them going.

“This sure is a queer experience for us to have, Hugh,” Don was remarking as he looked around at their strange surroundings, with the many columns of smoke rising from stumps, half-decayed logs and deposits of dead leaves, which, being somewhat damp underneath, had not burned as readily as other batches.

“Well, it counts with a lot of others we’ve passed through in our time,” the other told him. “When you stop to think of it, Don, we’ve been a pretty lucky bunch of scouts to go through with all we have since the troop was first formed.”

“I often have to smile when I think how queer it seems that our fine scout master, Lieutenant Denmead, is nearly always away on some trip whenever these big things are pulled off. This time we’ll have another adventure to tell him, of how we were called by duty up into the burning forest, and what a glorious time we had of it beating the fire away from the widow’s farm buildings and hay-stacks.”

“Yes, and bringing in these tots who were the waifs of the fire,” added Hugh, as he looked fondly down at the sturdy curly-headed chap who was so manly trudging alongside, with not a single murmur, though the way was far from easy for his little feet.

“If we didn’t do a single thing besides this,” Don asserted in a way that told how he meant every word of it, “I’d feel that it was worth our trip up here ten times over. I never ran across such a fine little bunch of kids before. No wonder Mrs. Heffner turned white in the face when she thought of them being left there in charge of only little Peter.”

“Everything is all right now, it looks like,” remarked Jack, who, of course, had been listening to what the others said, for he was close behind them.

“There, I felt it!” burst out Bud, and when they turned to look at him he was found to be holding his face upward as though searching the bare treetops for something.

“Another drop of rain, do you mean, Bud?” asked Don, with considerable eagerness.

“It certainly was,” came the reply. “Oh, why does it wait to be squeezed out in driblets that way? There’s a heap of wet due us by now, and the old weather clerk up yonder had better give it to us from the bung-hole and not by way of the spigot. We want it, and we want it bad.”

“Hold your horses, Bud,” Hugh told him. “I’ve got an idea we’re going to get all we need before a great while. Half an hour’s drenching rain would put out nearly every fire there is. Even if a few old stumps did smoulder afterward they couldn’t do any more damage, things would be so well soaked. By the time we get to the farm-house it ought to be starting in.”

“Huh!” grunted Bud, “I’d be willing to stand the worst kind of a ducking if that would hurry things up any.”

“Well, nothing that we can do or promise will make the least difference,” Hugh went on to say, with a laugh, “so we might as well keep our coats dry and be comfortable.”

“We’re much more than half way there now, I should say, wouldn’t you, Hugh?” Don wanted to know.

“Two-thirds of the distance you had better put it,” added Jack.

Hugh nodded, and then surprised them both by saying:

“I’ll see what I can do to help things along. I remember that leaning birch over there on the left. We struck it after we had left the stone wall just five minutes, so you see by that time we ought to be back there, which would mean the farm-house in as many more. So we’re over the worst of the journey, and three-quarters of the way back.”

“Every little helps,” admitted Jack, “and I’m going to keep a bright lookout for that old stone wall. It’ll sure seem like a good friend to me; and the kids will be glad to get in a house again after all they’ve passed through.”

“That’s queer now!” Don was heard to say, half to himself.

“What did you think you saw, Don?” asked Hugh, noticing that the other seemed to be staring straight ahead.

“There was something or other moving off yonder, and in this gully, too, where the creek used to run,” the scout explained. “I saw it just as it went behind a clump of rocks. Watch and see if it comes out on this side, fellows; over there, I mean.”

“Then it must have been heading this way, Don?” remarked Hugh.

“Which it surely was, and as it stands to reason that no wild animal, a fox or anything else, could have stuck it out through all that fire, I take it I must have seen—there, look!”

“Why, it’s certainly somebody coming this way!” ejaculated Bud, as they stood and stared.

“If that smoke would only blow away we could make out who it was,” muttered Don.

“We’ll soon know,” ventured Hugh. “He’s headed up the gully, you see.”

“I wonder now if it could be their daddy?” reflected Bud.

“Well, hardly,” the scout master told him. “He would be coming from our rear, heading for the Heffner place to find out if they knew anything of his babies. I’ve got an idea I could guess who it is.”

Just then the smoke did blow away and they could see the approaching figure very distinctly. It was a boy, and he was limping painfully along as though his feet had been bruised by the cruel stones. No sooner did the oldest child set eyes on that figure steadily drawing near and nearer than he burst out into a shrill cry.

“Peter, oh! Peter, here we all are!” was what he sent out; and at that, the bound boy forgot to limp as he started on a run toward them.