Chapter 8

This sort of work was intended, of course, to confine or check the fire within the area already affected, and could accomplish nothing toward saving the structures already alight. The roar of the flames, the hissing of firebrands sucked upward, the crash of timbers, the shrieks of the foremen through their trumpets, the yells of applause or of sarcasm from the crowd, and the _thud, thud, thud, thud_ of numerous brake bars made a fine pandemonium. Everybody except the owners or tenants of the buildings was delighted.

Keith, with two others, was instructed to carry the Monumental nozzle to the roof of a house not afire. Proudly they proceeded to use their scaling ladders. These were a series of short sections, each about six feet long, the tops slightly narrower than the bottoms. By means of slots these could be fitted together. First, Keith erected one of them against the wall of the building, at an angle, and ascended it, carrying another section across his shoulder. When he reached a certain rung, which was painted red, he thrust his foot through the ladder and against the wall, pushed the ladder away from the wall, and fitted the section he was carrying to the top of the section on which he was standing. He then hauled up another section and repeated. When the ladder had reached to the eaves, he and his companions dragged the squirting, writhing hose up with them, chopped footholds in the roof, and lay flat to look over the ridgepole as over a breastwork. All this to the tune of admiring plaudits and with a pleasing glow of heroism. There was a skylight, but either they overlooked or scorned that prosaic expedient.

At the other end of the ridgepole Keith made out the dark forms of two men from another company. His own companions, acting under orders, now descended the ladder, leaving him alone.

The next building was a raging furnace, and on it Keith directed the heavy stream from his nozzle. It was great fun. At first the water seemed to have no effect whatever, but after a little it began to win. The flames were beaten back, broken into detachments. Finally, Keith got to the point of chasing down small individual outbreaks, driving them into their lairs, drowning them as they crouched. He was wholly interested, and the boy in him, with a shamefaced half apology to the man in him, pretended that he was a soldier directing a battery against an enemy.

Along the ridgepole cautiously sidled the two men of the other company, dragging their hose. Keith now recognized them. One was a vivid, debonair, all-confident, magnetic individual named Talbot Ward, a merchant, promoter, speculator, whom everybody liked and trusted; the other a fair Hercules of a man, slow and powerful in everything, called Frank Munro.

"Look here," said Ward, "does it strike you this roof's getting hot?"

Recalled to himself, Keith immediately became aware of the fact.

"The house is afire beneath us," said Ward; "we've got to get out."

"What's the matter with your ladder?" asked Keith.

"They took it away."

"We'll use mine."

They let themselves cautiously down the footholds that had been chopped in the roof, and looked over. A blast of smoke and flame met them in the face.

"Good Lord, she's all afire!" cried Keith, aghast.

The flames were licking around the scaling ladder, which was already blazing. Keith directed the stream from his hose straight down, but with no other result than to break the charred ladder.

They crawled back to the ridgepole, and worked their hose lines around to the end of the building, out of the flames. Here a two-story drop confronted them.

"This thing is going to fall under us if we don't do something," muttered Ward.

"Duane's forgotten us, and those crazy idiots at the engines are too busy trying to keep from being washed," surmised Keith.

"Look here," said Munro suddenly; "I'll brace against a chimney and hang on to the hose, and you can slide down it like a rope."

"How about you?" demanded Ward crisply.

"You can run for more ladders, once you're on the ground."

At this moment the water failed in Keith's hose. He stared at the nozzle, then rapidly began to unscrew it.

"Cistern empty or hose burst," surmised Munro.

But Talbot Ward, cocking his ear toward a distant pandemonium of cheering, guessed the true cause.

"Sucked," said he. By this he meant that the Monumental crew had succeeded in emptying their water box in spite of the Eureka's best efforts.

"Get off your nozzle quick!" urged Keith.

Munro, without stopping to ask why, bent his great strength to the task; and it was a task, for in his hose the pressure of the water was tremendous. It spurted back all over him, and at the last the nozzle was fairly blown away from him.

"Now couple my hose to yours quick, quick, before my hose fills!" cried Keith.

"They won't go--" Munro began to object.

"Yes, they will, mine's a special thread," urged Keith, who had remembered Bert Taylor's reversed nozzle.

All three bent their energies to catching the threads. It was a fearful job, for the strength of the water had first to be overcome. Keith was terribly excited. Time was precious, for not only might the roof give way beneath them, but at any moment the water might come again in Keith's hose. Then it would be physically impossible to make the coupling. All three men concentrated their efforts on it, their feet gripping the irregularities of the roof or slipping on the shingles. Frank Munro bent his enormous back to the task, the veins standing out in his temples, his face turning purple with the effort. Keith helped him as well as he was able. Talbot Ward, coolly, deliberately, delicately, as though he had all the time in the world, manipulated the coupling, feeling gingerly for the thread. The water spurted, fanned, sprayed, escaping with violence, first at one point, then at another, drenching and blinding them.

"There!" breathed Ward at last, and with a few twists, of his sinewy hands brought the couplings into close connection. Munro relaxed, drawing two or three deep breaths. Without the aid of his great strength the task could not have been accomplished.

"Hook her over the chimney," gasped Keith.

With some difficulty they lifted the loop of the throbbing hose over the chimney.

"Down we go!" cried Keith, and slid hand over hand down the way thus made for them. The others immediately followed, and all three stood looking back. It was a wonder the building had stood so long, for in both stories it was afire, and the walls had apparently burned quite through. Indeed, a moment later the whole structure collapsed. A fountain of sparks and brands sprang upward in the mighty suction.

"There goes our good hose!" said Keith.

The remark brought them to wrath and a desire for vengeance.

"I'm going to lick somebody!" cried Keith, starting determinedly in the direction of the engine.

"We'll help," growled Munro.

But when they came in sight of the engine their anger evaporated, and they clung to each other, weak with mirth.

For the Monumental was "washed," and washed aplenty. This was natural, for now the water was pouring into her box from _both_ directions, and would continue so to pour until the hose coupled to Ward's engine had burned through. The water was fairly spouting up from the box, not merely overflowing. Her crew were still working, but raggedly and dispiritedly. Bert Taylor, his trumpet battered beyond all recognition, was fairly voiceless with rage. An interested and ribaldry facetious crowd spared not its sarcasm.

"My crowd must be in the same fix!" gurgled Ward; "the back pressure has 'washed' them, too." Then the full splendour of the situation burst on him, and he fell again on Munro for support.

"Don't you see," he gasped. "They'll never know! The hose will burn through. Unless we tell, they'll never know! We've got even, all right."

At this moment Duane rode up, foaming at the mouth, and desiring to know what the assorted adjectives they were doing there. The crews awoke to their isolation and general uselessness. Bert Taylor, still simmering, descended from his perch. They followed the hose lines to glowing coals!

"Here, this won't do," said Talbot; so they reported themselves before the news of a tragedy had had time to spread.

The fire was now practically under control. It had swept a city block pretty clean, but had been confined to that area. An hour later they dragged their engine rather dispiritedly back to the house. Ordinarily they would have been in high spirits. Fires were to these men a good deal of a lark. The crews were very effective and well drilled, and the saving of property was as well done as possible, but that was all secondary to the game of it. But to-night they had been "washed," they had lost the game, and the fact that they had put out the fire cut very little figure. There was much bickering. It seemed that Bert Taylor, in his enthusiasm, had, out of his own pocket, hired extra men who appeared at the critical moment to relieve the tired men at the brakes; and it was under their fresh impetus that the Monumental had so triumphantly "sucked." Now Bert Taylor was freely blamed. The regular men stoutly maintained that if they had been left alone this would never have happened.

"These whiskey bummers never can last!" they said. Everybody trooped upstairs to the main rooms, where refreshments were served. After some consideration Keith decided to tell his story in explanation of how it was that the Monumentals were washed. Instantly the company cheered up, A clamour broke out. This was great! With Talbot Ward and Munro to corroborate, no one could doubt the story. Taylor ran about jubilantly, returning every few moments to pat Keith on the shoulder.

"Fine! fine!" he cried. "We've got those _Eurekas_! I can't wait for morning!"

XV

Keith got home about daylight to find Nan, terribly anxious, waiting up for him. He brushed away her anxiety with the usual masculine impatience at being made a fuss over, gave a brief account of the fire--omitting mention of his narrow escape--and insisted that she go to bed. After a few moments she obeyed, and immediately fell asleep. Keith bathed himself and changed, made a cup of coffee, and wandered about rather impatiently waiting for time to go downtown. Wing Sam appeared, the morning paper came. The sun gained strength, and finally tempted him outside.

For some time he prowled around, examining Nan's efforts at gardening. There was not much to show as yet, but Keith had already the eye of faith so essential to the Californian, and saw plainly trees, shrubs, and flowers where now only spears of green were visible. The Morrells' garden next door was already well grown, and he cast on it an appraising eye. No sign of life showed about the place except a thread of smoke from the kitchen chimney. It was still early.

Nevertheless, five minutes later Mrs. Morrell opened the side door and stepped forth. She had on a wide leghorn hat, and carried a basket and scissors as though to gather flowers. Immediately she caught sight of Keith and waved him a gay greeting. He vaulted the fence and joined her.

"Aren't these early morning hours perfect? Isn't this glorious sunshine?" she greeted him.

As a matter of fact Mrs. Morrell seldom rose before noon, and detested early morning hours and glorious sunshine. She was inclined to consider the usual remarks in their praise as sheer affectation. But she adored fires, and often went to them when they promised well enough. Sometimes she attended in company with certain of her men friends; and sometimes alone, cloaked as a man. She liked the destruction and stimulation of them. She had been to the fire just extinguished, and seeing Keith in the garden, had put on her fluffiest and gone out to him. It was time this most attractive young man next door paid her more attention.

"How does the hero of the fire survive?" she asked him archly.

"Hero?"

"Don't pretend ignorance. Charles told me all about it. He heard your tale at the Monumental."

"It's hardly heroism to get out of a scrape the best way possible."

"It's heroic to save lives, I think; but especially heroic to keep your head in an emergency."

"Mr. Morrell all right?" asked Keith, to change the subject.

"He is sleeping off the fire--and the after effects. You men need watching every minute--even when we think you must be in danger of your lives."

She laughed and clipped a few flowers at random.

"Have you been moving furniture all these days? We've seen nothing of you. I thought we were going to have some music. I do my little five-finger exercises all by myself and nobody knows but I am playing Beethoven. You ought in Christian charity to help me out--whether you want to or not. What do you think of our garden? Don't you adore flowers?"

"No, I don't believe I do," replied Keith bluntly. "I like to see a pretty woman amongst 'em," he went on gallantly, "they set her off. It's like dresses. No good to show me pretty frocks--unless they're filled."

"La! You are so clever; at times I'm really afraid of you," said she.

She went on tossing a few blooms into her basket. Under the stimulus of the fire she had acted on impulse in going out into the garden. She realized it as perhaps a mistake. Keith's early morning freshness and fitness made her feel less sure of herself than usual. She had an uneasy impression that she was not at her best, and this reacted on her ability to exercise her usual magnetism. In fact, Keith, the least observant of men in such things, could not avoid noticing her rather second-hand looking skin, and that her features were more pronounced than he had thought.

"Do come over this evening for some music," she begged. "You can take a nap this afternoon, and you can go home early."

Keith had been just a little uneasy over this second interview with Mrs. Morrell. His straightforward nature was inclined to look back on the impression she had made on him at the supper party with a half-guilty sense of some sort of vague disloyalty he could not formulate. Now he felt much satisfied with himself, and quite relieved. Therefore, he accepted.

"I shall be very glad to," said he.

At breakfast, which was rather late, he told Nan of the meeting and the invitation. Nan's clear lines, fresh creamy skin, bright young eyes, looked more than usually attractive to him.

"Perhaps she _can_ play," he said. "Let's go find out. And you must wear your prettiest gown; I'm proud of my wife, and I want her to look her very best."

A little later he remarked:

"I wonder if she isn't considerably older than Morrell."

XVI

When he had at last reached downtown after his late breakfast, Keith found it in a fair turmoil. Knots of men stood everywhere arguing, sometimes very heatedly. Eureka members were openly expressing their anger over what they called Taylor's "dirty trick" in putting hirelings on the brakes, men who did not belong to the Monumental organization at all. If it had not been for that the Monumentals could never have "sucked" at all. On the other hand, the Monumentals and their friends were vehemently asserting that they were well within their rights. Fists were brandished. Several fights started, but were stopped before they had become serious.

Keith avoided these storm centres, waving a friendly hand, but smilingly refusing to be drawn in. Near the Merchants' Exchange, however, he came on a quieter, attentive group, in the centre of which stood Calhoun Bennett. The Southerner's head was thrown back haughtily, but he was listening with entire courtesy to a violent harangue from a burly, red-faced man in rough clothes.

"And I tell you that sort of a trick won't go down with nobody, and the story of why you were washed won't wash itself. It's too thin."

"I have the honah, suh," said Bennett formally, "to info'm yo' that yo' do not know what yo' are talkin' about."

His silken tones apparently enraged the man.

"You silk-stockinged----of a----!" said he.

Without haste Calhoun Bennett rapped the man across the face with his light rattan cane. Venting a howl of rage, the Eureka partisan leaped forward. Calhoun Bennett, quick as a flash, drew a small derringer and fired; and the man went down in a heap. Superbly nonchalant, Bennett, without a glance at his victim, turned away, the ring of spectators parting to let him through. He saw Keith, and at once joined him, drawing the young man's arm through his own. Keith, looking back, saw the man already sitting up, feeling his shoulder and cursing vigorously.

Bennett was fairly radiating rage, which, however, he managed to suppress beneath a well-bred exterior calm.

"These hounds, suh," he told Keith, "profess not to believe us, suh! They profess, suh, that our explanation of how we were washed is a fabrication. You will oblige me, suh, by profferin' yo' personal testimony in the case."

He faced Keith resolutely toward the Eureka engine house. Keith spared a thought to wonder what he was being let in for by this handsome young fire-eater, but he went along unprotesting.

Around the Eureka engine house was a big crowd of men. These fell silent as Bennett and Keith approached. The Eurekas represented quite a different social order from the Monumentals. Its membership was recruited from those who in the East had been small farmers, artisans, or workingmen in the more skilled trades; independent, plain, rather rough, thoroughly democratic, a trifle contemptuous of "silk stockings," outspoken, with little heed for niceties of etiquette or conduct. Bennett pushed his way through them to where stood Carter, the chief, and several of the more influential. Keith, looking at them, met their eyes directed squarely into his. They were steady, clear-looking, solid, rather coarse-grained, grave men.

"I have brought Mr. Keith here, who was an eyewitness, to give his testimony as to the events of last evenin'," said Bennett formally.

Keith told his story. It was received in a blank noncommittal silence. The men all looked at him steadily, and said nothing. Somehow, he was impressed. This silence seemed to him, fancifully, more than mere lack of words--it conveyed a sense of reserve force, of quiet appraisal of himself and his words, of the experiences of men who have been close to realities, who have _done_ things in the world. Keith felt himself to be better educated, to own a better brain, to have a wider outlook, to be possessed, in short, of all the advantages of superiority. He had never mingled with rough men, and he had always looked down on them. In this attitude was no condescension and no priggishness, Now he felt, somehow, that the best of these men had something that he had not suspected, some force of character that raised them above his previous conception. They might be more than mere "filling" in a city's population; they might well come to be an element to be reckoned with.

When he had quite finished his story, there ensued a slight pause. Then said Carter:

"We believe Mr. Keith. If Mr. Ward and Frank Munro were there, of course there can be no doubt." Somehow Keith could not resent the implication; it was too impersonally delivered. Carter went on with cold formality and emphasis; "Mr. Keith had a very narrow escape. It was lucky for him that your hired men had 'sucked' your waterbox. In view of that we can, of course, no longer regret the fact."

"It was a dirty trick just the same!" growled a voice out of the crowd.

Carter turned a deliberate look in that direction, and nothing more was said. Bennett ignored the interruption, bowed frigidly, and turned away. The Eureka leaders nodded. In dead silence Keith and Bennett withdrew.

"That settles _that_!" observed Bennett, when at a little distance. "A lot of cheap shopkeepers! It makes me disgusted every time I have anythin' to do with them!"

As they walked away, one of the hangers-on of the police court approached, touching his hat.

"For you, Mr. Bennett," he said most respectfully, proffering a paper.

"Me?" observed Bennett, surprised. He unfolded the paper, glanced at it, and laughed. "I'm arrested for wingin' that 'shoulder-striker' up the street a while back," he told Keith.

"Anything I can do?" asked Keith anxiously.

"Not a thing, thank you. There'll be no trouble at all--just a little nuisance. May call you for a witness later."

He went away with the officer, but shortly after Keith saw him on the street again. The matter had been easily arranged.

Keith went to his office. In spite of himself he could not entirely take Bennett's point of view. Several of the men at Eureka headquarters looked interesting--he would like to know them--perhaps more than interesting, the potentiality of a reasoning and directed power.

XVII

The afternoon nap suggested by Mrs. Morrell was not enjoyed, and Keith returned home feeling pretty tired and inclined to a quiet evening. Nan had to remind him of his engagement.

"Oh, let's send a note over by Wing," he said, a little crossly. "I don't feel like making an effort to-night."

But Nan's convention could not approve of anything quite so radically a last-minute decision.

"It's a little late in the day for that," she pointed out. "She may have stayed in just to see us. We can leave early."

Keith went, grumbling. They found Mrs. Morrell in full evening dress, showing her neck and shoulders, which were her best points, for she was full bosomed and rounded without losing firmness of flesh. Nan was a trifle taken back at this gorgeousness, for she had not dressed. Keith, with his usual directness, made no secret of pretending to be utterly overwhelmed.

"I didn't know we were expected to dress for a real concert with flowers!" he cried, laughing.

Mrs. Morrell shrugged her fine shoulders indifferently.

"This old rag!" she said. "Don't let that bother you. I always like to put on something cool for the evening. It's such a relief."

It developed that Morrell had an engagement, and could not stay.

"He was so disappointed," purred Mrs. Morrell.

She was all eager for the music, brushing aside this and other preliminaries.

"You play, sing?" she asked Nan. "What a pity! I'm afraid you're going to be terribly bored."

She turned instantly to Keith, hurrying him to the piano, giving the impression of being too eager to wait--almost the eagerness of a drunkard in the presence of drink. And this in turn conveyed a vibrating feeling of magnetism, of temperament under restraint, of possibilities veiled. The impact struck Keith's responsive nature full. He waked up, approached the piano with reviving interest. She struck idle chords and flashed at him over her shoulder a brilliant smile.

"What shall it be?" she demanded, still with the undercurrent of eagerness. "You choose--a man's song--something soulful. I'm just in the mood."

"Do you know the 'Bedouin Love Song?'" he inquired.

"The 'Bedouin Love Song?' No--I'm afraid not. We are so far out of the world."

"It's a new thing. It goes like this."

He hummed the air, and she followed it hesitatingly, feeling out the accompaniment. Mrs. Morrell knew her instrument and had a quick ear. Occasionally Keith leaned over her shoulder to strike for her an elusive chord or modulation. In so doing he had to press close, and for all his honest absorption in the matter at hand, could not help becoming aware of her subtle perfume, the shine of her flesh, and the brightness of her crown of hair.

"You play it," she said suddenly.

But he disclaimed the ability.

"I don't know it any better than you do, and you improvise wonderfully."

They became entirely absorbed in this most fascinating of tasks, the working out little by little of a complicated accompaniment.

"There!" she cried gayly at last. "I believe I have it. Let's try."