“Prince! Where are you, boy?”
Ahead of him, to the left, he heard loud barking. He followed the sound and broke out of the trees onto the abandoned fire line. Glancing to the left and right along the ten-foot strip, he saw a solid wall of fire on both sides where the flames had jumped the line. Roughly 1200 feet separated the twin fronts, but as the flames raced through the trees behind the hill, the gap was closing fast.
Sandy started as Prince’s head burst out of a thicket across the path from him. “There you are!” he said with relief. “What are you doing way over here? Come on, we’ve got to get out of the woods fast.”
Prince barked and backed into the thicket again.
“You stupid dog!Come here!” Sandy yelled. In a frenzy of anger, he dropped down on his hands and knees and charged into the thicket after the dog. He had gone about five feet when he came upon Prince standing over the still form of Quiz Taylor sprawled out on the ground. From the fire line he had been completely hidden by the thick foliage.
Sandy had a moment of overwhelming panic and confusion. Behind him, he heard Jerry calling to him. “Over here, Jerry,” he shouted as he stood up in the waist-deep brush.
Jerry stared at him incredulously from the center of the path. “What are you doing?”
“It’s Quiz,” Sandy said weakly. “He’s unconscious. Give me a hand. We’ve got to carry him out.”
Jerry turned pale. “Good night!” He struggled through the bushes to Sandy’s side and stared bug-eyed at Quiz. “Is he alive? What happened to him?”
“I think he’s alive. But I don’t know what happened to him. If it hadn’t been for Prince—” He didn’t finish the statement, but Jerry knew what he meant.
The boys managed to get Quiz on his feet, and by slinging one of his arms around each of their necks, they were able to drag him along between them. Their progress was painfully slow. Every few feet, vines, bushes and other impediments would snag on Quiz’s feet. And both Jerry and Sandy were physically exhausted from the night before. They had only gone as far as the stream when it became obvious to Sandy that the dead weight of the stout boy was too much for them.
“We’ll never make it, Jerry,” he gasped. “The fire will get us for sure.”
Jerry was on the verge of panic. “What’ll we do? We can’t leave him here.”
Sandy looked around frantically. “We’ve only got one chance. The hill. Maybe we can signal to the helicopter from the top.”
Jerry shook his head in despair. “They’ll never spot us through all this smoke.”
“Just the same,” Sandy insisted. “It’s our only chance. I heard one of the rangers say that forest fires often leave one side of a hill untouched.” Abruptly, his eyes fell on Prince, who was standing in the shallow water, whimpering and trembling. “Say, I’ve got an idea!” He rummaged in his pockets until he found the stub of a pencil. “You got anything I can write on, Jerry?”
“Here’s a piece of paper that’s blank on one side.” Jerry handed him a folded sheet on which Dick Fellows had scribbled a message the night before.
Sandy crouched down, and spreading the paper flat on his leg, he began printing in big block letters:
TRAPPED ON HILL. SEND HELP. SANDY
When he had finished the message, he sat down and began to unlace one boot.
“What the heck are you doing?” Jerry asked.
“I need the lace to fasten this note to Prince’s collar. The way he travels, he can make it out of here easily. If the note gets to Uncle Russ—or anybody for that matter—maybe they can notify the ’copter pilot that we’re on the hill. You’ve seen how they perform air rescues in the movies, haven’t you?”
Jerry’s voice wasn’t too hopeful. “Sure. They drop rope ladders or slings. But by the time they get this note—if theyeverdo—we’ll be fried to a crisp.”
It took all of Sandy’s will power to force a feeble grin. “We’ll come out of this, pal. The most important thing to remember when you’re in a tight spot, Uncle Russ says, is to stay calm and cool; if you use your head there’s mostly always a way out.”
“Save your breath, Sandy. I’m so scared I could blubber.”
Sandy folded the paper several times until it was a tight little wad. Then he called the dog over to him. Wedging the paper into the leash ring on Prince’s leather collar, he bound it securely in place with the long thong from his boot. He took the Doberman’s slender muzzle between his two hands and looked straight into the intelligent brown eyes.
“Prince,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word. “Go ... to ... Uncle Russ ... Uncle Russ ... Understand? ... Find Uncle Russ ... That’s the boy.” He turned Prince around in the opposite direction and gave him a pat on the rump. “Go, boy!”
With a parting yelp, Prince streaked out of sight into the forest.
The crackle of the fire was louder now, and they could see it advancing through the treetops on both sides of them. The sky was completely blotted out by smoke, creating an artificial dusk.
“We’d better get back to the hill,” Sandy said.
“What do you say we soak ourselves in the stream?” Jerry suggested. “I heard somewhere that you can protect yourself from the heat and flying embers that way.”
“Good idea,” Sandy agreed. “Maybe the cold water will revive Quiz too.”
The two boys stretched out full length in the sluggish stream, turning over and over until their clothing was soaked back and front. Last of all, they pulled Quiz into the stream, splashing water on his face and head.
For the first time since they had found him, he showed signs of life—a soft moan and a fluttering of his eyelids.
“He’s got a lump the size of an egg on his head,” Sandy pointed out. He scooped up a handful of wet mud from the bed of the stream and plastered it on the swelling.
“Look, he’s coming to,” Jerry said.
Gradually, the injured boy’s eyes opened; they stared blankly into space for a few moments, then focused on the anxious faces hovering over him.
“Sandy ... Jerry ...” he said weakly. “Was I asleep?”
“You were out cold,” Sandy told him. He touched the lump on Quiz’s head gingerly. “Something must have conked you.”
Recollection flooded back to Quiz. “I climbed a tree to see if I could get a better look at the fire. A branch broke and that’s about all I remember.”
“Do you feel strong enough to walk?” Sandy asked him.
“I think so.” Suddenly his hands went to his eyes. “My glasses! Where are they? I can’t see two feet ahead of me without my glasses.”
Sandy winced. “I picked them up, Quiz. But I don’t think they’re going to do you much good.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pair of woeful-looking eyeglasses. The frames were twisted like a pretzel and the lenses were spiderwebbed with tiny shatters.
Quiz accepted them glumly. By twisting and bending the pliable frames, he was finally able to wear them, though they perched on his nose at a rakish angle. In spite of their predicament, Sandy and Jerry had to laugh.
“You look like a cockeyed owl,” Jerry said.
“Nobody asked you,” Quiz growled. He squinted through the shattered lenses. “It’s like looking through cheesecloth. But it’s better than nothing.”
A blast of scorching air hit Sandy on the side of his face. Because of the smoke and the thickness of this portion of the woods, it was impossible to tell exactly how far away the fire was, but he knew it couldn’t be too far.
“Come on, boys, we’ve got to get back to the hill.”
Quiz’s mind was still a bit hazy. “Hill?” he demanded. “You mean the ridge?”
Briefly Sandy described how the fire had out-flanked them.
“We’re cut off,” Jerry said with a note of doom in his voice. “Surrounded by fire.”
Quiz swallowed hard. “There must besomethingwe can do.” He snapped his fingers as a thought hit him. “Wait a minute! Macauley’s men left a pile of shovels, hoes and picks behind when they were relieved by the Canadians. We can clear a line in the grass on this side of the hill and start a backfire.”
“What are we waiting for?” Sandy said. He led the way out of the forest, which ended about ten yards beyond the abandoned fire line. Directly ahead, the hill rose up like an oversized haystack.
Quiz pointed to a stack of digging implements off to one side. “There’s the stuff I was telling you about. But first let’s go up to the top and have a look around.” He started up the steep, grassy slope that ran up about 200 feet to the summit.
The top of the hill was littered with rocks of all sizes and shapes. The boys scrambled up on an enormous boulder, where they had a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding countryside. Up here, the force of the wind was so great that they had to crouch on hands and knees to keep from being toppled over. On the west slope, a slow but determined grass fire was burning all around the base of the hill. But they had never seen anything to match the fury of the crown fire raging all around them. A quarter of a mile behind the hill, the twin fronts had finally united, sealing off the last corridor of escape. They were now literally isolated on an island in the midst of a sea of flame. A shifting current of air sent a hail of hot coals and blazing twigs raining down on the hill.
“Ouch!” Jerry beat out a spark that was sizzling on the wet material of his pants.
Smoke spiraled up from several spots on the grassy slope away from the fire.
“Come on!” Sandy yelled, leaping off the boulder. “We’ve got to beat those out before they really get started.” He ran down the slope to the nearest place where the grass was smoldering and stomped on the sparks with his boots.
Jerry went to another danger spot farther down the slope, while Quiz spotted one in a patch of heavy brush far to the left. As Quiz leaped feet-first into the bushes, Sandy, who was looking in that direction, was startled to see his friend unexpectedly disappear as if the earth had swallowed him. He heard the rattle of falling earth and stones, followed by a cry of pain.
“Quiz!” he shouted in alarm, and started over in that direction.
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 dullclankof 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 itis! 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 sowedidn’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.
Because of this latest emergency, Fire Boss Landers had moved his headquarters about two miles down the road to the junction of the two big firebreaks. Over four hundred smoke-eaters were strung out along this line. Twice they had fought the fire on its own terms in the thick forest and had had victory within their grasp—only to see it get away from them. Now, tired and discouraged, they had retreated to strong defensive positions established years before for just such an emergency. They would wait until the fire came to them, hurling itself against the firebreaks as a wild beast throws itself against the bars of its cage. They would watch its struggles become weaker and weaker until, at last, it would burn itself out. But in some vague, intangible way, they felt that the fire had really won the battle. For it would be hundreds of years before man and nature could rebuild what the fire had destroyed.
The remarkable escape of the boys was the only heartening note in camp that second night of the forest fire. Time and time again, they had to repeat the dramatic story for new audiences.
“They ought to strike medals for the lot of you,” Paul Landers declared enthusiastically.
“They might just do that,” Russ Steele mumbled under his breath, just loud enough for his nephew to hear. As soon as the rescue plane had landed them back at headquarters, Sandy had pulled his uncle aside for a private conversation. Minutes later a carefully worded telegram was on its way to the Pentagon:
FIRE STILL RAGING UNCHECKED HERE AT RED LAKE BUT WE PLUCKED OUR HOT POTATO OUT BEFORE IT WAS TOO BADLY BURNED
FIRE STILL RAGING UNCHECKED HERE AT RED LAKE BUT WE PLUCKED OUR HOT POTATO OUT BEFORE IT WAS TOO BADLY BURNED
“The local telegrapher must be really scratching his head over that one,” Russ said with a laugh, as he and the boys sat around in a circle on the ground eating supper.
“What happens now?” Jerry asked.
“The Air Force will fly a top-security demolition team up here pronto. Probably tomorrow morning. The bomb will be dismantled and that will be the end of it.... I don’t have to tell you boys that the government owes you a debt of enormous gratitude for finding its ‘hot potato.’”
Sandy grinned. “We didn’t exactly find it. More accurately, we stumbled over it.”
“Istumbled over it,” Quiz corrected, patting his ankle, now tightly strapped with elastic bandage. “But as I pointed out to Sandy and Jerry before, General Steele, we owe our lives to the fact that the bomb fell where it did. If we hadn’t had that hole to crawl into, there might have been three well-done potatoes on that hill.”
Ranger Dick Fellows approached them with his plate and coffee mug. “Mind if I join you fellows?”
“Sit down,” Russ invited him. “How’s the fire?”
“Looks as if she’ll lay waste the entire area due east and due north of the end of the ridge between the two roads. All we can do now is concentrate on the flanks. If that wind should reverse itself, she might burn clear back to the river before we could stop her.”
The boys let out a long groan. “Oh, no!” Sandy said with disbelief. “That couldn’t happen!”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Dick said pessimistically. “Fire in Idaho played tag with the fire fighters for three days. Burned off thirty thousand acres before it was controlled by—” In the middle of the sentence, he stopped and cocked his head to one side. “Say, do you hear what I hear?”
Sandy became aware of a loud rustling in the heavy foliage overhead. “Sounds as if the wind is picking up again.”
“Wind nothing!” To the amazement of Russ Steele and the three boys, Dick Fellows unexpectedly threw his mess tin high into the air and let out an ear-splitting Indian yell.
“Holy smokes!” Jerry said, edging back from the ranger. “He’s blown his stack.”
Sandy heard the deep rumble of thunder, and then he felt thesplatof a raindrop on the top of his head, followed by another and another. Soon they were falling all around him, making little pockmarks in the dry dust.
“Rain!” Jerry said in an awed voice.
Dick Fellows was nearly hysterical. “Rain!” he repeated. And before Jerry could stop him, he had snatchedhisplate away and tossed it into the air.
“Who’s hungry?” Sandy cried gleefully and sent his meat loaf and mashed potatoes soaring. As if at a signal, the other fire fighters who were eating in the grove followed suit.
“I can’t tell which it’s raining harder,” Quiz said, “gravy or water.”
Prince and a few other stray dogs who had attached themselves to the camp were having a field day, scampering around gobbling up the discarded food. The road was crowding up fast with men leaping about with their faces turned to the sky. This was a rain to end all rain. It was almost as if the sky had been filling up during all the weeks of the drought and finally had burst open like a balloon, dumping its whole reservoir onto the parched earth in one big splash.
Sandy saw men dancing together in a knee-deep rivulet running down a culvert at the side of the road. He saw one man scoop up a handful of mud and throw it at another man like a kid with a snowball.
Fire Boss Landers was standing by himself very quietly, his face turned up to the sky, and Sandy had a feeling that tears were running down his cheeks along with the raindrops.
Dick Fellows grabbed Sandy by the arm and pointed to a gigantic cloud almost a mile wide that was rising and spreading across the forest to the west.
“Smoke?” Sandy asked fearfully.
“Steam!” the ranger bawled happily. “What we couldn’t do in two days, nature has done in a matter of minutes. The fire’s done for.”
Sandy saw his uncle walking slowly in the direction of the headquarters tent. “Where are you going?” he called after him.
Russ turned and grinned back at them. “Don’t you guys know enough to come in out of the rain?”
Sleeping in a pup tent was out of the question that night. Ankle-deep mud covered the ground as the rain continued unabated. Russ Steele bunked in with Paul Landers and the boys were invited to use three empty cots in one of the Canadian squad tents. It was pleasant sitting around in a circle on the cots by the dim light of an oil lamp, hearing the drops pelt and drum on the canvas sides of the tent. They shared these quarters with two older men who were veterans of a thousand outdoor adventures, and their stories held the boys spellbound.
But by ten o’clock none of them could keep their eyes open, and they put out the light and rolled up in their blankets. For nine hours, Sandy slept the deep, untroubled sleep of exhaustion until his uncle shook him gently awake the next morning.
“Time to break camp,” Russ told him. “The helicopter pilot is going to give us a free ride back to Red Lake. I don’t imagine Quiz will be able to do much walking on that bad leg for a while.”
“He’s not the only one,” Sandy groaned. “I feel about ninety years old. Every muscle in my body aches.”
“You’ll loosen up once you start moving around.”
In the next cot, Jerry pushed himself up drowsily on one elbow. “I’llneverbe the same again.”
Russ Steele laughed. “Hey now, that’s no way to talk. You boys have almost three weeks of your vacation to go.”
“What!” Jerry squawked. “It feels as though we’ve been living in the woods all our lives.”
“Too much for you, eh?”
“Heck, no!” Jerry said hastily. “I wouldn’t have traded a minute of it for anything.”
“Even the couple of hours we camped on the hill with that bomb?” Sandy asked slyly.
“Absolutely not,” Jerry maintained. “Only if it’s all the same to you guys. I’d just as soon spend the next couple of weeks camped smack in the middle of Red Lake aboard that nifty power launch—with plenty of water all around me.”
“I’ll buy that,” Sandy agreed.
Russ Steele nodded. “You can swim, fish and go water skiing. And explore the lake. It’s pretty big, you know. Some day, we can cruise down to the lower lake and visit the Indian Reservation.”
“Great!” Sandy looked around to make sure that their Canadian tent-mates were not around. “What about the bomb? Are we just going to take off and leave it?”
“Everything’s under control,” Russ assured him. “A special military detail arrived at dawn to expedite that matter. You’ll be relieved to learn that there is no trace of radioactivity in the area whatsoever. Evidently, the casing was not shattered by the impact.”
Quiz woke up just in time to hear the last part of the conversation. “That’s good. Last night I dreamed that I glowed in the dark like the radium numbers on a watch face. What a nightmare!”
“So what?” Jerry said brightly. “Just think, you could read in the dark by the light of your nose.”
Sandy swung his feet around to give Jerry’s cot a hard shove. “You didn’t think it was so funny yesterday, old buddy.”
Russ Steele stood up. “Get a move on, boys. We don’t want to miss that plane ride back to the lodge. I’ll meet you over at the mess tent.”
While they were dressing, Quiz began to speak self-consciously. “You know, I never did get a chance to thank you guys.”
Sandy and Jerry exchanged puzzled looks. “Thank us for what?”
“Oh, you know,” Quiz said gruffly. “I mean you two wouldn’t have been trapped by the fire if you hadn’t come back to look for me. Well, you risked your lives to save me. I don’t know quite how to say it, but—”
“Don’t say it,” Sandy cut in, bending over quickly to tie his shoelace. “Have it engraved on a medal.”
“Solid gold,” Jerry added. “None of this cheap gold-plated stuff.”
“Aw, wait a minute!” Quiz roared. “I’m trying to be serious.”
“On second thought,” Jerry said, “the town of Valley View might have given us a goldcupif we hadn’t bothered.” He ducked as Quiz heaved a shoe at him.
“Oafs!” Quiz fumed.
Sandy laughed. “Old buddy, you know perfectly well that we couldn’t have deserted anybody in a spot like that—not even Pepper March.”
“Good old Pepper,” Jerry mused. “He sure will feel bad thatyougot off that hill, Sandy. Just imagine, that would have left the quarterback slot on the school team wide open for him this fall.”
“Good night!” Sandy sat up straight. “That’s right, summer is practically over. In less than three weeks, the new term starts.”
Jerry slumped forward sadly on the edge of his cot. “You know what I just did? I just went and ruined the rest of my vacation.” He sniffed as the smell of frying bacon drifted into the tent. “But not my appetite. Come on, you guys, let’s go to chow.”
SANDY STEELE ADVENTURES1. BLACK TREASURESandy Steele and Quiz spend an action-filled summer in the oil fields of the Southwest. In their search for oil and uranium, they unmask a dangerous masquerader.2. DANGER AT MORMON CROSSINGOn a hunting trip in the Lost River section of Idaho, Sandy and Mike ride the rapids, bag a mountain lion, and stumble onto the answer to a hundred-year-old mystery.3. STORMY VOYAGESandy and Jerry James ship as deck hands on one of the “long boats” of the Great Lakes. They are plunged into a series of adventures and find themselves involved in a treacherous plot.4. FIRE AT RED LAKESandy and his friends pitch in to fight a forest fire in Minnesota. Only they and Sandy’s uncle know that there is an unexploded A-bomb in the area to add to the danger.5. SECRET MISSION TO ALASKAA pleasant Christmas trip turns into a startling adventure. Sandy and Jerry participate in a perilous dog-sled race, encounter a wounded bear, and are taken as hostages by a ruthless enemy.6. TROUBLED WATERSWhen Sandy and Jerry mistakenly sail off in a stranger’s sloop instead of their own, they land in a sea of trouble. Their attempts to outmaneuver a desperate crew are intertwined with fascinating sailing lore.PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER
1. BLACK TREASURE
Sandy Steele and Quiz spend an action-filled summer in the oil fields of the Southwest. In their search for oil and uranium, they unmask a dangerous masquerader.
2. DANGER AT MORMON CROSSING
On a hunting trip in the Lost River section of Idaho, Sandy and Mike ride the rapids, bag a mountain lion, and stumble onto the answer to a hundred-year-old mystery.
3. STORMY VOYAGE
Sandy and Jerry James ship as deck hands on one of the “long boats” of the Great Lakes. They are plunged into a series of adventures and find themselves involved in a treacherous plot.
4. FIRE AT RED LAKE
Sandy and his friends pitch in to fight a forest fire in Minnesota. Only they and Sandy’s uncle know that there is an unexploded A-bomb in the area to add to the danger.
5. SECRET MISSION TO ALASKA
A pleasant Christmas trip turns into a startling adventure. Sandy and Jerry participate in a perilous dog-sled race, encounter a wounded bear, and are taken as hostages by a ruthless enemy.
6. TROUBLED WATERS
When Sandy and Jerry mistakenly sail off in a stranger’s sloop instead of their own, they land in a sea of trouble. Their attempts to outmaneuver a desperate crew are intertwined with fascinating sailing lore.
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER