Ronnie stooped down beside his friend and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “Sure, Bill, we’ll have you fixed up in no time,” he said.
He took Bill’s raincoat and covered him with it, wrapping it around underneath as far as he dared without moving the injured leg. Then he set to work massaging Bill’s wrists and limbs to restore the circulation. And all the while he worked, he was glad for those hours of practice and study that he’d given to learning first aid at Scout meetings and at home. His first-aid merit badge was proving its worth!
He looked up at Phil. “Down the culvert I saw some boards that must have washed in one time or another. I’ll need a couple of splints. Go get them.”
Phil nodded. Ronnie handed him the flashlight, and his brother moved off down the culvert. Ronnie continued chafing Bill’s wrists in the dark. He could feel the rapid pulse and knew that his friend was in slight shock. He’d have to treat that first. The leg could wait. He continued to massage Bill’s limbs and arms.
Phil returned with an armful of boards. Ronnie signaled for him to drop them and to take over the job that he had been doing. The flashlight showed that the color wasbeginning to return to Bill’s face. His pulse was slowing down to normal now, too.
Ronnie got up and came around to kneel by Bill’s feet. He swallowed hard. This was going to be a real tricky job—straightening out Bill’s leg without compounding the fracture. Ronnie had done it plenty of times in practice, but then there had been no broken bones that could jab through the flesh if he made a wrong move.
He reached in under the raincoat and felt his way forward until he could get a hold on Bill’s shoe. When he was ready, he instructed Phil to grasp Bill around the armpits and to lift him gradually. As the weight of Bill’s body was removed from the leg, Ronnie took a firm grip about Bill’s ankle and began the slow, tedious task of straightening the leg. All the time he moved the leg out from under his friend’s body, he applied a steady forward tension to keep the broken bone from working into the flesh. Several times Bill cried out in pain.
Now the leg was ready for splinting. Ronnie selected several of the longer boards. He ripped sections from his own shirt and placed these against Bill’s leg and laid the boards gently on top. Then he tore strips of cloth and bound them about the boards and the leg until the splints were firmly in place.
Only then did he realize that he was soaking wet from perspiration and that he was shivering from nervous tension. “There,” he said to Bill, “I guess that’ll hold you until we get rescued.”
Bill smiled weakly. “Thanks, pal,” he said.
Ronnie turned to his brother. “Think we can carry him back to the spot where we came in?”
“We probably can,” Phil answered, “but I don’t think we ought to. You see, the river’s risen since you were there, and that part of the tunnel’s under a foot of water now.”
Ronnie tried desperately not to let Bill know how frightened he was. “Then—then we’ll put Bill up on that shelf where the crates of glassware used to be.”
“O.K.,” Phil answered. “That sounds like a good idea, because it isn’t going to be long before the whole culvert’s covered with water. It’s coming in fast!”
Ronnie wished his brother could see his face so Phil would know what he was thinking. Of all the stupid things to let Bill hear! It would be simple for Ronnie and Phil to climb to a safe level in the crawl space beneath the building, but never in a million years could they get Bill up there. And Bill wouldn’t know, of course, that Ronnie would never leave him behind—no matter how high the water rose.
They brought Bill down the culvert without too much difficulty and lifted him up onto the shelf where he could lie down. There was room for Phil and Ronnie to sit, too, and although they had their boots on, they preferred this to standing in the water.
Now that Bill had been taken care of, Ronnie had time to think about plans for their escape. He sat on the edge of the shelf with his feet dangling over the edge and watched the water swirl in from the river. He could go back and continue the plan that Bill had been attempting before his accident. But somehow Ronnie doubted the wisdom of this. There must be a better way.
He looked over at Phil. “Got any ideas?” he asked.
“Ideas about what?”
“Ideas about getting out of here, of course!”
“Not right offhand,” Phil answered. “But I’ll think on it.”
Ronnie didn’t want to count too heavily on that! Phil had never been one for finding a way out of a scrape. Phil had always relied upon his brother for an answer—or he had just simply evaded the issue completely if that were possible.
Bill raised his head a few inches and placed his arm underneath to support himself. “Don’t try my idea,” he said, “it just won’t work. Nobody but the thin man from the circus could get through that opening.”
“I don’t intend to,” Ronnie answered. “Except maybe as a last resort.”
“Yea,” Phil said. “And by that time you’ll be thin enough to squeeze through.”
Ronnie smiled a little at Phil’s remark. He turned off the flashlight to save the batteries. “We’ve certainly made a mess of everything, haven’t we?” Bill’s voice reached Ronnie from out of the darkness. “Let the glassware and money slip right out of our hands. Got ourselves trapped down here. Me with a busted leg. And I guess we’re about as far from saving the village as we ever were. Well, my pa says it’s always darkest before the dawn. Maybe things will get better from here on.”
The silence closed in again, except for the steady dripping of water against the flooded floor. It sounded to Ronnie as if a hundred distant bells of different pitch were all ringing at the same time. It was hard sitting here in the darkness, waiting ... wondering if they’d ever get out again.
“Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You suppose our folks are out looking for us now?”
“Maybe. Depending on how late it is. I’ve lost all idea of the time.”
“Nobody’ll ever find us down here,” Bill continued. “They won’t even look inside the padlocked building because they’ll see that the lock’s still on the door. I wish we could attract their attention somehow.”
“I’ve got plenty of matches left,” Phil announced. “Want me to burn down the building? Nobody could miss seeingthat!”
Ronnie wasn’t sure if Phil was being serious, or if this was another of his attempts at humor. Whichever it was, Ronnie couldn’t go along with his brother’s suggestion. With the building on fire, the culvert was sure to fill with smoke and fumes, perhaps to the point where it might suffocate them. “No, Phil,” he told his brother, “that’s too risky.”
“Then how about just burning through the trap door?” Phil added. “How about that?”
Ronnie found himself shaking his head. “No, Phil. It would never stop with the trap door. Besides, I don’t think we’ve got enough kindling to get it started. No, we’ve got to think of a better way.”
“Then how aboutyouputting out with a few?” Phil demanded of his brother.
“Maybe I can if you’ll keep quiet for a few minutes.”
Ronnie rested his chin on his palm and braced his elbow on top of his leg. He stared into the blackness. There was some merit to Phil’s idea. Not fire, of course. That was too dangerous. But some kind of a signal that could be seen at a distance.
He thought over all the different ways of signaling he’dever heard of. There were whistles and bells and horns. There were lights and radio beams, flags, hands, smoke.... The Indians had used smoke signals!
Ronnie stiffened, straightening up. He let out a little high-pitched sound of approval. “Ronnie?” Bill asked. “You all right, Ronnie?”
“Sure I’m all right! I just had an idea that might work. I guess I surprised myself with it!”
“You sounded like something bit you,” Phil grumbled.
“Let’s hear your idea, Ronnie,” Bill said.
“Well, remember right after Caldwell nailed the trap door shut I went up to test how strong it was? While I was there I saw a little metal door in the base of the fireplace. You know, a door to an ash box.”
“Sure, Ronnie, sure,” Bill said excitedly. “We’ve got one in our fireplace—down in the cellar.”
“Well, my idea is to build a real smoky fire in the box. It’ll travel up to the fireplace and then on up the chimney—I hope!”
“That’s a great idea!” Bill exclaimed. “I sure wish I could help you with it.”
“We’ll need kindling,” Ronnie went on. “There’s more of that where Phil got your splints. But the real problem is finding something that’ll give a lot of thick smoke and won’t burn up too quickly.”
“Like rubber,” Phil said.
“Say, Phil, you’re really using your brains at last!” Ronnie exclaimed. “And rubber’s something we’ve got plenty of! Three raincoats, three pairs of boots, and the soles off our shoes, too, if we need them.”
“I’ve got a penknife,” Bill said, his enthusiasm mountingas the pain in his leg subsided. “You can cut the rubber into chunks and then feed them into the fire. Why, with the supply we’ve got we can keep a signal fire going for hours and hours!”
They set to work immediately. Bill found he could help, too, after he had pulled himself up to a sitting position. He used the knife to cut up the heavier pieces of boots. Phil and Ronnie worked at the raincoats, ripping the fabric, first into strips and then into smaller pieces. Soon they had a large pile between them in the middle of the shelf.
Phil waded down the culvert to gather kindling. In the meantime Ronnie took off his torn shirt and, tying a knot about the neck end, used the piece of clothing as a sack to carry the chunks of rubber while he climbed to the crawl-space above.
Phil joined him in front of the ash box a few minutes later. “All I could find was wet wood,” he told Ronnie. “The floodwater has picked it all up. We’ll need something dry to get the fire started.”
Ronnie inspected the wood Phil had brought. “Yes, I guess you’re right. We’ll have to take part of the shelf. Suppose you go down and rip off a few boards. You take the flashlight. I think I can manage in the dark.”
It wasn’t easy breaking up the wood in the darkness. He was continually hitting his head on the low floor beams. But by the time Phil returned with the flashlight and several pieces of dry wood, Ronnie had most of the work done.
Then suddenly there were sounds overhead—footsteps creaking across the floor, a muffled murmur of voices. Ronnie drew a deep breath and let it all out in a shout. “Dad! Dad! We’re down here!”
“Bust a hole in the floor if you can’t find the trap door!” yelled Phil.
Ronnie’s heart beat wildly as he heard the screech of nails being pulled from the wood. The trap door was lifted. Phil uttered a soft groan of relief. And then an all-too-familiar voice said harshly, “O.K.! Down you go!”
For a moment the two boys stood frozen. Then, with a swiftness amazing for him, Phil pointed the flashlight at the trap door. Caldwell was standing near the opening, motioning with his gun to someone in the shadows behind him.
As the light struck him, Caldwell made a low, snarling sound and whirled around to level his gun at the boys below. “Put out that light!” he commanded.
Phil obeyed hastily, but in the split second it had taken him to find the switch, a second man had stepped into the light. Ronnie gasped. He knew, from Phil’s simultaneous gasp, that he had not been dreaming. There weretwoMr. Caldwells!