CHAPTER XIFOREST RADIO
“I’ll say this is the life,” said Herb, as he rambled happily about the lodge which Dr. Dale had turned over to the Radio Boys for a temporary camping place. “Say, fellows, did you ever hear that one about——”
“Shoot him, someone,” interrupted Jimmy, hard-heartedly. “That’s the fifth near joke he has tried to work off on us this morning.”
“Yeah, come and help with this bacon,” added Joe, who was struggling manfully to keep a panful of the aforementioned article from burning to a crisp. “If I don’t eat pretty soon I’m going to drop dead.”
“Same here,” groaned Bob, and went to the rescue just in time to save the bacon.
The lodge was a picturesque, rambling little building with small, many-paned windows and a steeply slanting roof. At some time or other someone had planted vines about its foundations, and these had flourished until the walls were almost completely covered with bright green foliage.
Inside there were three small rooms furnished roughly—the one or two tables and scattered chairs looking as though they had been put together by hand.
The one main room of the little house served as kitchen, living room and dining room all in one but it was large and rambling and comfortable with its great open fireplace at one end and tiny oil stove for cooking at the other.
There were trophies on its rough-beamed walls also and these the boys regarded with interest—old rifles that looked as though they had seen a good deal of service, a horn or two and, in a conspicuous place directly over the fireplace, the great, antlered head of a buck.
This, together with the fact that there were four fairly comfortable cots in the two small rooms adjoining the main one and that there were enough battered utensils in which to cook their meals, was enough to satisfy the boys; especially as the lodge was not more than a stone’s throw away from the headquarters of the forest rangers.
“I hope we’ll meet some of those boys to-day,” said Bob, referring to the rangers.
“We’re sure to, if we go up to the station,” returned Joe, as he sat down at the table, preparatory to eating the bacon and eggs of his own preparing. “Probably Mr. Bentley will show us the works and introduce the boys as we go along.”
“Say, give me some more of everything, will you?” asked Jimmy hungrily. For that moment Jimmy’s mind was on one thing only—and that thing, food. “I never tasted anything half so good as that bacon.”
Flattered, Joe helped him to a double portion.
“You never knew what a fine cook I was before, did you, Doughnuts?” he asked complacently. Jimmy grinned wickedly at him.
“Huh,” he said. “It isn’t the cooking—it’s my appetite!”
“Say, you crook,” cried Joe, making a dive for Jimmy’s plate, “come back with that grub!”
But it was too late. The food had already disappeared.
They had finished breakfast, had scraped up the pots and pans and were preparing to leave the cabin before they remembered that this was the day Dr. Dale had promised to “drop in on them” to see if everything was all right.
“Oh, well, he won’t be here before noon, anyway,” reasoned Bob. “And we’ll have time to say howdy to Mr. Bentley and get back before then.”
“Let’s go,” cried Herb exuberantly. “I want to find out if those forest rangers are the kind of fellows Mr. Bentley pictured ’em.”
“We won’t have to stay long to-day,” said Bob, as he locked the door of the lodge and turned with the others down the woods path that led in the direction of the station. “There will be plenty of other days when we can stay as long as we like.”
“You sure said it that time, Bob,” cried Joe, joyfully. “Something tells me we’re going to have the time of our lives in this neck of the woods.”
But little did Joe guess when he uttered the careless words what kind of excitement they were destined to meet in that “neck of the woods.”
They soon came upon the camp of the rangers, a long low building, situated close to the banks of the lake. Above the station, shooting straight up through the trees to the cloudless blue of the sky, towered the mast to which the antenna of the powerful radio apparatus was attached.
The sight of that huge mast with the attached wires stretching sensitive fingers into the vibrating ether thrilled the boys, fired their imaginations. For those slender lines of wire, seemingly so frail, were, in reality, more powerful than a host of men in guarding the safety of the forest. For, where a man could see only as far as his eyesight permitted, the eyes of radio searched for scores, for hundreds of miles, ever on the alert to catch the first faint hint of danger. One small flame shooting through the dried underbrush of the forest, and immediately, through the warning of the radio, countless men were put upon the defensive, intrepid, fearless rangers rushing to the scene of danger to meet the dreadful menace and subdue it.
For several seconds the boys stood still upon the edge of the cleared space, gazing upward, awed by the power of their beloved radio.
Bob, perhaps unconsciously, summed up all their thoughts when he said: “Wherever it is, it does the trick!”
At that moment Mr. Bentley, attired in his aviator’s suit and in company with two or three other men, stepped out on the porch of the building.
He saw the boys and came toward them at once, his hand outstretched in cordial greeting.
“Well, well, well!” he said, heartily. “If I’m not glad to see you boys! Come on in and make yourselves at home.”
The three men who had been in conversation with Mr. Bentley were introduced by the latter as fellow rangers, and it was not long before the Radio Boys felt as though they had known these rugged fine fellows all their lives.
Then Mr. Bentley showed them through the station himself, “introducing them” as he said, “to the whole works.”
The boys were intensely interested in everything, feeling, since Mr. Bentley’s memorable talk to them at Bob’s house on that day when they had first met the forest ranger, as though the whole place were familiar to them.
They were shown the “quarters” of the rangers. These were fitted up quite comfortably, considering the rough work of the men. And there also was the apartment where were stored the weapons used in the fighting of that great forest enemy, fire.
But, needless to say, interested as they were in other departments of the station, the one that interested them most powerfully was the radio room.
The huge dynamo absorbed them and the tremendously complicated mechanism of the set itself held them rapt and awed. The operator, a nice young chap with crisp curling red hair, was instantly won by the boys’ admiration of the apparatus and, led on by their intelligent eager questions, he gave them many technical details which fascinated them.
“No wonder,” Bob breathed at last, “you have been so successful in the fighting of forest fires. With a set like this——”
“Yes, it’s a wonder,” broke in the red-haired chap quickly. “There’s no denying that our apparatus is the best of its kind. But even at that, we, here at the station, wouldn’t be able to do very much without the cooperation of our radio-equipped air force. They are the real eyes of our organization. We merely receive information from them and act upon it. Mr. Bentley here,” he turned with a smile to the latter, “will tell you how important the air service is.”
Payne Bentley grinned good-naturedly.
“Sure,” he said, “we aviators think it’s pretty classy. Just the same,” he added seriously, “an air force without a base to work from would be pretty much like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. The two branches of the service are absolutely dependent one upon the other. Apart, neither branch would be effective. Together—well,” he ended with a boyish grin, “I’ll tell the world, we’re pretty good.”
As the boys said good-by to the curly-haired operator, promising to return in a day or two, and followed Payne Bentley down the stairs, they were ready to agree heartily with the latter in his estimate of the worth of the Forestry Service.
Bob said as much to Mr. Bentley as they stopped on the porch for a moment or two of talk. He added, with a laugh:
“But now that we have a perfect firefighting system—where are the fires?”
Mr. Bentley laughed, the fine lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.
“That’s a pretty sound question,” he said. “But one to which we luckily have no answer just at present. With the exception of two or three small outbreaks not worthy of mention, there have been no fires for a considerable time. Our boys are getting lazy from light work.”
“Perhaps,” said Bob with a laugh, “the fires are scared.”
“Forest rangers got ’em bluffed, eh?” asked Mr. Bentley, with a twinkle in his eyes.