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                             THE BOY SCOUTS
                                   AS
                          FOREST FIRE FIGHTERS


                                   BY
                       SCOUT MASTER ROBERT SHALER

       AUTHOR OF "BOY SCOUTS OF THE SIGNAL CORPS," "BOY SCOUTS OF
       PIONEER CAMP," "BOY SCOUTS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY," "BOY
         SCOUTS OF THE LIFE SAVING CREW," "BOY SCOUTS ON PICKET
            DUTY," "BOY SCOUTS OF THE FLYING SQUADRON," "BOY
             SCOUTS AND THE PRIZE PENNANT," "BOY SCOUTS OF
            THE NAVAL RESERVE," "BOY SCOUTS IN THE SADDLE,"
                "BOY SCOUTS FOR CITY IMPROVEMENT," "BOY
                SCOUTS IN THE GREAT FLOOD," "BOY SCOUTS
                  OF THE FIELD HOSPITAL," "BOY SCOUTS
                    WITH THE RED CROSS," "BOY SCOUTS
                      AS COUNTY FAIR GUIDES," ETC.


                                NEW YORK
                            HURST & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS


                            Copyright, 1915,
                                   BY
                            HURST & COMPANY




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I. Oakvale's One Wise Man                                            5
  II. What Presence of Mind Meant                                     16
  III. The Threatening Peril                                          27
  IV. The Call of Duty                                                39
  V. Carried to the Front                                             48
  VI. The Burning Forest                                              59
  VII. As Busy as Beavers                                             73
  VIII. Back-firing                                                   85
  IX. Peter, the Bound Boy                                            96
  X. At the Dry Spring                                               105
  XI. Babes In the Woods                                             116
  XII. When the Rain Came Down                                       130
  XIII. Right-about Face!                                            142




                The Boy Scouts as Forest Fire Fighters.




                               CHAPTER I.
                        OAKVALE'S ONE WISE MAN.


"Don't believe in it, I tell you! All a humbug! No boy of mine will ever
fool away his time strutting around and wearing soldiers' clothes when
he ought to be doing his chores at home! Take that from me, young
fellow!"

"But Mr. Prentice, if you care to ask any one of the best citizens of
Oakvale----"

"Foolish of them to be so blind, I tell you, boy!"

"There's Mr. Hayward, the minister, sir!"

"A good man, but an easy mark all the same!"

"And Judge Marshall!"

"Surprised to hear that a long-headed man like the judge should allow
his name to be used in connection with such utter foolishness. If he had
boys of his own instead of three girls he might see things in a
different light."

"There's Dr. Kane, and--well, the father of every one of the thirty boys
in the troop. In fact, Mr. Prentice, I think you're almost the only
prominent man in or around Oakvale who hasn't enthusiastically endorsed
the local scout troop, which they believe has made good."

Perhaps this little shaft of flattery told. At any rate the man called
Mr. Prentice allowed a glimmer of a grim smile to flit across his stern
face as he observed:

"All I can say then, Hugh, is that the prominent men of this section are
a short-sighted lot when they allow themselves to be so easily led by
the nose, and humbugged by a parcel of prank-loving boys!"

Billy Worth nudged the leader of the Wolf Patrol, Hugh Hardin, in the
side. He acted as though it might be on the tip of his tongue to say
something saucy; but for fear he might thus injure the cause Hugh was so
manfully representing, Billy managed to remain silent.

Hugh made a final appeal, as he saw the man was about to leave them.

"But surely, Mr. Prentice, you must have heard _some_ good things said
about the scouts, haven't you?" he asked, with one of his most
persuasive smiles; which, however, in this case, seemed to be wasted on
the one-idea man.

"Oh! yes," carelessly replied the other, gathering up his lines
preparatory to starting his horse, "a lot of _won_derful stories have
come floating over to my house, but I set most of them down as
exaggerations. When I was a boy I read the 'Arabian Nights,' 'Baron
Munchausen,' 'Sindbad the Sailor,' and 'Gulliver's Travels.' I know how
proud fathers like to boast of their smart sons. I've had my eye-teeth
cut, Hugh. You're a clever lad, I know, but if you talked until doomsday
you couldn't change _my_ mind about the folly of this Boy Scout game."

He spoke to his horse, and the two boys saw him go down the road in a
cloud of dust, for it was the driest fall ever known about Oakvale.

Billy Worth--who was a pretty ample sort of a boy--a good-natured
expression on his face most of the time, doubled up like a hinge, so far
as his girth allowed, and seemed to be quivering with mirth.

Hugh Hardin was shaking his head as though he fancied he had run across
about the hardest _nut_ to crack of all his experience.

"What is there so funny about it, Billy?" he asked, for he was thinking
how sorry he would be to report an utter failure to poor Addison
Prentice, who was really wild to join the scouts, and had begged Hugh to
intercede with his parent for him.

"I'll tell you," gasped Billy, trying hard to catch his breath. "When
you said he was the only _prominent_ man around here who didn't think
the scouts worth their salt, he had _nerve_ to say he pitied them all
for disagreeing with him. He made me think of a story I heard long ago."

"Well, go on and tell it," said Hugh, "for I know you'll not be in shape
to talk straight again until you get it out of your system."

"Oh! it was only that chestnut about an Irishman who was on a jury that
had to be discharged because they could not come to any agreement after
being out ever so long. When some one asked him what was the matter he
vowed he had never run across eleven such pig-headed men in his life;
and that he was the only sensible member of the whole jury. Hugh, that
stubborn Irishman is Mr. Prentice."

"I guess you're pretty nearly right, Billy; but don't think I've given
up trying to influence him on that account. Opposition only makes the
game more worth playing. Something seems to tell me that we'll make Mr.
Prentice see a great light one of these days."

"That's the ticket, Hugh! 'Never give up the ship!' is our motto. We'll
try and get up some scheme to prove to Addison's dad that he's barking
up the wrong tree when he thinks the scouts are a shiftless lot, who've
got a reputation that hasn't any foundation in fact."

The boys were some little distance outside of the town of Oakvale when
they had this conversation with Mr. Prentice, who owned the big quarry
toward which he was heading when stopped on the dusty road by the chums.

Oakvale was proud of its troop of Boy Scouts, and justly so. If you do
not know why this should be, it may pay you to secure a few of the
previous volumes in this series and read what some of those boys had
done to gain such an enviable reputation among the thinking people of
the neighborhood.

Even a glance over the titles of these books will show the extent of
their activities in the time that had elapsed since the troop was first
organized. As Hugh and his comrades went steadily on their way as the
weeks and months crept by, they were constantly finding numerous
opportunities to add to the esteem in which they were held by the
community.

Well had they proved the vast advantages which scouts have over
ordinary, unattached boys in a country town. Organization had done
wonders for many of the members of the troop. There was really not a
single family in Oakvale a member of which wore the khaki of the troop
but stood ready to openly declare that a most radical change for the
better had followed since "Tommy joined the scouts."

Hugh had received the proper credentials from Headquarters to be an
assistant scout master; and sometimes during the temporary absence of
Lieutenant Denmead, a genial, retired army officer who had willingly
assumed that office because of his love for boys, Hugh filled his place
acceptably.

If Mr. Prentice had not been one of the most stubborn men alive, and if
he had been open to conviction, he certainly would never have closed his
ears to the stories that were told of the doings of these Oakvale
scouts, and proven to be absolutely true.

Why, only on the preceding spring several of them chancing to visit
Lawrence, a town many miles away, during the great freshet which
culminated in a disastrous flood, had aroused the dormant local scout
troop, almost dead from lack of appreciation, and performed prodigies in
the way of saving distressed families caught in their homes by the
rising waters.

Then Hugh, on that same visit, had actually saved the life of a reckless
boy who ventured onto a bridge threatened by the flood, snatching him
off after he had fallen and become senseless just before a floating tree
carried the structure down amidst the boiling waters of the torrent.

Later on when they were in camp near a large cement works it happened
that there was a strike by the hundreds of foreign workmen, and the
guards who had been brought from the city to defend the strikebreakers
fired upon them.

As a result a dozen and more men, yes--and women, too--among the
ignorant foreigners received serious gunshot wounds. Hugh and some of
his chums hurried to the spot, organized a rude field hospital, and
looked after the injuries of the wounded in a manner that called for
high praise from the Red Cross surgeon coming on the field later on at
the summons of Hugh Hardin.

For this great service, and for saving lives at the same time, every
scout who had taken a part in that work now proudly displayed the
coveted bronze medal which is sent from Scout Headquarters in New York
City to any boy wearing the khaki who saves a life. Hugh was also the
possessor of a gold medal, because he had saved that lad from the doomed
bridge at the extreme risk of his own life.

Then, to come down to a period only a short time back, in the early days
of the present dry autumn, the scouts had served as guides at the yearly
County Fair in the vicinity of Oakvale. They had met trains, directed
visitors to boarding places, answered innumerable questions, run
errands, taken telegrams, and last but far from least, rendered first
aid to the injured to a considerable number of persons who came to grief
among the jostling throngs that visited the Exposition grounds.

(What else Hugh and some of his nearest and dearest chums managed to do
during that time will be found narrated in the pages of the preceding
volumes; and they should afford interesting reading to all who are
concerned with the education of boys along other lines than those
connected with ordinary school life.)

Hugh and Billy walked slowly on after their meeting with Mr. Prentice,
which had been an accidental one. They saw that he had stopped his horse
a little further along the road, and appeared to be examining some part
of the hillside, since his extensive quarry ran for a quarter of a mile
along the road.

The boys had climbed up the <DW72> and were standing by the little
narrow-gauge track down which cars loaded with stone were allowed to
drop, checked by a brake, to the base of the hill, where wagons came and
went.

This track crossed the county road at a certain place below where the
two boys were standing. In reality it was a dangerous thing to allow,
but during working hours the quarry company always kept a signal man
there to see that vehicles were warned to keep back, whenever a car came
down the almost level incline. An overhead trolley drew the empty car
back up the rise again.

"Why, isn't that a queer thing how that wagonload of children has gone
and stopped right on the track of the stone chute!" exclaimed Billy,
suddenly. "My stars! they must have got a wheel caught in the track
somehow, for the horses don't seem able to drag it off worth a cent. It
would give the children a bad scare now if one of those stone cars
started down the hill, eh, Hugh?"

"It's to be hoped nothing of the kind happens," said Hugh, "though with
the brake set the man on the car could stop it easily enough. I was just
wondering who those children are, and I've guessed it. They come from
the orphan asylum."

"Yes, that's Sim Reeves' rig, of the town livery stable, and he's a
good-hearted man, so I guess he loaned the wagon and driver just to give
the poor kids a little outing on this fine Saturday afternoon. But I
wish they'd hurry and get that wagon moving, for as sure as you live
there's a car loaded with stone starting slowly down the incline now."

"Yes, you're right," said Hugh, thrilled by the thought of a catastrophe
overtaking those innocents below.

"The man on it can't see that there's anything wrong down at the
crossing," cried Billy in great excitement. "He will soon, and put on
the brakes."

While Billy continued to keep his eyes glued on the coming car, Hugh on
the other hand allowed his gaze to roam around. He even took several
steps over to one side as though measuring the distance separating him
from the track at a certain place.

All at once Billy gave a shriek.

"Hugh! look! look! the brake's given way! There goes the man jumping for
his life, and listen to the children screaming, will you? Hugh, can't we
do something? It'll get going faster and faster, and--oh! Hugh, the
poor, poor kids!"




                              CHAPTER II.
                      WHAT PRESENCE OF MIND MEANT.


While Billy Worth was talking Hugh was acting. That seemed to be a
chronic habit with the scout master. An emergency never caused him to
quail, and as a rule he could be depended on to do the right thing at
the right time.

That was where the benefit of his preliminary look around came in. The
very second that he discovered the accident to the descending
stone-laden flat-car, Hugh knew that it was up to him to do something in
order to save those imperiled orphans from a terrible calamity.

The car was on a run of the track that was very nearly level, so that as
yet it had not attained the very great velocity sure to follow, after it
came over the crown of the rise, just above where the two boys stood.

Hugh stooped and caught hold of a small log that he had noticed when he
made his movement in the direction of the track. It took all his
strength to lift it up, and Billy would have been of great assistance
could his wits have served him as speedily as was the case with the
scout leader.

With a tremendous effort Hugh raised the log and hurled it upon the
track. Just as he intended it should do, it fell with one end braced in
a cavity, and the other pointing upwards. When the onrushing heavy car
struck that obstruction, it could not very well go any further, but must
be hurled from the track.

All this happened almost in a breath. The car had now reached the edge
of the steeper descent, and was seen by the frightened children below.
Some of the youngsters were being flung from the wagon by the driver,
but there would never have been time to have saved them all before the
constantly increasing speed of the runaway car brought it upon the
trapped wagon.

The horses, as though conscious of their peril, pranced and jumped
wildly, but for all their antics did not seem able to release the
imprisoned wheel. As for the children they shrieked louder than ever,
for the anticipated danger had become a real one.

Billy began to realize that his more active chum had done something
while he was only standing there shivering. He also found Hugh's hand
gripped on his arm, and that he was being dragged hastily back from the
track.

"Oh!" gasped Billy, as with a rush and a roar the laden stone car came
speeding down the incline.

Hugh held his very breath in fear lest the uptilted log might not
project far enough to catch the base of the heavy car. But it turned out
all right.

There was a mighty crash when car and log came in collision, and Hugh
saw the descending vehicle of transportation flung bodily aside. It
landed in a heap upside-down--something of a wreck, with the rocks
scattered in all directions.

Billy tried to shout, but his best effort was hardly more than a
whisper, such was the reaction that instantly set in when he saw the
danger to the orphans was a thing of the past.

He did manage to seize Hugh's hand and pat it tenderly, as though in
that way he could find an outlet for the mingled emotions of gratitude
and pride that filled his loyal heart.

Some scouts might have immediately hurried down, to allow themselves to
be made heroes of by those who had witnessed this presence of mind on
the part of the boy. That was not Hugh Hardin's way.

"Go down if you want to, Billy," he told the other, when importuned to
descend to the road. "They've managed to get a lever under the wheel
now, and pried it loose, so they can go on. I want to see just how the
car struck, and how close it came to passing over the log without
connecting."

That seemed to be the point giving him the greatest satisfaction; for he
found that had the stout little log been six inches shorter, it would
have failed to throw the car from the track. What that meant made Hugh
shiver as he looked.

"Here comes Mr. Prentice up to see what happened!" exclaimed Billy.

"There's one thing this accident may bring about," remarked Hugh, "and
that's a change in this grade. The stone cars should never cross the
