Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE
The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains,the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder madea deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what theimperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:
"Not that way! Pull sideways!"
He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nantugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, andscratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread likeclaws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the raindescended torrentially again.
The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beatendown. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfullywhen he walked.
But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for thesmoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to breakaway; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheelbudge.
"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, andrun ourselves."
"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"
The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beatNan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.
He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the greatwheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threwhimself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight tothe endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly.
The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was nosuction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and thewheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of itso that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root anddragged back the team.
Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they werequenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan,who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple fromthe strain he put in the effort to dislodge the wheel. Up, up it came,and then-----
"Gid-ap! 'Ap, boys! Yah! Gid-ap!"
The horses strained. The yoke chains rattled. Tom gasped to Nan:
"Take my whip! Quick! Let 'em have it!"
The girl had always thought the drover's whip Tom used a very cruelimplement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that itwas necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down andshowed that she knew its use.
The lash hissed and cracked over the horses' backs. Tom voiced one last,ringing shout. The cart wheel rose up, the horses leaped forward, andthe big timber cart was out of its plight.
Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain dashing upon andinto the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But thewagon was safe, and so, too, were the two cousins.
Tom was rather painfully burned and Nan began to cry about it. "Oh! Oh!You poor, poor dear!" she sobbed. "It must smart you dreadfully, Tommy."
"Don't worry about me," he answered. "Get aboard. Let's get out ofthis."
"Are you going home?"
"Bet you!" declared Tom. "Why, after this rain stops, this whole blamedplace may be in flames. Must warn folks and get out the fire guard."
"But the rain will put out the fire, Tom," said Nan, who could notunderstand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.
"Look there!" yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as shesat behind him on the wagon tongue.
With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart ofthe hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given freeingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flamesdirectly up the tall chimney the tree made.
The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain asthough they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, andsecond by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain wasalmost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now brokencover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.
Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through thetamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction,after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadwaycame out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad.
Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat downthe fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephoneline there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the newsof the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along therailroad line.
But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as thehorses neared the road.
"Tom! For goodness' sake!" she gasped.
"What's the matter now?" her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for hisburns were painful.
"Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?"
"What d'you mean?" asked Tom, aghast.
"That poor cripple! They can't get away, he and his grandmother. PerhapsToby hasn't come home yet."
"And the wind's that way," Tom interrupted.
It was indeed. The storm had come up from the west and the wind wasstill blowing almost directly into the east. A sheet of flame flew fromthe top of the old dead tree even as the boy spoke, and was carriedtoward the thick forest. It did not reach it, and as the blazing brandfell it was quenched on the wet surface of the sawdust.
Nevertheless, the fire was spreading under the crust and soon the fewother dead trees left standing on the tract would burst into flame. Asthey looked, the fire burst out at the foot of the tree and began tosend long tongues of flame licking up the shredded bark.
The effect of the drenching rain would soon be gone and the fire wouldsecure great headway.
"Those poor folks are right in the track of the fire, I allow," admittedTom. "I wonder if he's got a good wide fire strip ploughed?"
"Oh! I know what you mean," Nan cried. "You mean all around the edge ofhis farm where it meets the woods?"
"Yes. A ploughed strip may save his buildings. Fire can't easily crossploughed ground. Only, if these woods get really ablaze, the fire willjump half a mile!"
"Oh no, Tom! You don't mean that?"
"Yes, I do," said her cousin, gloomily. "Tobe's in a bad place. Youdon't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'mright troubled by old Tobe's case."
"But there's no danger for Pine Camp, is there?" asked the girl,eagerly.
"Plenty of folks there to make a fire-guard. Besides, the wind's notthat way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around sosoon, neither. I, don't, know"
"The folks at home ought to know about it," Nan interrupted.
"They'll know it, come dark," Tom said briefly. "They'll be looking foryou and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree willlook like a lighthouse for miles 'n' miles!"
"I suppose it will," agreed Nan. "But I do want to get home, Tom."
"Maybe the storm's not over," said her cousin, cocking an eye towardsthe clouded heavens. "If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due aboutthis time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the firedown, put it out entirely, maybe. But we can't tell."
Nan sighed and patted his shoulder. "I know it's our duty to go to theisland, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on."
Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headedaway from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not havethought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only peoplelikely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousinsmight easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, andreturn to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed thewood-road.
They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thickforest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Overa quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the
sleepers,shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the intersticesas the horses put down their heavy feet.
"An awful lot of water fell," Tom said soberly.
"Goodness! The swamp is full," agreed Nan.
"We may have some trouble in reaching Toby's place," the boy added. "Butmaybe--"
He halted in his speech, and the next instant pulled the horses down toa willing stop. "Hark-a-that!" whispered Tom.
"Can it be anybody crying? Maybe it's a wildcat," said Nan, with a vividremembrance of her adventure in the snow that she had never yet told toany member of the family.
"It's somebody shouting, all right," observed Tom. "Up ahead a way.Gid-ap!"
He hurried the horses on, and they slopped through the water which, inplaces, flowed over the road, while in others it actually lifted thelogs from their foundation and threatened to spoil the roadway entirely.
Again and again they heard the faint cry, a man's voice. Tom stood upand sent a loud cry across the swamp in answer:
"We're coming! Hold on!
"Don't know what's the matter with him," he remarked, dropping downbeside Nan again, and stirring the horses to a faster pace. "S'pose he'sgot into a mud-hold, team and all, maybe."
"Oh, Tom! Maybe he'll be sucked right down into this awful mud."
"Not likely. There aren't many quicksands, or the like, hereabout. Neverheard tell of 'em, if there are. Old Tobe lost a cow once in someslough."
They came to a small opening in the forest just then. Here a great treehad been uprooted by the wind and leaned precariously over a quagmirebeside the roadway. Fortunately only some of the lower branches touchedthe road line and Tom could get his team around them.
Then the person in trouble came into sight. Nan and her cousin saw himimmediately. He was in the middle of the shaking morass waist deep inthe mire, and clinging to one of the small hanging limbs of the uprootedtree.
"Hickory splits!" ejaculated Tom, stopping the team. "It's old Tobehimself! Did you ever see the like!"