CHAPTER X
AN EXPLOSION
The rain came. It descended in perfect sheets, and only the fact that our tourists could reach a mountain house saved them from more inconvenience than a wetting.
They had just partaken of a very agreeable lunch by the roadside, all arranged and prepared by the boys, with endless burned potatoes down on the menu as "fresh roasted," when the lowering clouds gave Dame Nature's warning. Next the thunder roared about what it might do, and then our friends hurried away from the scene. The run brought them some way on the direct road to the Berkshires, and in one of those spots where it would seem the ark must have tipped, and dropped a human being or two, the young people found a small country community.
The special feature of this community was not a church, nor yet a meeting house, but a well-equipped hotel, with all the requisites and perquisites of a first-class hostelry.
"No more traveling to-day," remarked Cora, as, after a wait of two hours, she ventured to observe the future possible weather. "It looks as if it would rain all there was above, and then start in to scoop up some from the ocean. Did you ever see such clouds?"
Ed said he had not. Walter said he did not want to, while the girls didn't just know. They wanted to be off, and hoped Cora's observations were not well-founded.
Miss Robbins found in the hotel a sick baby to take up her time, and she inveigled Bess into helping her, while the wornout and worried mother took some rest. The little one, a darling girl of four years, had taken cold, and had the most troublesome of troubles—an earache—so that she cried constantly, until Miss Robbins eased the pain.
When the boys realized what a really good doctor the girls' chaperon was, they all wanted to get sick in bed, Jack claiming the first "whack."
But Walter had some claim on medical attendance, for when the storm was seen to be coming up he had eaten more stuff from the lunch basket than just one Walter could comfortably store away, and the headache that followed was not mere pretense.
So the rainy afternoon at Restover Hotel was not idle in incident. It was almost tea time when Cora had a chance to speak with her brother privately. She beckoned him to a corner of the porch where the rain could not find them; neither could any of their friends.
"Jack," she began, "do you know that the people in the gypsy wagon really did try to stop us? All that prattle of Bess and Belle was not nonsense. Only for Miss Robbins I should have stopped."
"Well, what's the answer?" asked her brother.
"That's just what I would like to find out," replied the sister. "It seems to me they would hardly have stopped a couple of girls to ask road directions or anything like that, when so many wagons, easier to halt than automobiles, had also passed by them."
"Maybe they wanted some gas—gasoline. They use that in their torches."
"But why ask girls for it?" insisted Cora.
"Because girls are supposed to be soft, and they might give it. Catch a fellow giving anything to a gypsy!"
"Well, that might be so, but I have a queer feeling about that old witch's threat. She looked like three dead generations mummified. Her eyes were like sword points."
"She must have been a beaut. I should like to have met her witchship. But, Cora dear, don't worry. We boys are not going to run away again, and if we see the gypsies we will see them first and last."
"But there are bands of them all over the hills, and I have always heard that they have some weird way of notifying each band of any important news in the colony. Now, you see, Jack, the arrest of that man would be very important to them. They are as loyal to each other as the royalty."
"Nevertheless it is a good thing the fellow is landed, and it was a blessing that he went for the cottage instead of to Miss Robbins' bungalow. They had no means of calling help," mused Jack.
"I suppose it was," answered Cora. "But I tell you, I do not want another such experience. It was all right while I had to act, but when it was all over I had to——"
"React! That's the trouble. What we do with nerve we must repeat without nerve. Now, what do you think of your brother as a public lecturer?" and Jack laughed at his own attempt to explain the reaction that Cora really felt.
"My, wasn't that a bright stroke of lightning?" exclaimed Cora.
"Listen! Something is struck!"
"That's right!"
"An explosion!"
A terrific report followed the flash. Then cries and shrieks all over the hotel alarmed those who were not directly at the scene of the panic.
"Oh, it's the kitchen! See the smoke!"
Jack and Cora rushed indoors, their first anxiety being to make sure that all the girls and boys of their party were safe.
"Where is Bess?"
"Where is Belle?"
"Where are Walter and Ed?"
"Oh! where is Miss Robbins?"
Every one was looking for some one. In the excitement the guests at the hotel were rushing about shouting for friends and relatives, while smoke, black and heavy, poured up the stairs from the basement.
Jack, Ed and Walter were among the first to get out and use the fire extinguishers. There were plenty of these about the hotel, but on account of the injury to the men who were working in the kitchen at the time of the explosion, and owing to the fact that all the guests in the hotel just then were girls and women, the men having gone to the city, there really were not enough persons to cope with the flames that followed the lightning.
"Quick!" shouted Cora, "we can get the buckets. Bess take that one," pointing to the pail that hung on the wall, and which was filled with water. "Belle, run around and find another! Regina is with the injured men, so we cannot have her, but there is a girl! Won't you please get a bucket from the hall?" this to a very much frightened young lady. "The fire extinguishers seem to be all emptied, and the men are beating back the flames from the stairway."
In a remarkably short time more than a dozen frightened girls and women had formed a bucket brigade under Cora's direction, and as fast as they could get the pails they handed them, filled and again refilled, to the boys, who were now doing all in their power to keep the fire from spreading to the dining-room floor.
"What happened?" demanded one woman, when Jack turned to take a pail of water from Cora.
"Lightning struck the boiler," replied the young man.
"Oh, mercy!" exclaimed the same unreasonable person, who was delaying the men with her questions. "Any one hurt?"
"Yes, three," and Jack, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and looking like the earnest worker he was, dashed again down a step into the dense smoke to splash the pail of water on the smouldering but now well-wetted woodwork.
It seemed then as if all the guests but our own friends had run out of the building, and were huddled on the porch or standing in the rain under the trees along the path.
Ed and Walter had carried the cook and the dishwasher out from the kitchen immediately after the explosion of the boiler, and the other injured ones were in the little cottage adjoining the hotel, where Miss Robbins was binding up their burns and making good use of her skill and the materials that she carried in her emergency case.
"But I am afraid this man is very dangerously injured," she told Ed.
"A piece of the boiler struck him directly on the back of the head."
"Should he go to the hospital?" asked the young man.
"Without question, if he could. But this is so far from anything like a hospital."
"We could take him to Waterbury in Cora's car," suggested Ed. "That is large enough to make him somewhat easy."
"The very thing! But I could not go with him. This other man is suffering so," and she poured more oil on the face that had not yet been bandaged in cotton.
"Cora could run the machine, and I could hold Jim—they say his name is
Jim."
"Poor Jim!" sighed the young lady doctor. "He has a very slight chance. See, he is unconscious!"
Ed rushed out, and in a short time had the Whirlwind at the door. Jack and Walter were still busy with the fire, but they stopped when he called them, and together all three carried Jim tenderly out, and when Ed got in first they put the man in his arms. Cora also had been summoned, and without as much as waiting for her cap, but, getting into the cloak that Bess threw from the hall rack, she cranked up, and was at the wheel, following the directions for the nearest way to a hospital in Waterbury.
"It is his only chance," remarked Miss Robbins, when she heard some one say the jolting of the auto would kill him outright, "and both the car and its chauffeur can be depended upon."
CHAPTER XI
THE RESULT OF A BLAZE
"That was plucky, Cora."
"What, Ed?"
"You running into Waterbury with a man who might have died in your car."
"Then he would have died in your arms."
"But I thought girls were so queer about things of that sort. When one dies in a house, for instance, a girl never likes the room——"
"But you would have had to keep your arms. Ed, I think the pluck was all on your side. But I do hope Jim has a chance. He seems an awfully frail little fellow."
"Weighs about as much as you do, I should judge. But they say that kind of build is the best for fighting disease—there is not so much blood to take up the poison."
They were riding back to Restover. Ed insisted upon driving the car, although Cora declared that she was not the least tired. The trip to the hospital had been made at a very high rate of speed, as the unconscious man seemed in imminent danger, and Cora's hands now trembled visibly from their work at the wheel of the Whirlwind.
"I suppose we will have to live on love tonight," remarked Ed, "for that kitchen is certainly a thing of the past."
"What saved the second floor?"
"The heavy beams and metal ceiling. I guess they have had fires before in that hotel, for the ceiling was practically of iron. I just wonder what the boys are doing about now. I fancy Walter has turned nurse to assist Miss Robbins."
"And Jack has taken up the role of engineer—to be made chief of the fire department. I shouldn't wonder but what they had formally organized by this time."
"He certainly deserves to be chief; he did good work. When a gas tank—a small affair—started to hiss in the servants' dining room, Jack grabbed up a big palm and dumped the contents of the flower pot into the tank. It was a small thing they heated coffee on, and when, the next moment, the tank broke it was surprised to find itself buried under a bed of sand, with flowers on the grave."
Cora laughed heartily at Ed's telling of the incident. Certainly strange things, if not really funny things, always seem to occur during the excitement caused by fire.
"If everything in the kitchen is gone, don't you think we had better bring back some refreshments?" asked Cora. "The folks will all have appetites when they find there is nothing to eat."
"Great idea. Here is a good-looking store. Let's load up."
"But is there no manager at the hotel? Who was or who is boss?"
"Jim. The management of that sort of place goes into the shape of bills and accounts, settled every month. Some New York company owns the place. It was a failure, and they leased it to a local man. That's why there will be no one to look after things now."
"Well, we will buy the food and send our bill in to the company. I guess they will be glad enough to pay it when they hear of the emergency."
"Yes, it would not do for the hotel disaster to get into the New York papers, with a starved-to-death head. Well, here's our store. What shall we buy?"
Cora and Ed left the car and went into the store. They bought all sorts of canned goods, although Cora declared they would have to be eaten raw. Then they bought bacon and eggs. Ed insisted on that, no matter, he said, if they had to come to town again and take back to Restover a gas stove. He insisted that no well-regulated emergency feed ever went without bacon and eggs. Bread and butter they procured for fifty persons. Some cake for the ladies, Ed suggested. Pork and beans, canned, Cora thought might do for breakfast, even if they had to be eaten from the cans. Then the last thought, and by no means the most trifling, was wooden plates and tin cups. The bill footed up to ten dollars, and Ed insisted that the man make out the bill as paid and marked for the Restover Hotel.
A half hour later the Whirlwind drew up to the hostelry.
The rain had ceased, and the hotel patrons were almost all out of doors, so that the motor girls and boys trooped down to meet Ed and Cora.
As was anticipated, hunger prevailed, and when it was found that stores of eatables were in the tonneau of the Whirlwind even the most helpless, nervous ladies at the hotel wanted to help get the refreshments into the house.
"But where can they be cooked?"
"What can we cook on?"
"There is no gas stove!"
"Not even an oil stove!"
"We can't eat bacon raw!"
"The bread is all right, anyway!"
Such was the volley of remarks that came out from the crowd.
"We will manage somehow," said Cora. "Our boys are used to emergency work in the line of eating and fixing meals."
"Seems ter me," whined a wizen old lady, "thet the girls knows somethin' about it, too!"
In the dining room on the second floor were two chandeliers. Under these were, of course, tables, and before the anxious ones had time to settle their fears there stood on these tables Cora, Bess and Belle, and on the other Ed, Jack and Walter. Each of our friends had in his or her hand something that answered to the pan or pot brand of utensil, and in the pan or pot, which was held over the gas, was something that began to "talk-talk" out loud of good things to eat, sizzling and crisping.
It was very funny to see the young folks cooking over the handsome chandeliers, from which, of course, the glass globes had been removed.
"Well, did you ever!" exclaimed more than one.
"Those young folks do beat all! I used to think ma and pa brung us up right, but whoever on earth would have cooked bacon and eggs over a lamp," ejaculated an old man.
"I guess driving them machines makes them smart," said another guest, as she took the pan Cora handed down and gingerly slopped the stuff over on a wooden plate. "I guess it is a good thing to know how to drive an automobile. Makes you right smart! Whew! but that was hot!" and she put the overheated fingers into her mouth.
"Put another dish over it to keep it hot," Cora ordered. "And can't some one set a table? That is not such a difficult thing to do."
"See here!" called out Ed, "this is no pancake party. I am not going to stay up here cooking all night. I am going down to eat. We have enough of tomatoes warmed to fill the wash bowl, and I love canned tomatoes if they are out of a washbowl. We washed the bowl, and sterilized it, and it's as good as a soup tureen."
There stood the white wash basin almost filled with the steaming tomatoes. As Ed said, there could be no objection to the crockery.
Jack had charge of the water for tea. This took a long time to boil, owing to the fact that the kettle was a very much bent-up affair that had been rescued from the ruined kitchen.
Bess was cooking canned peas, while Belle insisted that all she could do was to turn over, with a fork, the things that cooked nicely on Cora's pan.
"Done to a turn!" announced Jack, as he jumped down with his pots. "Now, if you folks need any more you will really have to go into active service."
His initiative was followed by the others, and presently the less timid of the guests had put food into pans and taken up their places on the tables to do their cooking, while it seemed that all at once every one "fell to" and procured something to eat.
"Let there be no unbecoming haste!" remarked Walter gently, but it was a great meal, that.