ADVENTURE NUMBER NINETEEN
ONE DAY'S BOOST FOR SAFETY
October had come and gone in busy school days and even busier Safety Scouting trips, all but the last day. For it was the morning of Hallowe'en,—and the Dalton twins' birthday.
"Twelve years old, eh?" said Father, at the breakfast table. "Well, well, how time flies, Nell! Stand up here, you Safety Scouts, and let's have a look at you. I declare, no one would suspect Bob of being a day under fifteen, would he, Jack?"
"I'd hate to have him haul off and hit me with that fist of his!" laughed Uncle Jack. "How are you going to celebrate the day, Scouts?"
"As if any one need ask!" smiled Mother. "Today's the day Bob takes his entering test and joins the Boy Scouts, and Betty joins the Camp Fire Girls. Just think—big enough for that! Good thing it's Saturday, Betty."
"What are you going to do—start out to capture all the honor medals?"
"Well, I hope to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with, you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can qualify as a first-class Scout."
"Hm-m-m!" muttered their uncle, winking at Mr. Dalton over the twins' heads. For he realized what Bob and Betty did not, that the practical, everyday Safety scouting the twins had done had already gone far toward qualifying them, not only for Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl honors, but for practical Safety work all the rest of their lives. There is no age limit in the Safety Scouts of America.
They were wearing their handsome new uniforms when Chance Carter came over to get some scouting tips from Bob. Chance was going around without his crutches now, for the broken leg seemed to be as strong and well as ever.
Chance had his heart set on a Safety Scout uniform like Bob's. "Dad says he'll get me one as soon as I do something to earn it," he told the twins. "I'm going to put in all day today scouting for something that will earn me that uniform—and I want you two to think up some stunt that will win it, sure!"
The twins were eager to get ready for their entrance tests, but it seemed only fair to give their friend his chance, too. So they sat and thought hard, while the golden minutes flew past.
"I can't seem to think of anything worth while today," said Betty. "Why not hunt for a live wire and report it, the way Bob did?"
"Not much use on a day like this," objected Bob. "That was the morning after the big windstorm, when wires were down all over town. I'll tell you what you might do, Chance: you might patrol the roads on the edge of town. You may run across a broken culvert, or a shaky bridge, or something."
"And you might patrol the river bank and watch for a chance to fish somebody out of the river," added Betty. "There are lots of children playing down by the river every Saturday, you know."
"Now," said Bob, when to their great relief Chance Carter had hurried off to begin his day's scouting for Safety, "now, we've got to hustle, or we'll be late for those examinations. Come along, Betty."
"Wait till I turn my Safety button upside down," was his sister's answer. "It seems a shame to go to the Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girls tests with our Safety buttons wrong side up, doesn't it? I feel almost like waiting till we've managed to do our 'One Day's Boost for Safety,' Bob. Don't you suppose we'd better, after all?"
"Oh, now, Betty, come on! If we can't do any better, we can count our patrolling hints to Chance as our work for Safety this time—certainly that took enough longer than our day's boost usually does!"
Though Betty scoffed at the idea of their talk with Chance being work for Safety, Bob had spoken more truly than they knew.
All forenoon long Chance Carter patrolled the different roads leading into town. By noon he was so hot and tired that he plodded on till he came to Red Bridge, as the boys all called the old bridge that spanned the river where it crossed Bruce's Road, the short cut to Bruce's Mills. Here he managed to find a shady spot on the grassy river bank and sat down to eat the lunch he had brought along.
"What luck!" he grumbled to himself. "Everything's so dis-gust-ing-ly safe!" The way he bit off the syllables showed how tired and disappointed he was.
He threw the crumbs from his luncheon into the water, hoping the fish would rise for them; but even the fish were not at all accommodating, this sunny Hallowe'en. For a while he amused himself by shying stones at the weather-beaten DANGER sign which was Bruce's only reply to the City Council's action condemning Red Bridge as unsafe. The bridge was really on Bruce's land, and nobody knew it better than the great mill owner himself. So, while the public wondered why the city did not build a newer and stronger bridge, Bruce had stubbornly insisted to the road commissioner, "Oh, that bridge'll hold a while longer," and was putting off spending the money for a new bridge just as long as he could.
Meanwhile the farmers from that part of the country had kept on using the shaky bridge as a short cut to town by way of Bruce's Mills. One of them was driving up to the bridge now. Lying on his elbow by the river's edge, Chance idly watched the old bridge quiver and quake as the light horse and buggy dragged lazily across.
Suddenly something went kerflop into the water, like a big fish jumping. Chance sat bolt upright, staring at the dark shadows under the bridge. There it was again! And this time he saw it was no fish, but a second brick which had rotted away from the bridge supports underneath the farther end.
"Phew!" whistled Chance to himself, now fully aroused. "If a light rig like that shakes the bricks loose, the old thing must be rottener than it looks! What would a loaded wagon do, I wonder?"
He carefully climbed up under the bridge to see just how bad it really was, and then climbed out again in a hurry. The whole middle support had crumbled away. Red Bridge was barely hanging on the weakened brickwork at the far end, ready to plunge into the river with the next heavy load that came along!
Bruce, in the meanwhile, was getting impatient. He sat at his desk in the little office, signing papers as fast as he could shove his pen across the pages. He glanced again at his watch and gave his call button a savage punch with his big, blunt forefinger. A buzzer snarled in the outer office, and a nervous looking secretary jumped for the private office as suddenly as if the buzzer had stung him.
"Why isn't that car here?" snapped the great man.
"I—I don't understand it, sir. It should have been here half an hour ago. Jennings is always so punctual," stammered the clerk.
"Humph! Call up the house and see if they've gone back for any reason. Bonnie told me she'd call for me with the car at five o'clock."
The clerk hurried to the telephone, while Bruce paced his office. "If that chauffeur has let anything happen to Bonnie, I'll—"
If Bruce had not cared more for his little golden-haired daughter than for anything else in the world, he never would have thought such a thing, much less said it; for he had had Jennings for years, and knew him for the safest, steadiest of drivers. But he scowled when the clerk hurried back to report that Jennings, with Bonnie in the biggest automobile, had left for the office almost an hour before.
Throwing his light coat over his arm, the big mill owner slammed down his rolltop desk and dashed out to the sidewalk, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the big automobile and Bonnie's flying curls. As he stood waiting on the curb, fuming at the delay, suddenly he heard a voice that sent his heart up into his throat.
"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, here we are!" The big automobile swept swiftly up to him—from the opposite direction!
"My Bonnie!" The big man snatched the dimpled, smiling girl into his strong arms and held her there.
In the excitement of the moment, Jennings interrupted his employer as the mill owner started to question him sternly as to the cause of the delay. Bonnie, too, broke in with her version of the story, and together they told him how a punctured tire had held them up fifteen minutes just as they were leaving the house in plenty of time.
They told him how, to avoid being late at the office, Jennings had taken the old short cut across to the mills, by the way of Red Bridge, only to be halted by a lad of fourteen who waved a red handkerchief at them and barred the way across the bridge in spite of the chauffeur's argument and threats.
They told him how a heavy lumber wagon, in which three farm hands were rattling home from the city, had come bouncing along to the other side of the river and how the men had howled down the boy's wild warnings and entreaties as they bowled on to Red Bridge as fast as their horses could go.
Bruce's stern face went white as his little daughter, shuddering at the awful memory of it, told how the bridge had gone crashing down into the river—men, horses, and all; how the boy who had tried so hard to warn them had almost given his own life trying to drag the drunken farm hands from the swift-running current; how two of the men had never come up again; and how the third, towed to shore by the half-drowned boy a quarter mile below, had been laid face down on the river bank as soon as the boy could catch his own breath long enough to get the water out of the man's lungs and start him to breathing again.
Still clasping Bonnie tightly to him, her father got into the automobile. "Home, Jennings. Why, what makes these cushions so wet?"
"Oh," said Bonnie, "that's where that nice boy sat while we were taking the almost drowned man to the doctor's. Then we took the nice boy home—he was so wet and shivery."
"Take us there first, Jennings, then home."
The big car whirled swiftly back to Chance Carter's house. Bruce found Chance with his hair still wet, but triumphant. He was telling his father exactly how he wanted his new Safety Scout uniform made, patch pockets and all!
From him Bruce got the whole story, clear down to the scouting hints from Bob and Betty that had started him off that morning. The mill owner took Mr. Carter aside and made him promise to send the bill for that uniform to Bruce's Mills. "Where do this other boy and the girl live?" he asked, as he and Bonnie got back into the machine. "All right, Jennings, we'll stop there next."
"I think, sir," suggested Jennings, "that must be the same boy and girl we took home from Turner Hall last Fourth—the boy who put the splint on this other lad's broken leg, sir. It's the same house, anyway."
Sure enough, when they drew up at the curb, there were Bob and Betty in their Safety Scout uniforms, just going in to their birthday supper. They were going to have a big double cake, with lots of frosting and with twenty-four green candles on it—green for Safety, Betty explained—and they were so excited over having passed their examinations with such high marks, that it was some time before the big man could make them understand what he was getting at.
"What I want to know," persisted Bruce, "is how you ever came to put that Carter boy up to such a stunt as that. What difference did it make to you?"
"Why," Betty told him, "we simply had to help him get a start for his uniform and his Safety First button. But we couldn't do much because we didn't have time. You see this is our birthday, and we had to go for our examinations." Before Bruce left they had given him their whole story, too, and a good deal more than they had intended telling him, forgetting what Colonel Sure Pop had told Uncle Jack about the way Bruce had been holding back the Safety First work from Maine to California.
Bruce said little as he listened to their story, but he did some quick thinking. So this was the sort of thing he had fought so long and so stubbornly—this "Boost for Safety" talk which he had called "new-fangled theory," but to which he owed the life of his own little girl!
As they talked, two Scouts came into the front hall to remind the twins that their birthday supper was waiting, but Bruce was too interested to see them. Quick at reading signs, as all good Scouts are, Colonel Sure Pop and Uncle Jack watched and listened for a moment, then smilingly went back to the supper table.
"You were right, Colonel, as usual," said Uncle Jack, heartily. "Bruce is coming around. He'll be the biggest Safety Booster in the whole United States before morning!"
"Sure pop!" exulted the dapper little Colonel. "I'll have to wire my King about this day's work!"
It was long after Bonnie's bedtime, and the nurse waiting in the hallway was beginning to wonder if her little mistress was never coming upstairs. On the avenue outside, in the soft, mellow Hallowe'en breeze, jack o' lanterns and soot bags were still being paraded up and down, horns blowing, rattles clattering. Two street urchins, bolder than the rest, crept up to the great iron gate in front of the Bruce mansion and vainly struggled to lift it off its hinges. Still the mill owner sat before the fire, Bonnie on his knee. He could not bear to let her go tonight, even to bed.
In the flames dancing on the hearth, the big man was seeing visions—visions of the Safety First work that would be started tomorrow morning in every mill in the whole Bruce chain. "I'll telegraph every manager to get busy on Safety work at once if he wants to hold his job," he thought to himself. "I won't lose another day!" For after hearing from the Dalton twins and from Chance Carter the way their spare time was spent, his own work in the world seemed suddenly very small and mean. Here he—Bruce the rich, Bruce the powerful, with the safety of thousands of lives in the hollow of his hand—had been holding back the great work which these striplings had been steadily, patiently—yes, and successfully—building up!
"I'll send those three youngsters each a copy of my telegram in the morning," he muttered, looking more eager and enthusiastic than he had looked for many a day. "I'll write across the bottom of each telegram, 'The Safety Scouts of America did this!' And the wonderful part of it is," he added, "that it's only what any boy and girl could do, every day of their lives. I wonder why somebody didn't start this Safety Scout idea long, long ago!"
Over in the Dalton cottage, only a few blocks away, Bob and Betty were going upstairs to bed.
"Many, many happy returns of the day!" whispered Betty to her brother as she kissed him good night.
"Same to you, and many of 'em! But our 'One Day's Boost for Safety' didn't amount to much today, did it, Betty?" For Bob and Betty had yet to hear of Chance Carter's adventures, and Bruce had given them no hint.
"No, it didn't—not unless what we told Chance gave him a start toward a Safety Scout uniform," said Betty, sleepily. "Never mind, though, Bob," she added. "We'll try to do better tomorrow, if we didn't get much done today."
But over in the big stone house on the avenue, the silent man with the little golden-haired girl in his arms thought differently of their day's work.
