“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.