“Yes, I do,” said her cousin, gloomily. “Tobe's in a bad place. You don't know what a forest fire means, nor the damage it does, Nannie. I'm right 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 not that way, exactly opposite. And she's not likely to switch around so soon, 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 for you and they'll see the blaze. Why! After dark that old dead tree will look 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 towards the clouded heavens. “If it sets in for a long rain (and one's due about this time according to the Farmer's Almanac) it would keep the fire down, 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 the island, Tommy. You're a conscientious old thing. Drive on.”
Tom clucked to the horses. He steered them into the roadway, but headed away from home. Another boy with the pain he was bearing would not have thought of the old lumberman and his family. They were the only people likely to be in immediate danger from the fire if it spread. The cousins might easily reach the Vanderwiller's island, warn them of the fire, and return to town before it got very late, or before the fire crossed the wood-road.
They rumbled along, soon striking the corduroy road, having the thick forest on either hand again. The ditches were running bank full. Over a quagmire the logs, held down by cross timbers spiked to the sleepers, shook under the wheels, and the water spurted up through the interstices as the horses put down their heavy feet.