With a wild cry, the Indian threw open the door, leaped across the threshold, and slammed it behind his retreating form. A frozen instant of hushed wonder—the smell became undeniable—a smell of charring timber——
Dirk dashed for the window, but Brick was before him. Together, the boys stared through the dirty pane. The forest showed them no danger signals, but from over their heads came the thuds of a scrambling body and the low hiss of flames in dry shingle-boards.
Brick turned to his friend, his freckled face aglow with renewed hope.
“This cabin must be afire, Dirk!” he muttered, trying to keep down the exultation in his heart. “Gollies, listen to that! The roof must be blazin’ like sixty!”
It was true; rising above the beats of his heart, the listening Dirk could hear the crackling of hungry flames.
“Our chance!” Brick’s eyes were dancing. “Come on! Old Mink sure will be busy for a minute, and he won’t think about us. Now’s our chance to make a getaway!”
CHAPTER XVII
THE FLIGHT INTO THE HILLS
The two captives were out the door of the burning cabin in an instant, and broke wildly for cover in the thickets beyond the clearing.
Dirk, as he fled, cast a desperate glance over his shoulder. Mink, their half-breed guard, had climbed somehow to the roof of his shanty, and with his khaki shirt, which he had torn off in haste, was striving to beat out the licking flames that fed on the dry, rotten shakes. His back was toward them, and he was so immersed in his furious task that he took no notice of their flight.
With Brick at his side, running stealthily and gasping for breath, he found himself beneath the shadow of a clump of pines. Pausing now to look about and get some feeling of the direction of the lake where their friends must be, he was startled by having his comrade seize his arm and shake it roughly.