“Stop that boy!” shouted the officer. “The little fool! Heaven help him get out of there,” for Ted had slipped past the clutching hands of the firemen and had entered the burning building.
People who had seen the boy rush in, shuddered with apprehension. A second officer stood threatening big John Dean, forcing him back into the crowd.
“You go after that kid and I’ll arrest you,” he said, flourishing his club. “His mother isn’t in there, anyhow. The firemen will take care of the boy.”
The restless, surging crowd, after a time, became hushed and silent. Only the hissing engines and the captain’s orders could be heard above the crackling flames, except as shattering glass and falling brick told how surely the fire was gaining headway.
As moment followed moment and Ted failed to appear, the officer took the anxious cattleman by the arm.
“Stay where you are,” he admonished. “You couldn’t get the boy if you went in. I have a youngster of my own,” he added. Then excitedly they pointed to an upper window. “They’ve got him,” he cried, and all through the crowd went a ripple of expectancy.
But the form that was slung across the fireman’s shoulder, as he climbed through the window onto the ladder, was not that of the little newsboy. It was the limp body of a brother fireman rescued from the smoke, the last of the firemen who had followed Ted into the seething tenement. A waiting ambulance hurried the unconscious man to a hospital.
Presently a warning cry from the chief caused the firemen to retreat hastily, withdrawing their lines of hose, as their attention was called to a long, widening crack zigzagging its way across the face of the building.
“The wall is going,” the officer told Dean, and the words struck a chill into the heart of the big Westerner. He turned his back. For what seemed to him hours he waited for the impending crash that meant the destruction of his heroic little friend. Suddenly a resounding cheer broke from the crowd. Dean turned and saw, high upon the edge of the building, battling his way along through the smoke, appearing for an instant and then lost to sight, Ted’s figure creeping along the cornice. One arm was held tightly to his bosom.
“Easy, lad, easy,” the chief called up encouragingly through his megaphone to the boy. A dozen firemen had seized a blanket and stood with it outspread, waiting for Ted to jump. “Are you afraid?” the chief shouted, and he glanced anxiously at the widening crack. “All right, boy. One—two—” Ted straightened up slowly. A cloud of smoke enveloped him, but through it, five stories above, the crowd saw his little form hurl itself through the air and drop into the blanket below. A crashing wall drowned their cheers.