Clinging like monkeys, they worked this up over their heads and up the shingles until the hooks caught squarely across the ridge-pole of the house. Then, on hands and feet, they trotted up this and sat astride the ridge-pole. One of these was Code Schofield.
Other men now swarmed up the ladders, until there was one on every rung from the ground to the top of the house.
Below, a line of men extended from the foot of the ladder to the great circular horse-trough. Another line extended from the opposite side of the store also to the horse-trough, where three men worked the great pump.
Back twenty yards, along the King’s Road, a white-faced row of women and children stood, ready to rush home and move their furniture into the fields.
Code, looking down, made out his mother and returned her friendly wave. Their house was across the road not a hundred feet away.
With a muffled roar another drum on the pier exploded. A great wave of molten fire shot out in the 17 breeze, and the shingles on Bill Boughton’s store, parched with the drought of a month, burst into quick flame.
The squire ran back to the water-trough.
“Dip!” he yelled. Big Pete Ellinwood, with the piles of buckets beside him, seized one and twitched it full.
“Pass!” screamed the squire as it came up dripping. Ellinwood’s great arm swung forward to meet the arm of the man a yard away. The bucket changed hands and went forward without losing a drop.
Up it went swiftly from one to another, to the eaves, to the two men at the top.