“Yes, I’m sure we ought!” Alice urged.
“Seems to me I’ve done enough fire-fighting for awhile,” Carl grumbled. “Why, yes, of course we must go,” he added. “I’ll be ready in a second. Shall we take our axes?”
“I declare, we left them both at the raft,” said Bob. “Never mind; I dare say we won’t need them. Alice can stay and keep house again.”
“Certainly not!” returned Alice, decisively. “There’s a woman down there and two little girls, and they may need a woman to help them. I’m going along.”
“Well, come along then—but I’d rather you wouldn’t,” said Bob with reluctance.
They all got into the boat and went down stream as fast as the oars and current could carry them. It was growing quite light now, but the morning mists and the pervading smoke blurred the outline of everything. The sky was clouded and stormy-looking. It might rain. Meanwhile the wind blew strongly and seemed still rising.
“If this wind keeps up and no rain falls, it’ll mean millions of dollars loss, beside—very likely—some lives,” said Bob. “At this rate, it may go right over Morton.”
They had gone a couple of miles down the stream before they really approached the fire zone. Heavy smoke clouds whirled before the wind; farther down the woods a little way in from the water seemed all ablaze on the right-hand shore, though the fire had not jumped the river.
“Looks as if Larue’s outfit had gone!” said Bob.
But as they drifted down things did not look so bad. A short distance back from the river, fire was, indeed, fiercely at work, but along the shore there was only occasional burning trees, dead ones that had been ignited by brands drifting through the air. They expected to encounter the squatter’s canoe, but nothing appeared on the smoky water, and they had come down near the beginning of the big slough when all of them, all at once, were startled by hearing a cry from the shore.