“What are the prospects?” Frank asked, speaking with his lips close to the ear of the patrol leader, for the roaring of the flames rendered ordinary conversation difficult.
“There is safety here,” Ned replied, “but everything to the west seems to be burning.”
“Gee!” Jimmie cried, looking Ned in the face, “how would you like to meet a friend with a basket of ice?”
“Ice wouldn’t last long here,” Frank said.
“Not if I got hold of it!” Jimmie grunted.
As the line of fire came nearer to the top of the slope the air grew hotter, the smoke denser and more stifling. Pat remembered that a pail of water from a spring had been brought to the vicinity of the aeroplane soon after Ned landed, and the boys wet their handkerchiefs and bound them over their eyes and mouths.
As the heat increased the wild creatures crowding together ominously. When a feeble beast was trampled by a stronger one, or when a rattler struck at the leg of a bear or deer, there was a cry of pain and a quick milling of the pack.
“If this doesn’t end soon,” Frank shouted to Ned through his handkerchief, “there will be a stampede here. Then it will be all off for us.”
Ned looked around the little circle before replying. The boys certainly looked like “white caps” with their sheeted faces.
“We’ll have to wait and hope for the best,” he said. “If the animals come this way, we must stop them, so far as we are able, with our guns and electric flashlights.”