"Let's hope not," Frank told him. "If there's any danger that way, we've got to get busy and hustle our stores out of the cabin where we hid the lot."
"You said something that time, Frank," declared Lanky. "After all, I'm not hankering for a diet of grizzly bear steaks, wolf chops, or gopher hash," and he looked at Paul with a sparkle in his eyes.
"Lanky," put in Frank, "you do love to stuff any gullible comrade, whenever the opportunity arises."
It turned out that fortune favored the boys in some ways. First of all, there was an utter absence of wind, so that the fire did not sweep wildly out toward the other dry and flimsy structures. Then again the recent downpour, called by Jerry a cloudburst, had thoroughly saturated the shacks.
Some three of those nearest the former hotel did succumb to the tremendous heat and burst into blaze but the boys saw they could not in turn communicate with the adjoining ones, since a wide space came between, over which the flames could not possibly jump unless a wind arose, something very unlikely to happen.
"Reckon that smoke will bring our folks back hot-footed," Lanky suggested, watching the billowing volumes soaring straight upward just before the utter collapse of the once busy hotel.
"They'll be all balled up trying to guess what's happened here at the mining camp," added Paul.
It came to pass that such was the case. Something like an hour afterwards Mr. Wallace and his two companions were seen coming on a run, and looking more than anxious.
"No harm done, Dad!" called out Lanky, to relieve his father's mind.