“Yah,” assented Holtzer, “or else some Mick has taken his pipe to bed with him.”
Then they cursed the old lady and the Mick or whoever it might be.
“The worst of it is that I’m scart now,” confided Holtzer. “I didn’t ust to care much, except for the trouble, but now, when I think of Mary Ellen, I hate to go shinning around taking chances.”
General Bonaparte, the worst-mannered conqueror in history, said that no man was courageous at three o’clock in the morning, an unmerited slight to the vanity of his soldiery. However it may be as to courage, certainly no man was ever philosophical when hauled from his bed at that hour. It was in Fireman Carter’s mind that a small movement of his foot would put his erstwhile friend in violent contact with the cold world below. However, civilization isn’t impotent. He restrained the action and replied: “You want to leave your girl at home—fires is no place for ’em.”
“You don’t understand,” retorted Holtzer, full of sentiment. “You can’t get away from it. It ain’t thinking what’s going to happen to me, so much, as thinking how Mary Ellen will feel about it when she hears.”
“You’re awful dead certain on that part of it,” said Dick, and now he hated his friend. The last vestige of humor had left the theme. “Perhaps she won’t care a cuss—how do you know?”
Holtzer started to answer, while Dick listened, his hands clenched tight—maybe there was something he didn’t know about?
There was no more time for conversation. As they turned the corner they saw their destination, an eight-storied storage warehouse, standing alone, with boarded vacant lots at each side of it.
The watchman was there with the keys; it was he who had turned in the alarm. Without delay the firemen, hauling the hose up after them, swarmed to the roof where the flames were beginning to curl.
The fire was in the back of the upper story. While some fought it on that level, the others cut holes through the roof and turned the streams down upon it.