Both Phil and Paul looked with astonishment to see the stranger, whom they now detested more than ever, seize Anderson's little girl in his arms to carry her; but they were all hastening forward through the crimson light, and clouds of smoke. No more than a glance could the boys exchange.
Many times the two lads looked back. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the rise of the ground soon shut off their view of the prized Thirty. The hungry, sweeping flames came curling, playing, leaping, dancing, roaring on. They reached the car.
Phil remembered, long afterward, that as he stepped out of the automobile for the last time he noticed the speedometer, twisted about so that the light of a lamp shattered and broken, but still burning, fell upon it. The reading was 5,599 miles–the record of the season.
Safely ahead of the fire the fleeing refugees reached Opal Lake. With a glad shout, though their faces showed deepest anxiety and fear, Billy Worth and Chip Slider received them.
"The raft's all ready! I've made it big enough to float a house! All our provisions are on board, too!" said Billy to Phil, the moment he ran up. "Where's the car?"
A few words told the story. There was no comment beyond the quick, "Oh! what an escape!"
The snaky tongues of fire coming on swift, almost, as the wind itself, were but two hundred yards away when the rescuers and rescued embarked upon the raft. Boxes and camp equipage afforded seats. Billy had trimmed a couple of extra long poles with which to move the clumsy craft, and present safety for all was assured.
The dawn was just breaking. Once out on the water the coming daylight was quite clear despite the smoke that in vast clouds rolled swiftly over, whipped and torn by the wind.
"Thank goodness there's no fire to the north–not yet anyway," said Phil rubbing his face, grimy with smoke and ashes. He was thinking of MacLester and for the information of the Andersons briefly told of Dave's unaccountable disappearance.
"There's a long stretch of pine on the other side," said the stranger, still wearing his golfing cap, by the way. "There are a couple of streams there, though, both of them flowing into the lower end of the lake. If your friend is lost and should remember that, he could follow either one of them and not come out wrong."