This gave Steve Rush a sudden idea.
"They can't all be going. Get together a lot of the men. We'll station two or three at each rise with pails of water and the gangs ought to be able to head off the fire when it comes through."
"That's a good idea. I'm with you."
The Iron Boys hurried away. They found groups of excited men, so beside themselves with fear that they were powerless to think or to act.
Steve was obliged in some instances to handle the men roughly—men much larger and stronger than himself—in order to shake some courage into their trembling bodies.
Yet he did not blame them so much. It was a scene calculated to shake the nerves of the strongest men. The interior of the mine was a roaring furnace; the flames were crackling with a sinister sound, eating their way through the dry timber. Now and then a dull, heavy reverberation told where a drift or a level had caved in under the weight of the rocks above it.
In the meantime Rush had explained to the men what he wanted done. The mine captain was not in the mine and the men all seemed to have lost their heads completely. After a time, however, Steve succeeded in getting a number of them to the point where he thought they would be able to obey orders.
Rush headed the first shift and led the way to a rise on a level that had not been attacked by the flames. Stationing a squad there, he went on to other levels, and other rises, arranging his forces in the same manner.
While he was doing this, Bob Jarvis was performing a similar service. The boys had no thought, apparently, for their own safety. They were working to save the company's property, and at the same time to make it possible for the men still in the mine to live. By this time the smoke had become so thick in the lumber shaft that it was impossible for anyone either to get up or down. The skips and the cage had stopped running altogether.
One of the foremen in the mines had been stationed at the only telephone that was working, where Steve directed him to keep the superintendent informed of the progress of the fire and of the work that was being done to check it. At the same time the Iron Boy was calmly demanding orders from his superior.