The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol / Or, The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol

by Lewis E. Theiss

Then came a long pause. Finally this message came back to Charley. "The Wireless Patrol thanks you, Charley, but we want you to sell the skin and use the money and the bounty to pay for the field-glasses you need."

Charley turned away from his instrument with a suspicious moisture in his eyes. It touched him deeply that his fellows were so solicitous concerning his welfare and success. He did not realize that he was merely reaping the reward of his own kindly good nature, that had made him a general favorite with the boys of the Wireless Patrol.

There were no further alarms that night. Early in the morning the ranger started back to his office, taking with him the letter to Lew. Charley accompanied him part of the way. Then he continued on his patrol.

The next time Charley met the forester he received Lew's answer to his letter. Lew had addressed the box, but several of the boys of the Wireless Patrol had helped to pack it. The piece of green pasteboard proved to be from a box in which Henry had gotten shoes by mail. The box came from Carson and Derby, a big New York mail-order concern. Almost everybody in the country around Central City bought articles from mail-order houses, so Lew's letter threw no light on the problem. There might be a green pasteboard box of that particular pattern in every farmhouse in the county. Yet as Charley thought the matter over, he recalled that almost everybody he knew who shopped by mail traded with Slears and Hoebuck, of Chicago.

The days passed. Little happened to vary the monotony. Yet the sameness of life in the forest was far from being bothersome to Charley. On the contrary, he found new delights every day.

Spring was now well advanced. The trees would soon be in leaf, the flowers were coming along in rotation, and the forest fairly pulsed with life. Now Charley found a gorgeous bed of blood-root. Again he came on great patches of arbutus. Here the Dutchman's-breeches grew in rich clumps. There spring-beauties fairly whitened the earth. Violets, Jacks-in-the-pulpit, marsh-marigolds, and dozens of other familiar and lovely blooms he found as he wandered through the forest.

There was nothing Charley liked more than the flowers. He determined to know every bloom in his section of the forest. So he divided his territory into definite strips, patrolling a different strip each day. Thus he became intimately acquainted with every part of his district.

There were more objects than flowers, however, to delight him. The birds and the animals were a constant source of pleasure. Often he had opportunity to study their actions and their habits. The mating season brought a wealth of pleasing experiences. Sometimes he came across a mother grouse with her brood of little ones. It pleased Charley to see how the tiny creatures scattered and hid among the leaves, making themselves invisible at the first warning note from the mother, while she fluttered along before him, dragging a wing as though it were broken, and drawing him farther and farther from her little ones. Wild turkeys, too, he saw, and many other feathered inhabitants of the forest.

Perhaps nothing touched Charley so much as an incident that occurred late one day when he was fighting a small fire. The fine, spring weather brought out regiments of fishermen, and numbers of them got deep into the woods. Whenever he possibly could, Charley avoided meeting them. Sometimes Charley could not avoid a meeting. Then he always posed as a fisherman. He never moved abroad these days without his rod. The rifle he had temporarily laid aside. More than one little fire, started by careless fishermen, Charley detected and extinguished.

One day he saw smoke at a considerable distance. By the time he could reach the spot, the fire had a good start and had already burned over several acres. It was blazing briskly and Charley was at first uncertain as to whether he should attempt to fight it alone or call help. But night was at hand, the wind was already falling, and Charley decided that he could conquer the blaze single-handed. He judged that the best way to do this was by beating it out with brush.