“Did you hear that, Ned?” shouted his brother, and Ned, who was at the wheel, “let her out,” breaking every speed law of the country to flinders.
The Fire Chief in his red racing car was only a few rods ahead of the Whites, therefore, when Ned whirled the automobile into the driveway. They saw a small boy, greatly excited, dancing up and down on the gravel beside the chief’s car.
“Yep—he’s up on the stable roof, I tell you. We’ve got to use your extension ladders to get him down,” Roger was saying eagerly. “I didn’t mean for all of the things to come—the engine, and hose cart, and all. Just the ladders we wanted,” and Roger seemed amazed that his pulling the hook of the fire-alarm box had not explained all this at fire headquarters down town.
There was some excitement, as may well be believed in and about The Cedars. The Fire Chief was at first enraged; then he, as well as his men, laughed. They got Joe, still clinging to the stray pigeon, down from the roof, and then the firemen drilled back to town, reporting a “false alarm.”
Major Dale, however, sent in a check to the Firemen’s Benefit Fund, and Joe and Roger were sent to bed at noon and were obliged to remain there until the next morning—a punishment that was likely long to be engraved upon their minds.
The incident, however, had broken in upon a very serious conference between Dorothy Dale and her father. And nowadays their conferences were very likely to be for the discussion of but one subject:
Garry Knapp and his affairs.
Aunt Winnie, too, had been taken into Dorothy Dale’s confidence. “I want you both,” the girl said, bravely, “to meet Garry Knapp and decide for yourselves if he is not all I say he is. And to do that we must get him to come here.”
“How will you accomplish it, Dorothy?” asked her aunt, still more than a little confused because of this entirely new departure upon the part of her heretofore demure niece.
Dorothy explained. Another—a third—letter had come from Lance Petterby. He had identified Garry Knapp as the Dimples Knapp he had previously known upon the range. Knapp was about to sell a rundown ranch north of Desert City and adjoining the rough end of the great Hardin Estate, that now belonged to Major Dale, to some speculators in wheat lands. The speculators, Lance said, were “sure enough sharks.”