"What's the next station below this?"
"Conway. That's about eleven miles down the line, and away from the city. 'Tisn't much more of a station than this. Just an operator who doubles up on all the other jobs same way I do."
"I've got to go wash dishes and make up our packs," said Jack. "It's eight o'clock now, and that doesn't leave so very much more time than we need. I've got to put out the fire, too."
He went off with the dishes on which they had eaten their simple but delicious supper, and left Hank Hudson to talk to Tom Binns and watch his key, which might at any moment click out some important order that would make the difference between safety and disaster for a train laden with passengers.
The fire on which he had cooked their supper was still glowing in the woods about a hundred yards from the railway tracks, and he hurried toward it to extinguish it, in accordance with the strictest of all Scout rules for camping. Fires left carelessly burning after a picnic have caused many a terrible and disastrous forest fire, and it is the duty of every Scout to make sure that he gives no chance for such a result to follow any encampment in which he has had a part.
As he made his way toward the fire he thought once or twice that he heard the sounds of a man or an animal moving through the woods, and once, too, he thought he heard a hoarse and raucous laugh. But he decided, after stopping to listen once or twice, that he had been mistaken, and he laughed at himself when he was startled as he got near the dancing shadows east by the dying fire, by what looked like the shadows of three men.
There was no danger in the fire he had built as long as the wind held steady, and he might have left it to burn itself out with little fear of any adverse happening as a result. But that was not thorough, nor was it the way of a Scout. A wind may shift at any moment, and a fire that is perfectly safe with a northwest wind may be the means of starting a conflagration no one can hope to check if the wind shifts even a point or two.
So Jack put his fire out thoroughly, and made certain that no live embers remained to start it up anew. Then he washed his dishes, and made his way back toward Hank Hudson's cabin.
Inside the cabin, as he approached, he could hear slight sounds, and then, insistent, compelling, the clatter of the telegraph key.
He stopped to listen a moment to its clicking, and then found, to his surprise, that it was "H-K," the call for Haskell Crossing, that was sounding.