Even these women were doing what little they could to save their possessions in case the fire came their way. They were drawing water in all sorts of tubs and other receptacles, some even digging ditches on the north side of the farm buildings as though in that Western way they hoped to keep the enemy at a distance.
“Oh! look there!” suddenly exclaimed “Whistling” Smith, a boy whose recognized ability as an imitator of birds had long ago given him this nickname.
“Our first glimpse of the fire line!” said Hugh, as all of them stared hard at what they could see through an opening in the timber bordering the road.
It was true enough. They could watch the play of the flames as they climbed up a tree that may have been dead, for it certainly burned like a torch.
“That looks like business, I’m telling you!” remarked Tom Sherwood, the water athlete of the troop, and who could do almost anything well, since he had both the physique and the quickness of action that are so necessary to success.
“And here’s a wider place in the road where by crowding I may be able to make a turn about,” remarked the driver of the “rubberneck” car.
“Jump off, fellows!” ordered Hugh, suiting the action to the words himself, and making a safe landing.
There was a hasty getaway, Billy turning out to be the only clumsy member of the lot; a slip of his foot just at the instant he sprang causing him to roll over after he alighted. He was seized and dragged to a place of safety by his comrades before the car could back, and run over him.
Mr. Lewis knew how to manage, it proved. He made a couple of turns back and forward, and then had his car facing toward Oakvale.
“Good-by, boys!” he called out to them.