They could hear a cow mooing wildly inside the barn, and a horse was stamping in his stall, being greatly excited by all this clamor. Hugh had already made up his mind that if the worst came they must see to it that the poor animals were given a chance for their lives; should the barn take fire in earnest, and all hope of saving the building be lost, some one must go inside and lead both horse and cow to the outside air.
Fortunately things did not reach this desperate stage, for the efforts of the hard-working scouts to save the buildings were crowned with complete success.
“Whee! but that was a corking fight, though!” gasped Billy, when it was finally safe for them to stop their labor and breathe more freely.
“But we won out, as we nearly always did, you noticed!” suggested Harold Tremaine, who had learned some pretty valuable lessons since becoming a member of Oakvale Troop.
“Thanks to Hugh and his way of doing things,” added Ralph Kenyon.
“I’ve done no more than the rest of you,” objected the scout master. “Every fellow is justly entitled to feel that he’s had an equal share in the glory.”
“There’s enough to go around, all right,” suggested Bud Morgan. “I know I’m as glad as I can be that we came up here. It’s been a picnic fighting the forest fire. If we can’t help extinguish it we’ve helped cheat it out of its prey.”
“You have saved me from being ruined, my brave boys,” declared Mrs. Heffner, as she looked at the group. “I’ll never forget it, never. When my Willie and Ben grow up to be big enough I give you my word they shall also wear the uniforms of the scouts. If this is what your organization teaches you to do for others in time of need, every boy ought to belong.”
“They would,” said Hugh, “if their folks only took the trouble to investigate for themselves what was going on. But we’re all glad to be here, Mrs. Heffner, glad to be able to help you out. It would have been too bad if you lost your home, after fighting so hard all these years to build it up, and keep a roof over the heads of your family.”
“I never could have lived through it again, Hugh,” she told him, beginning to cry, now that the danger seemed over, for up to then she had kept up wonderfully.