“Yes, sir,” explained the strange lad, “you see the hose is always attached to wash the mud off the machines. I sort of hang around here and have been sleeping in the office for two nights. I don’t know how the fire started; but when I came out some rags soaked with cylinder oil were ablaze. I did what I could.”
“What you did saved that theatre building,” announced the battalion chief. “If that frame end there had got blazing—good-bye to the whole block, maybe. You’d make a good fireman, son.”
“You come with me,” said Pep, grasping the arm of the lad firmly.
“Why, what for?” inquired the boy.
“To get dry clothes—to be made just as comfortable as can be—to give me and my friends a chance to show you what we think of the fellow who has saved our beautiful new playhouse!”
CHAPTER XII
AN AMAZING STATEMENT
“Shake!” spoke bluff Hank Strapp,—then, quite as expansively—“and shake again!”
It was the lad who had saved the Standard from destruction to whom the genial Westerner spoke. The hero of the hour had been taken in tow by Pep from the moment that the latter was assured that the photo playhouse was safe. Randy had seen to the closing up of the place. Then he had become second pilot in the march to the hotel.
The honest-faced, wonder-eyed youth whom they ushered impetuously in upon Mr. Strapp had not resisted their urging. Perhaps he had not possessed much power of resistance after his fire-fighting experience.
“You’re sort of drifting me along; aren’t you?” he had observed, with a quaint smile. “I don’t know where; but if you’re friends of Frank Durham, and I guess you are, it’s all right.”