“Low gear yourself!” snapped the plump youth. “I’m built on modern lines—regular safety bicycle idea. You fellows are like the old-style high wheels—all show and headers!”
Something in the distance had caught Orkney’s attention, and he was studying it intently.
“What’s that yonder—low down; just above the tree tops; sort of hanging over them? Think it’s a dust cloud?”
There was a thin haze in the air, more suggestive of autumn than of late spring. It faintly blurred the horizon, but Sam could make out the thickening, so to speak, to which Tom referred.
“Dust?” he repeated. “I don’t know. Might be, of course, but——”
“But it looks to me more like smoke,” the Trojan interrupted.
“That’s my idea, too,” said Sam sharply.
He started at a rapid pace down the hill, and his club-mates hurried after him.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CLUB TURNS FIRE BRIGADE
It was not a thin haze now, but a blurring gray curtain, half concealing the woods before which it hung. A pungent odor filled the air, which had, too, a curiously irritating, smarting quality, trying and painful to eyes and lungs. The boys, panting from their forced march—the fast walk at which they had descended the hill had quickened to a dog trot and then to a run—pulled up a little uncertainly. They had reached the border of the wooded tract which extended to the lake shore, and in which their camp was situated, and now they knew that the dreaded danger of a forest fire was facing them. Just where it might have started, or how much headway it might have gained, was still to be determined, however; for, though there was smoke a-plenty, no line of leaping flames showed.