“Maybe he’s taken a boat and is crossing the lake,” somebody else hazarded.
“I’ll go and see,” a third volunteered, and ran down to the shore. He was back in a moment or two.
“There’s a boat missing,” he reported. “Likely’s not Ed’s off to see the circus. And I don’t know but he had the right idea. Looks to me as if the heft of the fire was straight across from here.”
“But the danger point for us is at the end of the lake,” Mr. Zorn declared. “That’s the way the fire’ll work around—it won’t jump across the pond. Wish I knew where that boy was, but—well, it’s our business to get to business. Come on!”
Step plucked at his sleeve. “It’s an awfully big fire, sir. We thought at first we could stop it, but we saw we were mistaken.”
Mr. Zorn peered at him. “You’re one of the crowd camping over there, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir—but we didn’t start the fire.”
“Umph! We’ll have to look into that part of it later on. Meant to look you over, but kept putting it off. Now it’s too late.”
He was moving away, but again Step stopped him. “It’s a big fire, an awfully big fire. And it’s getting bigger and bigger all the while. Maybe you’ll need to get help from outside—all the help you can raise.”
Mr. Zorn studied the opposite shore and the fiery picture it presented. The trees close to the water made a dark fringe, through which he had glimpses of the glare of flames, even where the fire itself had not burned its way into clear view. And, as a matter of fact, it was now showing in places which had been dark when the alarm roused the settlement. He tried to gauge the rapidity of its spread; he made note of the stiff breeze; he knew the tinder-like condition of the woods.