“I am going to look for him now. You are with kind people and they will care for you. Rest quietly and be patient until I return.”
Her dark blue eyes looked helplessly up into his for a moment; then he turned and was gone.
Roderick rushed down the hill, back to the scene of devastation where he might be useful in helping to save human life, determined also in his heart to find General Holden. But where was he? In some hospital, as Gail’s telegram had told.
He was debating with himself whether he should return to seek some directions from Gail. But just then the surging, swaying crowd pushed him irresistibly back, then swept him away along Market Street. The Palace Hotel was on fire. Policemen and firemen were thrusting the people away from the known danger line.
Just then he heard a voice crying out in heart-rending anguish: “My little girl’, my little girl.” It was a frantic mother weeping and looking far up to the seventh story of a building she evidently had just left. There leaning out of a window was a curly haired tot of a child, perhaps not more than four years old, laughing and throwing kisses toward her mama, all unconscious of danger.
“I came down,” sobbed the weeping mother to those around, “to see what had happened. The stairway is now on fire, and I cannot return. Will no one, oh Lord, will no one save my little girl?”
Roderick looked up to where the woman was pointing and saw the child.
“My God!” he exclaimed, “smoke is coming out of the next window.” He noticed that the adjoining building was already a mass of fire. At a glance he took in the situation.
“Hold on a minute,” he shouted. “I will try.”
There was an outside fire escape that led from the top story down to the first floor. Roderick made a leap, caught hold of the awning braces, pulled himself up with muscles of steel, and grasped the lowermost rung of the escape. A moment later he was making his way up the narrow iron ladder, pushing through the aperture at each floor, with almost superhuman swiftness. When he reached the window he lifted the child in his arms and hastily started on the downward journey.