The Young Wireless Operator-As a Fire Patrol Part 13

"How?" demanded Charley.

"Never mind now," smiled the forester. "But while we are on this subject, I want to say this to you: when you are trying to solve a crime, you must forget your prejudices. You must look at the facts and not at the people concerned. You must take the att.i.tude that anybody may be guilty until he is proved innocent. In short, you must be ready to suspect anybody. You must not a.s.sume, for instance, that because I am the forester I would not set the forest afire, or because my rangers are connected with the Forest Service they would never start a fire."

Charley looked almost startled. "Why, it would be the worst sort of crime for a forest protector to set a fire in the woods," he cried.

"Of course it would," replied the forester. "But in this world almost everybody acts according to his own interests or his own pa.s.sions. If a man could earn more money by setting fires than by preventing them, there are many men who would take the chance. Or a man might set fire to the forest to be revenged on somebody--possibly on me; for a forester can hardly avoid making some enemies."

The forester paused. "Somebody has three times set this part of the forest afire," he continued after a moment. "We have no clue as to who did it. So it is our business to suspect anybody and everybody that circ.u.mstances may point to. But that doesn't mean we must condemn a person merely because circ.u.mstances point to him. We must study the facts and either condemn or acquit him according to the facts. I say this to you because you have probably had little or no experience in tracing crime and, like most young folks, are p.r.o.ne to trust people too far."

Charley's face was very serious. He had not thought of detective work as a possible part of his duties.

"Don't take what I say too seriously," laughed the forester, when he noticed Charley's expression. "You will really have very little of this sort of thing to do. Most fires come through the carelessness of campers.

To warn them to be careful, to try to put out fires as soon as you discover them and notify me if you fail, will be about all you will ordinarily have to do. The chief forest fire-warden will attend to investigating fires. But in this case, I especially want to know how this fire started. Sometimes boys, if they are shrewd enough, make the best of all agents for watching folks. People don't take boys seriously, and will often do or say incriminating things before boys that they would not dream of doing in the presence of grown men. If you keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut, you may be very useful. And the less you appear to know, the more useful you will be."

Charley looked at his watch. "Willie will be at his instrument in three minutes, sure," he said. "He might even be there now."

He drew the pack bags from the wireless instruments and sat down, watch in hand, beside them. The forester looked on with keenest interest. He no longer regarded the wireless outfit as a mere plaything. If the boys could do what they said they could, he saw what a help wireless communication might be in protecting the forest. He had always considered the telephone as about the last step that could be made in quick communication in the forest. But his telephone was miles away and he had to get to it before he could talk with his office. Here was a boy who could sit down anywhere and instantly talk to a wireless operator anywhere else within a reasonable distance--that is, he could, if all that Charley said was true. Of course the forester knew about radio-telegraphy, but he was like many other people who have not actually seen persons talk by wireless. It seemed as though it could hardly be.

But he was not to remain long in doubt. When the three-minute period had elapsed, Charley threw over his switch, and sent Willie's call signal flas.h.i.+ng abroad. Hardly had he taken his finger from his key when the answer buzzed in his ear.

"Got him," said Charley.

"Who?" asked the forester in astonishment.

"Willie Brown, at Central City. I'm telling him to get your a.s.sistant on the telephone." And he made the sparks fairly tumble over one another, so rapidly did he manipulate the key.

"Willie's going to get him," he announced, a moment later.

They sat silent for several minutes. Then a signal once more sounded in Charley's ear.

"Willie's got your a.s.sistant on the 'phone," said Charley a little later.

"Tell him to tell my a.s.sistant that the fire is out, with little damage done; that the fire crew is on the way home, and that I have decided to remain here to look around a little. Tell him that if he needs me he shall call your friend at Central City. He'd better arrange with the telephone people for quick connections if he needs to talk to me. I guess that's about all."

Charley flashed out the message to Willie and soon the a.s.sistant forester's message came back. Everything was O.K. and he would do as directed. Then Charley talked to Willie on his own account, telling him they were going to move their aerial and asking Willie to listen in often.

Willie said he would sit by the wireless table and keep the receivers on his ears so that Charley could get him at any time.

While Charley was talking with Willie, Lew had been collecting and packing the camp utensils. Now the wireless instruments were quickly uncoupled and stowed away in a bag, and the aerial taken down and loosely rolled around the spreaders so that it could be hoisted in a moment's time. Then the little party set off swiftly down the valley toward the point at which the fire started.

Walking rapidly, they arrived at the edge of the burned area in half an hour. Smoke was still rising from smouldering embers at various points in the burned area; but there was no danger to be feared, for everything inflammable about these embers had been consumed. Even should the wind fan them into a flame again they could do no harm, for there was nothing for them to feed upon. Along the entire edge of the burned area the fire crew had made sure there was a wide belt of ground in which no spark remained.

Thus, though these glowing embers might continue to smoulder for hours, they could do no harm. The quant.i.ty of smoke arising was still considerable, but it did not shut off the vision as the dense clouds of smoke had done during the fire. So the onlookers could get a fair idea of the extent of the blaze.

The blackened area on which they looked, they were relieved to find, was not of great width, though it stretched from the edge of the brook on one side almost to the mountain on the other. Altogether, the fire had swept over not more than a hundred acres. Had it not been for the presence of the two boys, it might easily have destroyed thousands of acres. The fire had started in a cut-over tract just below the edge of the virgin timber.

Had the morning proved windy, instead of calm, the flames would have gone racing into the big timber, with the chances good for a disastrous crown-fire, when the flames would have gone leaping from tree top to tree top, utterly consuming the forest, as the previous fires had destroyed the timber on Old Ironsides. A lucky combination of circ.u.mstances alone had prevented a holocaust.

Climbing upon a high rock, the forester searched for the point at which the fire had originated. Prom his pocket he drew some powerful field-gla.s.ses, and again and again swept his vision over the farther edge of the burned area. Presently he closed his gla.s.ses and leaped to the ground.

"Come on," he said, and headed diagonally across the burned tract.

In a few minutes the three stood on the unburned forest floor on the farther side of the strip of black.

"We must get our aerial up at once, Lew," said Charley. "It's been three-fourths of an hour since we talked to Willie."

They glanced about, selected two suitable trees, and had the supporting wires attached to them in no time, with the aerial dangling aloft between the trees. It took only a moment more to couple up the instruments.

"CBWC--CBWC--CBWC--CBC," rapped out Charley, as soon as the outfit was in readiness.

Almost instantly Willie replied to the signal.

"Any message for us from Oakdale?" inquired Charley.

"Not a word. What are you doing?"

"We are investigating the cause of the fire. Have moved our aerial down past the burned area. Forester and Lew and I alone. Fire crew on way back to Oakdale."

"Have you found cause of fire?"

"No. Just got here. Haven't investigated yet. Will listen in every quarter hour, beginning with the hour."

"All right. I'll be here. Good-bye."

The minute Charley finished talking with Willie, the three investigators set about their work.

"We'll walk along the edge of the burned area," said the forester, "and try to find the point of origin."

He went ahead, the two boys following. They were facing toward the brook.

The line was irregular, like a huge saw-blade, with little jutting, black teeth here and there, where the flames had crept out in advance of the main line. The wind that had come up when the boys were fighting the fire had driven the flames back upon the area they had already consumed and the blaze had died out of itself. It could not eat its way to windward out here in the open, as it could have done in the dense timber where the wind was broken. From their starting-point they walked to the brook, finding nothing to enlighten them. They then retraced their steps, walking along the windward edge of the fire. Yet they found nothing to show them how or where the fire originated.

"Evidently the flames have eaten their way some distance to windward of the point of origin," said the forester. "We shall have to look within the burned area."

As he started to cross the black strip, the forester continued: "Perhaps I had better go through the burned strip alone. I want things disturbed as little as possible, and three will stir up the ashes a good deal more than one. You keep looking along the edge, and I'll search among the ashes."

"Is there anything in particular we are to look for?" asked Charley. "Is there any special way to distinguish the starting-point of the fire?"

"If this blaze started at a camper's fire, there ought to be some trace of that fire discoverable. If it began with a lighted match, the stem of that match might not be entirely consumed. If blazing paper created the fire, there may be a sc.r.a.p of paper left unburned. And even the ashes might show that paper had been burned. That's why I don't want the leaves disturbed any more than we can help. We shall quite likely find our clue, if we find it at all, in the ashes themselves."

The forester started slowly across the valley.

"I don't see where he has anything on us as observers," said Lew. "If our drill at Camp Brady didn't make competent observers of us, I don't know what it did do. Captain Hardy drilled us and drilled us in noticing even the most minute things. Let's go along the line again and look more carefully. We've got a better idea now of what we're looking for."

They started once more along the edge of the black belt. The forester was walking well within the burned area. The two boys centred their attention on the strip between the forester's tracks and the edge of the black area.

This was a strip roughly fifty to seventy-five feet wide. Practically everything was blackened in this area. A piece of unburned paper would have shown with startling distinctness. But there were no pieces to show.

The forester crossed the black belt from brook to mountain, and the boys kept pace with him for a little. Then Lew turned back in order to listen in, while Charley went on with the forester. For a long time the two searched among the leaves, but found nothing to indicate where or how the fire had started.

"The fact that we can't find where it started," said the forester at last, "is what makes me suspicious. A fire can generally be traced. I guess we'll have to give up. I'll get back to headquarters, and you go home and make your arrangements as quickly as possible. Then report to me."

"We'll go right back with you," said Charley. "That is, we will if Lew is willing. It would hardly be right to ask him to give up his fis.h.i.+ng trip.

And, anyway, two of us could guard the forest better than one."