The Young Wireless Operator-As a Fire Patrol Part 37

He made his way to the blackened area where he had put out the first fire.

The s.p.a.ce burned over was small. Charley stood and looked at it for some moments, thinking the problem over. Then he walked slowly around the burned area, examining it closely, but not stepping within the fire-line.

Then he wet a finger and held it aloft. Unmistakably the light breeze was from the west. It had doubtless been blowing from that quarter all the morning, though this particular fire had been extinguished when there was hardly more than a suspicion of a breeze. The fire would have spread in an elongated circle, or more exactly an oval. Charley tried to figure out the exact starting point. He felt sure he could estimate it within a few yards.

When he had decided about where the fire must have originated, he made his way cautiously, a yard at a time, toward that point. He was careful not to disturb the leaves any more than was necessary in putting down his feet.

Carefully he scrutinized every inch of the ground he covered. He was looking for a mound of burned leaves or any other suspicious thing. But he found none. Look where he would, the leaves seemed to have been disturbed before the fire started.

Not far from the point selected by Charley as the probable place of the fire's origin, the ground thrust up in a little, low shoulder, as though there might be an outcropping ledge of rock there. Immediately around this elevation the ground was clear of brush. No trees stood near. Charley paid little attention to the mound until he noticed that it was hollowed out on top. At the same time a piece of freshly dug earth caught his eye near by.

At least Charley judged it to be freshly dug, although it was blackened by fire. He made his way very carefully to the little mound. Now he noticed that the leaves about this mound had been raked together, for the ashes lay thick in the hollow centre in the elevation.

Cautiously Charley began to scratch among the ashes at the edge of the pile. His fingers encountered many rough chunks of earth, partly hardened by fire. The rain, the frost, and the cold of winter would naturally have broken those chunks down into loose soil. So Charley knew they could not be very old. As he scratched more of them out of the leaves, he blew the ashes from them and examined them critically. He could think of no connection between these chunks of earth and the fire, yet something made him scrutinize them closely.

All the time he was carefully digging the ashes away, and working toward the centre of the pile. Suddenly he picked up a chunk that was quite different from the crumbly earth ma.s.ses he had been handling. This piece was partly hardened and reddened. At once Charley saw it was clay.

Charley continued to sc.r.a.pe aside the ashes. He found more and more little chunks of clay, while the hollow place in the centre of the mound proved to be a square, small depression that must have been made with human hands. Even before he had it cleared of ashes, Charley knew that. The depression was much too rectangular to be natural. It was about eighteen inches square and almost a foot deep. In the bottom of it were charred ends of sticks and a little candle grease, buried under the ma.s.s of ashes.

When Charley had carefully sc.r.a.ped and blown out all the ashes possible, he lay flat on his belly and examined the place minutely. Some person or persons had dug a little square chamber, like a sunken box, right in the shoulder of the mound. Charley decided that a candle had been placed in the centre of the box-like excavation, leaves packed loosely about the base of the candle, some fine, dry twigs stacked across the edges of the excavation, and across the top of the hole other dry twigs had been placed. Then the candle had been lighted, the open side of the excavation closed with twigs thrust vertically into the clay, and leaves heaped over and about the excavation.

As Charley examined the mound, he could not but admire the devilish cunning exhibited in the construction of this fire box. The open s.p.a.ce about the mound would give full sweep to the morning breeze, and the box was located in the windward shoulder of the little mound, exactly where the breeze would hit it hardest. The piles of leaves heaped about the box would spread the flames on all sides.

The candle grease in the bottom of the excavation, Charley had no doubt, was the remains of one of his own candles, taken with the food supplies from his cupboard. Nor did he doubt that the man who had taken it was Lumley. He must have disappeared in the forest the moment Henry Collins had told him what was afoot, for there could be no doubt Collins had informed him. After the moon rose, so that he could see well, Lumley must have come to the cabin, stolen food and candles, cautiously removed the aerial and grounded the battery, and gone straight down the valley to set his fires. If he could not get the money for the timber, or at least some of it, quite evidently Lumley did not intend to allow any one else to have it, not even the state.

In his own mind Charley had no doubt whatever that the incendiary was Lumley, and that he had done exactly the things Charley pictured him as doing. Even now he must be somewhere in the forest. But Charley felt relieved when he realized that in all probability Lumley had no firearms.

He must have fled without taking time to equip himself. Also Charley doubted if he would remain in the forest. The forester would be certain to scour the woods for him, and Lumley could hardly hope to evade pursuit indefinitely. He would probably make his way out of the forest at some distant point and try to get away. Sooner or later, Charley felt sure, the man would be captured and doubtless sent to prison for cheating the state.

It made Charley feel bad to think that he did not have enough direct evidence to insure Lumley's conviction for arson as well.

An idea came to Charley. Blowing away the remaining dust and ashes, Charley once more began an examination of the little excavation. Inch by inch he scrutinized the surface of the pit. He found it partly baked.

Suddenly he gave a cry. He had found the distinct prints of some one's fingers. On the second side of the excavation he found more prints, and the third side yielded still others. Carefully Charley chopped out the incriminating bits of clay. When he laid them side by side and examined them under his microscope, he found they had been made, not by one person, but by three. Apparently each side of the pit had been fas.h.i.+oned by a different man.

Chapter XXVII

Trapped

While Charley was turning the matter over in his mind, the forester suddenly appeared. Charley gave a glad cry when he saw him.

"Did you get them all out?" he asked anxiously.

"All will be out in a short time," was the reply. "Morton and his big gang crossed directly into the other valley when I came here with my crew. As soon as we had finished your job here, we hustled over to the other valley. The fires there had spread considerably, but as there was little wind and we had a big force of men, we quickly got them under control. The minute I was satisfied we had them in hand, I came back to see how you were. Jim is in charge over there, so everything will be all right. How are you?"

"All O.K.," said Charley, "but I guess I must have been about all in when you got here. I don't remember much about it."

"Yes, you were about gone. We got to you just in time. Now tell me what you know about this fire."

The two men sat down in the shade and Charley told his chief all that had happened to him since the two had parted on the preceding evening. When he showed the forester the marks in the clay, the forester was elated.

"He's a pretty clever rascal who doesn't trip himself up somewhere," he said. "It's an easy guess who your three fire bugs are. I have a very great suspicion that the thumb-prints in that ball of clay I took from your secret camp will match up with some of these marks, and that both sets of prints will correspond with the marks on the thumbs of one Bill Collins, though I didn't know that he was in the neighborhood at present.

And it's just as safe a bet that another set of those marks will match the ends of Lumley's thumbs. If only he had been as considerate as his friend Collins, and left his calling cards behind him, we'd have a complete case against him."

"We have," cried Charley, leaping to his feet in sudden excitement.

"Lumley left his thumb-prints in the putty he stuck in his window-sash. I never thought of them until this moment."

"Excellent!" cried the forester. "I suspect we can find the duplicates for this third set of prints only when we lay hands on Henry Collins. But I have a strong suspicion we'll have a chance to make that comparison very soon."

"How?" asked Charley eagerly. "What do you mean? Have the police made any arrests?"

"I don't know," replied the forester. "But this is the situation. Lumley will never dare hang around in the forest, for he will know that every man in the Forest Service is looking for him. Then, too, he can't have much food with him."

"Only what he took from me, I suspect."

"That makes it certain that he must leave the forest soon. It's a good many miles from the lumber camp to this neighborhood, so the three fugitives must be traveling in this direction. If they keep on for fifteen or twenty miles further, they will come out of the mountains near Pleasantville or Maple Gap. They can board a train at either place. The state police already are watching both stations. If Lumley and his fellows went straight on after they started the fires, and Goodness knows they wouldn't hang around here, they could reach the railroad in six or eight hours. That means they would be there by this time. There is a train that reaches Pleasantville about eleven o'clock. They would have time to make it. I should not be at all surprised, when I get back to the office, to find a message saying that the police had caught them."

"Let us hope you do," said Charley.

The forester arose. "Would you like to go see?" he asked.

"Surest thing you know," replied Charley.

"Then we'll hike back to the road and slip out to Lumley's house in my car. We can get that window-sash and put it in a safe place in my office and be back here before Jim brings his gang out."

Rapidly the two walked back along the fire trail. "Charley," said the forester suddenly, "just how did you manage to get that message to Jim?

It's all that saved the forest. The telephone was put as completely out of commission as your wireless was."

Charley then told the forester how he had used a tree for an aerial. "It was my last chance," he said. "If it hadn't worked, the forest would have burned. I had read about the use of trees to receive by, and I thought I had read that messages had been sent through trees, but I wasn't sure. It was my only chance and I took it."

"You're a wonder, Charley. I take back everything I ever said about the wireless. I have telegraphed for the Commissioner to come on from the capital. I shall put this entire matter before him and urge the installation of a wireless outfit in every district of the state forests.

No matter what is done elsewhere, we're going on a wireless basis here as soon as we can get the outfit, just as I told you. If I can't get money from the state for the outfit, I'll pay for it myself and have your Wireless Club make it. This coming winter we'll start a radio school and you shall have charge of it. Maybe Jim can help you now."

"That will be grand," said Charley with sparkling eyes. "If only we had the money Lumley robbed the state of, we could buy a dozen outfits."

"We'll get every cent of it," said the forester with decision. "Don't you worry about that. When we went to the lumber camp after Lumley last night, I stopped all cutting. Before another stick is felled, you and I are going in there and measure every stump. Then we'll estimate the timber that came from those stumps and the lumber operators will pay for it or they will face a criminal prosecution. If we catch Lumley, we've got the operators dead to rights. He's the kind of a rat that will squeal quick when he's caught."

They reached the road, jumped into the forester's car and sped away to Lumley's house. Half an hour later they entered the forester's office, carefully carrying a window-sash. As the forester reached his desk, the man in charge handed him a message from the state police at Maple Gap. It read, "Have arrested three men who came out of the forest here and tried to board a train. They give fict.i.tious names, but no doubt two of the men are wanted. Third has gold teeth and scar over right cheek. Do you want him?"

"Do we want him?" echoed the forester, as he began to write an answer.

"Well, I should say we do."

He dashed off his message, and handed it to his a.s.sistant. "Rush that," he directed.

Then he took a long coil of wire from a closet and led the way back to his car. "That's for a temporary aerial in case you decide to make one," he said, as Charley climbed up beside him and they went whirling back to the fire-tower in the mountains.

Chapter XXVIII