Crowded Out o' Crofield Part 5

"Where'd you sit in church?" asked his mother.

"Out on the stoop," said Jack, "but I didn't go till after I'd sat in five pews inside."

"Sorry you missed the sermon," said his mother. "It was about Jerusalem."

"I heard him," said Jack; "you could hear him halfway across the green.

It kept me thinking about the city, all the while. I'm going, somehow."

Just then the talk was interrupted by the others, who came in from the parlor.

"I declare, Ogden," said the editor, "we shall quite fill your table.

I'm glad I came, though. I'll print a full report of it all in the Mertonville _Eagle_."

"That's Murdoch, the editor," said Jack to himself. "That's his paper.

Ours was a _Standard_,--but it's bu'sted."

"There's no room for a newspaper in Crofield," said the blacksmith.

"They tried one, and it lasted six months, and my son worked on it all the time it ran."

Mr. Murdoch turned and looked inquisitively at Jack through a huge pair of tortoise-sh.e.l.l-rimmed gla.s.ses.

"That's so," said Jack; "I learned to set type and helped edit the paper. Molly and I did all the clipping and most of the writing, one week."

"Did you?" said the editor emphatically. "Then you did well. I remember there was one strong number."

"Molly," said Jack, as soon as they were out in the kitchen, "there's five besides our family. They won't leave a thing for us."

"There's hardly enough for them, even," said Mary. "What'll we do?"

"We can cook!" said Jack, with energy. "We'll cook while they're eating. You know how, and so do I."

"You can wait on table as well as I can," said Mary.

There was something cronyish and also self-helpful, in the way Jack and Molly boiled eggs and toasted bread and fried bacon and made coffee, and took swift turns at eating and at waiting on the table.

The editor of the _Eagle_ heard the whole of the trout item, and about the runaway, and told Jack to send him the next big trout he caught.

There was another item of news that was soon to be ready for Mr.

Murdoch. Jack was conscious of a restless, excited state of mind, and Mary said things that made him worse.

"You want to get somewhere else as badly as I do," he remarked, just as they came back from taking in the pies to the dinner-table.

"I feel, sometimes, as if I could fly!" exclaimed Mary. Jack walked out through the hall to the front door, and stood there thinking, with a hard-boiled egg in one hand and a piece of toast in the other.

The street he looked into was silent and deserted, from the bridge to the hotel corner. He looked down to the creek, for a moment, and then he looked the other way.

"I believe Molly could do 'most anything I could do," he said to himself; "unless it was catching a runaway team. She couldn't ha'

caught that wagon. Hullo, what's that? Jingo! The hotel cook must have made a regular bonfire to fry my trout!"

He wheeled as he spoke, and dashed back through the house, shouting:

"Father, the Was.h.i.+ngton Hotel's on fire!--over the kitchen!"

"Ladder, Jack. Rope. Bucket," cried the tall blacksmith, coolly rising from the table, and following. As for the rest, beginning with the editor of the _Eagle_, it was almost as if they had been told that they were themselves on fire. Even Aunt Melinda exclaimed: "He ought to have told us more about it! Where is it? How'd it ever catch? Oh, dear me! It's the oldest part of the hotel. It's as dry as a bone, and it'll burn like tinder!"

Everybody else was saying something as all jumped and ran, but Jack and his father were silent. Ladder, rope, water-pails, were caught up, as if they were going to work in the shop, but the moment they were in the street again it seemed as if John Ogden's lungs must be as deep as the bellows of his forge.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" His full, resonant voice sent out the sudden warning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Fighting the Fire_.]

"Fire! Fire! Fire!" shouted Jack, and every child of the Ogden family, except Mary, echoed with such voice as belonged to each.

Through the wide gate of the hotel barn-yard dashed the blacksmith and his son, with their ladder, at the moment when Mrs. Livermore came out at the kitchen door, wiping a plate. All the other inmates of the hotel were gathered around the long table in the dining-hall, and they were too busy with pie and different kinds of pudding, to notice anything outdoors.

"Where is the fire, Mr. Ogden?" she said, in a fatigued tone.

"The fire's on your roof, close to the chimney," said the blacksmith.

"May be we can put it out, if we're quick about it. Call everybody to hand up water."

Up went a pair of hands, and out came a great scream. Another shrill scream and another, followed in quick succession, and the plate she had held, fell and was s.h.i.+vered into fragments on the stone door-step.

"Foi-re! Foi-re! Foi-re-re-re!" yelled the hotel cook. "The house is a-bur-rnin'! Wa-ter! Waw-aw-ter!"

The doors to pa.s.sage-ways of the hotel were open, and in a second more her cry was taken up by voices that sent the substance of it ringing through the dining-hall.

Plates fell from the hands of waiters, coffee-cups were upset, chairs were overturned, all manner of voices caught up the alarm.

It would have been a very serious matter but for the promptness of Jack Ogden and his very cool father. The ladder was planted and climbed, there was a quick dash along the low but high-ridged roof of the kitchen addition of the hotel,--the rope was put around Jack's waist, and then he was able safely to use both hands in pouring water from the pails around the foot of the chimney. Other feet came fast to the foot of the ladder. More went tramping into the rooms under the roof. The pumps in the kitchen and in the barn-yard were worked with frantic energy; pail after pail was carried upstairs and up the ladder; water was thrown in all directions; nothing was left undone that could be done, and a great many things were done that seemed hardly possible.

"Hot work, Jack," said his father. "It's a-gaining on us. Glad they'd all about got through dinner,--though Livermore tells me he's insured."

"I can stand it," said Jack. "They have steam fire-engines in the city, though. Oh, but wouldn't I like to see one at work, once. I'd like to be a fireman!"

"That's about what you are, just now," said his father, and then he turned toward the ladder and shouted:

"Hurry up that water! Quick, now! Bring an axe! I want to smash the roof in. Bear it, Jack. We've got to beat this fire."

The main building of the Was.h.i.+ngton Hotel was long, rather than high, with an open veranda along Main Street. The third story was mainly steep roof and dormer-windows, and the kitchen addition had only a story and a half. It was an easy building to get into or out of. Very quickly, after the cry of "Fire!" was heard, the only people in it, upstairs, were such of the guests as had the pluck to go and pack their trunks. The lower floor was very well crowded, and it was almost a relief to the men actually at work as firemen that so many other men kept well back because they were in their "Sunday-go-to-meeting"

clothes.

Everybody was inclined to praise Jack Ogden and his father, who were making so brave a fight on the roof within only a few feet of the smoke and blaze. It was heroic to look a burning house straight in the face and conquer it. During fully half an hour there seemed to be doubt about the victory, but the pails of water came up rapidly, a line of men and boys along the roof conveyed them to the hands of Jack, and the fire had a damp time of it, with no wind to help. The blacksmith had chopped a hole in the roof, and Tom and Sam Bannerman, the carpenters, were already calculating what they would charge old Livermore to put the addition in order again.

"There, Jack," said his father, at last, "we can quit, now. The fire's under. Somebody else can take a turn. It's the hottest kind of work.

Come along. We've done our share, and a little more, too."

Jack had just swallowed a puff of smoke, but as soon as he could stop coughing, he said:

"I've had enough. I'm coming."