Andy the Acrobat | Page 6

yelled out Alf.
A spurt of flame had shot against his hand that held the short stick attached to the hoop.
Alf let go the hoop and dropped it. As Andy came down, righted again on the platform, one foot struck the narrow edge of the hoop.
He was in his stocking feet, and the contact cut the instep sharply. It threw Andy off his balance. He tried to right himself, but failed. He tipped sideways, and was forced to jump to the ground.
The hoop fell forward against the horse's mane. With a wild neigh of terror and pain the animal leaped to one side, carrying away a section of rotten fence. The blazing hoop now dropped around its neck.
A shout of dismay went up from the spectators. Alf, nursing his burned fingers, looked scared. Andy glanced sharply after the flying horse and spurted after it. At that moment the school bell rang out, and the crowd made a rush in the direction of the building. Alf Warren lagged behind.
"Go ahead," directed Andy, "I'll catch Dobbin."
Ned Wilfer at that moment dashed up to Andy's side.
"I'll stay and help you," he panted.
"Don't be tardy, don't get into trouble," said Andy.
Dobbin was making straight across a meadow. The kerosene soaked rags had pretty well burned out. They smoked still, however, and in the breeze once in a while a tongue of flame would dart forth.
Dobbin passed a haystack, then another. He was momentarily shut out from Andy's view on both occasions.
At his second reappearance Andy noticed that the animal had got rid of the hoop. Dobbin now slackened his pace, snorted, and, laying down, rolled over and over in the stubble.
The horse righted himself as Andy came up with him, breathless.
"So, so, old fellow," soothed Andy. "Just singed the mane a little, that's all."
He patted the animal's nose and seized the bridle to lead Dobbin back to the pasture from which he had started.
"Oh, gracious!" exclaimed Andy, abruptly dropping the bridle quicker than he had seized it.
Forty feet back on the course Dobbin had come, the second haystack was all ablaze.
There the horse had thrown off the fire hoop, or it had burned through at some part and had dropped there.
It had set the dry hay aflame. As Andy looked, it spread out into a fan-like blaze, enveloping one whole side of the stack.
Andy was dumb with consternation. However, he was not the boy to face a calamity inactively.
His quick eye saw that the stack was doomed. What troubled him more than that was the imminent danger to half-a-dozen other stacks nearly adjoining it.
"All Farmer Dale's hay!" gasped the perturbed lad. "Fifty tons, if there's one. If all that goes, what shall I do?"
Andy took in the whole situation with a vivid glance. Then he made a bee-line dash for a broken stack against which rested a large field rake.
It was broad and had a very long handle. Andy ran with it towards the blazing heap of hay and set to work instantly.
"This won't do," he breathed excitedly, as an effort to beat out the spreading flames only caused burning shreds to fill the air. These threatened to ignite the contiguous stacks.
Once the first of these was started they would all go one after the other. They were out of the direct draught of the light breeze prevailing. What cinders arose went straight up high in the air. The main danger threatened from the stubble.
Creeping into this from the base of the haystack in flames, little pathways of fire darted out like vicious serpents.
Andy made for these with the rake. He beat at them and scraped the ground. He stamped with his stockinged feet and pulled up clumps of stubble with his hands.
The trouble was that so many little fires started up at so many different spots. Finally, however, the ground was a mass of burned-out grass for twenty feet clear around the centre of the blaze.
The haystack was sinking down a glowing mass, but now confined itself and past spreading out.
Andy flung himself on the ground fairly exhausted. His hands and face were somewhat blistered, and he was wringing wet with perspiration.
He looked pretty serious as he did "a sum out of school."
"That stack held about two tons and a-half," he calculated. "I heard a farmer at the post-office say yesterday that he was getting eight dollars in the stack for hay. There's twenty dollars gone up in smoke. Where will I ever get twenty dollars?"
Andy became more and more despondent the longer he thought of the dismal situation.
He stirred himself to action. With the rake he heaped together the brittle filaments of burned hay.
"It can't spread any now," he decided finally. "It's dying down to nothing. Now then, what's next?"
Andy took a far look in all directions. The fire had burned so rapidly