The Young Firemen of Lakeville | Page 2

a chair, and began to sort them in the darkness, looking for his trousers.
"What are you doing, Herbert?" asked his mother.
"I'm going to dress."
"What for?"
"I'm going to the fire."
"Herbert! Don't go! You might get hurt. Suppose some of the horses should run away and trample on you? Don't go!"
"I must, mother. They'll need all the help they can get. I must go!"
From the village street once more came the alarm.
"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
Now, however, more voices were shouting it. There was also the rush of feet, and Bert, peering from the window, saw a crowd of men and boys, many of them carrying buckets, hastening along. The glare in the sky had become brighter.
"I'm going to dress and go, mother," said the boy. "I want to aid all I can. We'd like help if our house was on fire."
"Oh, Herbert! Don't suggest such dreadful things!"
Mrs. Dare left her son's room, and in a few minutes he had dressed sufficiently to go out.
"Now do be careful, Herbert," called his mother, as he ran downstairs. "If anything should happen to you, I don't know what I'd do."
"I'll be careful."
Herbert Dare was the only son of a widow, Mrs. Roscoe Dare. Her husband had died several years previous, leaving her a small income, barely sufficient to support herself and her son. It may be added here that Mr. Dare had been a city fireman before his marriage. This, perhaps, accounted in a measure for the interest Herbert took in all alarms and conflagrations.
"It certainly looks like a big fire," thought the boy, as he broke into a run down the street. He soon caught up with the crowd hastening to the blaze.
"Hello, Bert!" shouted a lad to him. "Going to help put the fire out?"
"If they need me, Vincent. I see you have your bucket."
"Yep," replied Vincent Templer, one of Bert's chums. "It's dad's. He belongs to the bucket brigade, but he's away from home, and I took it."
"I wish I had one."
"Oh, I guess they'll have plenty at the barn."
"They'll need 'em, for it looks as if it was pretty well on fire."
The reflection of the blaze was now so bright that objects in the street could be plainly seen, and faces easily distinguished at a considerable distance.
"There's Cole Bishop!" said Bert to his chum, pointing to another lad, who was running along, evidently much out of breath, as he was quite fat.
"Hello, Cole!" called Bert.
"Hello--Bert! Goin'--to--the--fire?" came from Cole, with a puff between each word.
"Naw, we're goin' to a Sunday school picnic," replied Vincent, who was something of a joker.
"Humph! Funny--ain't--you!" remarked Cole.
The boys continued to speed on toward the burning barn, which was one of the buildings belonging to Anderson Stimson, a farmer, and located just on the edge of the village. The crowd had increased, and several score of people were on their way to the conflagration.
"They'll--have--a--hot--time--putting--out--that--fire," spoke Cole, with labored breath. "They--only--got--buckets."
"That's all they've had in Lakeville since the time it was founded by Christopher Columbus," remarked Vincent. "It's a good thing we don't have many fires."
"If I had my force pump I could show--show--'em--how--to--squirt-- water," said Cole, who had begun the first part of the sentence very fast, but who had to slow down on the last section. He was almost completely out of breath.
"Why didn't you bring it along?" asked Bert.
"Huh! How--could--I--when--it's--fast--on--the--cistern?"
That argument was, of course, unanswerable. Cole Bishop was a lad quite fond of mechanics, and was usually engaged in making some new kind of machinery. His force pump was his latest effort, and he was quite proud of it.
"Say! I should think it was burning!" suddenly exclaimed Bert, as he and his chums turned a corner of the street and came in full view of the blazing barn. The structure seemed enveloped in flames, great tongues of fire leaping high in the air, and a black pall of smoke hovering like an immense cloud above it. "They can't save that!"
"Guess not!" added Vincent. "What good are buckets in a blaze like that? You can't get near enough to throw the water on."
"Wish--I--had--my--force--pump," panted Cole.
By this time the boys had joined the crowd that was already at the scene of the fire. The heat could be felt some distance away.
"Come on, everybody with buckets!" cried Constable Stickler, who sometimes assumed charge of the bucket brigade. "Form a line from the horse trough to the barn. Pass the full buckets up one side and the empty ones down the other. Let the boys pass the empty buckets an' the men the full ones."
"Let's form two lines for full buckets," proposed another man.
"We'll need three," put in a third individual.
"Who's runnin' this here fire, I'd like to know?" inquired the constable indignantly. "Git to work now."
"Yes, I guess they'd better, or there won't be any barn to save,"