Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 27

"Sure that's it?" queried Tom, craning his neck to look up into the tall, straight tree.

"I, I'm almost sure," stammered Nan.

"I, don't, see, any, smoke," drawled Tom, with his head still raised.

The rain had almost ceased, an intermission which would not be of long duration. Nan saw that her cousin's prophecy had been true; the ground actually smoked after the downpour. The sun-heated sawdust steamed furiously. They seemed to be crossing a heated cauldron. Clouds of steam rose all about the timber cart.

"Why, Tommy!" Nan choked. "It does seem as though there must be fire under this sawdust now."

Tom brought his own gaze down from the empty tree-top with a jerk.

"Hoo!" he shouted, and leaned forward suddenly to flick his off horse with the whiplash. Just then the rear wheel on that side slumped down into what seemed a veritable volcano.

Flame and smoke spurted out around the broad wheel. Nan screamed.

The wind suddenly swooped down upon them, and a ball of fire, flaming sawdust was shot into the air and was tossed twenty feet by a puff of wind.

"We're over an oven!" gasped Tom, and laid the whip solidly across the backs of the frightened horses.

They plunged. Another geyser of fire and smoke spurted from the hole into which the rear wheel had slumped. Again and again the big horses flung themselves into the collars in an endeavor to get the wheel out.

"Oh, Tommy!" cried Nan. "We'll be burned up!"

"No you won't," declared her cousin, leaping down. "Get off and run, Nan."

"But you--"

"Do as I say!" commanded Tom. "Run!"

"Where, where'll I run to?" gasped the girl, leaping off the tongue, too, and away from the horses' heels.

"To the road. Get toward home!" cried Tom, running around to the rear of the timber cart.

"And leave you here?" cried Nan. "I guess not, Mr. Tom!" she murmured.

But he did not hear that. He had seized his axe and was striding toward the edge of the forest. For a moment Nan feared that Tom was running away as he advised her to do. But that would not be like Tom Sherwood!

At the edge of the forest he laid the axe to the root of a sapling about four inches through at the b.u.t.t. Three strokes, and the tree was down.

In a minute he had lopped off the branches for twenty feet, then removed the top with a single blow.

As he turned, dragging the pole with him, up sprang the fire again from the hollow into which the wheel of the wagon had sunk. It was a smoking furnace down there, and soon the felloe and spokes would be injured by the flames and heat. Sparks flew on the wings of the wind from out of the mouth of the hole. Some of them scattered about the horses and they plunged again, squealing.

It seemed to Nan impossible after the recent cloudburst that the fire could find anything to feed upon. But underneath the packed surface of the sawdust, the heat of summer had been drying out the moisture for weeks. And the fire had been smouldering for a long time. Perhaps for yards and yards around, the interior of the sawdust heap was a glowing furnace.

Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plunging back to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yielding sawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain.

Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole into which her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if her heart had stopped beating.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him.

Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yielding ma.s.s up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out.

A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It, indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.

But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she could get, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, and tried to tell her to avoid the fire.

Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. To lift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.

Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE

The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains, the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder made a deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what the imperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:

"Not that way! Pull sideways!"

He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nan tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the rain descended torrentially again.

The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beaten down. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfully when he walked.

But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for the smoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to break away; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheel budge.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, and run ourselves."

"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"

The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beat Nan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.

He placed the b.u.t.t of the lever he had cut under the hub of the great wheel. There was a sound stump at hand to use as a fulcrum. Tom threw himself upon the end of the lever. Nan ran to add her small weight to the endeavor. The wheel creaked and began to rise slowly.

The sawdust was not clinging, it was not like real mire. There was no suction to hold the wheel down. Merely the crust had broken in and the wheel had encountered an impediment of a sound tree root in front of it so that, when the horses tugged, the tire had come against the root and dragged back the team.

Out poured the flames and smoke again, the flames hissing as they were quenched by the falling water. Higher, higher rose the cart wheel. Nan, who was behind her cousin, saw his neck and ears turn almost purple from the strain he put in the effort to dislodge the wheel. Up, up it came, and then-----

"Gid-ap! 'Ap, boys! Yah! Gid-ap!"

The horses strained. The yoke chains rattled. Tom gasped to Nan:

"Take my whip! Quick! Let 'em have it!"

The girl had always thought the drover's whip Tom used a very cruel implement, and she wished he did not use it. But she knew now that it was necessary. She leaped for the whip which Tom had thrown down and showed that she knew its use.

The lash hissed and cracked over the horses' backs. Tom voiced one last, ringing shout. The cart wheel rose up, the horses leaped forward, and the big timber cart was out of its plight.

Flames and smoke poured out of the hole again. The rain das.h.i.+ng upon and into the aperture could not entirely quell the stronger element. But the wagon was safe, and so, too, were the two cousins.

Tom was rather painfully burned and Nan began to cry about it. "Oh! Oh!

You poor, poor dear!" she sobbed. "It must smart you dreadfully, Tommy."

"Don't worry about me," he answered. "Get aboard. Let's get out of this."

"Are you going home?"