the
Andersons to be suffocated if they aren't burned up. Who'll go with me
to bring 'em?"

"I'll go! Come on!" cried Paul, and Billy was not a second behind him.

"Wait!" Phil ordered. Then, "One of you stay here with Chip. Add all the
logs you can to the raft. Make it bigger, stronger! There'll be eight of
us, likely, that it will have to carry."

"Gee whiz! The car! The car, Phil! It'll be burned."

"No, it won't! Into the lake it goes. Water won't put it out of business
permanently. Billy, will you stay?"

"Go ahead!" cried Worth and in five seconds Phil was driving the
automobile in a way he had never done before.

Even before Anderson's place was reached the raging flames to the west
of the road lit up the narrow trail with a frightful glare. But on and
on the car flew.

The little clearing was reached in the nick of time. Great sparks and even
flaming branches were raining down upon it. The smoke was stifling.

Huddled under some kind of an old canvas,--a tent cloth from some
workman's camp on the gravel road, perhaps, Mrs. Anderson and the little
girl were trying to escape the smoke and terrific heat. The grass all
about the clearing was on fire. The little house must go, when the main
body of the flames came closer, and very doubtful did it look that life
itself could be saved in so exposed a place.

With a cry, "You can never come through the fire if you stay here,
people! We've come for you in the car! The lake! It's the only chance
of escape!" Phil made his presence known.

The roar and crackle and all the dreadful noise of the ocean of flame
that, as far as eye could see, flooded the woods to the west seemed quite
to drown the boy's loud shout.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST RUN OF THE BELOVED THIRTY

A second time Phil loudly called and now an answer showed Nels Anderson
and the golfing man to be near the edge of the woods. They had completed
the burning of a wide strip of the dry grass completely around the
clearing, only to find their work useless. All hope of thus stopping the
spread of the fire toward the buildings was destroyed by the falling
embers. The wind carried them everywhere.

There was no time to lose. The danger of death from suffocation, even
if the flames could be escaped, was very great. Now the roof of the
house was on fire. There was not a barrel of water within miles. Further
fighting, further loss of time, would be folly. Giants of the forest were
flaming up from roots