ned to Pete Stubbs, who had come up.

"It's burning mighty fast," said Pete. "The woods are awfully dry up
there. There's no green stuff at all to hold it in check. If those
people on the farm down there don't look out, they'll be in a lot of
trouble."

Jack sent that information, too, and then came orders from Dick
Crawford.

"Return to camp," the Assistant Scout-Master flashed. "Warn farmer and
men of danger. Suggest a back fire in their fields, to give clear
space fire cannot jump. Then report, verbally, result of warning."

The warning was a waste of breath and effort.

"Think you can learn me my business?" asked the farmer, indignantly.
"I don't need no Boy Scouts to tell me how to look after my property.
Be off with you, now, and don't bother us! We're busy here, working
for a living. Haven't got time to run around playing the way you do."

Jack felt that it was useless to argue. This farmer was one who
believed that all boys were full of mischief. He didn't know anything
about the Boy Scout movement and the new sort of boy that it has
produced and is producing, in ever growing numbers. So Jack and Pete
went on to camp, and there Jack made his report to Durland.

"It would serve him right to have his place burned," said Durland, "but
we can't work on that theory. And there are others who would suffer,
too, and that wouldn't be right. So we'll just go over there and stop
that fire ourselves."

There was a chorus of cheers in reply to that. The idea of having a
chance to fight a really big fire like this awoke all the enthusiasm of
the Scouts of the three Patrols, the Whip-poor-wills, the Raccoons and
the Crows, this last the one to which Jack and Pete belonged.

So off they went, with Durland in the lead.

CHAPTER II

FIGHTING THE FIRE

The three Patrols of the Troop had been nearly at full strength when
the hike to the camping ground began, and Durland had at his disposal,
therefore, when he led them across the open fields toward the burning
mountain, about twenty quick, disciplined and thoroughly enthusiastic
Scouts, ready to do anything that was ordered, and to do it with a will.

"What's it like over there, Jack?" asked Tom Binns, who was Jack
Danby's particular chum among the Scouts, and the one who had really
induced him to join the Crows.

"It's going to be pretty hot work, Tom," said Jack. "There's no water
at all, and the only chance to stop that fire is by back firin