Chapter II: Part 2

"Come on to the fire!" the Safety Scout called up to him. "Perhaps we can do somebody a good turn. Bring Betty along, if your mother doesn't mind."

Bob got dressed first and hurried in to help Betty. Her teeth were chattering with excitement, and she could hardly button her clothes. "Where is the fire, Bob?"

"I don't know exactly--a mile or two north of here, I think. Come on--Mother says you may go, if you'll stick close to me."

The two clattered down the back stairs and joined Sure Pop.

"Bother that shoe string, anyhow!" panted Bob as they scampered off to the fire.

"Better stop and tie it up," advised the Safety Scout. "It'll trip you the first thing you know."

Bob thought otherwise. A couple of blocks farther on, however, he stepped on the dragging string, caught his toe on a loose board in the sidewalk, and sprawled headlong. But Bob was game. Up he jumped, gave Sure Pop the Scout salute, and said, with a grin, "Sir, I stand corrected." Then he tied the shoe string by the light of a street lamp, winked at Betty, and the three ran on.

The fire was farther away than it looked, and not till they had reached the hilltop did the size of the blaze fully show itself. "Goodness!" cried Betty. "The German church is gone, and Turner Hall will be next. And look at all those little houses in a row--they won't last long at that rate!" Then she stopped and coughed, for the air was full of smoke and soot, both from the burning buildings and from the fire engines.

Everywhere was noise and confusion. Half-dressed men and women stumbled over the fire hose as they hurried along with their arms full of household articles, trying to save everything they could.

A frightened sob fell on Betty's ears. She turned to see a chubby little baby boy, toddling along barefooted in his nightie, the tears rolling down his fat cheeks. "Mama!" he sobbed. "I want my Mama!"

"Oh, poor little thing!" cried Betty. "He's lost!" She caught the scared little fellow up in her arms and wrapped him snugly in the folds of her loose cloak. "Don't cry, honey. Betty'll find Mama for you!" And she cuddled and petted him till he stopped crying and lay still in her arms, peering out at the spreading flames with wondering eyes.

"I'm going to find his mother for him," said Betty. "He's scared half to death!"

But Sure Pop caught her arm as she started away. "Wait, she'll find him."

Sure enough, before long a young woman came running wildly from house to house calling out, "Karlchen! My little Karlchen! Where are you?"

The little fellow popped his head out from under Betty's cloak with a squeal of delight. "Mama!" he cried in his soft baby voice. "Mama!"--just that one happy word, over and over, as his mother pressed him to her breast.

The look on her face was thanks enough for Betty. Somehow the fire did not seem so dreadful to her after that.

"How'd it start?" Bob asked a fireman who was binding up a split in the bulging canvas hose.

"Fellow dropped a lighted match in a coat closet--house next to the church," puffed the fireman, who was breathing as if he had run a mile. He gave the hose a parting kick and hurried to join his comrades down the street, where the flames were fiercest.

"The same old story," said Sure Pop, soberly. "Hold on! What's that?"

Bob and Betty looked up at the little old-fashioned window in the cottage across the street. A small black-and-tan dog was standing on his hind legs inside the room, pawing and scratching at the window pane.

Sure Pop put two fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle. The dog answered him, barking wildly and running back into the smoke-filled room, then to the window again, as if trying to call their attention to something or somebody in the room with him.

"There's somebody in there!" cried Bob. "Come on, Sure Pop--wait here for us, Betty!"

As they ran, the two splashed into a pool of water in a hollow of the sidewalk. Sure Pop dipped his handkerchief in this and tied it over his nose and mouth. Bob did the same. Then the smoke of the burning cottage swallowed them up.

Remembering the dangers of a draft, Sure Pop carefully closed the door after them, and stopped Bob from kicking a hole in the window at the head of the stairs. They knew which room it was--the farthest window from the front door--and flung themselves against the door so hard that it burst open and they fell headlong into the room. The little black-and-tan dog, barking more wildly than ever, had heard them coming and was dragging with all his might at something on the bed.

Bob and Sure Pop, half choked with smoke, ran to the bedside. There lay a little girl only five or six years old. Yes, she was breathing!

Just then the hungry flames burst in through the flimsy closet door and came licking along the ceiling. Bob's eyes smarted and burned, and his lungs felt as if they would burst. He remembered his Boy Scout studies in First Aid, though, and threw himself beside Sure Pop on the floor, where the smoke was not so thick. Together they dragged the little girl to the window.

Bob put his lips close to Sure Pop's ear. "Shall we jump?"

Sure Pop shook his head. "Too risky. We'll try the stairs."

With the little girl held close between them, their bodies shielding her from the flames, the two groped and stumbled down the short flight of stairs, fairly falling through the whirlwind of flame that swirled upward from the first floor. Scorched, singed, with their clothing afire in places, they fought their way back to the street--safe!

Betty ran forward with a glad cry and flung her arms around her twin. "Bob! Oh, Bob, I thought you were _gone_!"

Just then they heard a shout as a frightened little family group came running up, and a roughly dressed laborer snatched the little girl and kissed her till her eyes opened and she smiled.

"Good Schneider! Nice Schneider!" said her small brother, patting the dog, who was wagging his tail almost off for joy.

"Nice little Schneider--he took--care--of--me!" exclaimed the little girl between kisses. And the father gathered up the little dog in his arms and kissed him, too!

As the tired Safety Scouts opened the front gate half an hour later, the boom of a cannon roared out, somewhere on the other side of town, and the twelve o'clock bells and whistles joined in an echoing chorus.

Sure Pop raised his hand with a tired smile. "Midnight!" he cried. "Hurrah for the glorious Fourth!"

_Don't let a careless match cost a dozen homes._
--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER NINE

"CHANCE CARTER'S WAY"

BOOM! It was the distant roar of some Fourth of July cannon which had escaped the watchful eye of the police.

Bob Dalton stirred uneasily and flopped over in bed. The morning sun was shining straight into his eyes.

By the time the twins were dressed and downstairs, Sure Pop was waiting for them in the back yard. He, too, had slept late after the excitement of the fire.

"I had hoped for a holiday today," he said, "but I can see there's going to be plenty of scouting for me to do, even on a 'sane Fourth,' so I'm off on my rounds. How are you two going to spend the day?"

"Going over to where the fire was, as soon as we've had our breakfast," said Bob. "Looks from here as if Turner Hall's still smoking."

Betty was fingering the Safety Button in Sure Pop's lapel. "What are you doing, Betty?" asked the Safety Scout, with a twinkle.

"Turning your button right side up," Betty told him.

The merry little Colonel laughed and explained: "I have to wear it wrong side up each day till I've done my One Day's Boost for Safety."

"Oh," said Bob. "Same as the Boy Scouts wear their neckties outside their vests till they've done the day's good turn to somebody?"

Sure Pop nodded. "That one little rule is the biggest thing in the whole Scout Law," he said. "The Scout who lives up to that test--doing a good turn to somebody every day, quietly and without boasting--will be classed alongside the greatest Scouts the world has ever known. Bring me your _Handbook of Scout-Craft_ a moment, please, Bob. Listen to this from page 7, now:

* * * * *

"'Another way to remind himself is to wear his Scout badge reversed until he has done his good turn. The good turn may not be a very big thing--help an old lady across the street; remove a banana skin from the pavement so that people may not fall; remove from streets or roads broken glass, dangerous to automobile or bicycle tires'--to say nothing," added Sure Pop, "of the danger to barefooted boys and girls, or to folks with thin shoes! Don't you see, Bob and Betty, how every one of those good turns happens to be a good turn for Safety as well? I told you a few days ago that all true Scouts are brothers; aren't we all working toward the same end, after all?"

Bob and Betty saw the point. They turned their Safety buttons upside down as Sure Pop waved them goodby, resolving to get them right side up at the very first chance that offered.

They found their father on the front porch reading the paper, taking solid comfort in the fact that Bruce's Mills were closed for the day. "I want you to help me with a little work out in the yard," he said, "as soon as you've had your breakfast." So it was almost one o'clock before Bob and Betty set out for the scene of last night's fire. Just across the river they met Chance Carter and George Gibson, bound in the same direction.

The German church still raised its steepled head toward the sky, but its roof had fallen in, and Turner Hall was a mass of blackened ruins. Parts of the walls were still standing, swaying as if ready to topple over any moment. Off in one corner the blackened timbers and jumbled bits of furniture were stubbornly smoldering.

The four stood and looked. "Just think!" said Betty softly. "All that from just one little careless match! Guess _that_ man won't light a match in a coat closet again."

"Pshaw!" scoffed Chance Carter. "That wouldn't happen once in a thousand times."

"How many matches do you suppose are scratched in the United States every second?" asked Bob, shortly.

"Oh, a couple of hundred, I suppose."

"Ten thousand, Chance, _every second_. And every match is a possible fire. Sure Pop told me last night that one third of the fire losses are due to carelessness in handling matches. And the fires in this country cost us over a million dollars every day--twice that, counting the cost of fire departments."

"Whew!" Even reckless Chance looked impressed.

"When you get into the Boy Scouts," Bob reminded him, "you'll find out what _they_ think about fooling with fire. A real Scout never leaves his camp fire till he's dead sure it's out. Even after there's no fire left that he can see, he pours water on it and all around it to guard against its rekindling. A Scout who isn't careful about such things is looked down on by the others as not of much account."

"Well, I don't care; there's such a thing as being too careful. I wish we had the old-fashioned Fourth of July back again. This sane Fourth business is too tame for me!" Chance strolled off to the far corner of the smoking ruins and began climbing around in the half-filled basement.

George winked at Betty. "Can't teach _him_ anything," he chuckled. "He was born careless and he'll die careless, I guess. Look at him, now--poking around where those loose bricks may cave in on him any minute. We can't say anything, though, or he'll get mad. Chance Carter always has to have his own way."

"It's a wonder the police aren't guarding this place," said Bob, anxiously. "Guess they've got their hands full elsewhere." He scowled as he watched his reckless friend jumping from one charred timber to another, never noticing how the crumbling walls tottered with each jump.

"Whether he likes it or not," he said finally, "I'm going to get him out of there. It's too risky. Hey, Chance! Look out--that wall's coming over!" His voice rose in a startled shout.

"Aw, I guess not--" Chance got no further. The overhanging wall, swaying on its wobbly base and loosened by his sudden backward jump, toppled over on him in a shower of bricks and mortar. "Chance Carter's way" had come to grief again!

"Too late--again!" muttered Bob, grimly, diving into the cloud of dust that hung over the spot where Chance had disappeared. For a picture had flashed into his mind--the memory of how he had failed to warn the wrestlers in time only a few days before, the picture of Joe's terrified face as his head crashed on the cement sidewalk. Why hadn't he warned Chance in time?

A groan from the wreckage told where the boy lay half buried under the fallen wall. "Got me that time!" he muttered, through his set teeth. "Guess my leg's broken."

A shadow fell on the two and Bob looked up to see George's white face gazing down at him. "What can I do, Bob?"

"Have Betty run for a doctor, or telephone. Chance is badly hurt. Help me lift this rubbish from on top of him." The boys worked fast but carefully, lifting one brick at a time, till Chance was free. To their dismay he could not move.

"It's this leg." He touched his left, just below the knee. "I felt something break when the wall hit me. Perhaps the other's broken, too--I don't know."

Very carefully Bob ripped the clothing from the injured leg. Then he put one hand gently on the spot Chance touched, and the other hand just below it, and lifted the leg slightly. There was enough movement at the broken point so that there could be no doubt. The other leg proved to be badly bruised, but not broken.

Bob carefully moved the broken leg back into the same position as the right one and piled his coat and George's around it so it would stay in shape. He brought the suffering boy some water in his hat, and the three waited for the doctor.

"He said he'd come right away," reported Betty, hurrying back from the telephone. "But, Bob, it isn't safe to stay down there--no telling when that other chunk of the wall may fall on all three of you. Shall I try to push it over from the inside?"

"Goodness, no, Betty! Keep as far away from it as you can. Well, we'll have to get him out of here, some way. You run back to that first store, please, and get half a dozen good strong strips of cloth about a foot wide and two or three feet long--anything that will do to tie his leg up to the splints. George, you bring over a few of those pieces of flooring that are not too badly charred to use for splints. There!"

He laid a long piece of flooring along Chance's left side, from below his foot clear to his armpit, and chose a shorter board for the inside splint. He arranged the two coats so that they would pad the broken leg where the boards came up against it, and tied the splints firmly, but not tightly, in place. Then Bob slowly gathered his groaning friend in his arms.

"Sorry to hurt you, old fellow, but we've got to get you out of here. You take his legs, George,--gently, now. So! We can climb out along that cave-in on the street side if we take it easy. Up we go!"

_Better be safe than sorry._
--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER TEN

THE TWINS MEET BRUCE

Chance Carter, lying helpless on the stone steps of Turner Hall, was wondering if the doctor would ever come. Bob and George did their best to ease his pain, while Betty gazed anxiously down the street.

"Why doesn't that doctor come?"

"Surely he knows where we are, Betty?"

"Yes, I told him Turner Hall, and he said, 'Why, Turner Hall burned down last night, little girl.' And I told him I knew it, and that we were waiting right beside what was left of it."

"Hm-m-m! Something must have happened to him then; he could have walked it in less time than this. If he doesn't come pretty soon, we'd better call up the police department and have them send the ambulance. We can't wait here much longer."

While they waited, an idea popped into Bob's head.

"Look here," he said, "somebody else is likely enough to get hurt here, just the way Chance did. I believe we'd better put up a sign. I'll get some paper from that store."

So Bob hurried around to the store and got some wrapping paper and nails and borrowed a pencil and hammer. He worked fast, the shopkeeper looking curiously over his shoulder while he lettered this sign:

DANGER!

These walls may fall on you any moment. One leg
already broken here today. Keep out.

SAFETY FIRST!

Bob had just finished the lettering when a big automobile came purring along in front of the ruined building. The chauffeur was in uniform. The big man inside looked almost lost among the cushions, so roomy was the machine. At a word from him, the car slowed down, and he scanned the ruins sharply. Bob knew him in a moment for Bruce, the great mill owner, one of the richest men in the city.

"Hello, what's this? What's this?" Bruce stood up in the car when the little group on the steps caught his eye. In a twinkling he was out of the automobile and bending over the groaning boy, while Bob and George and Betty told him what had happened.

"Tut, tut!" snapped the great man whose mills gave work to thousands of men, the twins' father among them. "This won't do at all! If the doctor won't come to him, we must get him to the doctor." Pushing aside the chauffeur, he lifted Chance into the car and on to the deep, comfortable cushions as easily as if he had been a child of two instead of a lad of twelve and big for his age.

"Now, jump in, the rest of you," he said, "and we'll take him over to Doctor MacArthur's."

Betty climbed in and George followed. The chauffeur took his seat and looked around at Bob, waiting. "What's the matter now?" asked Bruce, impatiently, as Bob lingered on the step.

"It's those walls," answered the boy. "I hate to leave them in that shape--somebody else will be getting hurt just as Chance did. I'd better put up the sign. You folks go on, please, and I'll follow on foot."

The mill owner shook his head. "Put up your sign and come along. We'll wait."

Bruce looked sharply at Bob's sign as the boy nailed it up in place, but said nothing. Bob climbed into the waiting automobile, and the big machine rolled smoothly, silently to the doctor's office.

Doctor MacArthur, surgeon's case in hand, came out. He was a little gray man--gray-haired, dressed in a gray suit, with keen gray eyes that seemed to take in everything at once.

"Who put those splints on?" He jerked out the words like a pistol shot.

"I did," said Bob, reddening; for the doctor's tone made him feel that he must have bungled his work.

Swiftly the doctor bared the leg and laid a deft finger on the exact spot of the break. "Simple fracture," was his verdict. "Bone badly splintered, though--would have come through the skin in short order if you hadn't got the splints on when you did. Where does he live?"

He took George's seat and George climbed over beside the chauffeur. On the way to Chance's house, he insisted on knowing how Bob had learned to give First Aid to the injured.

"So you're a Boy Scout, eh?" Another keen glance from those sharp gray eyes.

"N-no, sir--but I'm going to be."

"Eh? How's that?"

"He isn't quite old enough yet," explained George. "You have to be twelve or over to join the Boy Scouts. I'm one--but Bob knows a heap more about it already than I do," he added frankly.

"Ha! Well, I'll have to change my opinion of the Boy Scouts, young man. I always took it for granted they were a sort of feeder to our regular army--playing soldier, you know. But if this is the kind of work they turn out, I don't know but I'll join myself."

George got out when they reached Chance's house, and helped the doctor carry the injured lad up the steps. "You needn't wait for me," he told the twins, "I'm going to stay a while."

"Come in and see me some time," Doctor MacArthur called back to Bob. "I want you to tell me more about your First Aid work! See you later, Mr. Bruce."

"Home, Jennings," said Bruce. "And be quick about it--I'm late."

Bob leaned back against the cushions and studied the grim, square-jawed face of the great man whom everybody was so anxious to please. So this was the way he looked at close range, this self-made, stubborn man of millions who always managed to bend every other man in his line of business to his own iron will! As he looked, Bob felt it was no wonder they all feared him--feared and followed.

For Bruce was the man who, more than all the others put together, was responsible for keeping Safety First work out of the mills in his line of business. Hundreds of men were killed and thousands injured every year in the great string of mills of which Bruce's was the head. Over and over it had been pointed out to him that the same Safety First work which had saved thousands of lives in other lines would save them in his line as well. But he was stubborn, iron-willed.

"You're wasting your time," was all he would say. "No theories or new-fangled notions in _my_ mills."

Because Bruce said this, all the other mills hung back, too. There were reasons. They knew Bruce.

All this Bob knew from talks he had had with his father about the risks of working in Bruce's mills. He understood it better, now that he was face to face with Bruce himself.

All too soon, to the twins' way of thinking, the automobile drew up in front of Bruce's big stone house. The mill owner wasted no words. Jumping out, he waved his hand to the three, said to Jennings, "Take them wherever they want to go," and hurried up the walk.

The eager face pressed against the big bay window disappeared, the front door flew open, and a sweet little fair-haired girl threw herself into Bruce's outstretched arms. "Daddy! What made you so late? Here I've been waiting and waiting--"

"Bonnie!" That was all the twins heard as the big automobile bore them away toward home. But the way he said it, and the way he caught his little daughter to his big, broad chest, told Bob and Betty all they needed to know about the soft spot in the millionaire's heart.

What did his great house and his mills and all his money amount to, after all? He would gladly have thrown them all aside rather than have the slightest harm come to his Bonnie; for her mother had died when Bonnie was only a baby, and the little girl was all Bruce had left in the world.

ADVENTURE NUMBER ELEVEN

"JUST FOR FUN"

The twins missed Chance Carter during the next few weeks. The boy had been a regular nuisance in some ways, for he was always getting into scrapes; but he was a clever lad and had a way of making up games that nobody else seemed able to think of.

"It does seem lonesome without Chance," Bob told Sure Pop when the broken leg had kept their friend tied up indoors for a week or more. "And yet we don't get into half as much trouble when he isn't round."

Sure Pop looked wise. "Perhaps it's because Chance hasn't learned that he must play according to the rules," he said. "The fellow who is always taking chances isn't playing up to the rules of the game."

"Anyhow," said Betty, "Chance has had his lesson now. By the time he's able to run around again, he will be ready to quit taking chances."

Sure Pop changed the subject, though a shrewd twinkle seemed to say that it would take more than one lesson to teach Chance how to play life's game according to the rules. "How'd you like to take a trip with me today?"

"Fine!" exclaimed Bob and Betty. "Where?"

"To a kind of moving picture show," answered Colonel Sure Pop. "Let's start right away, then. And be sure you wear your Safety First buttons."

The twins couldn't help smiling at the idea of going anywhere without their magic buttons. They boarded the crowded street car with Sure Pop and stood beside the motorman all the way to the railroad yards. It seemed as if somebody tried to get run over every block or two, and the way people crossed the crowded streets in the middle of blocks was enough to turn a motorman's hair gray.

"How'd you like to be the motorman, Bob?"

"Well, I tell _you_, Sure Pop, I don't believe it's as much fun as it looks from the outside. If fellows like Chance and George would ride beside the motorman for just one day, seeing what he has to see right along, they'd be Safety workers forever after. Look at that, now! Those chaps have no business to cross in the middle of the block."

"Nobody has," agreed Sure Pop, with a keen glance at Bob. The boy flushed as he remembered what he himself had been doing when he first felt the warning touch of the Safety Scout's hand.

He and Betty noticed, too, how carefully Sure Pop looked all around him before leaving the car, and they did likewise. Two short blocks more and they were in sight of the railroad roundhouse. The Safety Scout stuck his head inside the great doorway and peered around at the smoking engines that impatiently awaited their turn. "There she is!" he exclaimed. "There's old Seven-Double-Seven!" And he waved his hand at the engineer up in the cab.

The three climbed into the engine cab, where the fireman stood waiting with his eye on the steam gauge. From the way the engineer shook hands with Sure Pop, the twins decided they must be old friends.

"Got my orders?" asked the engineer. He ripped open the envelope Sure Pop handed him, glanced at the message, nodded to the fireman, and gently pulled open the throttle. The big, powerful engine answered his touch like a race horse. With a warning clang of the bell, they slipped down the shining track, through the crowded yards, and toward the city limits.

"Bob, what are you looking for?" asked Sure Pop.

Bob went on looking in all the corners of the cab as if greatly puzzled. "Looking for the moving picture machine," he said with a grin. "I thought I heard you promise us a moving picture show."

"You just wait. Be ready to rub your magic buttons when I say the word, both of you, and you'll see some moving pictures you'll never forget--pictures of what _might_ happen to boys and girls like yourselves. The pity of it is, it does happen, every day of the year."

Sure Pop paused to call their attention to some little blurry patches of blue scattered along the track. "Wild flowers," he said. "Pretty things, aren't they? If we weren't going so fast, we'd stop and get some."

The engineer scowled. "Pretty? They don't look pretty to me any more. Look there, now!"

The brakes jarred as he spoke, and the shriek of the whistle scattered a group ahead. Several young couples, going home from town by way of the railroad track, had stopped to gather wild flowers. One couple were walking hand in hand over the railroad bridge, deaf at first to whistle and bell and everything else. Suddenly they heard, looked up, and turned first one way and then another, uncertain whether to jump off the bridge or stand their ground.

"Is it any wonder that I don't like the flower season?" grunted the engineer in disgust. "It's the worst time of all, seems to me. Now you'd think those young fellows and girls were old enough and would have sense enough to keep off the railroad's right of way, wouldn't you? But look at 'em!"

He mopped his forehead and glared ahead at the frightened couple, holding the panting engine at a standstill till they could scramble off the bridge.

"They act as if we had nothing to do but just watch out for 'em," he went on, getting under way again. "They got off scot-free this time, but imagine what old Seven-Double-Seven would have done to 'em if this had been my regular run! Forty miles an hour on schedule--and where would they be now?

"It's the same old story, day after day--boys riding bicycles down the tracks, when the road's ten times smoother and a million times as safe! Boys playing on the turntables and getting crippled for life, one by one!

"They'll run like mad to get across the track ahead of a fast train--and then stand and watch it go through! I ought to know--I did it myself when I was a boy, but little I knew then of the way it wrecks an engineer's nerves!

"They flip the cars and try to imitate the brakemen without the least idea of how many thousands of brakemen have lost their lives just that way. They crawl under cars, instead of waiting or going around. Why, Colonel, the railroads kill thousands and thousands of people every year--you know the figures--dozens every day, week in and week out. And somebody's badly hurt on the railroads every three minutes or less--_and a third of them are boys and girls and little children_! That's what I can't stand--the little folks getting hurt and getting killed, when just a bit of common sense would save them! Oh, if their fathers and mothers had any idea--"

The big engineer choked up for a moment. "Even on the trains," he added, "when they're safe inside the cars, they get hurt. I'm not the only one that worries on my run--ask the conductor. He'll tell you how they run up and down the aisle, till a sudden jar of the brakes throws 'em against a seat iron or into the other passengers. They get out into the vestibules, which is against the rules, and when the train takes a sudden curve they get smashed up."

Three minutes later he slowed down for the twins to watch the fast mail thunder past. It was near a village crossing, and a little group of boys stood waiting. As No. 777 came to a stop, the twins saw that most of the boys had stones in their hands.

On came the fast mail, tearing past the little village as if it were not even on the map. The mail cars--the smoker--the long rows of glass windows, a head beside each--

Smash! The flying splinters of glass told of one stone that had found its mark. The boys ran like scared cats around the corner into a lumber yard.

"Little cowards!" The fireman glared angrily after them. "They may have killed somebody on that train--_they_ don't know!"

"Rub your buttons!" whispered Sure Pop, whose eyes were still fixed on the fast mail, now disappearing in a cloud of smoke and dust.

Bob and Betty rubbed. At their first touch of the magic buttons the disappearing train took on a queer, unreal look, like a film at the "movies."

They seemed to be inside one of the cars. They seemed to be watching a sweet-faced old lady--somebody's grandmother--snowy haired, kind, gentle, not used to traveling, as even the twins could see. She kept looking first at the time-table and then at an old key-winding silver watch she wore on a quaint little chain around her neck.

Her lips were moving, smiling. "Only two stops more," she seemed to be saying, "and then I shall see little Jim." She took a kodak picture out of her handbag and looked at it long and lovingly. She glanced out of the window and saw a group of boys standing by the village crossing "to watch the fast mail go through." She liked boys. She smiled at them--she did not see the stones in their hands.

Smash! The other passengers sprang to their feet as one of the stones, thrown at random, shivered the car window into bits and struck the kind old face, full between the eyes. A quick, startled cry--a pitiful fumbling of kind old hands before shattered spectacles and eyes suddenly blinded--and the moving picture seemed to fade away. The twins were left with the sickening fear that perhaps little Jim's grandmother might never see him after all.

"Oh! oh!" gasped Betty, rubbing her eyes. "How terrible!" Bob caught Sure Pop by the arm.

"Did we imagine it, Sure Pop--or was it true?"

"Too true," said Sure Pop, sadly. "It happens almost every day somewhere--where boys throw stones at the cars 'just for fun'!"

ADVENTURE NUMBER TWELVE

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

"And just to think," said Bob, as the three sat on the home steps talking over their exciting trip on old No. 777, "just to think of how many boys and girls are killed on the railroad tracks every day!"

"Every day," echoed the little Safety Scout, "and all over the world. Go into any village graveyard along any railroad, and you'll find the grave of some boy or girl who has been killed trespassing on the railroad tracks. No way to save them, I'm afraid, till folks wake up to the fact that it's not so much the tramps who are being killed this way--it's the children!"

"It's just awful," said Betty, puckering up her brow in a thoughtful scowl. "I think we ought to do something about it."

"What, for instance?" Sure Pop was watching her sharply.

"Well, something to put a stop to it. Surely we could find _some_ way of teaching the boys and girls how to play safely; and then when they grew up they'd be in the habit of _thinking_ Safety. Then they'd teach _their_ boys and girls--and all this awful killing and crippling, or most of it, would be ended."

"The trouble is," said Bob, "in going at the thing in too much of a hit-or-miss style. We could do some good by talking to the few boys and girls we could reach, but not enough. Why can't we organize?"

Sure Pop's eager face lighted up, overjoyed at the turn Bob's thoughts were taking. "You can," he said quietly.

"Why, sure!" went on Bob, getting more and more excited as the idea took hold. "Let's get busy and organize an army of Safety Scouts right here. We've already got the biggest thing in the Safety Scout Law at work--don't you see?--our 'One Boost for Safety' every day. We can get some more Safety Scout buttons made, and as fast as a boy earns his--"

"--Or a girl earns hers!"--interrupted Betty, so seriously that Bob couldn't help smiling.

"Yes, of course--girls too--why, as fast as boys and girls earn the right to wear Safety Scout buttons, we can form them into patrols. It wouldn't be long before we could have several troops hard at it. I tell you, Sure Pop, if we go at it that way we can do big things for Safety just as sure as you're a foot high!"

Sure Pop gave Betty a droll little wink. "It's a go, then," he said cheerfully. "Well, where are you going to begin?"

Bob looked up at him with a sudden idea shining in his eyes. "Why not begin by organizing in patrols and then in troops, just about like the Boy Scouts? First, we can get a few of our friends interested, and let each one of them get eleven others interested--that will make a patrol of twelve, commanded by the one who got them together."

"Spoken like a Scout and a gentleman!" cried the little Colonel, giving him a sounding thump on the shoulder. "Go on, Bob--what next?"

"Well, just as fast as we get four new patrols, we can form them into a troop, with a Scout Master for their leader."

"Good," said Sure Pop. "It will take some lively work to pick your Scout Masters and get them trained in time, but the difference in their efficiency will be worth your while."

"I suppose," said Betty, "we'll have to choose only boys and girls who have good records for Safety?"

Bob looked doubtful. "What do you think about that, Sure Pop?"

"I think it would be a mistake, Bob. You'll find too few who have even learned to think Safety. A better plan will be to take in those who seem most in earnest over the idea, especially those who have been taught a hard lesson through accidents which care would have avoided."

"Go on, please. Tell us more--how would you work out the details?"

"Bob, I would--but I believe I've told you enough. You and Betty go ahead in your own way and work out the details yourselves. Let me see you get your Safety Scouts together, if you really do mean business, and I'll show you about the work that's already been done among the factory hands and mill-workers of America.

"Let me tell you this much, though: you'll find, when you get your Safety Scouts of America organized, that the good work will go ahead by leaps and bounds. All this talk about 'efficiency' is really part of the same movement, though very few realize it; it's nothing more or less than cutting out guess work and waste--and what else, after all, is our Safety work?"

"That's so. It really is all working in the same direction, isn't it?" agreed Bob. "Chance Carter's oldest brother is studying to be an efficiency engineer--perhaps he can give us some ideas."

"Then--you really do mean to get busy and organize the Safety Scouts of America?"

"Mean it!" Bob and Betty fairly shouted the words in their eagerness to get to work. And as Sure Pop said good night to them, there was a joyous light in his eye which showed his plan was working out just as he had thought it would.

He smiled a satisfied smile as the door closed on the excited Dalton twins. "And now," said Colonel Sure Pop to himself, "_now_, we're getting down to business!"

_Enlist now! We fight to save life, not
to take it._
--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER THIRTEEN

DALTON PATROL

The next few weeks were busy ones for Bob and Betty Dalton. The plan was a big one--the Safety Scouts of America. Growing out of an idea planted by Colonel Sure Pop, it sprouted and grew surprisingly fast. Already the news was spreading like wildfire among the boys and girls all over the city.

Joe Schmidt was out again, his head as good as ever. George Gibson, always brim full of energy and enthusiasm, had set his heart on becoming a Safety Scout Master and heading a troop of his own. Even Chance Carter, hobbling about on crutches, had caught the fever of Safety Scouting and was making all sorts of plans as to what he would do when his broken leg got well.

Chance really had changed, somehow. The twins supposed it was all due to his accident, but the real reason was Colonel Sure Pop. Chance seemed almost magnetized by the little Colonel and never lost a chance to be near him.

"Honestly now, Colonel," he owned up to Sure Pop one day, "I'd read so many stories about reckless heroes and all that, I got in the habit of thinking I had to be reckless. Story books seem to make out that it's a brave thing to risk your life--and wasn't that exactly what Bob did when he found that live wire?"

Sure Pop laid an understanding hand on Chance's shoulder.

"Listen, Chance! You've caught only half the point, that's your main trouble. It _is_ a manly thing to take a risk--_when it's necessary_. When somebody's life is in danger, it's the manliest thing on earth to take a risk for the sake of saving it. That's why Bob's act in patrolling the live wire earned him a Safety Scout button--the lives of those smaller boys were in danger, to say nothing of anybody else who might blunder across the wire just then--that's where the difference comes in."

"That's so. I never thought of it in just that way."

"I know you haven't. When you stop to think it over, you see it's a fellow's plain duty to take a chance when it's necessary, but it's downright foolish to do it on a dare. One thing about Bob's live-wire adventure I don't believe even he realizes," added Sure Pop. "It was that hurry-up patrol of small boys that he threw out around the live wire which really gave him the idea of how to organize the Safety Scouts of America. I knew the idea would strike him and Betty sooner or later."

Chance looked admiringly at the little Colonel. What a wise Scout he was, sure enough, as keen and clever at reading signs of the trail as any Indian fighter that ever stepped in deerskin!

The boy looked longingly after the Safety Scout Patrol, which was just starting off on an "observation hike," as Bob called it. Part of the training Bob had laid out for his men was an hour's brisk walk, after which each Safety Scout wrote out a list of the unsafe things he had noticed while "on the trail."

"There's one thing that stumps me, though," said Chance. "How did Bob _know_ that was a live wire?"

"He didn't. He simply had sense enough to treat _all_ fallen wires as if they _were_ alive. See? Better safe than sorry. Just the same in turning on an electric light: it _may_ not harm you to touch an iron bedstead with one hand while you turn the light on with the other--but it's taking a chance. Same's the fellow who turns an electric bulb on or off while standing in a bathtub: he _may_ go on with his bath in safety--and then again he may drop lifeless in the water.

"It's a good deal like the gun that isn't loaded, Chauncey. There _was_ a lad, you know, who found a gun was dangerous without lock, stock, or barrel--his father whipped him with the ramrod! A real Scout knows how to take care of himself--and of others. And that's especially true of Safety Scouts."

"Well, Colonel," said Chance, reaching for his crutches and rising painfully to his feet, "I'm _for_ it! Perhaps if I make good, the fellows will quit calling me Chance and call me either Chauncey or Carter, I don't care which--but Chance makes me sick!"

"Here's _to_ you, Carter!" said Sure Pop, with a hearty handshake. Again came that smile of satisfaction as he watched the boy hobble off on a slow "observation hike" of his own. In Carter's mind, too, the big idea was taking root.

Ten days later, Colonel Sure Pop was reviewing Dalton Patrol.

"Safety Scouts," he said, saluting the even ranks drawn up before him, "your Colonel is proud of the work you're doing. These 'observation hikes,' as your Scout Master calls them, show better than anything else how much more alert you are to danger signs than you were a month ago.

"Now, I've been sizing up these risks as covered by your patrol reports. They seem to be of three kinds--home, street, and railroad risks.

"Nobody can study these reports without seeing that our work is plainly cut out for us for the next few months. Charity and every other good work begin at home--though they end there only with the weak-minded! So our work in Safety patrolling will naturally begin in our homes and with ourselves, and will begin with the risks which these reports show to be most common. Let me read you a few of the common risks reported by the Scouts of this patrol:

Matches: left on floor where they may be stepped
on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the
stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the
last spark is out.

Celluloid things: brushes and combs handled near
the gas jet, where they may burst into flame.

Kerosene: poured on the fire to make it burn faster
(three bad cases of burns reported from this cause
alone).

Gasoline: left near a flame, or anywhere except
clear outside the house.

Gas: lighting oven of gas stove without first
opening oven door; leaving gas jet burning near
window, where breeze may blow curtains across (five
fires started that way during last month).

Electric wires: loose wires crossing, which often
cause fires.

Bathers: venturing too far out in deep water. In
nearly every case, it is the rescuer who drowns.
Never take a chance that may cost another's life.

Safety pins: left open within baby's reach. You all
know what happened to Mrs. Fuller's baby girl two
weeks ago, all through an open safety pin.

Hot water and grease: left standing where children
may get into them.

Dogs: left unmuzzled and running loose.

"These are only a few of the common dangers shown in your scouting reports. So far, our work has been hunting out these risks and listing them. From now on, we'll fall to with a will and set them right as fast as we can, in our own homes first and next among our neighbors.

"Just one word of caution before we take up this new patrol duty. Let's be careful how we go about setting these things right. Remember, we can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so let's not give people the idea we are criticizing them--just suggesting.

"For instance: if a Safety Scout sees a mop and a pail of scalding water on Mrs. Muldoon's back steps and one of her babies in danger of pitching into it headfirst, he'd better not walk up and begin to scold about it. Mrs. Muldoon may have done that for years without scalding any one yet. More likely than not she'd just order you off the place--and go right on as before. But if, instead, a Scout steps up and begins playing with the baby, he can first get baby out of harm's way and _then_ watch his chance to say, 'Baby seems to have his eyes on that pail of hot water, Mrs. Muldoon. Two babies over on the west side were scalded to death last week; did you hear about it?' Chances are Mrs. Muldoon will be around warning all her neighbors before you've been gone ten minutes. Get the idea?--honey instead of vinegar."

"Honey works better down in South America, anyhow!" said a deep voice, and a tall, handsome man stepped forward, saluted, and shook hands cordially with Colonel Sure Pop. He was brown as a berry from the tropical sun and he carried his left arm in a sling.

"Uncle--Uncle Jack!" The Dalton twins forgot that the troop was on review, forgot Mrs. Muldoon's babies, forgot everything and everybody but Uncle Jack. What a surprise! And he knew Sure Pop, too!

"Sure pop, I do!" laughed the explorer, kissing Betty warmly before the whole admiring troop. "Here, look out for that lame arm, you rascals! Our surgeon told me it would be well in a month, but he was too optimistic, for once!" For Bob and Betty were fairly swarming over their favorite uncle, home at last from the jungle.

"Nellie," said Uncle Jack to Mrs. Dalton that night, when the Safety Scouts were off to bed at last, "those twins of yours are making history--do you realize that?"

"Well," said his sister, "they have their faults, like all the rest, but they're pretty fine youngsters at that. But, oh, Jack, they're growing up so fast!"

"They are, sure enough, like weeds; but their harvest isn't going to be any weed crop, now mark my words. I heard most of what was said at their patrol review this afternoon before anybody saw me; and on my word, Nell, those youngsters have started something bigger than they have any idea of, something that no power on earth is going to be able to stop. After all, I'm just as pleased that the old chief's spear thrust sent me home in time to see the Safety Scouts of America in the making!"

_A real Scout knows how to take care of himself--and
of others._--SURE POP

ADVENTURE NUMBER FOURTEEN

SIX TIMELY TIPS

Sure Pop and Uncle Jack were sprawled out side by side on the green river bank, talking over old times. Bob and Betty were hanging on every word.

"My first few months of Safety work among American factories and mills," Sure Pop was saying, "was largely planting. I planted the Safety First idea and gave it time to grow. I began with the steel mills; then I turned to the railroads, then to the wood-working shops, and so on."

Uncle Jack gazed thoughtfully at the sparkling river. "Well," he said at last to Sure Pop, "what results and how?"

"How?" repeated the little Colonel. "First, by putting the idea, Safety First, into the mind of every workman we met. Second, by whispering in his ear new ways of cutting out accidents--_after_ the Safety First idea had had a chance to sink in. Results? Three fourths of the deaths and injuries in the steel mills were cut out entirely in six years' time; in the railroads, the number of accidents was cut squarely in two in three years' time; in other kinds of work--all except one--big reductions all along the line."

"Great!" There was no mistaking the admiration in Uncle Jack's voice. "What about the one exception--what line was that?"

"It's a certain class of mills that is practically controlled by one man, a very able man, but exceedingly self-willed and stubborn. He owns a chain of mills from coast to coast, and the rest of the manufacturers in his line follow his lead in everything. He has fought the Safety First idea from the start--calls it 'one of these new-fangled notions'--will have nothing at all to do with it--and he has held back the Safety movement in his whole line of work."

"Hm-m-m! Hard nut to crack, eh? What's the old codger's name?"

"Bruce. He's done more to handicap Safety work than any other man in the country--and I do believe he's proud of it," said Sure Pop, grimly.

"Bruce--isn't that the man your father works for, Bob?"

Bob nodded. "He has a heart, though"--and he told them how the mill owner had come to Chance Carter's aid, and how like a different man he had seemed when little Bonnie threw her happy arms around him.

"Queer mixture, isn't he?" said Uncle Jack.

"Yes, he is. But don't you suppose our patrol could do something to change his mind?"

Uncle Jack waved the idea aside. "Forget it, Bob, forget it! Don't lose sight of what the Colonel told you Scouts yesterday about the right way to go at things. Well, the right way to go at Bruce is to leave him alone for a while. If he's as prejudiced as all that, interfering would only make him worse. He'll come around by and by, won't he, Colonel?"

"All in good time," said Sure Pop. "Your work is cut out for you, Bob, as I told you yesterday. Get the Safety First idea well rooted in the homes, and then we'll begin on the streets, and get folks in the habit of thinking Safety every time they cross the street."

Uncle Jack yawned and stretched himself.

"Can you spare these twins of ours for the day, Colonel? I've a frolic of my own I want to borrow them for, if I may."

"Sure pop! Go ahead, sir."

Uncle Jack stepped across the street to a telephone, and the first thing Bob and Betty knew, a big red automobile drew up beside them. "Jump in, folks--look out for my arm, please. Now--we're off! Goodby, Colonel."

"My, but isn't this glorious!" Betty nestled closer to her uncle as they sped along toward the shopping district. "Is this your car, Uncle Jack?"

"For today it is," laughed her uncle. "Today we'll just make believe I own the mint. Careful there, driver!"