I didn’t stay there long, because the smoke was too thick for me and when I saw Artie bind a wet rag over Wig’s eyes and mouth, I knew then it was going to be mighty bad in that little cabin.

“Have another ready,” I heard him say; “better have three or four of them.”

Then he put his hand on the damper in the pipe and turned it and then the smoke in the cabin wasn’t so bad.  He just turned it around quick and kept turning it around and that let little puffs of smoke through, and I heard the fellows up on the roof shouting, “Hurrah!” so I knew it was working all right.  He sent up a lot of little puffs like that, just so as to draw attention, and he; kept doing it so long I got impatient.

“No use talking till you know somebody’s listening,” he said, kind of pleasant like to me.  I guess maybe he never liked me very much, because I didn’t want that badge to get into their patrol and anyway he’s kind of sober, sort of, and maybe he thought I had too much nonsense.  But, oh, boy, I was strong for him now...and I could see how he began to cough and I was worried.

Then he groped around to get hold of the damper, for he was blindfolded and the smoke in there was getting thicker and thicker.  Then he gave it a quick turn, then waited a few seconds, then held it lengthwise with the pipe for about twenty seconds.

“R,” I said to myself.

Then he opened the damper three times, each about twenty seconds, and I could hear the fellows up on the roof shouting.

“O!  It’s a good O!  Bully for Wig Weigand!”

“Give me another towel, quick,” he said to Artie.  “Is the window open? you better go up, Kid.”

It was the first time he ever called me kid and he had to cough when he said it.  But I just couldn’t move.  There was something in my throat and my eyes that wasn’t smoke, and I said, “I can stand it if you can—­Wig.”

“Go on up, kid,” he said, “we’ve—­got—­got—­her—­talking—­now,” and he coughed and choked.

“Go on up, Roy,” Artie Van Arlen said.

Up on the roof all the fellows were sitting ’round the edge with their legs over, watching the black column in the sky, and shouting when they read the letters.  But I was thinking about those fellows down in that cabin filled with smoke and how they were doing that all on account of me.

“Pretty smoky down there,” one of the Elks said to me.

“You said something,” I told him.

“He’s marking up the sky all right, if he can only stick it out,” another fellow said.  “Who’s down there with him ?”

“Artie,” I said.

“They’ll stick it out, all right,” Westy Martin said; “it’s easier for Artie, he can stay near the window .”

“Bully for you, Wig, old boy!” somebody shouted, just as the E in safe shot up.  And I knew what it meant—­it meant that the words Roy is safe had been printed in great big black letters across the sky.