“That ain't Weeks's store,” declared Captain Perez, who was in the lead. “It's Web Saunders's place; that's what it is.”
Captain Eri paused and looked over to the left in the direction of the Baxter homestead. The light in the window was still burning.
They turned into the “main road” at a dog trot and became part of a crowd of oddly dressed people, all running in the same direction.
“Web's place, ain't it?” asked Eri of Seth Wingate, who was lumbering along with a wooden bucket in one hand and the pitcher of his wife's best washstand set in the other.
“Yes,” breathlessly answered Mr. Wingate, “and it's a goner, they tell me. Every man's got to do his part if they're going to save it. I allers said we ought to have a fire department in this town.”
Considering that Seth had, for the past eight years, persistently opposed in town-meeting any attempt to purchase a hand engine, this was a rather surprising speech, but no one paid any attention to it then.
The fire was in the billiard saloon sure enough, and the back portion of the building was in a blaze when they reached it. Ladders were placed against the eaves, and a line of men with buckets were pouring water on the roof. The line extended to the town pump, where two energetic youths in their shirtsleeves were working the handle with might and main. The houses near at hand were brilliantly illuminated, and men and women were bringing water from them in buckets, tin pails, washboilers, and even coalscuttles.
Inside the saloon another hustling crowd was busily working to “save” Mr. Saunders' property. A dozen of the members had turned the biggest pool table over on its back and were unscrewing the legs, heedless of the fact that to attempt to get the table through the front door was an impossibility and that, as the back door was in the thickest of the fire, it, too, was out of the question. A man appeared at the open front window of the second story with his arms filled with bottles of various liquids, “original packages” and others. These, with feverish energy, he threw one by one into the street, endangering the lives of everyone in range and, of course, breaking every bottle thrown. Some one of the cooler heads calling his attention to these facts, he retired and carefully packed all the empty bottles, the only ones remaining, into a peach basket and tugged the latter downstairs and to a safe place on a neighboring piazza. Then he rested from his labors as one who had done all that might reasonably be expected.