Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 156: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

786 He led out, as they say in the fire depart- ment, the nozzle under his arm, and snow on the peak of his helmet. His body swung left and right in great strides as he bucked the drifts. The wind had lost its sharp edge next to the building, and a flick- er of warmth flipped down from the hot brick walls. Sullivan squeezed his right arm against his side. His right hand had turned strangely numb—it hurt indistinctly. He swore again, rich old-fashioned oaths that gave his chest room. yenkins, Henry, Steimel and Malone trailed after him, dragging the hose out of kinks and knots, pulling it across the snow. Ike Razmus lifted down his brass lantern and squinted through the thickening air at the water gages. He still feared the snow would put out his fire. Steam didn’t go far on a night like this. He could admit it if the captain wouldn't. The warehouse ahead bulged with flames. Already its upper windows showed writhing, blazing arms. A sharper light, now pink, now purple, seeped out of the lower floors. An iron fire-escape angled up the brick wall. Toward the foot of this Stone Age Sullivan led a crooked, staggering quartet of men. if. TureE blocks behind, Captain Mike McQuire had given up the chase. Engine Thirty-Two lay by a curbstone hydrant. Snow buried its hood, whence a toiling motor still throbbed, as if no weather could make it die. Squad One stalled behind it; back of the squad Engine Ninety-Eight dug . her nose into a snow bank, grumbled and fell silent. Truck Nine and Truck Three were waylaid still farther back. The whole fire department might be barricaded behind a fence of snow—except Teakettle Ten. “ Sullivan’s went through!” some one bawled across the wind to Mike McQuire. A battalion chief waddled up, heard the shout, and added his own voice to the_ uproar. : “Lay your line, Thirty-Two—Ninety- Eight, lay your line! Lead off, couple up together—help them, squad—you Truck Ten, help ’em! Lead off. Siamese if you got to—follow up behind Engine Ten!” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, _ He was off in a snow whirl, calling upon his driver to ‘‘ pull a four-eleven, quick!” He knew the dangers of long drags of line. Each length of hose means decreased pres- sure. They were a thousand feet from the fire now, this snow-bound fleet of pumpers and ladders—twenty lengths of hose! Water couldn’t rise to hit a third story window with that much line laid—a four- eleven it must be, ten more engines at least. Captain Mike McQuire wiped the sweat under his snow-peaked helmet. Stone Age Sullivan, reactionary, a thousand years be- hind the times, was on the job up there ahead. Captain McQuire didn’t laugh. He remembered Sullivan’s taunt in the cel- lar that other day they met. He waded across the snow, wet and irritable, lugging a brass nozzle. The crew of his stalled apparatus fell in behind him. Beside the burning warehouse, Stone Age Sullivan, sick with the smell of hot hides, tried to get his feet braced securely on the fire-escape. The heat swept down from above; the snow melted as it whipped against the hot walls. His men were breath- less. They staggered ahead with their un- gainly coils of hose, their faces hot that a minute before had been stinging with cold. Sullivan tried to shift the nozzle to his right hand, and found that he could not close his fingers. He looked at his glove, swore at the frozen blood that held it stiff, and gripped the nozzle under his elbow. ‘“* Give me a hand!” he ordered as Malone panted into the light beside the fire-escape, “give me a hand and I'll make that third story window!” So Malone and Henry and Steimel car- ried the hose aloft, their faces dipped be- hind rubber collars to ward off the heat: but Stone Age Sullivan went ahead. Past the smoking windows of the first floor, up to the second story where red lights already played against the dust-streaked glass. There he halted, squatted on the iron bal- cony, hunched over like a gnome, the brass nozzle shining in his arms. ** Water!” the master of Teakettle Ten cried aggrievedly. ‘“ Water! And Malone! Henry! Seat it back, you apes, back and get another lead of hose off the engine. Tell Razmus to give me water and then you CORMICE OCC) cS) (S@)