088 Inferno of Fear by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon [Dixon, Franklin W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: hbfiles
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

“What are you doing in here?” Willis demanded harshly.

Frank thought of a number of excuses, none of them believable. Frank wasn’t about to ask Willis if someone who started forest fires to train people might also start them for fun.

“I was—ah—looking for some applications,” Frank finally responded. “Homer told me they were in here.” Homer hadn’t told him anything like that, but Willis wouldn’t know that. Frank could tell he didn’t totally buy his story, though. “Do you know where they are?”

Willis went to Dodge’s desk, opened one of the lower drawers, and pulled out two applications.

Frank pretended to read one of them, but he did it mainly to avoid Willis’s icy glare.

Willis stared at Frank for a few more seconds. Then he yawned. Frank inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Let’s go to the lounge,” Willis said, turning out the light in Dodge’s office. “I’ll make you one of my knockout specials.”

“What’s that?” Frank asked.

“Two aspirin in a root beer float,” Willis said.

In the lounge Willis and Frank found Carroll and Joe, back from their tour, sitting at the table, eating sandwiches. “Hey, Willis,” Carroll said, “I was just telling Joe what Homer always says about being a smoke jumper. Remember? ‘What makes you a smoke jumper is not jumping out of an airplane, but—’ “

” ‘Eating smoke and digging fire lines,’ ” Willis completed the sentence with a smile. “Repeat after me!” Willis added, imitating Homer’s gruff voice. Carroll joined him on the chant. “You are not a skydiver! You are not a parachutist! You are a fire fighter!”

Watching the performance, Frank wondered if one of the fire fighters was also a fire starter.

Frank and Joe’s room had two bunks and a chest, a closet with sliding doors, and a sink with a mirror above it. Tarpaper had been taped over the window to block out the midnight sun so they could sleep.

Early the next morning Frank untacked a corner of the tarpaper to peer outside. A bright ray of sun streaked across Joe’s pillow, making him squint and roll over.

“Get up,” Frank said. “We’re burning daylight.”

Joe groaned and pulled the covers up. “Who cares? There’s plenty of it to burn up here.”

Frank jabbed his brother in the shoulder. “But there’s only one train back to Denali today.”

A few minutes later Frank stood under the shower nozzle and gloried in the simple pleasun of hot, steaming water. While he let the spra; work out the kinks in his muscles, he ponderer what had happened over the past days. The fin at Wonder Lake, the gunshot that ran them oi the road, the incident at the Sure Shot, the helicopter crash—all of these incidents raised questions that Frank still couldn’t answer.

Was Rose Hudiburg so bitter about breakinj up with Paul that she would try to kill him? Wh; was Jeff Rankin nosing around the chopper yesterday? And what about Willis? Frank wondered if Willis knew anything about explosives and timers.

What Frank found most perplexing, though, was the strange behavior of Paul Garcia.

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