"Gott'n'immel!" He slung startled words together and was out of the room before he'd finished. He thumped heavily down the carpeted steps, then, feeling at the wall for guidance, hurried for the living room.
"Fire at Nielsen house!" he gasped after agitated cranking had roused the night operator from her nap.
The hour, the remoteness, and one more thing doomed the house. German Corners had no official fire brigade. The security of its brick and timbered dwellings depended on voluntary effort. In the town itself this posed no serious problem. It was different with those houses in the outlying areas.
By the time Sheriff Wheeler had gathered five men and driven them to the fire in the ancient truck, the house was lost. While four of the six men pumped futile streams of water into the leaping, crackling inferno, Sheriff Wheeler and his deputy, Max Ederman, circuited the house.
There was no way in. They stood in back, raised arms warding off the singeing buffet of heat, grimacing at the blaze.
"They're done for!" Ederman yelled above the windswept roar.
Sheriff Wheeler looked sick. "The boy," he said but Ederman didn't hear.
Only a waterfall could have doused the burning of the old house. All the six men could do was prevent ignition of the woods that fringed the clearing. Their silent figures prowled the edges of the glowing aura, stamping out sparks, hosing out the occasional flare of bushes and tree foliage.
They found the boy just as the eastern hill peaks were being edged with gray morning.
Sheriff Wheeler was trying to get close enough to see into one of the side windows when he heard a shout. Turning, he ran towards the thick woods that sloped downwards a few dozen yards behind the house. Before he'd reached the underbrush, Tom Poulter emerged from them, his thin frame staggering beneath the weight of Paal Nielsen.
"Where'd you find him?" Wheeler asked, grabbing the boy's legs to ease weight from the older man's back.
"Down the hill," Poulter gasped. "Lyin' on the ground."
Is he burned?
"Don't look it. His pajamas ain't touched."
"Give him here," the sheriff said. He shifted Paal into his own strong arms and found two large, green-pupilled eyes staring blankly at him.
"You're awake," he said, surprised.
The boy kept staring at him without making a sound.
"You all right, son?" Wheeler asked. It might have been a statue he held, Paal's body was so inert, his expression so dumbly static.
"Let's get a blanket on him," the sheriff muttered aside and started for the truck. As he walked he noticed how the boy stared at the burning house now, a look of masklike rigidity on his face.
"Shock," murmured Poulter and the sheriff nodded grimly.
They tried to put him down on the cab seat, a blanket over him but he kept sitting up, never speaking. The coffee Wheeler tried to give him dribbled from his lips and across his chin. The two men stood beside the truck while Paal stared through the windshield at the burning house.
"Bad off," said Poulter. "Can't talk, cry, nor nothing."
"He isn't burned," Wheeler said, perplexed. "How'd he get out of the house without getting burned?"
"Maybe his folks got out, too," said Poulter.
"Where are they then?"
The older man shook his head. "Dunno, Harry."
"Well, I better take him home to Cora," the sheriff said. "Can't leave him sitting out here."
"Think I'd better go with you," Poulter said. "I have t'get the mail sorted for delivery."
All right."
Wheeler told the other four men he'd bring back food and replacements in an hour or so. Then Poulter and he climbed into the cab beside Paal and he jabbed his boot toe on the starter. The engine coughed spasmodically, groaned over, then caught. The sheriff raced it until it was warm, then eased it into gear. The truck rolled off slowly down the dirt road that led to the highway.
Until the burning house was no longer visible, Paal stared out the back window, face still immobile. Then, slowly, he turned, the blanket slipping off his thin shoulders. Tom Poulter put it back over him.
"Warm enough?" he asked.
The silent boy looked at Poulter as if he'd never heard a human voice in his life.
As soon as she heard the truck turn off the road, Cora Wheeler's quick right hand moved along the stove-front switches. Before her husband's bootfalls sounded on the back porch steps, the bacon lay neatly in strips across the frying pan, white moons of pancake batter were browning on the griddle, and the already-brewed coffee was heating.
"Harry."
There was a sound of pitying distress in her voice as she saw the boy in his arms. She hurried across the kitchen.
"Let's get him to bed," Wheeler said. "I think maybe he's in shock."