the vacant lot all around us. I swung my head and through all the confusion I could see the deputy sheriff and two more men running along the line trying to force them back. I jerked my head at the two men behind me.
“Slide up here and take this!” I yelled. They clamped their hands on it and I let go, ducked back, and made for the deputy. I got him by the arm and yelled in his ear.
“That wall’s coming down any minute! We got to get ‘em out of here.”
“What you think I’m trying to do?” he roared back.
“Look! Go tell ‘em to cut the water on this hose. Then get as many men on it as you can. Pick it up. We’ll shove ‘em back.”
He got what I meant, and ran towards the fire engine. I turned and plowed my way back to the nozzle. Just as I got my hands on it the hose went limp. I started running, dragging it, down alongside the wall and out into the vacant lot at the rear, as far as it would reach. Men were falling in behind me now, picking it up. I started swinging it out and away, like hauling a fish seine. The deputy was yelling and motioning backwards with his arms. They began to back up, and every time they gave a step we dragged the hose against them. In a couple of minutes we had the whole crowd shoved back across the street.
The wall didn’t fall outwards after all. It sagged a little and went on burning. But I had accomplished the thing I wanted. That deputy, and at least a half dozen others, would remember me all right. My clothes were a mess; I looked as if I’d been fighting fire for a week. There wasn’t much to do now except to keep it from spreading to the houses along the street. We put out fires in the weeds and sprayed water on some of the nearer shacks. And all the time I was waiting. It would break any minute now.
Then I heard a siren, pitched low and merely growling. Another highway patrol car was inching its way through the crowd jammed in the street. The driver got out and waved his arm towards the deputy sheriff. The deputy went over, while people pressed around them. Then I saw some of them break away and start running towards Main.
I shoved into the knot of men. The word was traveling faster than another fire. “What’s up?” I yelled at a man squeezing his way out.
“Bunch of men held up the bank! While everybody was over here at the fire they stuck it up and got away with ten thousand dollars!”
“Did they catch ‘em?” I tried to grab his arm.
“Not yet. They got away in a car.” He was gone past me.
By the time I got back to the lot it had grown to four men with sub-machine guns and thirty thousand dollars, and the car was a black sedan. I didn’t pay much attention to it. This was the kind of rumor you’d expect; the men who were working from facts, over there at the bank, wouldn’t be saying what they’d found out. It was just a matter of time till they got the hunch the fire was rigged and start at it from that angle. As far as I could see it had come off without a hitch; I hadn’t left a track.
The letdown began to catch up with me. I told them I was going over to the room to change clothes. What I really needed was a drink. As soon as I got out of the shower I dug the bottle out of the suitcase, poured a stiff slug in a glass, and collapsed on the side of the bed. It had been rough. I had lost all track of time. I took a jolt of the whisky, felt it explode inside me, and wondered how much money there was out there in the trunk of the car. I couldn’t even guess.
I went back to the lot. The whole town was in an uproar. It was the biggest thing since V-J Day. The Sheriff and two more deputies had just arrived from the county seat twenty miles away. Highways were being blockaded in all adjoining counties. The story was already spreading across town that the fire had been a decoy. The next rumor was that two experts from the insurance company