The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men Part 13

Ross brought the matter to a point.

"The way I feel about it," he said, "I reckon we'd all like to tackle something like that. And, I tell you, chaps, it would be bully for us to have a club-house of our own."

"A club-house!" cried one.

"Yes," said Ross, "Anton's father is ready to give us the old barn. He says we can fix it up any way we like."

"All for our own?"

"Yes, to do anything we like with. Mr. Levin has given me some bully ideas about things we can do, and Bob's thought up a scheme that's just great!" and he proceeded to explain the lad's offer of wireless.

The enthusiasm of the boys was rapidly growing. With the Forecaster behind him, with Anton's rain-gauge, with the new sun-dial staring them in the face, with Bob's plan for the wireless plant, with a club-house of their own and the admitted leaders.h.i.+p of Ross, the whole group was swinging into line.

"Tell you what I'll do for my share, fellows," said another of the boys.

"You know that printing-press of mine?"

"You mean the one you printed the pirate flags on, Fred?" queried Ross, referring to the Treasure Island period when the boat was made.

"Yes. Ever since Dad found that he had to use the shed I used to keep the press in, I haven't had much chance to get at it. I'll s.h.i.+p the press over here, if there'd be room for it in our club-house," the words were said with great pride. "We could print a little weekly paper. I wanted to do that last year, but Dad said that he didn't want me to print nothing but gossip, and there didn't seem anything else to write.

If we really had some stuff worth reading, like weather news, I'm sure I could make it go. Enough, anyhow, to pay for paper and mailing."

"You think we ought to issue a regular weather bulletin," said Ross.

"That's a good notion, Fred."

"I'll let you have some of my stories," said one.

"Or Fatty's jokes," suggested another, dodging a nudge of the elbow from his neighbor.

"A weather bulletin would be a good thing," the Forecaster said, approvingly.

"What could the rest of us do?" asked an alert youngster. "I haven't a printing-press, or a wireless apparatus or anything else."

"Nor have I," said two or three voices.

The Forecaster looked quickly at Ross. This was a crucial point. It was Anton who answered.

"You've got plenty of wind at your place, Lee, haven't you?" he asked.

The lad laughed.

"Pop says it's the windiest place in the county," he answered, "poked right up there on the top of that knoll."

"You ought to be the official wind-measurer," the crippled lad declared.

"There is a way to measure wind, isn't there, Mr. Levin?"

"Certainly," the Forecaster answered, "it's a very necessary thing to do, too."

"Pete's camera!" interjected the laconic Bob.

"What's the good of that?" broke in its owner. "You can't snap-shot the wind, at least not that I've ever seen."

"Clouds!" said Bob.

"That's right," agreed Anton, "you could photograph the clouds, Pete.

Suppose you took a snap-shot of the sky every day, at the same time, for a year, it would make a peach of a series."

"The Bureau at Was.h.i.+ngton would be glad of a series like that," put in the Forecaster. "So far as that's concerned, Pete, I'd buy a daily print for my own use. I couldn't pay much, of course, but enough to meet the cost of materials."

Pete brightened up.

"I'll do that, quicker'n a wink," he said. "I've snapshotted about everything else around here, but I never thought of the sky."

"You could tackle eclipses and halos and rainbows and lightning--all sorts of things," suggested Anton.

"Right-o!" answered Pete, "you can put me down as official photographer."

"I don't see," said one of the smaller lads, "where that rain-gauge is so hard to make. I'll make one and put it up at my place."

"Dad's got an old barometer," suggested another, "that he used to have when he was a steamboat skipper. I'm sure he'd let me have it. It's in the attic now, where n.o.body looks at it."

"Some of us might measure the amount of suns.h.i.+ne," said Ross. "Isn't there some way of doing that, Mr. Levin?"

"Indeed there is," the Forecaster replied. "Why, in some places, they run machinery by suns.h.i.+ne. There is a big solar engine at Pasadena, in California, where they pump water and irrigate an orchard just by an arrangement of mirrors. Even a small one would run quite a good-sized engine."

"Gimme that! Oh, gimme that!" burst in another of the boys, who had been pa.s.sive theretofore but who was absorbed in mechanics. "I'll be tickled to have an engine run by suns.h.i.+ne."

The Weather Forecaster looked around with a smile at the enthusiastic group.

"It seems to me," he said, "that with an official photographer, an official wind-measurer, an official suns.h.i.+ne recorder, an official wireless station, a club-house and an editor with an official publication, 'The Mississippi League of the Weather' is mighty well launched on its way.

"Now, I'm going to have the fun of making the first motion. I move you, Mr. Chairman, that the League come into the house and hold its first official feast!"

CHAPTER IV

THE Ma.s.sACRE OF AN ARMY

"Where's the boss?" queried a strange voice, one afternoon.

The entire mechanical staff of the _Issaquena County Weather Herald_, consisting of Fred Lang, publisher and editor-in-chief, aged fifteen, and a general a.s.sistant with the blackest face and the whitest teeth in the county, aged seventy, named Dan'l, turned at the question.

"Why?" asked Fred.

The stranger stepped into the office of the _Herald_.