The Firefighters appear in both Pigeon Post and the The Picts and the Martyrs:
Pigeon Post[]
The young men of the district had been trained by Colonel Jolys to fight fires because of the drought, and would rush in motor cars to the site of any fire to beat it out (PP1). But Mrs Tyson says the firefighters are No good to us. However can we let them know if there's a fire? If owt catches here, we mun fight it ourselves. Before we'd get word to the Colonel at the head of lake there'd be nowt left of our valley but ash and smoke (PP8). The farms do not have telephones.
Titty sends a desperate fire message by the unreliable pigeon Sappho Help fire quick. Captain Flint phones Jolys before they leave for the camp (PP33). Mrs Tyson says in despair There's nowt'll stop it ..... What's the good of Colonel Jolys? Who's to tell him? By the time they see the smoke over yonder the woods'll be ablaze, and the whole valley gone in ashes (PP34).
But then came the blast of a coach horn, the old blast on four notes that used to echo up and down the valleys thirty years ago ... "Tatarara-ta-ta-ta- ... Tatarara-ta-ta-ta- ... Come to the cookhouse door, boys. Come to the cookhouse door" ..... Dozens of motor horns sounded in the distance. Mrs Tyson said doubtingly One o' them pigeons (PP34).
The Picts and the Martyrs[]
At the beginning of the book, Dick points out Jolys' card by the telephone with his number Fellside 75 to Dorothea; he had a queer feeling that they had never gone away. Nancy laughed Nothing for him to do this year ... too much rain. I bet he's simply praying for somebody to light a fire on purpose .... (PM 2).
When the Great-Aunt is missing and Timothy says that The police are the only people for a job like that with thick woods all over the place, Nancy says that Colonel Jolys and the Firefighters would be .... delighted at the chance of really doing something, and there are hundreds of them (PM25). They arrive the next day, sounding their coach-horns. The team leaders are to sound their horns to keep in touch, and plan a single long blast, as long as he can blow when the GA is found (PM26).
So they repeat the long blast when she turns up in Scarab; the GA says Tommy Jolys, am I right in supposing that you are the leading spirit in all this foolery. When she leaves Beckfoot they give her a blast on every horn they have, rather than (as Jolys says) trooping off with our tails between our legs. The sergeant of police points out to the GA that a section of the police have been taken from their duties, and a large number of other men have had to leave their work ... (PM28,29).