CHAPTER XIII
IN RANGER UNIFORM
“Speaking about sleep,” Ben observed, as Kit made the remark that he never expected to get any more, “reminds me that we can’t go on like this forever. It will soon be daylight, now, and the chances are that the fellow in the other flying machine will lie low for a time for the same reason that we shall. In other words, he won’t want to attract undue attention by hovering over the mountains in plain sight of forest rangers and tourists.”
“That’s a mighty pleasant conclusion!” laughed Jimmie. “It means that all we’ve got to do now is to leave one man to guard the machines and sleep all day!”
“I’ll do the watching stunt,” offered Kit. “I had a great sleep back there in the other canyon.”
“You might have had a longer one if you hadn’t followed Jimmie into the cavern,” suggested Carl.
“Well,” replied Kit, “you fellows made so much noise that I couldn’t sleep, and I saw Jimmie’s light disappearing in the cave, and so I just naturally sneaked in after him! I got there just in time, too,” he went on, “for I believe those Chinks would have devoured Jimmie if they hadn’t seen some one else coming!”
“Speaking of Chinks,” laughed Carl, “I wonder what that Chink thought when he saw us heading our machines directly for the precipice.”
“It’s a good bet that he didn’t stop long enough to think,” Ben suggested. “The chances are that he flew back to his companions in the cave at a pace that set his pigtail straight out in the air.”
“You found him tied up, didn’t you?” asked Ben.
“We sure did,” replied Kit.
“Then why should he go back to the people who served him a trick like that?” asked Ben.
“That’s a fact,” Jimmie replied, “I never thought of that.”
“Now, I’d give a dollar to know what they were doing to him, anyway,” Carl put in. “I can’t understand why they should tie up one of their own crowd in that way.”
“He was a queer-looking fellow,” suggested Kit.
“Just washee-washee!” Jimmie insisted.
“Well,” Kit went on, “when I held the light in his face and bent down over him, it seemed to me that he drew a grin that meant something more than amazement. And, then, did you notice how he chuckled when we turned him loose?”
“I only noticed that he smelled like a Chinese laundry!” Jimmie answered. “I never did like a Chink.”
“Now, if we sit around here talking all day, we won’t any of us get any sleep,” Carl exclaimed, after a while. “We’ll give Jimmie a chance to get up one of his square meals, and then all flop in this nice soft grass and wake up when we hear the sun going down.”
“That’ll suit me!” Kit said. “I wouldn’t sleep if I had a chance! You fellows go to it, and I’ll watch the machines.”
The breakfast was not so elaborate as the boys desired, but there was plenty of it, and in a short time the three were stretched out on the grass sound asleep, their faces protected by a rude awning hastily constructed out of a shelter tent.
Kit wandered about the little valley aimlessly for a long time. The whole situation was new to him, and he was filled with wonder at the things he had seen since leaving the little settlement where the boys had found him.
The valley where the flying machines had landed has been called a little bowl between two parallel ridges. The word bowl describes it exactly.
It was as round as if dug out by the hand of man. The bottom was covered with lush grass, and through the center a small stream trickled from ridge to ridge. Where the rivulet started and where it ended no one knew. For years the valley had been known as the Place of the Lost Brook.
The sides were heavily timbered to the very summits which shut in the bowl. Through some freak of nature, however, there was no undergrowth or trees at the very bottom. Perhaps the soil, being a wash from the rocks around in prehistoric days, provided only sufficient nourishment for the grass which grew there.
After walking around the grassy bowl, and crossing the stream at least a dozen times, Kit turned his face toward the wooded slope to the west. He was soon in the heart of a forest, the trees of which interlaced their boughs far above his head. The sun shone warmly on the softly swaying tops, and there was a stir of insect life in the air. He knew that the summit of the ridge he was climbing was merely a convex wrinkle in the side of the lofty mountains.
His idea as he climbed steadily upward, always keeping his eye on the little valley where the machines lay, was to reach the top and look into the next canyon in the hope of seeing the flying machine which had been observed during the dark hours of the night. Wearied from his long climb, he finally sat down and leaned against the bole of a sprawling sycamore tree.
Birds were winging their way among the branches of the trees, and the drone of insect life was in his ears. In fact, the boy would have been asleep in another moment if an unexpected thing had not occurred.
The bushes directly in front of him parted, and, with a grunt like that of an overfed hog, a gigantic grizzly bear lumbered into the little clearing under the boughs of the tree.
Kit had never seen a grizzly bear before. In fact, his knowledge concerning all wild animals was limited. At that moment, however, instinct told him that the bear was not friendly to his species.
At first it seemed that the animal was equally surprised with the boy, for he drew hastily back, his pig-like eyes glaring viciously.
The fellow was evidently not very hungry, but at the same time he did not propose to overlook a feast of boy. The next thing Kit saw was a figure advancing toward him on a pair of hind legs which seemed to him to be larger than the trunk of the tree against which he leaned.
With a shout which he now declares must have been heard in San Francisco, he sprang for an overhanging limb and drew himself up. A person less agile and, perhaps, less frightened, would have been unable to escape the sweep of the bear’s paw which followed his spring.
The bough bent low under the weight of the boy, but he seized another just above it, and in a short time was walking up the tree like one passing from one rung of a ladder to another. Bruin sat down under the sheltering branches, evidently intending to remain there until his dinner should be served. Kit looked down upon him scornfully.
“Come on up, bear!” he shouted.
Bruin growled out a refusal.
“Look here, bear,” Kit explained, talking to the animal as if he understood every word that was said, “you ought to go on your way immediately, for I have two flying machines to watch, and consequently have no time to visit with you. Go on away, now!”
Bruin uttered a series of vicious growls at the sound of the boy’s voice, but refused to honor the request.
“I’m in a nice box, now!” wailed Kit. “If I only had a gun, I could fill this wild animal full of lead, but I haven’t got any gun, and I guess I’ve got to stay here until some of the boys wake up and come to the rescue. I’m in a bad fix!”
The bear did not seem to agree with the boy in his estimate of the situation, for he appeared to be contented as he shambled around under the tree, looking up into the branches with greedy eyes.
“Now,” thought Kit after the situation had held for at least half an hour, “I wonder how I’m going to shake this brute. If I let out a yell, people we don’t want to know anything about our presence here may follow the sound of my voice and make trouble with the machines before the boys get up.”
An hour passed and the bear showed no signs of impatience.
“If I had a good round rock about the size of a hen’s egg,” declared Kit, “I believe I could raise a welt on his nose that would put him on a fluid diet for a month! But I haven’t got any rock, and I haven’t got any gun,” wailed the boy. “All I’ve got left is my voice, and I’m going to use that right now!”
In accordance with this decision, Kit threw back his chest and let out a shout which, as he believed, must have been heard far beyond the camp. Indeed it was heard at a point more distant than the place where the machines were standing. The boy listened in suspense for an answer to his call, and was soon gratified to see a motion in the undergrowth to the right.
“Hello!” a voice cried in a moment.
“Look out!” Kit answered. “There’s about a ton of bear under this tree! He’s waiting for his dinner!”
Bruin sniffed in the direction of the newcomer, but continued to give the most of his attention to the tree and the boy it held.
“Why don’t you shoot him?”
“Got no gun!”
“Jump down and run, then,” suggested the other.
“Not me!” replied Kit.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the whizz of a bullet cut the air, and the bear dropped, floundering and gasping, to the ground.
“You can come down now!” said the stranger.
“Holy Smoke!” shouted Kit. “How did you shoot that bear without firing a gun? Is he really dead?”
“He’s as dead as he ever will be!” was the reply.
“Did you throw something at him?” asked Kit, still wondering.
The boy heard a chuckle in the bushes but saw no one.
“I have a silencer on my gun,” the voice said directly. “I don’t care to advertise every bullet I send out.”
The boy dropped down from the tree and stood for a moment over the bear, still twitching spasmodically, but undoubtedly dead.
Then a man in the uniform of a forest ranger stepped out and looked the boy over curiously.
“You’re a little mite of a fellow to be in a mix-up like this,” the ranger said. “Where are your friends?”
“Down in the valley,” replied the boy. “We came across in flying machines and we’re taking a little rest.”
“Rather a dangerous locality to take a little rest in,” smiled the other. “You ought not to remain here long.”
“Why don’t you go down and talk to the boys?” asked Kit. “I left them asleep by the machines.”
“Well,” the visitor said, after a moment’s hesitation, “I may give you a call this evening, if you are still in the valley. Just now I have an important engagement.”
“We’ll be glad to see you,” replied Kit.
“So you came over in flying machines, did you?” asked the man in ranger’s uniform.
“That’s what we did,” replied the boy.
“What do you call the machines?” asked the other.
“The Louise and the Bertha.”
“From New York, eh?”
“Yes, from New York,” replied the unsuspecting boy.
“Well,” said the man after a moment’s thought, “I’ll probably call on your friends to-night. I never fail to have a good time in the company of flying machine boys. By the way,” he added as he turned away, “have you seen anything of a third machine in this vicinity?”
As the man spoke he lifted his left hand to brush a twig out of his path and Kit saw that the little finger was missing at the first joint.
“No,” the boy replied in a moment, making a mental note of the crippled hand. “I don’t think there’s any other machine here.”
For the first time during that interview the boy realized that he had been talking too much. Therefore, he denied any knowledge of the aeroplane which had crossed the mountains during the night.
The ranger departed, and Kit hastened to the camp to find the boys awake and anxious concerning his absence. Of course he was all excitement over the encounter with the bear, but he told of his conversation with the ranger hesitatingly, for he disliked to admit that he had been too talkative with an entire stranger. He explained the good turn the ranger had served him and added that they might have company that night.
“Forest ranger, is he?” asked Ben as the boy concluded his story.
“He wore a ranger’s uniform, anyway!” replied Kit.
“And he asked you all about us, didn’t he?” Jimmie quizzed.
“Why, he asked a few questions, yes.”
“And you told him all about our coming from New York, and the names of our machines, and everything else you could think of, didn’t you?” questioned Carl. “You were so glad he saved your life that you told him all you knew?”
“I told him about New York, and about the machines,” was the hesitating reply. “He didn’t seem to care much about details.”
“What sort of a looking man is he?” asked Ben.
“Oh, he looks all right,” Kit replied. “I couldn’t describe him. When he lifted his left hand I saw that the little finger was off at the first joint. That’s all I know about him.”
“That’s enough!” Ben exclaimed. “We don’t have to know any more about him! Phillips has a frank, pleasant manner, and his little finger on the left hand is off at the first joint, too, but perhaps that is only a coincidence!” he added with a scornful smile.
Kit actually turned pale under all his freckles.
“Is that one of the men you boys have been telling me about?” he asked.
“I haven’t a doubt of it!” replied Ben.
Kit, very much ashamed of himself, crawled under the shelter-tent where the boys had been sleeping and refused to be comforted.
“It’s just this way, boys,” Ben said as they stood looking into each other’s faces, questioningly. “It looks like we’ll have to get out of this cosy little valley right away.”
“Phillips doesn’t know what we’re here for yet, because he was inquiring for the third flying machine,” Jimmie replied. “If he wants to come to the camp to-night, let him trot right along. If he isn’t warned in time we may be able to tie him up like a pig for market.”
CHAPTER XIV
A GAME OF TAG STARTED
Carl walked over to where Kit lay under the shelter-tent and, seizing him by one leg, drew him forth into the sunlight.
“It’s all right, Kit!” he exclaimed. “We’ve decided that you did a mighty good thing in locating Phillips. We know where he is now, and so it will be all the easier to catch him.”
Kit rubbed his eyes sheepishly.
“I thought I’d given the whole snap away,” he said.
“You couldn’t have done a better job,” Carl insisted. “You see it’s this way,” he continued. “Phillips and Mendoza are still unaware that they have been followed to this locality. At least, we judge so because this alleged ranger asked you concerning a third machine.”
“I begin to understand,” said Kit brightening.
“This third machine,” continued Carl, “is evidently operated by the man who tried to destroy the Louise and the Bertha near St. Louis. He came on from New York, the way we have it figured out, to warn the two murderers of the steps which were being taken for their capture.”
“And we beat him to it!” cried Kit exultantly.
“Yes, we beat him to it,” replied Carl. “And here’s another reason,” the boy went on, “why we think the outlaws have not yet communicated with the messenger sent on from the east.
“If Phillips had known all the messenger will be able to tell him when they meet, he never would have shown himself to you.”
“Jiminy!” exclaimed Kit. “Then I’d be up in that bear tree yet!”
“You might be!” grinned Carl. “Anyhow, you did a good job in locating the outlaws for us. We know now that they’re in this section, and that is a whole lot.”
“Then we must be somewhere near Two Sisters canyon?” asked Kit.
Carl replied that he believed that they must be, and Kit tumbled back into the shelter-tent in a more cheerful frame of mind.
“There’s one thing about this situation that I’m not at all pleased with,” Ben remarked, as the boys began working over their machines, oiling, polishing and giving them a more respectable appearance generally. “We saw this third machine cross the range and settle down somewhere off to the south. My idea is that it can’t be very far away at this time, and I’m wondering whether the outlaw who talked with Kit won’t find it before night.”
“You bet he will!” exclaimed Jimmie. “That blond aviator who tried to blow up our machines will find some way of letting the murderers know that he has news for them.”
“Then why don’t we go and drive this blond aviator away?” asked Carl.
“I’d like to know how we can do that?” asked Jimmie.
“We might get up in the air and drop a few sticks of dynamite down on him!” suggested Carl. “You know we always carry dynamite in small quantities. He ought to be blown off the earth, anyway!”
“There’s no doubt about that,” Ben cut in, “but we ought not to be the ones to do it.”
“Well, we ought to do something!” insisted Jimmie. “If that blond brute gets to Phillips and Mendosa, we may as well trek back to little old New York! We never can find them in all this mess of hills if they know we’re doing the detective stunt.”
The boys discussed the problem for a long time without reaching any decision. At last Ben and Carl went to the shelter-tent and fell asleep. There had been very few hours of uninterrupted rest since leaving New York, and the boys were really “about all in” as Carl expressed it.
Jimmie, thus left alone, climbed into one of the seats of the Louise and sat for a long time in deep thought, his freckled chin resting heavily in the palm of his right hand.
“I don’t know what the boys would say,” the lad finally mused, “but I’ve a great notion to try it!”
He leaped to the ground and began a careful inspection of the Louise, looking to every detail of the mechanism.
“I wish I knew whether he would or not,” the boy thought, a slight smile coming to his face. “I just wish I knew whether he’d be fool enough to do it.”
Next, Jimmie went to the convenience box under the seat and drew out two automatic revolvers and a searchlight. He saw that the light was in good working order and that the revolvers were loaded. After that he drew on a belt stuffed with cartridges and again took his place on the seat of the machine.
Looking about cautiously, almost furtively, at the shelter tent and the Bertha, he saw Kit making his way toward him.
“Come on, Kit!” Jimmie called out softly, so as not to waken the others. “I was just wishing you’d wake up. I want you to be a good little boy, now, and watch the camp, and not associate with any more grizzly bears until I come back.”
Kit looked into the boy’s face questioningly.
“And another thing,” Jimmie went on, “when Ben and Carl wake up, advise them to go out and get a haunch of bear. You can show them where it is. Bear steak sounds mighty good to me! Only for our excitement over the discovery you made, I would have been out there long ago.”
“Where are you going?” asked Kit.
“Why,” replied Jimmie, “I’m just going out to exercise my horse. She seems to be getting a little lame standing in the stable.”
“Why can’t I go?” asked Kit.
“You’ll have to watch the camp,” Jimmie answered.
Kit stood by the machine when Jimmie pressed the starter. Instead of dropping back and clearing away, the lad bounded nimbly into the seat and looked up at Jimmie with a twisted smile on his face. By this time the Louise was well under motion, the wheels humming softly over the grass of the green bowl in which she lay.
“Jump!” cried Jimmie. “You’ve got to watch the camp, you know!”
Kit hung on tighter. The wheels of the aeroplane left the earth and the propellers whirled softly in the upper air.
“Now you’ve gone and done it!” Jimmie exclaimed half-angrily. “Now I’ve got to turn back and let you out!”
“I’m going with you!” insisted Kit.
“You’re likely to get your neck broken!” advised Jimmie.
“I guess I can stand it if you can!” responded the boy. “Anyway, my neck is long enough to tie.”
Jimmie remained thoughtful for a moment, and then turned to his chum.
“Come to think of it,” he said, “I guess I would better take you along. You always do seem to blunder into the right procession. You located the outlaws for us, and now you’re going out to be the candy boy in the sleuth game. You’re all right, Kit!”
“What are you going to do?” demanded the boy.
“Look here,” Jimmie declared. “We came out here to do some flying machine stunts, didn’t we?”
“That’s the idea!” answered Kit.
“Well, we haven’t done any stunts yet,” Jimmie went on. “We just plugged across the continent, half asleep all the time, like an old horse pulling a cross-town car in New York. We’ve exercised our machines good and plenty, but we haven’t had any real lively fun yet.”
“It’s kept us awake, anyhow,” suggested Kit.
“Well,” Jimmie went on, “the machine that followed us from New York is in one of the canyons over to the south. You remember that we saw it settling down in the darkness.”
“And it isn’t very far away, either,” suggested Kit.
“That’s the idea!” returned Jimmie. “It is so near at hand that this imitation ranger you saw is likely to find it at any minute. If he does, it’s all off with us!”
“So you’re going to bump into this crooked aviator yourself?” asked Kit.
“I aim to keep him busy all day!” Jimmie answered.
“Up in the air, I presume?” queried Kit.
“Exactly,” replied Jimmie.
“Then I ought to have stayed behind to watch the camp,” Kit mused, regretfully. “The boys may sleep for hours, and some one may wreck or steal the Bertha. You see,” the boy continued, “I thought you were only out for a short spin, so I had the nerve to jump aboard.”
“It’s all right to have company,” laughed Jimmie, “and now,” he added, turning on more power, “we’ll have to quit talking, for I’m going to give the motor a tip to get a move on, and her conversation will drown anything we have to say. But before I do this,” the boy went on, “I want to pass you this automatic revolver, and tell you that if anything happens to me I want you to catch hold of the steering apparatus as you’ve been taught and keep going toward the camp.”
“I couldn’t run a machine on a bet!” replied Kit sorrowfully.
Jimmie laughed and turned on full speed. Just as the Louise swung over the edge of the cup which formed the round valley below, the boy saw Ben and Carl, doubtless awakened by the starting of the motors, rush out of the shelter-tent and wave toward them. It was evident that the two boys left in camp did not think much of Jimmie’s unannounced excursion into the air, for their greeting seemed to be more of a command to return than anything else.
A mile away, Jimmie slowed down and, with a field glass, began a close examination of every gully, canyon, and valley which he passed. Finally the glistening planes of an aeroplane came to view, lying on a level stretch of rock only a short distance from the main ridge.
“Here we are, now!” thought the boy. “Here’s the other machine! Now, if I can only coax him out of his nest, and keep him amused through the day, I’d like to know how he’s going to get time to deliver the message sent by the underworld of New York to Phillips and Mendosa?”
As the boy slowed down again, he saw a figure running wildly around the aeroplane below. He circled the little shelf, dropping lower at each swing. Presently he darted away, as if satisfied with his scrutiny, and the machine below lifted instantly and gave chase.
“And here,” mused Jimmie with a grin, “you’ll see the liveliest game of tag ever pulled off in the air!”