“There’s no use in discussing the matter at length,” the other stated. “I think I’d better take you boys into camp and let the boss talk with you. And let me warn you now, before anything more is said, not to attempt resistance. If you do, there’ll be shooting done, and it won’t be my men who will get hurt! Now, face about to the north and march away to camp, like good little boys. We don’t want to hurt you, but we insist on having our way in the matter of this information. Perhaps Nestor may be able to convince you that you ought not to be so obstinate.”
“I don’t think Nestor will attempt anything of the kind,” replied Jack, “and I think that you are a great big bluff!”
CHAPTER X
GILROY AND THE BEAR
When, at last, Ned and Jimmie, still watching about for hostile forces, came to the barricaded camp, the fire had burned down and no one was in sight. Ned regarded the wall of rock with a smile.
“Isn’t that great?” Jimmie asked.
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good in case of an attack,” Ned suggested. “We’d soon get hungry and thirsty and have to surrender.”
“Anyway, it’s an all right thing to shoot from!” Jimmie announced. “If you’d seen the way we sweat rolling those rocks, you’d think it was all right, anyway. I wonder where the boys are.”
“I was thinking more about the boys than about the barricade,” Ned admitted. “Were they all here when you left?”
“All sitting in front of the entrance,” Jimmie replied, “except Gilroy, and he was asleep on a pile of blankets in the cave.”
“He may be there yet,” suggested Ned. “Suppose we go and see.”
Jimmie made his way through the narrow entrance, found a searchlight, and turned a round circle of flame on a great heap of blankets in a back corner. There was no one in the cave at all save only himself.
Before returning to report to Ned, the hungry boy seized a plate of corn pones and a can of tinned beans from the provision chest.
“Look here, Ned,” he said in a moment, appearing before his chum with his mouth full of beans, “the appetite of our midnight visitor seems to be for confidential clerks as well as for bread. Someone has stolen Gilroy! Anyway, he’s not in the cave!”
“He may have gone away with the boys,” suggested Ned.
“He wasn’t thinking of going away with the boys when I left,” Jimmie answered. “He was telling how much he liked New York, and how he’d like to pound his ear for about three days and nights.”
“Anyway,” Ned decided, “we’ll wait here a little while and see if they don’t return. In the meantime, you can get yourself something to eat.”
“Don’t you call this something to eat?” asked Jimmie.
“One poor little can of beans and one poor little plate of corn pones won’t make much of an impression on your appetite,” Ned laughed. “What you need is one of those neat little bear steaks, about as large as a warming pan. You’ll have plenty of time in which to cook it.”
“And that means that I can cook one for you, too?” asked Jimmie.
“Why, of course you can!” returned Ned.
“I’d like to cook one for the Boy Scout who got us both into such trouble,” Jimmie declared. “I’d put poison on it!”
“Now, don’t you be too severe on that Boy Scout,” Ned advised. “According to your own story, he warned you and Frank in the thicket, and I know very well that he wanted to tell me something, but didn’t dare do it.”
“Well, here’s another thing,” Jimmie explained. “When I went out to look for you, I gave the ‘help’ smoke signal from the top of a granite rock in the pines. In five minutes after the columns of smoke became large enough to be seen at a distance, the signal was answered from the north, it seemed to me from the vicinity of the old mission. Now, of course, you didn’t send out that signal.”
“I rather think not,” smiled Ned.
“Then it was sent up by this crooked messenger boy with the intention of getting us out to look for you. He believed, of course, that we would regard the call for help as coming from you and rush away from camp.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” warned Ned. “There’s something about that boy I rather like. Besides, he really is a member of the Wolf Patrol, New York.”
“My own patrol?” exclaimed Jimmie. “I never saw him at the club room. He told me that he belonged to the Wolf Patrol, but I didn’t believe it. I think he’s a fake.”
“Time alone will tell,” answered Ned. “I’m going to believe in the boy until I get some positive proof that he really is crooked.”
Jimmie was about to continue the argument when a succession of shrieks and calls for help came from the forest on the slope below.
“Now, what’s that?” demanded Jimmie. “That isn’t any of our boys!”
“Help! Help! Help!” cried the voice.
“No,” Ned agreed, “our boys don’t make a racket like that.”
“Say!” Jimmie shouted, springing to his feet. “I bet you the next dollar I don’t find that that’s the fat clerk, Gilroy!”
“The voice sounds like that of a fat man,” Ned laughed.
“Gilroy’s fat all right!” Jimmie exclaimed. “He’s got one of those pink baby faces that make you hungry to look at. He makes me think of a roast of veal, and he’s got a cute little round bald spot on the top of his head. And he wants to be dignified and speaks his words impressively. Say, Ned,” the boy continued, “I wouldn’t mind having that fellow get into some kind of a mixup out here!”
“Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Oh Lord!” cried the voice from the forest.
“That’s Gilroy, all right enough!” Ned declared. “Why don’t you go down and see what he wants, Jimmie?” he added.
“Aw, he ain’t talking to me!” cried the boy.
“Then I presume I’ll have to go,” Ned said, rising from his seat in front of the barrier. “Perhaps he’s been stung by a bee.”
“He didn’t get crippled in his shrieker,” Jimmie suggested.
Ned stepped into the cave and secured an automatic revolver to replace the one taken from him at the old mission, and also passed one to Jimmie. Then the two hastened into the forest in the direction of the sounds.
The call for help continued to come, although the voice of the man came hoarser at every call. When the boys finally came close enough to distinguish words spoken in low tones, they heard a warning.
“Shoot!” he cried. “There’s a lot of bears under this tree!”
Although convulsed with laughter, the boys moved more cautiously after this. At last they came to the pine from which the voice proceeded. There was a rustle in the thicket as they advanced, and they saw a black object shambling away.
“There’s Gilroy’s flock of bears!” Jimmie shouted.
“And a little bit of a black bear at that,” Ned laughed. “If Gilroy had made an ugly face at him, he’d have run away!”
The tree into which the fat confidential clerk had climbed was not a large one. In fact, it was swaying dangerously under his weight. As he moved his position at sight of the black back of the bear, the slender upshoot to which he clung gave way and he came clattering down through the few lower branches.
“Oh my! oh my! oh my!” he shouted. “I never should have come into this blasted country! I shall be eaten alive!”
Instead of rushing to Gilroy’s assistance, his rescuers, boy-like, sat down on the mat of pine needles which strewed the ground and roared with laughter. Gilroy eyed them angrily without attempting to rise to his feet. His rage only made the scene more amusing.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” he demanded at length.
“Shoot him?” repeated Jimmie. “That bear is a great deal more frightened than you are. At the rate of speed he’s now going, he’ll strike the arctic circle at exactly four-fifteen tomorrow morning!”
“He chased me up the tree,” whined Gilroy. “He nipped at my heels as I left the ground, and I heard his teeth grinding together in the most frightful manner. I’ll never get over this!”
“I guess he would have climbed the tree after you in about another minute,” Jimmie declared, with a sly wink at Ned. “You see, it’s just this way, Mr. Gilroy,” he went on, “the bears out here are hungry for fat clerks from Wall street. I’ve heard they make stews of ’em,” he concluded.
Gilroy now arose to his feet and stood gazing into the thicket in the direction of the bear’s disappearance. Jimmie’s assertion that bruin would hit the Arctic circle early the next morning seemed to give him great comfort. As the distance between the bear and himself increased, he grew braver and began throwing out his chest.
“What a chance that was for me to kill a bear!” he began, boastfully, “If I’d only had a gun with me, I might have had a fine rug made out of his hide! It would have been fine to show my friends.”
“Sure it would!” declared Jimmie. “I’m glad you didn’t remember that you had a gun in your pocket. The bears out here are pretty sensitive about being shot at. If you’d blazed away at that cub, and hadn’t shot him dead in his tracks the first time, he would have eaten you.”
Gilroy put his hand to his pistol pocket and a look of pretended amazement came over his fat face.
“Upon my word!” he said, “I thought I left my gun in the bunk!”
“After this,” Ned advised, “always keep your gun in sight when you go into the forest. Suppose there had been no tree to climb, what then?”
“I should have grappled with him, sir!” exclaimed Gilroy. “I certainly should have grappled with him.”
“You would have had to catch him first,” Jimmie grinned.
“How long since you left the camp?” Ned asked, after Jimmie had introduced the two.
“Perhaps half an hour ago,” was the answer. “When I went to sleep, the boys were sitting by the fire, but when I woke there was no one in sight. I came out to look for them.”
“I understand you came on a mission for Jack Bosworth’s father?” asked Ned after a pause.
“Yes,” was the reply, “at the request of my employer I came on this most dangerous mission. I shall be glad to see New York again.”
Ned hesitated a moment and then asked:
“Did Mr. Bosworth ever say anything to you about a set of documents he wished us to bring to light?”
“He did not,” was the answer.
“His purpose in sending you, then, was to secure, by means of our help, proof connecting a corporation he is fighting with unlawful acts which have been or may be committed in this section?”
“That is exactly the idea!” answered Gilroy.
“Come on,” Jimmie shouted, “let’s get back to camp. I begin to feel hungry already. Perhaps the boys have returned.”
Before Gilroy would move out of the forest he insisted on pinning up certain rents in his clothing and combing out his mussed up hair with his fingers. There were also numerous scratches on his face, caused by contact with the rough branches of the tree, and these he thought necessary to nurse carefully with his handkerchief.
“Oh my!” laughed Jimmie, as the fat confidential clerk struggled under difficulties to make himself more presentable. “If you think you’re in a muss, just look at this beautiful new khaki uniform I put on only a day or two ago! It’s a peach, ain’t it?”
“It certainly is in a mess,” admitted Gilroy.
“Of course,” grinned Jimmie. “I fell down a chute, and rolled into the basement of a mountain, and climbed up a smutty chimney, and fell into a secret passage and had all kinds of sport! Ned and I have had a glorious morning. You should have been with us.”
The confidential clerk frowned slightly, but made no reply.
When the boys reached the camp, after giving a great deal of mental and physical assistance to the clerk, they found it just as they had left it. The boys had not returned.
“Now, what kind of blockheads do you think they are to go away and leave the camp like this?” Jimmie asked.
The boy did not know, of course, that his own signal, shown from the granite rock, had led to their departure, and also to their subsequent encounter with the half-breeds.
“We don’t know why they left,” Ned answered, “but we must suppose that they had some good reason for doing so.”
“Do I understand,” Gilroy asked, “that something has happened to your companions?”
“All we know about it is that they’re not here,” replied Jimmie.
“There are altogether too many bears in this forest,” suggested Gilroy. “The lads may have encountered some of them.”
“That’s a fact!” laughed Jimmie. “Perhaps we’d better go out and see if we can find a group of pine trees bearing a mess of Boy Scouts.”
“This is a serious matter,” Ned interrupted. “Judging from our own experiences, the boys may be having a bad time of it.”
“The outlaws are none too good to commit murder!” Jimmie asserted.
CHAPTER XI
THE DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL
“See here, boys,” Frank Shaw suggested, as the three boys moved on through the forest, almost entirely surrounded by repulsive half-breeds, “this will be a fine story for Dad’s newspaper. ‘Captured by Bold, Bad Men; or, Why Little Frankie Didn’t Get Home to His Beans’! That would be a fine title for the story, and I’ll ask Dad to print a picture of three boys wandering through a jungle surrounded by a bunch of cheap skates that no decent dog would bark at.”
“Keep still!” whispered Harry. “What’s the use of stirring these people up? We’re in no shape to scrap with them!”
“And then,” Frank went on, “Dad might take a notion to send an expedition out here to round up these dirty greasers. If he does, I’m coming out just on purpose to see them hanged.”
“Cut it out!” advised Jack.
“Of all the rotten, unwashed specimens of humanity I ever came across,” Frank continued, speaking in a still louder tone, “this escort of ours takes the bun. They’re imitation bad-men all right.”
“A little of that goes a long way, young man,” the leader of the party said. “It makes no difference to me what you say, but several of these men understand the English language and can speak it fluently.”
“I presume so,” returned Frank. “I’ve seen just such a collection as that in jail in New York. Say, honest, Captain,” he went on, “if a bunch like this should run up against the strong-arm squad in New York, they’d get their heads beaten off just because of their ugly mugs.”
“Aw, what’s the use!” demanded Harry.
By this time several of the guards were casting ugly glances at Frank, who seemed to regard their disfavor with great joy.
“You’d better come on ahead and walk with me, young fellow,” the leader said, taking Frank roughly by the arm and jerking him to a position in front. “If you get back there where those ugly ones are, they’ll put a couple of bullets into your back and swear that you were trying to escape.”
On his way to the front of the party, Frank passed Jack and paused for a second only to whisper in his ear:
“Now, these ginks will be watching me every minute, waiting for a chance to shoot. You may catch them off their guard directly and when you do, cut and run!”
“So that’s what you did all the talking for?” queried Jack.
“You bet!” answered Frank. “And while you’re running, I’ll do a little sprinting myself.”
“Here, you!” shouted the leader, almost lifting Frank’s feet from the ground as he dragged him away.
“What were you whispering to that boy?” demanded one of the others.
“I was telling him,” Frank answered, making an insulting face, “that I used to have a dog that looked exactly like you.”
The fellow thus insulted sprang for the boy with upraised fist. The leader blocked his rush by imposing his own burly form, and the two went down together. The half-breeds sprang forward, too, the intention evidently being to assist their companion as against the leader.
Frank let out a yell which might have been heard half a mile away, and the three boys darted down the mountainside, followed by harmless shots from the guns of the half-breeds.
The incident had taken place on a rocky level flanked by steep slopes on each side. The place, in fact, was almost like a shelf of rock cut into a long fifty percent grade.
The ledge was narrow, and as the bunch clung together where the leader and his opponent still struggled, one of them slipped over the edge of the declivity and started downward. Naturally he caught hold of the first object within his reach, and this happened to be the shoe of the outlaw nearest to him. This man, in turn, caught another, and two more tried to pull up the falling ones, with the result that in about half a minute five of the half-breeds were rolling and tumbling heels over head down the rocky slope.
The boys were not far out of their path, but they managed to elude the downrushing bodies as they swung by. Notwithstanding the gravity of the situation, the boys shrieked with laughter as the clumsy fellows went tumbling down, uttering vicious curses at the boys, at the mountain and at each other.
“I wish I had a gun now!” shouted Frank.
As he spoke a formidable weapon which seemed to be half revolver and half sawed-off shotgun, flew out of the hands of one of the involuntary acrobats and landed against Frank’s side with a great thud.
Frank seized the weapon and backed away. By this time the leader was on his feet shouting wrathful commands for the boys to return.
“Easy, now,” Frank shouted, moving away to the south. “If any of you ginks lift a finger until we get into the timber line, I’ll empty this load of slugs into the thick of you.”
The leader, more daring than the others, sprang down the slope, his great boots scattering fragments of rock and sending them hurtling down upon the heads of the half-breeds below. Frank was about to fire when the man lost his balance and joined the procession of those making for the bottom a la log.
“Here we go!” shouted Frank.
The boys raced along the slope until they came to a point of timber which, following a more fertile spot, thrust itself up the ascent. Here they disappeared, considering themselves reasonably safe in the seclusion of the forest. Frank examined his gun and found it empty.
“Good thing that dub didn’t know it was empty!” he laughed.
“Don’t stop now to throw bouquets at yourself!” grinned Harry.
“That’s right!” Jack declared. “We want to be getting back to the camp. Gilroy’ll have a fit if he wakes up and finds us gone.”
“Don’t you ever think those half-breeds will give up the chase here,” Frank suggested. “Do you know what they’ll do?” he asked, “They’ll circle around and get between us and the camp! That’s what they’ll do.”
“I sometimes think,” Harry snorted, turning to Jack, “that Frank is getting so intelligent that he may have the gift of speech conferred upon him. He certainly has that proposition right.”
“Well, if we can’t go back to camp,” Jack asked, “where can we go?”
“We’ll have to glide into some gentle dell in the bosom of a friendly hill!” laughed Harry, “and send a scout out to watch those fellows spy upon the camp.”
“If they’ve got a detachment of half-breeds guarding every squad of Boy Scouts that have strayed away from the camp today,” Jack laughed, “they must have an army in here. Ned was coaxed away by a fake note; Jimmie went to find Ned and got lost himself, and we go out to answer a call for help and get mixed up with a lot of half-breeds. I guess we’ll have to take a company of state troops with us next time we go camping.”
“Well, let’s be moving,” urged Frank. “Those fellows’ heads will be just sore enough when they quit rolling to shoot at anything in sight. They’d string us up if they caught us now.”
In accordance with this reasoning, the boys turned south in the thicket then shifted to the east, then whirled back in a northerly direction. At one time they heard the shouts of the half-breeds on the slope far away to the south.
“They think we kept right on south,” laughed Jack. “Now,” he went on, “we’ll walk north a long ways, climb the slope to the snow line, and come out on the camp from above. How’s that strike you boys?”
“It listens good to me,” Frank answered. “Do you suppose Ned is back there yet?” he continued.
“It struck me,” Jack replied, “that the half-breeds we encountered were out looking for Ned or Jimmie.”
“You’ll have to guess again,” Harry put in. “The ginks we encountered were stationed there to catch any Boy Scout who came in answer to that signal. That’s some more of the work of that crooked messenger.”
“Well, I hope the bears won’t devour Gilroy while we’re gone,” Frank suggested. “It’s likely to be night before we get back.”
The boys walked for a long distance, and it was three o’clock by their watches when they turned up the slope. They would have felt less comfortable during the latter part of their journey if they had known that they were passing within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the outlaws at the old mission.
After a time they came to what looked like a wrinkle in the face of the grand old mountain. They proceeded up this with no little caution, not knowing but enemies might be watching there. It was just such a place as outlaws lurking for prey or cowering from officers would be apt to seek. The wrinkle, or gully, led almost to the snow line and finally ended in a little dip which lay between two summits rising side by side, like jagged rows of teeth.
“I’m half starved and half frozen!” Harry declared, as he rested for a time in the depth of what had once been a mountain lake, but which had been drained by the gully. “If I ever get back in little old New York again, I’m going to get Dad to make me a gasoline buggy with a snout nine feet long, and I’m going to push traffic aside on Broadway for the next thousand years.”
“How often have you said that?” laughed Jack.
“Let’s see,” Frank put in, “this is the twelfth trip we boys have taken, either in the interests of the Secret Service or on vacations, so this makes twelve times that Harry has promised never to leave New York again once he gets back there.”
“That’s all right!” Harry grinned. “You fellows ain’t half so hungry as I am or you wouldn’t feel so gay over it.”
“Now, how far are we from camp?” asked Jack.
“About two miles on the level,” Frank suggested, “and about four hundred miles the way the surface of the ground runs.”
After a short rest the boys proceeded south, climbing over jutting spurs, dipping into depressions, and sliding over stony slopes until they were almost too tired to take another step.
“We’ll get used to this in a month or two,” Harry said, sitting plump down on a boulder.
Frank followed the boy’s example, except that he stretched himself at full length, while Jack pushed on a few steps and stood peering over a rim of rock which lay directly in their way.
“Look here, boys!” Jack finally called. “You remember the place in Mexico called the Devil’s Cauldron? Well, this is it!”
“What have you found now?” demanded Frank sleepily.
“Here’s a round hole in the mountain,” Jack answered back, “that you might hide a city block in. It’s deep and the sides are almost smooth. Looks like the pit Kipling gets one of his characters in, only there’s rock instead of sand.”
The boys rose to their feet and looked over the ledge.
“And right there in the bottom,” Harry exclaimed, “is a pool of water so clear that it looks like a diamond!”
“Running water, too,” added Frank. “Now, where do you think that water comes from, and where does it go to?”
“Runs through a pass, foolish!” answered Jack.
“But there’s no break in the formation,” Frank insisted.
“Then it runs through a tunnel manufactured by itself!” Jack explained. “Anyway, it gets out somehow.”
“What a dandy place to catch mountain trout!” shouted Harry.
“Yes, you get down there once and you’d think it was a dandy place!” laughed Frank. “You’d never get out in a hundred years.”
“I’d like to see if there are fish there, anyway,” suggested Harry. “I’ve heard so much about the firm flesh of fish caught in mountain streams that I’d like to investigate.”
“Investigate nothing!” laughed Jack. “You’d starve to death there.”
“Oh, that doesn’t look so worse!” exclaimed Harry.
The boy leaned far over as he spoke. The stone upon which his breast pressed dropped away with a crash. The boy’s heels flew into the air, and the next moment he was sliding down the awful declivity.
Jack and Frank heard the cry of terror as the boy disappeared and closed their eyes to shut out the horrible sight which they believed to be due the next instant.
CHAPTER XII
TREACHERY FEARED
“I would suggest,” Gilroy remarked, as the boys stood in front of the barrier looking anxiously out in every direction, “that you prepare a bit of luncheon. I must confess that this mountain air gives me an appetite, and I had a light breakfast, you know.”
“All right,” Jimmie replied. “I’ll build a fire, put on the big kettle and make a bear stew that will put an inch of fat on your ribs.”
“A bear stew?” repeated Gilroy, holding up his white hands in horror.
“Sure, a bear stew.”
“You don’t mean to say that the ferocious creatures known as bears are served as food in this outrageous country, do you?”
“Certainly!” laughed Jimmie. “The bear is the noblest work of God when it comes to making a stew.”
“I couldn’t eat bear stew, indeed I couldn’t,” gasped Gilroy.
“All right,” Jimmie said, “then we’ll cook you some eggs.”
The boy set to work preparing the stew. The larder was well stocked with provisions, and he had plenty of vegetables and rice to use, so in a couple of hours he had a great kettle bubbling fragrantly over the fire. Gilroy was supplied with eggs and soda biscuit.
Leaving the confidential clerk munching his supper and looking about for bears, Ned and Jimmie walked around the corner of rock and stood looking over the fast-darkening landscape.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Jimmie said, at length. “Those boys are in trouble somewhere. It’s an even bet that they’ve been geezled by the ginks that grabbed us.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” Ned answered.
“Look here,” Jimmie went on, in a moment. “I know the way to that old mission place. I could find my way there in the dark of the moon blindfolded. Now suppose I sneak over and see if there’s any trace of the boys there or thereabouts?”
“We’d better wait a short time,” Ned answered. “The outlaws in the subterranean rooms will naturally be doubly watchful after our sensational escape, and so we’d better wait until along in the night.”
“They may not be there at all,” Jimmie finally said. “They may be just lost in the mountains.”
“I don’t think they would really get lost,” Ned decided.
While the boys talked around the angle of rock, a shrill cry followed by a pistol shot came from the camp.
In a moment Norman, the Boy Scout messenger boy, came dashing around the corner, white-faced and out of breath. He dropped down close to where the boys were standing and looked up at Ned with appealing eyes. He was evidently very much exhausted, for his breath came in short, hard gasps. There were spots of blood on his hands, as if they had been torn on rocky surfaces.
“Well?” asked Ned shortly. “What do you want here?”
Norman half arose and peered around the angle of rock.
“I came running up to the fire a minute ago,” he said, still panting, “and some one in the cave shot at me as I passed.”
“Don’t you think you deserve shooting?” asked Ned.
“Shooting for what?” asked the other faintly.
“Because you have proven yourself a treacherous guide!” answered Ned.
“Aw, pitch him down the hill!” gritted Jimmie.
“Wait until I explain!” gasped Norman. “I have only a minute to spare.”
“Well, what is it?” asked Ned.
“And get a new plot this time!” put in Jimmie. “Don’t go to bringing out any old fake note!”
“You’ll understand, some day,” Norman said, lifting his eyes frankly to those of the boys. “You’ll know all about it before long.”
“Get down to business!” ordered Ned.
“Then listen,” Norman went on. “Some of your friends are in trouble up near the summit.”
“And you want us to follow you to the scene of activity!” laughed Jimmie. “That’s almost as good as answering the note in person.”
“Now listen to me,” pleaded Norman.
“You worked that game once,” roared Jimmie. “You got me geezled in the woods, and you got Ned lugged into the old mission.”
“Let me tell you,” Norman went on. “I was sent out into the mountains to look for you boys. I went off to the west because I didn’t want to find you. I thought you wouldn’t be in that direction.”
“That’s called ‘bunk’ in New York,” Jimmie insisted.
“Let the boy have his say,” Ned suggested.
“I went off to the west,” continued Norman, “and walked a long way. I didn’t want to go back to the mission at all, but I knew that if I didn’t something serious would take place in New York.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Jimmie.
“I can’t tell you,” answered the boy. “I can only say that upon my keeping on good terms with Toombs and his gang depends the liberty and happiness of a person I am very fond of.”
Jimmie snorted his disbelief, but Ned motioned for Norman to go on.
“When I got high up on the hill, I came to a depression known to the mountaineers as the Devil’s Punch Bowl.”
“Wasn’t any punch in it, was there?” asked Jimmie, in derision.
“Just as I was about to turn away, I heard shouts from the bottom of the pit. I drew nearer to the edge and looked down. Two boys were beckoning and shouting to me to run for assistance.”
“Two?” asked Ned anxiously.
“Only two,” replied Norman. “There was another lying on the ground and he looked to me as if he might be dead.”
“Why didn’t you find out?” asked Ned.
“There is always quite a wind up on the mountains at this time of night,” the boy answered, “and I couldn’t understand all they said. I understood, however, that they wanted me to come for you.”
“And you want us to go with you to this Devil’s Punch Bowl, I presume,” scoffed Jimmie.
“If you can find the place alone, I’ll go back to the old mission,” answered Norman. “It is not so very far away.”
“What sort of a place is this Devil’s Punch Bowl?” asked Ned, moving toward the cave and beckoning Norman to follow.
“It is just a deep pit between two ridges,” was the answer. “It must be a hundred or more feet to the bottom. The sides are so steep that escape from it is impossible.”
“It must be a dangerous place,” Ned agreed.
“The mountaineers claim that no one ever left it alive,” replied the boy with a very grave face.
“What ought we to take with us,” asked Ned, “in order to be of assistance to the boys? What do you suggest?”
“You must take plenty of ropes,” was the answer.
Jimmie looked up into Ned’s face appealingly.
“You’re not going with this gink?” he asked.
“I certainly am,” replied Ned. “The boys may really be in trouble.”
“Then I’ll go, too,” Jimmie decided, “but I’ll tell you right now that I don’t believe a word of this story.”
“Will you show the way?” asked Ned, bringing out a large coil of rope.
“Yes,” was the reply, “if you’ll treat me fairly while we’re together. Some one shot at me from the cave as I came by.”
Gilroy was now seen looking out of the cave. The firelight showed a set and frightened face.
“That’s the boy!” he shouted, pointing a fat finger at Norman. “That’s the boy that tried to sneak into the cave while you were away.”
“That’s the man that shot at me!” Norman said. “I guess he thought I was a burglar. I didn’t try to get into the cave at all, but just looked over the barrier.”
“I saw him trying to climb over!” shouted Gilroy.
“Never mind all that now,” Ned advised. “If the boys really are in trouble we can’t afford to lose any time getting to them.”
“I’ll give you another reason why you ought to hurry,” Norman went on, “I’ve been gone from the camp quite a long time, and I don’t know what’s going on there, of course, but I can tell you right now that your camp will be watched tonight. There may be someone watching me now.”
“What is the real object of all this?” asked Ned. “We have nothing those fellows have use for, either information or documents of any kind.”
“You probably couldn’t make them believe that,” suggested Norman. “At any rate,” he went on, “if they believed what you say, they would still try to drive you out of the country.”
“Had the outlaws anything to do with the plight in which you found the boys?” asked Jimmie.
“Certainly not!” was the reply. “When the boys escaped from the outlaws, they took the upper route back to your cave and came upon the Devil’s Punch Bowl. My idea is that one fell in and that the others, in some manner, worked their way down to the bottom and attempted to get him out. They didn’t say so, but that’s the way it looked to me.”
“So the half-breeds captured the boys, did they?” Jimmie asked.
“Yes,” was the reply. “Some one sent up a Boy Scout help signal in the forest below here, and the boys must have gone to see what it meant. The half-breeds were wandering around there and captured them, but the boys got away by some trick or other and took to the mountain.”
Jimmie stood looking at Ned with a shamed face.
“Say!” he said, “I made that Boy Scout signal, just before those ginks started to march me off to the old mission. I never thought our boys would take any notice of it. I guess I’m to blame for all this trouble, Ned. I must be getting awful dense, never to remember that our boys were looking for just such signs at the time I left the camp.”
“I saw the signal,” Norman said, “and answered it. I was cooking in front of Toombs’ tent when the two columns of smoke showed and I built another fire on the plea that I needed two to cook the dinner. The fires didn’t make much smoke, so I soaked some of the wood I put on.”
“And I saw your signal, too,” Jimmie explained, “and started toward it. That’s the time the half-breeds gave me the pinch.”
“Now,” said Ned, turning to Norman, “we’re going to leave Gilroy, the man who mistook you for a burglar, here to watch the camp while we go to the assistance of the boys. I don’t think you’d better go with us. We may come upon a bunch of the outlaws and have to fight. If with us, you would be recognized and that would end your usefulness so far as we are concerned.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you any more,” Norman said hesitatingly. “It would be terrible if the news got back to New York that I had turned traitor to Toombs. I can’t endure the thought!”
“What would happen?” asked Jimmie. “Why don’t you speak plainly?”
“I can’t tell you what would happen,” the boy answered. “It is something I don’t even dare think about.”
“Then of course you can’t afford to accompany us to the Devil’s Punch Bowl,” Ned said, “and I was about to suggest that you remain here with Gilroy for a short time after our departure.”
“Aw, let Gilroy take care of himself!” Jimmie said.
Ned laughed as he threw a long coil of rope over his shoulder and provided himself with a couple of electric flashlights.
“Gilroy,” he said, “would be having three fits at a time if he knew that we are leaving him here alone in the night. If the boy will remain a short time until we get out of sight and hearing, that will help matters materially. You’ll stay will you?” he added.
“Only a few minutes,” answered Norman.
“And if there is to be a raid on the camp tonight,” Ned went on, “perhaps you may be able to warn us in time.”
“I can’t promise that,” the boy said. “I can’t take any chance on offending Mr. Toombs. I know that he’s a dirty trickster, and that he means mischief to you boys, but I’ve said all I dare say.”
The boy entered the cave and engaged in conversation with Gilroy, in accordance with Ned’s instructions, and Ned and Jimmie, who had in the meantime received definite instructions as to the location of the Devil’s Punch Bowl, started up the steep slope of the mountain.
“Suppose the boy is lying?” asked Jimmie anxiously.