Lemon arose and, going to a table, secured a tobacco pouch and a book of cigaret papers. As he rolled a cigaret Ned observed that the middle finger of his left hand carried, just below the nail, a blue spot, as if he had been using a typewriter since cleaning his hands. Ned noticed it particularly, as he himself used a double keyboard machine and usually smutted that finger on the ribbon when he rolled the platen.

“Well,” Lemon said, “I’ll have to ask you to excuse me now. I’ve been off on a long country tramp. You see how mussed up I am. I think I crawled through briar patches and wire fences and fell into cow ponds.”

Ned turned away without a word, with plenty of food for thought in his mind.

CHAPTER VIII.—FATE OF THE STEAK A LA BRIGAND.

“He’s been up in the world since then, all right,” Frank said, suggestively.

“Too high up,” Jimmie grinned. “Too high up for me, anyway. I thought I’d die up there, on the night of the fire.”

“In all the history of air navigation,” Frank observed, soberly, “there was never a trip like that. When I think of the quick start, and the wind and the rain, the whole thing seems like a dream. How did he ever do it?”

“I don’t know,” Jimmie replied. “He boosted me into the seat, and the next I knew we were off, an’ the fire was dropping away from us, an’ the mountains were growing smaller, an’ the peaks looked like warts on the world. I felt like I was fallin’ over the edge of somethin’.”

“And the wind?” questioned Frank. “Didn’t it take your breath away?”

“Wind, nothin’,” the boy said, scornfully. “There wasn’t any wind where we were. We went along with it. It was like sailin’ on a swift stream. Ned tuned the engine up to keep steerway, an’ shut his teeth. Then, in half a minute, we were above the clouds, an’ the moon an’ stars were askin’ what we were doin’ up there.”

“You’re saying it well,” Pat said, joining the little group. “If you were going so merrily before the wind, why did he want steerway?”

“You don’t know much about the atmosphere,” laughed Frank, answering for Jimmie. “If you did, you’d know that the air blanket of the earth is a good deal like a river. It has eddies, and currents, and ripples, and holes, too.”

“You’re good, too!” exclaimed Pat. “Holes in the air is about the best I ever heard!”

“Of course there are holes in the air,” Frank replied, with the air of one imparting valuable information, “especially when there are fires beneath. And, let me tell you this, you old red-head,” he added, with an exasperating grin, “when the air, driven swiftly by the wind, or what we call the wind, comes to mountain peaks, and tall trees, and sky-scrapers, it just backs up, just the same as water does when it comes to a dam, or any obstruction.”

“Go it!” Pat cried. “Make it a good one! Where does this air go when it backs up?”

“It just hunches up,” Frank replied, gravely, “and checks the flow back of it, and then eddies and swirls away, fit to twist an aeroplane into kindling wood.”

“Of course,” broke in Jimmie. “I’ve often read of aeroplanes dropping a thousand feet into holes in the air, and of their being swept against tall trees and buildings by eddies. It takes a cool head to run an air machine in a storm of wind, and that is where Ned won out.”

“If he hadn’t kept the aeroplane going with the wind at full speed,” Frank added, “he would have been in a wreck the first half mile.”

“The more I learn about the atmosphere,” Pat said, “the less I like it. When you get me up in an aeroplane, just send word to the folks that I’m tired of life.”

“Ned ought to have a Carnegie medal for what he did that night,” Jack remarked, “and I’m going to speak to father about it when I get home.”

“There is no doubt that he ought to have one,” Frank said, “but the men who really deserve Carnegie medals never get them.”

“You’re an anarchist!” roared Pat.

“All right,” was the sober reply, “but if I had the giving out of the medals I’d present them to men who work twelve hours a day and provide for families of eight on nine dollars a week—the men who never get rested, and who never have enough to eat. They are the ones who ought to have the medals.”

“Most of them would sell the medals,” Jack said, cynically.

“Well,” Frank replied, “I shouldn’t blame them if they did. I’d rather have a porterhouse steak in the interior than a piece of bronze on the outside.”

“Don’t talk about porterhouse steak!” pleaded Jimmie.

“Hungry, little man?” asked Pat.

“Hungry! I’m like one of the men Frank has been telling about. I never get rested, never have enough to eat.”

The boys fell upon Jimmie and rolled him out of the tent.

“You get busy with fuel,” Pat said, after they had given him plenty of “movements,” “and I’ll cook a steak à la brigand.”

“We ain’t got no steak,” complained Jimmie.

“We’ve got potatoes, and bacon, and onions,” Pat said, “and canned beefsteak. You just watch me. I used to cook steak à la brigand in the Philippines.”

“Get busy, then,” Jimmie said, “and Jack will help get the green wood.”

“If you bring green wood here for me to cook with, I’ll roast you over it,” Pat said. “You get a lot of good dry wood that will make coals, and I’ll show you how to broil a steak à la brigand.”

“Why do you call it a brigand steak?” asked Jimmie.

“Because it takes a red-headed brigand to cook it,” suggested Jack, dodging out of Pat’s reach.

“Never you mind the name,” Pat replied. “Get the dry wood and I’ll broil a steak that will melt in the mouth.”

“That old canned stuff?” asked Frank.

“Get the wood,” ordered Pat, “and I’ll show you.”

There were a few dead trees—the sole reminders of a former forest fire in that green valley—close at hand, and the wood was soon gathered and placed in a great pile near two rocks which Pat had rolled to within a yard of each other.

“Here!” Jack called out, as Pat transferred the whole supply to the space between the stones, “there’s enough fuel there for a week’s cooking. Quit it!”

“My son,” Pat replied, with a provoking air of patronage, “what you don’t know about broiling a steak à la brigand would make a congressional library.”

While the wood was burning down to coals, Pat cut a green slip about an inch in diameter at the bottom and peeled and smoothed it nicely.

“Is that to be used to enforce the eating of the steak?” asked Frank, winking at the others.

“To keep you from gorging yourselves,” Pat replied, going on with his work.

In a short time he had the potatoes cut into half-inch slices. Jack had peeled them and, following directions with many grins, had also cut a round hole an inch in size in the middle of each slice.

“He’s going to wear ’em around his neck, like beads,” Jimmie suggested, looking carefully over the heaped-up dish.

The bacon was now sliced thin, as were the onions, and in the center of each slice a round hole was made. Then Pat opened a couple of tins of beefsteak—so called by the packers—and cut a hole in the middle of each slice. Then he strung a slice of potato on the spit, then a slice of bacon, then a slice of onion, then a slice of beef, until there was nearly a yard of provisions.

“I begin to feel hungrier than ever!”

Jimmie was dancing around the fire as Pat turned the spit. There were only coals now, and Pat kept the toothsome collection turning slowly, so as to broil without scorching. The smell of the cooking bacon and onions set the boys to getting out the tin plates and making the coffee.

The sun, which had been shining fiercely all day, now seemed to be working his way through a mist. The atmosphere appeared to be tinted with the yellow haze one sees in the northern states in autumn.

As the boys were keeping watch for Ned and the aeroplane, they noticed the change in atmospheric conditions, but attributed it to the rising vapor brought out by the heat of the sun.

“Say,” Jimmie said, presently, “I smell smoke. I wonder if there’s goin’ to be another forest blaze here?”

“Of course you smell smoke,” Jack said, watching the broiling supper. “We’re cooking a steak à la brigand, ain’t we?”

“Smells like burnin’ leaves,” Jimmie insisted.

“More like onions,” Pat observed.

The boys crouched about the fire for some moments longer and then Jimmie arose and began to climb the wall of the cup to the west.

“I’m goin’ to see about this,” he said.

Frank laid a hand on his arm.

“You wait a minute,” he said. “You can’t climb that slope in less than half an hour, and Ned will be here before that. Look! He’s coming now, like the wind!”

The aeroplane, high up in the hazy sky, was indeed making good progress toward the little cup in the mountain side. While the boys looked they saw it shift away to the west, whirl back to the east, dart off to the north and back again.

“He’s huntin’ for us,” Jimmie said.

“He’s investigating!” Frank cut in.

“Investigating what?” Pat demanded. “He’s smelling of this steak à la brigand and is hunting for it. Let be. He’ll find us.”

The sky was growing more uncertain every minute, and puffs of smoke were seen out in the west, over the rim of the cup.

“The world is on fire, I tell you!” Jimmie cried, presently. “That’s what Ned is shiftin’ about for. If the blaze wasn’t high up on the mountains we couldn’t see the columns of smoke over the rim of the valley.”

“Well,” Pat observed, “the fire can’t get in here. Nothing to burn.”

“It can fill the cup with hot air and scorch us to death,” Frank said, uneasily. “I think we’d better be looking about for a place to crawl into.”

“Wait until Ned comes,” Jimmie suggested. “He’ll know what to do.”

The aeroplane acted badly in the currents caused by the burning forest, but Ned finally managed to bring it down in the valley. The boys gathered about him, all excitement, and the steak à la brigand was for the moment forgotten in the joy at the return of the patrol leader and the anxiety to learn something of conditions out in the woods.

“It’s going to be a great conflagration,” Ned said, “but I think the aeroplane will be safe here. The whole slope is on fire.”

“I wouldn’t take chances on leaving it here,” Frank advised. “I’d jump over the divide with it.”

“I have been in the air three hours now,” Ned replied, “and must have a rest. Besides, we must remain where we can, if necessary, help head off the flames. That is what we are here for, remember.”

“Not to fight fires,” corrected Frank, “but to find out who sets them.”

“Anyhow,” Ned replied, “we must fight the fire, if it gives us a chance, now that we are here. Now, what do you think that is?” he added, as a chorus of howls and cries came up from the slope on the west.

“Sounds like a country circus!” Jimmie laughed.

“That is just what it is!” Ned exclaimed. “Here! Help me roll the aeroplane into that nook, where it won’t be trampled into splinters. Now you boys get behind it, and I’ll get in front. Whatever you see or hear, don’t shoot unless you are actually attacked.”

The boys obeyed the commands without a word of comment, well knowing what was coming next. A breeze was sliding up the slope, bringing with it flying masses of smoke. Presently birds began to stagger through the heavy atmosphere, flying low, almost within reaching distance, as they had fled long before the mounting flames and were exhausted.

“I wish this would let up a moment,” Pat said, “long enough for us to reach that steak à la brigand. It must be about done by this time.”

“I’ll go an’ get it,” volunteered Jimmie. “An’ eat most of it on the way back.”

“Then bring the coffee,” cried Jack.

“Why can’t we all go out there and eat?” asked Frank.

The boys were about starting with a rush when Ned caught two of them by the arm and stopped the others by a quick call. Through the smoke and the hot air on the rim of the cup, a great head, a head neither white nor black, but grizzly, was seen. Then a deer bounded over and crouched down in the valley. Next two mountain lions raced over the lip of the valley and halted growling, within a few yards of the boys.

“There goes our steak à la brigand!” Jimmie cried, as the rush of frightened animals showed under the smoke. “I’ll eat one of them deer to pay for this,” he added.

“You’ll be lucky if one of these wild animals doesn’t eat you,” Jack said. “How would you like to be back in little old Washington Square just now?”

“Forget it!” was the boy’s only reply.

“Will the fire get here?” Frank asked of Ned, as the wild creatures of the forest poured into the valley, regardless of the presence of the boys, unmindful of the proximity of each other.

“I don’t think the flames will come into the cup,” Ned replied, “but if the smoke settles here we shall have a hot time of it.”

“Huh!” Jimmie cried. “The whole valley is full of mountain lions, an’ bears, an’ deer, an’ snakes, an’ rabbits. There ain’t no room for any smoke!”

Then the smoke rolled away for an instant, showing a sun as red as a piece of molten iron; showing, too, a huddle of forest animals crowding together in the center of the valley. In their terror of the fire they had forgotten to be afraid of mankind—of each other!

CHAPTER IX.—THE CHAOS OF A BURNING WORLD.

In that case, too, the fire virtually held its ruthless way until it burned itself out, as there were no trails, no telephones, no provisions for the fire fighters. The men of the forest patrol were each guarding a hundred thousand acres. In the more civilized countries of Europe, a thousand acres is considered a large district for one man.

It was hot and close in the odd little valley on the mountain side. There seemed a premonition of greater danger in the very air—the lifeless air which seemed to dry the lungs beyond power of action. The wind, coming over the blazing forests, struck hot upon the face and scorched the lips, while the acrid smoke filled the eyes, the ears, the nostrils.

It seemed to Ned that everything east of the Kootenai river must be on fire. Now and then, drawn by some wayward current of air, the thick smoke lifted in the little cup-like valley, and the cowering wild animals could be seen, huddling together in the terror of the time, deer no longer afraid of lion or bear, lion and bear forgetting to mark their prey.

Finally, anxious to know the extent of the disaster, so far as it might be judged by a personal view of the country west of the valley, Ned left the boys in charge of the aeroplane and crept toward the rim of the cup. Jimmie saw him leaving and started on after him, but Jack drew him back.

“Let him go alone, for once,” Jack said, “he’s only going to find out where this menagerie of wild animals comes from.”

Jimmie settled sullenly back by Jack’s side, resolved to break away at the first opportunity and follow the patrol leader.

When Ned gained the elevation he sought, the procession of wild animals had come to an end, although birds, frightened and singed by the flames, were calling from the sky. Everywhere rolled billows of smoke, blown on ahead of the line of fire and in a measure concealing its fatal advance.

Now and then, however, a spurt of hot wind came over the burned waste and lifted the curtain for an instant. Then the boy saw that the fire was crawling up the slope, not racing as it had earlier in the day, but moving steadily, sweeping the earth of the undergrowth, but leaving many large trees.

The danger was decreasing there, but lower down the flames were consuming everything in their path, eating down great trees and leaving fiery, straggling columns to consume them to ashes. Ned thanked his stars that the growths on the slope were not dense enough to foster such a blaze as that which burned below.

It has been stated by those who know that ordinary care would have prevented most of the devastating forest fires which have raged in the Northwest. Experts claim that forests should be burned over under careful supervision, every three or four years. This, they say, will prevent the accumulation of inflammable material such as caused the terrible losses of August, 1910.

Ned saw at once the expediency of the proposed remedy. He knew that resinous spines, steeped in the drippings of pitch and turp from the overhead branches, had lain many inches deep around the trunks of the trees, beneath fallen boles, and at the roots of the undergrowth. This accumulation made the extinguishing of forest fires impossible. He understood that the government had virtually provided for what followed by permitting this material to accumulate year after year.

It is declared by foresters and others who strove to check that wall of fire that it advanced at the rate of a mile a minute between the Kootenai river and the foothills. Below where Ned lay was a burning furnace. It was so hot that he dare not lift his face a second time, and so he moved back to the aeroplane, which he found still safe from the flames, and the wild creatures crouching in the center of the valley.

“What are the prospects?” Frank asked, speaking with his lips close to the ear of the patrol leader, for the roaring of the flames rendered ordinary conversation difficult.

“There is safety here,” Ned replied, “but everything to the west seems to be burning.”

“Gee!” Jimmie cried, looking Ned in the face, “how would you like to meet a friend with a basket of ice?”

“Ice wouldn’t last long here,” Frank said.

“Not if I got hold of it!” Jimmie grunted.

As the line of fire came nearer to the top of the slope the air grew hotter, the smoke denser and more stifling. Pat remembered that a pail of water from a spring had been brought to the vicinity of the aeroplane soon after Ned landed, and the boys wet their handkerchiefs and bound them over their eyes and mouths.

As the heat increased the wild creatures crowding together ominously. When a feeble beast was trampled by a stronger one, or when a rattler struck at the leg of a bear or deer, there was a cry of pain and a quick milling of the pack.

“If this doesn’t end soon,” Frank shouted to Ned through his handkerchief, “there will be a stampede here. Then it will be all off for us.”

Ned looked around the little circle before replying. The boys certainly looked like “white caps” with their sheeted faces.

“We’ll have to wait and hope for the best,” he said. “If the animals come this way, we must stop them, so far as we are able, with our guns and electric flashlights.”

Presently night fell, and the wind quieted a little at the setting of the sun. In a short time the clouds rolled away in sullen, threatening groups, and the stars looked down on the forest tragedy. Later, there would be moonlight.

“I wonder if all the world is burned, except just this mountain?” Jimmie asked, taking the handkerchief from his face and wiping the smoke out of his inflamed eyes. “It looks that way.”

“There seems to be enough left to hold a lot of heat,” Jack said. “I don’t believe it will ever be cool again.”

“If we’d only saved that brigand steak!” wailed Jimmie.

With the half light and the cooler air there came a commotion in the mass of forest creatures in the center of the valley. It was night now, and they seemed to feel the mounting of their wild instincts to be up and away on the hunt.

Under the stars, one by one, they slunk away, bears and mountain lions turning sullenly toward the lesser beasts, but still too terrified by what they had passed through to feel the pangs of hunger. In half an hour the menagerie had vanished, some to the mountain, some over the slopes to the north and south. The boys drew long breaths of relief when the shambling figure of the last bear disappeared.

Once Jack drew his gun on a fat old buck who seemed desirous of investigating the aeroplane, but Ned saw the action and checked the slaughter.

“Let him alone,” he said. “He’s lived through this hell on earth, so give him one more chance.”

The boys now began gathering up their scattered utensils, restaking the tents, and preparing supper. Jimmie proposed another brigand steak, but Pat insisted that he never wanted to get near enough to a fire to cook again, so they made an indifferent meal of biscuit and tinned pork and beans, not even going to the trouble to boil coffee.

While they were eating a gunshot came from the east, followed by the challenge of a chanticleer.

“What do you know about that?” demanded Jimmie.

“I suppose,” Jack complained, “that we’ve been eating a picked-up supper within a few rods of a farmhouse, or cattle ranch!”

“You might pry open some of the rocks back there,” Pat observed, with sarcasm, “and see if you can find the house you speak of. It was a human throat that crow came from.”

“Sure it was!” cried Jimmie. “It was a Boy Scout call. Now just see me get him to talking.”

“What’s a Rooster patrol chap doing here!” asked Jack. “I guess we are all having bad dreams.”

Jimmie did not reply. Instead he put his hands to his throat and in a second a long snarling wolf cry came forth, rising into a shrill call, as if summoning a pack at a distance.

“We’ll see what he knows about that,” the boy said.

As they listened the challenge of the chanticleer came once more. This time Jack answered it with the growl of a black bear, which seemed to Frank to be a great improvement on his practice stunts in the Black Bear Patrol club rooms in New York.

This odd exchange of greetings kept up for some moments, and then the figure of a boy of perhaps seventeen was seen in the uncertain light, making slow progress down the mountain, a short distance to the north. He carried a haversack on his shoulders and was dressed in the khaki uniform of the Boy Scouts of America.

“He must be used to mountain work,” Jack remarked, as the boy leaped lightly from ledge to ledge and finally dropped into the valley. “I couldn’t do that, even in broad daylight, to save my life!”

The stranger now advanced to the group of boys and gave them the half salute of the Boy Scouts, standing with right arm straight out from the shoulder, palm outward, three fingers standing vertical, the thumb crossing the palm to rest on the bent-in little finger. Ned replied with the full salute, which is made with the hand in the same attitude, only at the forehead.

“What does the badge say?” demanded Jimmie.

“Be prepared!” was the quick reply.

“For what?” was the next question.

“To assist those in distress.”

“You’re all right,” Jimmie shouted. “What patrol?”

“Chanticleer, Denver,” was the reply.

“That accounts for the way you lighted down from the mountain,” laughed Ned.

“I’ve got used to climbing in walking the streets of my home town,” smiled the other. “Is Ned Nestor here?” he added. “My name is Ernest Whipple; I’m looking for Mr. Ned Nestor.”

“Here he is, the only good-looker in the bunch,” Jack laughed, pushing Ned forward. “What do you want of him?”

“My father is connected with the Secret Service at Washington,” was the reply, “and he posted me as to what was going on here. Said I might come out and join the party, if Mr. Nestor would permit it. What do you say?”

Of course the son of a man connected with the Secret Service at Washington—a man who undoubtedly knew all the plans of the men who had sent Ned into the Northwest—was not to be ignored, but at the same time Ernest would have been received into the party on the strength of his own engaging personality, his own frank manner. From the very first moment he was a favorite with all the boys.

“You’re as welcome as the flowers of May!” Frank cried. “Been to supper?”

“Last night!” grinned Ernest. “My haversack is empty—also my stomach. I had to take to the mountain in order to keep out of the fire, and couldn’t connect with a grub stake.”

“Then there are fires east of the divide?” asked Ned.

“Sure,” was the reply, “although they are nothing like the ones over here. The foresters are watching them, and there is little danger of their getting a big start.”

“Where did you find foresters?” asked Ned, wondering if the men who had sneaked away from the cavern were not posing as foresters waiting to do further mischief.

“They are in camp beyond the summit,” was the reply. “They told me they had patrols all through the lower levels.”

Jack gave a description of the man who had visited the camp on the plateau, and was not at all surprised when Ernest identified the fellow as the apparent leader of the band of foresters he had passed on his way west.

“I see that you don’t believe the men are foresters,” Ernest said, looking into Ned’s anxious face. “Well, to tell the truth, I doubt it myself. I heard some talk there that set me thinking, after I got away. There was a man there who had just arrived from San Francisco, they said, and he was doing a good deal of kicking about something that had been done, or hadn’t been done. I don’t know which.”

“Can you describe the fellow?” asked Ned, a quick suspicion coming to his mind.

“Of course I can,” was the reply, and the remainder of the answer gave an accurate word photograph of one Albert Lemon.

Ned was thinking fast. How had Lemon reached the eastern side of the divide so quickly. He, himself, had traveled swiftly from San Francisco, leaving soon after his exit from the bachelor apartment where the strange and not entirely satisfactory interview had taken place. He had left the man who claimed to be Albert Lemon half dazed and weakened from the effects of opium—still weary from a long and exhausting journey, as shown by his clothing, and yet the fellow had beaten him out in the race to the mountains.

Why? Certainly not to take charge of the body of his unfortunate friend, for the grave was not there, but in a little hollow away to the north and near the lake. His business seemed to lie with the outlaws who had, apparently, committed the crime. Why? Had the man been killed as the result of a conspiracy between the two interests?

This point was worth looking into, for the motive for the deed might also prove to be the motive for other crimes—among them the burning of forests.

CHAPTER X.—CHASING THE MILKY WAY.

Ned smiled at the determination of the lad to keep close to his side. He knew that Jimmie dreaded the very idea of leaving the solid earth that night, still he found him willing to make the ascent merely for the sake of being in his company.

“All right, kid,” he said. “You may go if you want to, but it may be morning before we get back to camp.”

“You can’t remain in the air all that time,” Jimmie said.

“I am fully aware of that,” Ned replied, “but I can drop down over on the other side and rest and tinker with the machine—if she doesn’t work just right.”

“You haven’t got gasoline enough,” urged Jimmie, who would have argued Ned out of the notion of the night flight if possible, but who was determined to go with him if he went.

“The first thing I do,” Ned replied, “will be to fly over the Great Northern right of way and fill up with gasoline. Besides filling the tanks, I shall carry a lot away in an aluminum keg I have provided for that purpose.”

“Well,” Jimmie said, with a tired sigh, “I should think you’d been through enough to-day and to-night, without goin’ off in the dark, but I’m goin’ if you do.”

After talking with the others regarding his intentions, and warning them to keep a sharp lookout during his absence, Ned assisted Jimmie to his seat and the two were away. There was scant room for a rise between the spot where the machine lay and the foot of the range, but Ned had little difficulty in getting into the sky and swinging along in the breeze.

It was now after ten o’clock, and the moon was high in the heavens. To the east the dark passes of the mountains showed green and misty in the moonlight. To the west the burned spaces looked dark and forbidding, with smoke half hiding the ruin that had been wrought. Jimmie clung to the machine and insisted that Ned was chasing the Milky Way when he lifted the aeroplane up the level of the divide.

Before crossing the divide, however, Ned flew to the Great Northern right of way and filled his tanks with gasoline, also filling the extra keg. The machine, which was an improved Wright, was then turned to the north-east. So perfect have aeroplanes now become that even inexperienced drivers may sometimes venture into the air with them with impunity, still it is well known that it is more the man than the machine that decides whether there shall be a tumble or a successful flight.

The aeroplane is a wonderful invention, yet the point which really makes it so serviceable is a very simple one. For years inventors studied ways of making a heavier-than-air machine sail through the sky like a bird. Then the gasoline engine came, and all the rest seemed easy.

But no one could keep control of the aeroplane. It moved about according to its own whims, and tipped drivers out at its own sweet will. Then the Wrights thought of lifting and lowering the planes to represent the wings and feathers of a bird. The secret had been found and required only experience and practice. Here was a machine light enough to fly, yet strong enough to carry with safety its powerful engine and two or more passengers, if there is room provided for them.

It is so stout that a man may walk over it while it lies on the ground, and yet so delicate in control when in the air that a slight pull on a lever will dip one wing, lift the other, and at the same time turn a vertical tail-rudder about to give the necessary balancing pull with almost the instinctive adaptability of a bird’s wings and feathers.

And this wonderful machine, while speeding through the air with the velocity of an express train, can be halted almost instantly and whirled about on its tail. It will be seen that it is the man at the levers who makes or breaks a journey in the air. One man may do almost anything with a machine, while another may send himself to eternity with the same one. It was Ned’s good fortune that he was naturally ingenious and quick to make his hands follow the impulses of his brain.

When a person is thundering through the air, a thousand feet above the earth, he must remain perfectly calm, even with the engine thundering behind his ears, tears running in streams down his face, and the wind fluttering his clothes into rags and ravelings, as he wishes he was back on land.

Besides, there are no level plains in the air, as there are on earth. Every bird-man knows that he is liable to come up against a fierce current or tumble into a hole in the atmosphere at any moment. While traveling in water one can see what is ahead and on both sides, but this is not so in the air. The currents, swirls, eddies, holes, do not show at all.

When Ned left the caché where the gasoline and provisions had been hidden away, he put on half speed, swinging steadily skyward on a broad spiral. His purpose was to pass over the summit and have a look at the forests on the east side.

The passenger’s seat in the Wright machine is in the middle. The engine is at his right and the driver at his left, so that the balance is the same whether an extra person is carried or not. Jimmie was glad of this, for it placed him close to Ned. In that half light, with the earth far below, with the pounding of the engine and the whistling of the wind, the boy felt the need of close human companionship.

He sat in a wooden seat with his back against the rest, holding to one of the uprights with both hands, and resting his tingling feet on a cross-bar. A guy-wire passed across in front, close to his chest, so he was now fastened in.

He wanted to talk with Ned, to hear the sound of his voice, but the clamor of the engine prevented that, so he just sat still and looked down on the flying forest below. It seemed to him, at least, that the forest was moving, while he was standing still in the starlight.

Up the aeroplane went, and still higher up. Jimmie saw the great divide below, and saw little red specks in the forests of the eastern slope which denoted forest fires not yet grown to maturity. After passing the summit Ned saw the campfire of the men Ernest had spoken of. He passed them, swung around a circle lower down, selected a spot where he thought he could land with safety, and dropped down.

Jimmie declared afterwards that he felt as if he had been thrown out of the window of a twenty-story building—and the highest window at that. When the aeroplane came into the shadows of the high trees where the landing was being made he knew that a wind was blowing at the surface and feared that the machine would be carried along on the ground and dumped over into a cañon.

The machine sank gracefully into a glade rather high up on the slope, and the boys alighted to stretch their legs. Ned’s first move was to see if there was plenty of room for him to get out. What he found was an incline to the east, an incline ending at a great cañon, into which he would have been hurled had the aeroplane run fifty feet farther on the ground.

“I think I can make it,” he said, “but it is risky. It wouldn’t be nice to take a header a thousand feet down.”

After the inspection of the locality Ned extinguished all the lights and sat down to map out his plans for the remainder of the night. There were the usual noises of the forest, as found at night, but no human sounds intruded.

Ned knew that the clamor of the engine must have been heard by the men in the camp he had flown over, and he had no doubt that the outlaws would make a quick excursion to his landing place, if they could determine where it was. So he put out the lights and listened for some indication of the approach of the others.

“They won’t find us in a thousand years,” Jimmie volunteered, as the two sat close together under a great tree.

“I hope not,” Ned replied, “for then we shall have a better chance to find them.”

“What do you want to find ’em for?” questioned the boy. “You can’t pinch ’em, ’cause you haven’t got the proof, an’ you couldn’t if you had the proof, ’cause there ain’t enough of us. They’d eat us up like spinach.”

“You are right as far as you have gone,” Ned replied, “but you have not gone far enough. What I want now is to find out what they are doing here. And, also, I want to find out about that fellow from San Francisco. If the description is any good, he was in the city when I left it, and I don’t see how he ever got here so soon. I came part way on an aeroplane, but it seems that he traveled farther and beat me out.”

“What’s he got to do with it?” asked Jimmie. “What did you find out in the city? You won’t have no luck if you don’t tell me all about it.”

So, while they waited, Ned told him “all about it,” while the boy sat in the dusk with his eyes and mouth both opened wide at the mystery of the thing.

“I don’t believe Albert Lemon ever got out here so soon,” the lad said, when the story was told. “He couldn’t.”

“Then who is the man from San Francisco?” asked Ned.

“It can’t be the dead man?” questioned Jimmie.

“You saw him buried,” Ned answered.

“Then I give it up!” Jimmie said.

The two sat there in silence a long time, then Jimmie gave Ned’s arm a pull and pointed to a flickering light in the forest just above the glade where the aeroplane rested.

“They think you’ve landed somewhere here,” the boy said, “an’ have set fire to the woods.”

“I think you have guessed it,” Ned said. “However, the blaze won’t run very fast up there, for the undergrowth is scanty, so we’ve got plenty of time to get out of the way.”

Jimmie scrambled up the slope, clinging to rocks and roots with both fingers and feet, and ran toward the blaze. Ned watched the little fellow dashing along with no little anxiety, for the outlaws might be there in the thickets, watching for some attempt to be made to lift the aeroplane.

He saw Jimmie recklessly climb to the top of a great rock which jutted out from the side of the mountain and saw his figure outlined against the growing blaze on the slope above. Then the fire died down, as if for want of material, and the top of the rock could no longer be seen.

Ned listened, but Jimmie did not return. The effort to create a general conflagration on the mountain side had evidently failed, for there was little to burn save the green boles of trees, that section having been swept by fire a year before.

Not daring to leave the aeroplane for even an instant, Ned awaited the return of the boy with premonitions of trouble in his mind. Presently he heard a shot, then a cry, and after that a brutal laugh. The outlaws were nearer than he thought.

There was only one thing for Ned to do, and that was to get the aeroplane into the sky immediately, and so once more place it beyond the reach of the outlaws. There was nothing he could do to aid Jimmie, he reflected, sadly, by remaining there.

It was no task at all to start the rollers down the incline, but the cañon threatened if he did not get it off the ground in quick time. He knocked the stones out from under the wheels and sprang into his seat. The machine, gaining momentum, moved on sedately. It had acquired a fair rate of speed when he came within a few feet of the cañon.

Then, after letting it get all the headway possible in that confined space without coming too close to the cañon, Ned pulled the lever which tilted the front rudder planes. Trifling as the deflection was the man-made bird felt its influence and rose from the slope as if endowed with life.

It reached the edge of the descent some distance in the air, and the boy was congratulating himself on the success of his unaided rise when the big machine began to sag as if dropping to the ground, five hundred feet below.

The west wall of the cañon ran straight down, and it seemed to Ned that he was following it, like an iron spike thrown off the ledge. He knew very well what had occurred. He had fallen into one of the down-tipping currents so frequent in mountain districts.

The air, he knew, was sliding down the precipice just as water tumbles over a dam. If it turned, as it might, when it struck the lower strata of air, he might secure control of his machine and manage to lift it out of the cañon. If it did not, he would doubtless fall to the rocky floor of the cañon, and lie there until some chance hunter or forester came upon a heap of bleaching bones and the wreck of an aeroplane.

But even at that swift pace downward, and at that exciting moment, Ned found himself puzzling over the strange sight he saw in a break in the wall of the cañon. It was a large opening he looked into, and strange figures were gathered about a cooking fire.

CHAPTER XI.—THE LUCK OF A BOWERY BOY.

The action brought on a whirl of dizziness, and he dropped back against the wall for support. He knew then that he had received a hard blow on the head, and that he had lost considerable blood. Once before in his life he had felt that dizzy weakness, and that was after an artery had been cut in his leg and he had nearly bled to death before reaching a hospital.

When he lay back trying to get something like a balance in his brain, he saw that it was near midnight. He knew that by the stars, for he had watched them many a hot night, lying on his back on a dray backed up some alley down near the East river, in New York.

There were certain stars which always occupied just such a position at midnight in New York. He did not know their names, but he knew that at midnight in Montana they would not be so far advanced across the sky. Therefore he looked for the stars as they appeared at nine o’clock on the Atlantic. When he found them he knew from their location that it had been something over an hour since he had left Ned and the aeroplane.

The three hours difference in time between New York and Montana—three hours in round numbers—would make the midnight stars three hours late, of course. Anyway, the boy was pretty certain of the time.

Then his mind went back to Ned and the aeroplane, and the cañon in front of the landing place. He recalled the stop, and remembered leaving Ned to see what was doing in the way of forest fires. He remembered, too, getting up on a high rock to look over at the creeping flames.

But strange to say he did not remember getting down again. The next thing on the record of his mind was that niche in the wall and the stars shining down out of a summer sky, the same stars he had looked at in old New York. Of course he had been struck the blow he had received while mounting the rock, otherwise he would know something of the attack.

His mind did not have to travel along the records of the past very far to convince him that he had made a mistake in leaving Ned. Of course he had been “geezled” by the outlaws, as he expressed it, and of course the boys would delay the business they were on in order to look him up—which, he reluctantly admitted to himself, would be a waste of time, as any boy capable of doing such foolish stunts certainly was not worth the trouble of looking up.

Presently the pain in his head became less violent and the dizziness in a measure passed away. Then he pushed out to the edge of the ledge and sat with his feet hanging over. It was a straight drop down. Below he could see a stream of water running along the bottom of the cañon.

Out, perhaps two hundred yards from his resting place, he saw a slope half covered with trees. He looked down into the gulf in the hope of seeing the aeroplane, but it was not in sight. Ned must have taken it away. Or he might have been overpowered and the machine broken up.

Of course the outlaws would break up the machine if they secured possession of it. They would not dare use it in that region, and it was about as handy a thing to ship away secretly as a white elephant.

There were no lights in sight anywhere, save a slight glow of coals away down at the bottom of the cañon. That might be the remains of the aeroplane, or it might be a bit of forest fire which had not burned itself out. Very much disgusted with himself, the boy leaned farther out wondering if there wasn’t a ledge which wound its way to the bottom of the cañon, or to the summit above.

So intently was he studying on this proposition that he did not hear footsteps approaching, nor did he realize that there was any human being near him until he felt a hand laid lightly on his shoulder.

“Be careful, young man,” the voice said, “or you’ll get another tumble. How do you feel by this time?”

“Fine!” cried the boy, turning a pair of astonished eyes toward the south, where a bulky personage stood blocking the ledge to the extent of obscuration.

“Well, don’t take any more chances, then,” said the bulky person, and Jimmie was forced, not ungently, back into the niche.

The man entered after the boy and threw himself down on the stone floor of the cut in the wall of the cañon. He was short and stout, with a double chin and a pointed forehead which gave his face the appearance of being engraved on a lemon. He was quite bald, and his hair, that which remained, was turning gray. His eyes were steel blue, and his mouth one long, thin-lipped slit between fat cheeks.

Jimmie did not like his looks at all, and he resented the patronizing voice and manner. So he leaned sullenly against the wall and waited for the other to open the conversation. He had not long to wait, for the man was busy in a moment.

“How did you get that fall?” he asked.

So, Jimmie thought, they were going to claim that he had a fall, and that they had found him, and cared for him gently, and were now ready to do anything in the world for his comfort. The boy decided that the correct course for him to pursue was to follow the lead of the other.

“Guess I slipped off a rock,” he said, knowing very well that he had been knocked off his feet so suddenly that he had instantly lost consciousness.

“What were you doing there?” was the next question.

“Why, I had been out in the aeroplane, and I got out to see if the forest fire I saw was going to be anything serious, and then I tumbled.”

“Where is the boy who was with you in the aeroplane?” asked the other.

Jimmie replied that he had no idea, which was, of course, the answer expected of him. His questioner remained silent a moment, looking out over the rugged land to the east. When he spoke again it was to ask:

“What are you doing in the Rocky Mountains?”

Jimmie thought that was a cheeky question, and a useless one, for he had no doubt that the fellow knew nearly as much about his business as he did about his own.

“We’re on a vacation,” he replied. “Five of us have a camp over on the other side of the divide. We’re just playing prospectors.”

“Very nice vacation for you all,” the other said, “but you ought to be more careful with your fires. You started a large conflagration yesterday.”

So the Boy Scouts were to be accused of that! Jimmie wished at that moment that the other boys were there. He wanted to tell this fat hypocrite what he thought of him and stand a fair show in the fracas which might follow.

“I don’t think we set any fires,” he said. “The fires started a long way from our camp.”

“I know what I’m talking about,” the other said.

Jimmie did not reply. He was wondering what would be the next move of the fat party, and whether Ned or the boys left in camp would be out to look him up before the morning.

“I am in charge of this district,” the other went on. “I’m Captain Slocum of the forestry force.”

Jimmie did not believe it, but did not say so. He only stared at the other in a manner which nettled his dignity.

“I have been watching you boys ever since you have been here,” Captain Slocum went on. “I didn’t know what you were up to, and so I watched.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmie, quite humbly, though angry enough to fight the man single-handed.

“It seems that you have left forest fires wherever you have camped,” Slocum went on, with an all-knowing air. “To-night I sent a party of foresters over to the camp to arrest you all.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmie again, shutting his lips hard in order to prevent saying a great deal more.

“Do you think they will find this Ned Nestor there?” Slocum asked, then.

“I don’t know whether he could get his machine back to the camp,” Jimmie replied.

“Well, wouldn’t he go without it?”

“No, sir; I don’t think he would, unless it was certain that he could not take it with him.”

“We’ll find him, anyway,” Slocum continued.

“Where are you goin’ to take us for trial?” Jimmie asked.

“We’ll have to consider that part of the matter later on,” was the reply. “The first thing for us to do is to lock you up good and tight and stop the setting of forest fires.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmie, still humbly, but still thinking what he would do to this fat falsifier if he ever got a chance.

“I’m glad you confess,” Slocum said.

“I didn’t,” said Jimmie.

“Why, yes, you did,” insisted the other. “You admitted setting the fires.”

Jimmie made no reply. Far down in the cañon he saw a glint of flame. It was not a forest fire. It was not even the red light of a campfire or a lantern. The light was white, and the boy knew it for what it was—an electric searchlight, such as Ned always carried on his aeroplane trips.

Slocum did not seem to see the light. His eyes were fixed on the face of the boy he was talking with, although the features did not show very distinctly in the dim light of the night.

“Well, to tell you the truth, we’ve already captured this Ned Nestor,” Slocum added, maliciously, Jimmie thought, “and no doubt my men have also captured those at the camp. Nestor broke a leg in trying to get away, but when he was fairly cornered he confessed everything.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Jimmie.

There was nothing else the boy could say without putting himself in the way of a beating. If he had expressed his opinion of this story no doubt he would have been given physical punishment for his frankness.

“And so,” Slocum smiled, “you may as well continue the confession you began.”

Jimmie recognized this as clumsy work in the third degree, but he did not say so. He was watching the light below. Now it disappeared behind a great rock or tree. Now it came out in the opening again and moved about in a circle.

“Ned is examining his ’plane, preparatory to going back to camp,” the boy thought. “Wonder if he’s been all this time lookin’ for me?”

The boy paid little attention to what Slocum said after this. Most of the time he was looking into the sky, or anywhere rather than where his thoughts were fixed. He had no intention of directing the gaze of the alleged forester to what was going on in the cañon.

Directly he saw the flashlight flutter over the white planes then become stationary. Ned, he knew, was getting ready to make a flight. He could imagine what the boy’s feelings were, for he knew Ned’s affection for him. Indeed, it was with a heavy heart that the patrol leader left the place without Jimmie.

“And there is also a suspicion that you boys are interested in getting opium over the border without settling with Uncle Sam,” Jimmie heard Slocum saying, as he watched the aeroplane move forward, lift for a moment, and then drop down out of sight. He knew of the precipice just ahead of the machine, and trembled for fear that Ned had not been able to lift the aeroplane, but had tumbled into the cañon with it.

“Anyway,” Slocum continued, “we shall place you under arrest for setting fire to the woods and also for smuggling.”

Just at that moment Jimmie was not at all interested in what Slocum was saying to him. He took no interest whatever in any threat made by the fellow. He was watching the cañon for some sign of the reappearance of the aeroplane.

After what seemed an eternity to the lad he saw the light again, this time higher up than before. It was lifting slowly, turning round and round in a spiral, and Jimmie knew that there was no room to mount into the sky in a straight line. Ned’s control of the machine was wonderful, and it lifted gradually until it was above the line of the hills on the other side and shot away to the west.

Then Slocum saw it. Jimmie blamed himself for calling his attention to it by lifting his head to follow the flight across the sky.

“There is another aeroplane,” Slocum said.

Jimmie could not restrain a laugh, which intruded oddly enough on the tense silence of the moment.

“You don’t think it is Nestor, do you?” Slocum asked.

“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmie, still humbly.

“But he must have taken a drop down the cañon,” urged Slocum.

“Yes, sir,” replied Jimmie, “but you said you had captured him!”

Slocum eyed the boy with rage in his eyes. He knew very well that while he had been telling of Ned’s capture and confession, Jimmie had been watching his chum get his aeroplane out of the cañon.

“You haven’t even thanked me for getting you out of the mess I found you in, and doctoring up your wound,” he said, presently, resolved to keep on good terms with the boy for a short time longer, if it was possible to do so.

“Thank you, sir!” Jimmie said, very modestly. “I think I must have received a good bump on the head.”

“Indeed you did,” smiled the other.

After a little further talk Slocum led the boy away to a cavern in the wall of the cañon which seemed to the weary lad to have no end. He saw several people lounging about as he passed through a large chamber, but paid little attention to them.

At last Slocum halted in a little alcove opening from a second chamber, in which were assembled at least a score of Chinamen.

“These people won’t harm you,” he said to the boy, swinging his arm about to include the group. “Uncle Sam is trying them out in the forest service, I don’t think much of the idea myself, but I’m not the boss.”

Then Slocum went away and Jimmie lay down and watched the Chinamen. Listening, he heard one of them speaking in English, then in Chinese. He knew that he had heard that peculiar voice and dialect before and devoted his whole attention to the fellow.

“Well,” he muttered, in a moment, with a grin, “I’m havin’ the luck of a Bowery boy in this deal, an’ that is the greatest luck in the world.”

Then he fell to wondering what Chang Chee, the keeper of one of the worst Chinese restaurants on Doyers street was doing there, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, mixed up with alleged foresters.

“Just wait until I see Ned!” the boy mused. “I’ll put him next to somethin’. He’ll be glad he brought me with him!”

Then the boy’s thoughts went back to the camp in the Valley of the Wild Beasts, as he called it. Slocum might have told the truth about the attack on the boys, and they might be in trouble at that moment. He wondered, too, if, in case they were taken prisoners, they would be brought to the cavern.

“Anyhow,” the lad mused, “they never intend to let me get out of this. If they did, they wouldn’t have permitted me a sight of the Chinks. Unless I sneak away, there’ll be an accident some day, an’ then there’ll be no more Jimmie McGraw!”

The boy was tired and weak, so that even such serious thoughts as these could not keep him awake. Wondering what conditions Ned had found at the camp, after soaring out of the cañon, he dropped his head against the stone wall of the alcove and was soon in a deep sleep. The fumes of opium with which the cavern was filled might in a measure have contributed to this, but, anyway, nature was exhausted, and the boy’s slumber was heavy and dreamless.