CHAPTER XIII.
IN RANGER UNIFORM.
IN RANGER UNIFORM.
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 wedon’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.
“TheLouiseand theBertha.”
“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.”