XVIIITHE VIGILANT GUARD
It had been arranged between Jack and his mate that it would be just as well for them to fetch their blankets ashore and settle down on the sand for the remainder of the night.
In the first place, Jack thought it would not look very nice if they went aboard their anchored amphibian and left poor Suzanne there alone. Although she had not mentioned the matter at all, he felt sure it had given her a few qualms and that in her mind she really hoped they might decide to camp there by the fire.
Then again it would add to the girl’s peace of mind, should she chance to be lying awake, unable to lose herself because of the haunting fears connected with the mystery of Buddy’s fate, to raise her head and look around to always find that cheery fire blazing, dispersing the gloom in the immediate vicinity.
Last of all neither of them was so fond of doubling up and trying to forget their bodily discomforts aboard their crate, that they could afford to pass up a golden opportunity to sleep on solid ground, though to be sure they were able to make the best of anything when duty bound.
So Perk went aboard by means of their ferry and returned with both dingy gray blankets as well as something to serve as pillows, since they had never made it a point to travel with such “soft stuff” as Perk always scornfully termed them.
“You turn in whenever you feel like it, Boss,” Perk had said with a grin. “I’m not a bit sleepy, it happens an’ ’sides I jest feel like havin’ another whiff or two—somehow this ’baccy seems sweeter to me than I ever knowed it to be.”
“It should,” Jack told him, and evidently there must have been a significant emphasis attached to those two words to make Perk look so queer and finally grin in a most ridiculous way like a boy caught robbing the jam jar or the cookey pot, and at a loss to explain the situation.
Accordingly Jack rolled himself up in his covers, fixed his head rest to suit his own notion, turned his back on the blazing fire and lost all interest in everything saving getting his fair quota of slumber.
Perk sat there and smoked three pipes one after the other. Then feeling a little draught of cool air on his back he dragged his blanket to him, wrapped it around his form, and gun across his knees, continued to sit with his back against a big boulder he had rolled down the sandy stretch for some purpose or other.
He continued to sit there like one of the sentries they say were found at their posts when the ruins of Herculaneum were cleared of the accumulated ashes of centuries, close to the grim old volcano. Proving how in those military days a soldier stuck to his post though the heavens might fall upon him.
Twice Perk got up, threw an armful of fuel on the dying fire, smoked a round of that “sweet” tobacco, cast a look of concern over toward where the stranded plane lay, shook his head doggedly and resumed his former position alongside the big boulder.
Apparently he had resolved to stay on duty throughout the entire night, and since Perk had a vein of doggedness in his disposition the chances were he would stick to his guns.
Perk may not have noticed it, but more than few times his chum’s covering would move just a trifle, allowing him to peep out and on each occasion Jack would chuckle as if vastly entertained, after which it was sleep again for him.
Midnight came and went.
Stars shone down upon the lonesome camp, gradually wheeling westward until each in turn passed beyond the lofty rim of the canyon walls while others climbed the eastern heavens to take their turn at peeping and eventually follow the track of those who were by that time doubtless setting beyond the genuine western horizon.
It must have been something like two in the morning when Perk waking up from a disturbed nap, in which he was beset by a pack of savage timber wolves with only a stout cudgel as a means of defense, caught a sound that sent a delightful quiver chasing up and down his spine.
“By gum! what wasthatnow?” he asked himself, at the same time moving the gun from his knee to a more elevated position.
His tingling nerves announced the delight that filled his heart in contemplation of a possible chance to show how he could play guardian to a camp where innocence slept. Suddenly awakened from such a wild dream, Perk was in fine condition to see a pack of ferocious, gray, hungry, four-footed pirates of the waste places creeping up here, there, everywhere, with the intention of taking the camp by strategy and devouring every solitary inmate.
His fire happened to be low so that the light even close by could hardly be called worth while. Again Perk caught some sort of sound—to his excited mind it seemed similar to an animal’s nails scratching the dry sand just at that point where the high river tide was wont to reach its peak during the flood season.
Perk redoubled his efforts to see something moving while he nervously fingered his modern shooting iron, so radically different from those old guns used by the pioneer settlers of the virgin West in the early days of the far-flung frontier.
Now his quivering changed its character to certainty and rapture. Most surely he had caught a fleeting glimpse of some object that was slowly and cautiously creeping up toward the slumbering campfire.
A wolf—just one of the precious pack that had bothered him in his late dream—but then he had only himself to consider, whereas now it meant three separate human lives in peril. How his teeth gritted as he mentally called the slinking beast every opprobrious name he could think of, his finger meanwhile playing with the trigger that, once pulled, would start the long line of cartridges contained in the endless belt to discharging like a pack of firecrackers popping to commemorate the birthday of the good old U. S. A.
Yes, there could be no longer any doubt—he had not deceived himself after all, as he was beginning to suspect. Now the thing had ceased to move and was starting to rise up on all four legs, as though to be in readiness to answer the call of the pack leader when it came time to charge.
“It’s goodbye to you, sneaker and robber on four legs!” muttered Perk grimly as he put the butt of the gun up to his shoulder, covered the half seen figure, and pressed the trigger.
A burst of firing instantly followed as the mechanical gun commenced to bombard the particular spot where Perk had discovered the first of the oncoming pack. The reports came thick and fast, following on each others’ heels and so it would continue to the end of the string unless Perk himself stopped the mechanism.
By the time he had thrown half a dozen leaden messengers at that one point, he felt he had effectually rid the world of one thief and marauder for which he should have the thanks of every decent person. Then Perk started to swing his arm from left to right, fully anticipating seeing a host of monster companions of his initial victim bounding forward and coming within range of the line of fire from his still spitting machine gun.
Nothing of the sort greeted his astonished eyes—in fact there was not the first sign of a single monster raider—only Jack indignantly bawling him out and demanding to know what in the devil he meant arousing the entire camp with such a racket, and spoiling the rest of the night for sleep.
So Perk instantly shut off the deadly stream of fire that was expected to slay the whole pack of fiendish wolves as he swung his gun around with a circular movement.
“Whatever ailed you Perk, to set that thing going like mad?” Jack demanded, as he scrambled out of his enfolding blanket and advanced toward his chum, keeping a nervous eye on the gun meanwhile as if afraid Perk, whom he believed had been dreaming, would start it going again.
“Wolves—heaps an’ heaps o’ ’em—dreamed they had me cornered, with on’y a club to hold the pack off—then I woke up, and sure as you live, they was acomin’ right in on us—saw one whoppin’ big feller right over yonder an’ let him have the whole works. Looky yourself Jack—honest to goodness he’s lyin’ right there where I knocked him cold.”
Jack gave him a laugh and hastened over to see for himself just how much truth there could be in what the other had said with so much earnestness.