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.