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.