CHAPTER XIX

A BOY SCOUT ENCOUNTER

When the boys started back over the long and difficult route to the camp, the moon was shining brightly on the mountains. There were no indications of strife anywhere. There were no sounds to break the stillness save those made by the boys in their passage over the loose rocks.

They had proceeded only a short distance when Jimmie darted away from the group and disappeared behind a crag which jutted out to the west. Ned and the others stopped in their tracks and looked about in wonder and perplexity.

“What’s that little monkey up to now?” asked Frank rather impatiently.

“He may be trying to get a rabbit for breakfast,” Jack replied with a grin. “We haven’t had anything to eat for a long time, you know, and I presume that Jimmie is about ready to make a meal out of granite.”

“Well,” Ned said in a moment, “we’ll go right on and leave the little rascal to his own devices. If he gets a squirrel for breakfast, we’ll help him eat it, and that’s the best we can do!”

The boys had proceeded but a short distance when a sound which startled them as no other could have done at that particular time reached their ears. It was the high, quavering, vicious call of the wolf pack!

The boys paused again and scattered, each one taking a few steps away from the common center. As for Gilroy, he squatted flat on the ground and covered his fat face with trembling fingers.

“Wolves!” he cried. “Oh, my God, wolves!”

While feeling sympathy for the man lacking entirely in physical courage, Ned could not restrain a burst of laughter.

“Is that Jimmie?” Jack asked in a moment.

“I should say not!” answered Frank. “Jimmie hasn’t got a tenor voice to that extent. That’s not Jimmie!”

“Then it’s that treacherous rat of a messenger boy!” Harry declared.

“Answer him, some one!” Frank advised, “and we’ll get our hands on him.” It was not necessary for one of the group to answer the call, for in a moment, almost like an echo, the answer came from behind the boulder where Jimmie had secreted himself.

“That’s Jimmie!” cried Frank. “Now do you suppose that little rat saw Norman before we heard the call?”

“It seems that he did,” answered Ned. “Jimmie rather favored the boy at first but now there’ll be a mixup if they meet.”

“Then I hope they’ll meet,” grumbled Frank. “Just look at the trouble that boy has made for us since we’ve been here. He’ll get his!”

Seeing the boys standing so unconcerned and talking so coolly, Gilroy looked up with a little less alarm showing in his face, and finally arose to his feet. His knees were trembling so that they almost bent under him.

“Did you hear it?” he asked in a shaking voice. “Did you hear the wolf calling to his mates? There’ll be a pack here directly. I know, because I had an experience with wolves when I was sent into the Dakotas on business by Mr. Bosworth. Why don’t you boys do something?”

“That was the call of the wolf pack all right!” Frank exclaimed. “But the wolves it summoned were only Boy Scouts of the Wolf Patrol.”

Gilroy seemed overjoyed at the information, and even ventured on toward the rock from which the last call had proceeded.

“I’d like to know why that little monkey of a Jimmie doesn’t show up?” asked Jack in a moment. “He ought to be here now.”

At this moment a great threshing and puffing came from the rear of the rock, and the boys rushed in that direction. What they saw caused them to dance with excitement and repeat the call of the pack until the mountains rang again.

Jimmie and Norman were having it out on a level space behind the rock! They were not doing each other any serious harm, but they were rolling and tumbling about, locked in each other’s arms, at a great rate. As Ned drew near, Jimmie gained a decided advantage, and in a moment was calmly sitting on Norman’s stomach wiping the perspiration from his face.

“Wolves trying to eat each other!” laughed Jack.

“Huh!” stormed Jimmie, “this ain’t no wolf. This is only a dirty dog that sneaked into the pack. I’m going to give him what’s coming to him! He deserves a good beating up for what he has done to us!”

“Pry him loose!” shouted Norman, half laughing at the predicament in which he had been discovered, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Yes you will!” shouted Jimmie. “You’ll tell us another pack of lies and get us into more trouble. Why,” he went on, “I wouldn’t believe you if you said that round thing up there in the sky is the moon.”

“Get up,” Ned advised, “and give the boy a chance.”

Jimmie arose, reluctantly, and Norman soon got to his feet.

“I said I’d tell you all about it some day,” Norman began, “and I’m going to do it right now!”

“Don’t work your imagination overtime!” scoffed Jimmie.

“Go on!” Ned suggested. “Say what you have to say. But let me tell you this,” he went on, “your story will have to be pretty straight, and not include any excursions into the land of the enemy, in order to be believed. You must remember that we’ve had trouble following your steers.”

“Don’t you believe a word he says!” almost shouted Gilroy, thinking only of his own inconvenience. “It was his fault that I was led to that awful Devil’s Punch Bowl. I’ll never get over that experience as long as I live! It was horrible—beyond belief.”

“Go on, Norman,” Ned advised. “Make it short!”

“I told you once,” the boy began, “that something terrible would happen to a person in New York if I ever gave Toombs any cause to believe that I wasn’t perfectly loyal to his interests.”

“I remember that,” Ned answered. “Go on!”

“That person,” Norman continued, “is my sister, a pretty girl of eighteen—though you wouldn’t believe she could be pretty, being my sister—who became employed in Toombs’ Wall street office a year ago. We lived together upon East Tenth street, and both had to work. When she secured the place in Toombs’ office we thought our fortunes were made, and for a time everything went well.”

“Aw, cut it short!” Jimmie hinted. “We don’t believe a word of it, you know, so you may as well ring off right now.”

“Don’t interrupt the boy,” Ned suggested. “Let him tell his story in his own way. We have plenty of time.”

“One day,” Norman continued, “a large sum of money—something like five thousand dollars—very mysteriously disappeared from Toombs’ safe. At least Toombs declared the money had been taken. Some of us never believed the story he told.

“The only person having a knowledge of the combination of the safe except Toombs himself was my sister. She was accused of taking the money, and Toombs threatened prosecution. At last he promised not to turn the matter over to the police if we would both promise to return the money.”

“Gee!” declared Jimmie in a friendlier tone. “That was a life sentence all right, wasn’t it? I don’t believe he ever lost any money.”

“We have been paying that old thief a portion of our wages ever since,” Norman went on. “Then, a few weeks ago, when he promised to square the whole account if I would do certain work for him in connection with the Wolf Patrol, I was forced to consent. He threatened that if I did not consent he would set the law in motion and send my sister to prison.”

“What did he want you to do in connection with the Wolf Patrol?” demanded Ned. “I don’t understand how you could help him through the Patrol. Wall street knows little of Boy Scouts.”

“When you boys reached San Francisco, after your bout with the train robbers,” Norman answered, “the newspaper owned by Frank’s father printed a long story about the Boy Electricians. At the end of the article was a statement to the effect that the boys were going into camp near Twin Peaks. Now, this is the point toward which Toombs’ activities had been directed for a long time.”

“I know that,” answered Ned. “He is trying to rob corporations represented by Jack’s father of their property.”

“I don’t know why,” the boy went on, “but he has been paying a great deal of attention to this section for a long time. He has had detectives here rounding up half-breeds, and has been hunting high and low in all the abstract offices of the west for papers which he claims are wrongfully withheld from him. There seems to be a great deal at stake.”

“You bet there is,” laughed Jack, nudging Frank. “There is more at stake than that old slob knows anything about.”

“When Toombs saw that Lawyer Bosworth’s son was headed for this part of the country, accompanied by Ned Nestor, well known over the world as a very successful juvenile detective, he just ran around in circles, he was so excited about it. It was then that he proposed to me to come on here with him, ostensibly as a cook in his camp, but really as a spy, and learn what you boys were up to. I had to come. What else could I do?

“There was my sister in New York, waiting for me to wipe out the unlawful indebtedness, and I couldn’t disappoint her. He could have thrown her into the Tombs prison with ten words sent by wire.”

“That’s a pretty rotten proposition, isn’t it?” demanded Jimmie.

“Rotten is no name for it!” agreed Jack.

“Toombs and his gang of mercenaries arrived in the vicinity of the old Franciscan mission long before you boys came into the mountains. I was with him, of course, acting as cook, and for a few days I enjoyed myself hugely. Then you boys came in, and I was ordered to deliver that note to Ned. But before the morning I saw you boys in camp and delivered the note, I had seen you all in your beds.

“Because of some trivial disobedience of orders, Toombs had decreed that I should go supperless to bed. What I did, I think, was to scorch his steak. Anyway, he said, that I shouldn’t have anything to eat until the next day at noon.”

“No wonder you grabbed for our grub closet!” laughed Jimmie.

“I was good and hungry that night all right,” Norman answered with a smile. “But I didn’t eat all the stuff I took away. I hid it in the forest so as to be provided with food when I finally gained the courage to beat Toombs over the head with a club and escape.”

“Did you really think of doing that?” chuckled Jimmie.

“I thought of doing it,” was the answer, “but I don’t know whether I should ever have acquired the courage. There was my sister waiting in New York, you know. Anyway, I hid the beans and part of the bread not far away from your camp.”

“Why didn’t you wake us up?” asked Ned.

“I wanted to,” was the reply, “but I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid you would in some way let Toombs understand that I was playing into your hands. I didn’t think you would betray me knowingly, but I thought that some careless act on your part might send my sister to prison.”

“I can’t blame you for being cautious,” Ned answered.

“The next morning, when we saw the two in the pine woods, that is, when Toombs and I came upon them there, Toombs laid the plot to get Ned into his hands by sending the note which I afterwards delivered. You must remember that I tried to warn you at that time, boys,” he added.

“Yes, you told us to beat it!” Frank said.

“After that,” Norman continued, “I gave the Indian smoke signal in order to confirm you in the belief that I really was a Boy Scout in good standing. I didn’t know then that Jimmie would start off alone to investigate and get cornered by the half-breeds. I didn’t know, either,” he added, “that the half-breeds were so thick about the place where Frank and the others were captured.

“And when I warned you,” he added, turning to Ned, “that the boys were in a bad fix in the Devil’s Punch Bowl, I did it in good faith. I have since learned that I was followed last night, and that the half-breed who came after me saw the boys in the pit and went back after the gang.

“Huga, Toombs’ right-hand man, was killed at the pit, and the old man is wild with anger. He can’t control the half-breeds without Huga. They have already deserted him. In fact, there is only one person with him at the old mission now, and that is a Hoola Indian named Sigma. This Indian is one of the descendants of the tribe of Indians which long claimed this property as their own under a grant from the Mexican government. He is said to know more about the mountains hereabouts than any other living person.”

“Is he a real Hoola Indian?” asked Frank, rather anxiously.

“He is said to be,” answered Norman.

“Are there other Hoolas about?” demanded Jack.

“A few have been seen—perhaps less than a dozen.”

“Then if there really should be an extensive deposit of gold in this section,” Frank asked, “this Sigma might know something about it?”

“He would know about it if any one did.”

Frank beckoned Ned and Jack to one side where they could talk without being overheard by the others. Then Frank very briefly explained the discovery of the gold chamber and added:

“If this Hoola Indian knows all about the deposit of gold, he’ll tell Toombs, and the New York bunch will get possession of it in some way. Now, what are we going to do?”

“Perhaps we’d better hear Norman out first,” Ned said, after expressing surprise that such a store of gold should remain so long undiscovered by the seekers after the precious metal. “Norman may know something more concerning this Indian.”

“Where do these Indians make their headquarters?” Ned asked, returning to the others.

“No one knows,” Norman answered. “They come and go like ghosts. It is common talk that they know where great deposits of gold are located but no one has ever been able to follow them to their store-house. They always have plenty of virgin gold, and are very independent.”

“Have you ever tried following this Sigma?” asked Ned.

“I followed him one moonlight night,” Norman replied. “He climbed the cliff which faces the east and backs against the Devil’s Punch Bowl. He made his way almost to the summit, and there disappeared. I searched the locality thoroughly, but all I discovered was a great smooth space of rock overlooking the east. Carved in deep lines upon this rock were the outlines of the flag of Spain, crown and all! I don’t think anyone ever saw it before—anyone save the Indians. After discovering it, however, I found no difficulty in tracing it out from the valley.”