CHAPTER XXII

A FIGHT IN THE AIR

“My idea of a pleasant afternoon,” Ned said, as they arose from a sumptuous camp dinner, “is to get off alone into the mountains. Mr. Bosworth seems inclined to go with you boys for a view of the flag on the cliff,” he went on, “and so I’ll leave you to your own amusement while I go and get acquainted with the mountains.”

“You would better come with us, and see what’s going on at the Devil’s Punch Bowl,” Jimmie advised.

“Somehow, ever since I’ve been here,” Ned went on with a smile, “I have lived in an atmosphere of excitement. We shall be leaving the mountains before long, and I have a notion that I’d like to get up to the snow line and look over the country.”

“I should think you’d had enough of the snow line at the Devil’s Punch Bowl!” Frank laughed.

“That wasn’t the real snow line,” Ned replied. “It was pretty cold up there, it is true, but still we didn’t get to the real thing.”

“I should like very much to go with you,” Mr. Bosworth suggested, “only my time is limited, and I really must investigate this mine about which so much has been said.”

The result of this conversation was that Frank, Jack and Norman started away with Mr. Bosworth, leaving Harry and Gilroy at the camp, while Ned turned straight west and pointed for an elevation which seemed to be something like 10,000 feet above sea level.

The boy’s days and nights for a long time had been filled with adventure, and now he was more than pleased to be away from all hostile influences. The way was not difficult for a time, and he walked along taking great draughts of mountain air and feasting his eyes on the wonderful landscape to the east.

About three o’clock in the afternoon he came to a cliff from which, through a break in the chain of mountains, he could look out toward the Pacific. The slope toward the sea was more gradual there, and the boy gazed over valleys in the great chain with feelings of awe in his heart.

As he stood on the cliff looking out to the west, he caught sight of an eagle perched on a crag not far above him.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” the boy thought, “to take back an eagle as a trophy. Boy Scouts as a rule,” he reasoned with himself, “are not supposed to take the life of any wild creatures for their own amusement or benefit. Still, I never saw anything about an eagle that looked very patriotic, or very much in touch with the softer side of animal life. The eagle, notwithstanding its prominence on the American dollar, is merely a bird of prey, eating its game alive and killing out of pure viciousness.”

The great bird finally left the crag and swung nearer and nearer to the place where Ned stood. The boy crouched down behind a boulder and watched it with no little interest.

“I don’t suppose it is the right thing to do,” Ned mused, as he drew his automatic revolver, “but I just naturally want that eagle in the Boy Scout club room in New York. The boys of the Eagle Patrol would greet him with an ovation which he will never receive while alive.”

When the eagle came nearer, the boy fired. The huge monarch of the air fell at the base of the cliff, shot through the heart.

“Now,” thought the boy, looking down in dismay, “how am I ever going to get him. It doesn’t seem to me that any human being can descend this precipice.”

After studying the lay of the country for some moments, Ned decided to at least make an attempt to reach the eagle. Removing his coat, and leaving his revolver and searchlight upon the ledge as too cumbersome to carry, he started down toward where the bird lay. He had indeed reached the snow line, for the crevices in the wall down which he clambered were filled with frost. It was a long, long journey down to the ledge below, and dangerous, too, but the boy finally succeeded in reaching the spot where the eagle lay.

It was a noble bird, something like seven feet from tip to tip, and Ned realized that he would have his hands full in conveying it to the shelf where he had very foolishly left his coat and his weapon.

“I must have been out of my head to leave the articles there!” he exclaimed, annoyed at his own reckless act. “Now,” he went on, “I’ve got to climb back up that almost perpendicular wall and get there before dark, too. If I had only brought the things with me the way to camp would be easier.”

After several attempts to climb the wall of rock, Ned was brought to the conclusion that the feat was impossible. The downward climb had been difficult, but the return was out of the question. After a further study of the situation, he passed along the ledge to a slope which seemed to him to lead to the shelf above. In ten minutes, he found to his dismay that the slope did not connect with the shelf he sought.

However, the only thing for him to do was to proceed on the way he had chosen, in the hope that some arrangement of surfaces would permit of his return to the point where he had left the articles mentioned.

At last he came to a narrow shelf of rock in front of which was a straight fall of hundreds of feet. Above him the crag rose to a height almost as great. The shelf was not more than two feet in width, and there were places where the rock had crumbled away so that the breadth was cut down to less than six inches.

Very much disgusted with his own thoughtlessness, Ned turned toward a slope to the east and tried to make his way off the dangerous elevation. As he did so, he heard a whir of wings and felt fanning pinions brush his back.

Turning he saw two huge eagles hovering in the air hardly a yard away. Their vicious eyes were fixed angrily upon him. Involuntarily the boy reached for his revolver but, of course, did not find it in its usual place. It reposed on the shelf hundreds of feet away!

“Now,” thought the boy, “I seem to be having the quiet little communion with nature I set out to attain! If these eagles actually attack me here, unarmed as I am, I’m afraid there’ll be somebody falling over the precipice in a short time.”

While these thoughts were passing through the excited mind of the boy, the eagles, after taking a long swing in the air, approached him, claws and beak threatening destruction.

It was a peculiar situation. Ned was still standing on a ledge a little more than a foot wide, entirely unarmed except for a large knife which he carried in his pocket. It seemed to him that a battle with the birds there could result in only one way.

He did not entirely abandon hope, but he knew that the chances were against him. It seemed that one powerful stroke from a wing must send him over the precipice.

He drew his knife from his pocket and opened it. He was not a moment too soon, for at that instant one of the eagles slashed at him with a beak which seemed to the boy at that time to be something like three feet in length. Threatened with the knife, the bird flew away, but his mate immediately continued the attack.

While obliged to meet only one bird at a time, Ned succeeded admirably in fighting them off, but directly they both charged at the same instant, and then Ned felt the powerful beaks tearing at his hands, at his legs and at his head. By keeping the blade of his knife flashing constantly before his face, he was able to protect himself when the eagles dashed at his eyes!

More than once he was thrown to the ledge by the fanning of great wings which seemed to the boy to be operated by sixty-horse power motors. Time after time he lay almost at the very verge of the precipice. Fighting desperately with knife and feet, however, he managed to escape the claws of the great birds.

Had either one of them succeeded in fastening those powerful weapons upon the boy, he must have been dragged from the ledge. During all this struggle the birds had been wounded time and again, but no fatal blow had been dealt, and so they fought on as if determined to avenge the death of their companion.

It seemed to Ned that the battle lasted for several hours. As a matter of fact, it was over in twenty minutes. A fortunate blow with the knife crippled one of the wings of the fiercest eagle so that he fluttered away into the canyon, unable to lift his body to the attack again. The second bird fought more warily after this, but the boy received several wounds and several blows from his fanning wings before a knife thrust in the throat sent the vicious bird tumbling into the space below.

Freed from his assailants, the boy dropped on the ledge and panted for breath. Every muscle had been strained to its utmost tension in the encounter, and, besides, the boy had been cruelly wounded by his antagonists of the air.

He lay there resting for some moments and then, rising, found it necessary to cut his shirt into ribbons in order to bind up some of the wounds which had been inflicted and from which the blood was trickling in considerable quantities.

“Talk about the great American eagle!” mused the boy. “I shall never want to see one again unless he’s on a piece of money! The noble bird of liberty is certainly a scrapper when it comes down to brass tacks, but the encounter of today shows that he is inclined to take every advantage of an opponent!”

Regarding his torn clothes ruefully, the boy once more glanced up at the shelf where he had very foolishly deposited his coat, his revolver and flashlight. His hat had been torn from his head during the first minute of the battle.

“It strikes me,” he considered, “that I’d better head for camp without going back after that plunder.”

Through the break in the mountainous range in which he stood he could see the red sun dropping low down into the sky. He knew that to attempt to secure his property would be to give up all hope of reaching camp before the night fell.

The next question for him to consider was as to whether he should attempt to convey the bird he had shot into camp.

“If I don’t take in the prize,” he mused with a smile showing on his face, “the boys will pretend to believe that I never had any battle with an eagle; that I received my injuries in some other way.”

He looked down at his torn clothing and at his bandaged wrists, and for a moment, realizing how tired he was, resolved to abandon the prize for the time being and make for the camp at all speed. At last, however, the boy’s indomitable courage asserted itself, and he picked up the heavy bird and started on his journey to camp.

Somehow the conformation of the land seemed to always lead him away from the direction he hoped to follow. Here a ledge he was following wound sharply around to the south, ending in a precipitous slope which obliged him to retrace his steps. There a gully in the hills threw a mountain torrent in his path. Long before he saw the light of the campfire, he was nearly ready to drop from exhaustion.

The cheerful blaze, however, brought new courage to his heart and before long he came within the circle of light. When he turned the angle of the rock, Harry and Gilroy greeted him with exclamations of dismay.