CHAPTER XVII.--THE TIME FOR THE ROUND-UP.

"Sure," Jimmie answered. "Shoot the cat!"

"Well, keep your light on him, and wait until I can get where I can see him. The cat frequently resents being wounded."

"Cripes!" cried Jimmie. "Don't shoot unless you kill him, for he'll jump at me then for sure. He's angry now--hear him pound with his tail? I fired all my loads at him an' he dodged the bullets."

"You couldn't shoot craps!" scorned Frank.

The panther, a great brute made ferocious by the excitement of the fire, and probably scorched a little, could now be heard moving in the branches of a tree not far from that in which Jimmie was perched. In a moment Frank reached a point from which the beast's face could be seen.

He thought to himself that it looked like a tiger head fastened against a gray cloud with unseen pins. Jimmie's searchlight brought the evil face, the cruel eyes, the back-sloping ears, the faintly-moving jaws, out into strong relief, as the circle of flame was only large enough to cover the face.

The beast heard Frank moving in the bushes below and turned its head to look, at the same time crouching low, as if to spring.

The first bullet struck him fair in the throat, the second entered the head just above the eyes, the third, coming so rapidly on the others that the three reports seemed to merge into one, entered the body over the heart. The great beast was dead when the body struck the ground.

Jimmie was not long in getting down to Frank's side and grasping him by the shoulders in a hug which threatened to end in a scuffle.

"Get away!" Frank said. "Suppose there's another cat here? If there is he'll get one of us through your foolishness."

"There were two," Jimmie said, coolly, "but I killed one."

"How did you get here?" was the next question, asked as the boys turned toward the camp.

"How do you think I got here?" returned Jimmie.

"Walked!" laughed Frank.

"Yes, I walked."

Jimmie stopped and rubbed his legs with careful hands.

"I'm all wore out!" he said. "I can't walk any farther to-night."

"All right," Frank said, with a grin. "I'll leave you both lights to keep the cats off with, and my gun, and come out after you in the morning after breakfast."

"Oh, my eats!" Jimmie cried. "Lead me to something that will sustain life! I'm starving, I tell you."

"You walked all the way?" asked Frank.

"Sure! Forty miles at least."

"Where are the others?"

"Pat, Jack and the Chink Scout? Pat came up just before I started, riding on a burro, an' in the custody of a small party of rangers, who thought he had been setting fires. The rangers went into camp over there, all tired out, an' Jack an' Pat settled down with them. I run away."

"They don't know where you are?" asked Frank.

"Nix know!" replied the boy.

"But how did you ever get through the burning forest?" asked Frank, hardly believing the boy's story of his long walk.

"This 'burn' is only a mile wide," Jimmie said. "I walked on the south edge of it. Say, there are plenty of lives lost! Bears, an' cats, an' all that. I guess this will be an agreeable place to live in about a week--not!"

The boy was indeed "all in," as he expressed it. He had walked since early morning through a tangled forest black with smoke, through an atmosphere burned and smoked out of its life-giving qualities. And all this exertion in order that he might be near his chum, Nestor.

Fortune had favored the lad, and he had at last blundered on the camp where Ned had taken refuge, otherwise he might have died in the forest from hunger and exhaustion, or been devoured by some of the savage beasts which had followed him all day.

"Where's Ned?" Jimmie asked, as they stood before the little row of tents.

"Asleep," was the reply, "and you let him alone for to-night. He's been having a lively time. But how in the name of all that's wonderful did you ever find your way here?" the boy added.

"I don't know," was the reply. "I knew that Ned would be wherever the fire was, and so started east. Not so very long ago I heard a couple of shots, and that directed me toward the camp. Who was hurt?"

Frank explained, briefly, what had taken place, hunted up a liberal meal for the boy, and then saw him settled for the night.

Ned's astonishment at seeing the boy in the morning may well be imagined.

"Huh!" Jimmie said. "You thought you would fool me out of all the fun!"

Ned laughed and asked about the others, finally informing Jimmie that he was leaving that morning for San Francisco by the aeroplane route.

"Then I'm goin'!" declared the boy. "I'm not goin' to be chucked into the discard again."

"You'll have to sit in Frank's lap," grinned Ned, "and the machine may tip over with such a load, at that."

"I guess it didn't tip over when Frank and Jack an' yours truly run it," Jimmie replied. "Anyway, I'm goin' with you."

Before leaving for Missoula, where he was to surrender the aeroplane to Frank, Ned had another long talk with Mr. Green, whose wound was not so serious as it had been considered the night before. The forester told him what he knew of the men under the leadership of Greer, saying that he might have arrested Greer at any time during the month, and, what is more, convicted him of smuggling both Chinamen and opium over the border.

"But what good would it have done?" Green went on. "The conspirators in Washington, or New York, or San Francisco would have chosen another leader, and the game would have gone on as before."

"That is very true," Ned admitted, "and still, it seems to me that the time to round the fellows up has come!"

"Do you give that as an order?" asked the other, a flash of excitement showing in his face.

"Yes," was the reply.

"But some of them have gone to Portland with the Chinks--some to Frisco, I think. What about that?"

"If you can spare men," Ned said, "follow them."

"You're on!" laughed Green. "I've been waiting for some such orders for a long time. You're on!"

"And follow on to Frisco as soon as you can," Ned continued. "Address me, or look for me, if you are able to be about after you get there, at the Federal building."

"I'll be there in a week," Green said, his eyes showing the joy of the coming fight with the outlaws, "and I'll have a bunch of prisoners with me."

The forester hesitated a moment, as the importance of the proposed move came to him, then faced Ned with a hesitating look. It was plain to the boy that Green wanted to ask a question which he believed to be either personal or impertinent.

"Is there something else?" Ned asked.

Green still hesitated, his eyes on the ground.

"Are you sure of your clues?" he asked, then.

"I think so," was the reply.

"Because, you see," Green went on, "the government doesn't want any trap sprung until the whole bilin' is within reaching distance. After the good work you have done here, I wouldn't like to have you order the round-up and then find that the men you wanted were still out on the range."

"Thank you for your frankness," Ned replied.

"I just want to be sure that you are sure," smiled Green. "It would mix things for me to make these arrests and have the big ones get away, now, wouldn't it?"

"Indeed it would," Ned admitted, "but I think it is safe to go ahead as we planned a moment ago."

"All right!" Green said, but there was still doubt in his eyes.

"And I'll accept all the responsibility," Ned added.

"I have a suggestion to make," Green said, then. "Why not go on to Frisco in the aeroplane and ask for instructions? You can make the trip in the airship in no time, but it is a long ride by rail."

"I think," Ned replied, with a laugh, "that the game will be ripe just about the time I get to Frisco by rail. Besides, I don't want the outlaws to know that I'm going to the city. They would know it if they saw the aeroplane making for the coast. Well, if I leave Frank navigating it in this district they will think I am still here. Don't you see?"

"Go it!" laughed Green. "I reckon you know what you're about."

"Anyway," Ned said, "I've got to play the game in my own way if I play it at all."

"I see," observed Green, and the two parted.

The aeroplane had not been damaged at all by the fire, but Ned went over it carefully before attempting a start. Sawyer, trembling with fright, was brought out to show where he had meddled with the machinery.

"I didn't harm it any," the prisoner said.

"There are some burrs missing," Ned said.

Sawyer brought half a dozen out of a pocket and passed them to Ned with a reluctant hand.

"I neglected to tell you that I had them in my pocket," he said.

"What did Green say to you this morning?" asked Ned, screwing the burrs on where they were needed.

"He says he won't be hard on me, if I tell all I know about the men who are doing these tricks," was the reply.

"You told me all you know?" asked Ned.

"Yes, there is nothing else to tell. I'm so glad to think that Green is not going to die from the wound I gave him that I'll do everything in my power to bring the men who put me up to this to punishment."

"Sure you can identify the man who hired you?"

"Dead certain," was the reply.

"Then I'll have one of the men bring you to Frisco," Ned said. "You will be wanted there."

"All right; anything the government wants goes!"

In half an hour the three boys, Ned, Frank and Jimmie, were on the aeroplane, sailing through the clear air of a splendid summer morning. Below they could see the long, narrow strip of land which had been swept by the fires. Off to the north was the British frontier, with Lake Kintla glimmering in the sunshine.

"Aren't we going back to that lake cavern again?" asked Frank.

"Not just now," Ned replied.

"I didn't know that you got all you wanted in there," Frank went on. "I had an idea that you were trying to identify the man we found dead there."

"I think I learned all there was to learn there," Ned replied.

"He spent a lot of time in there before he went to Frisco," Jimmie said. "He made me go in there with him, and I didn't like it."

"And so no one will ever know who the dead man was?" asked Frank.

"I have been given a name," Ned said, "a name to call him by, but I don't exactly like to accept the information, considering the source from which it came."

The aeroplane drifted to the west and north easily under the steady pulse of the motors, and the plateau where Jimmie had left the boys and the foresters was soon in sight.

"I wonder if they're all alive?" said Jimmie.

"What could happen to them?" demanded Frank.

"Oh," Jimmie replied, with biting sarcasm, "there is nothing here to harm 'em! This is a pink tea, this is! This is a church fair, where you get ices made out of the cream they skim off the cistern!"

"You're getting nutty!" Frank said, with a grin.

"When I left 'em," Jimmie went on, "the boys an' the foresters were wondering if the outlaws would come back an' kill 'em one by one or just blow up the caves underneath the plateau an' send 'em up in the air without any good means of gettin' down."

"Then we'll look them up," Ned said.

The great divide lay down below, and the plateau was in plain sight, with the early sunshine streaming over it. When the aeroplane circled about it a shout came up to Ned's ears, then a shot, and the powder smoke drifted lazily upward in the clear air.

"Somethin' doin'!" Jimmie cried. "Suppose we go down an' see."