CHAPTER VIII.--FATE OF THE STEAK A LA BRIGAND.

Jimmie lay stretched at full length under one of the discolored shelter tents in a little cup in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Frank and Pat and Jack were moving restlessly about, looking up at the blue sky expectantly. Ned had not returned from his trip to San Francisco, and the boys were anxious as to his safety.

"He should have taken me with him," Jimmie drawled, presently, when Frank threw himself down by the tent. "Then he'd have been all right."

"It is a wonder that he got along in the world at all before he fell under your protecting care," Frank replied, with a grin.

"Oh, he managed in some way," Jimmie answered, "but he never got up in the world until he took me into partnership," with a wink at his chum.

"He's been up in the world since then, all right," Frank said, suggestively.

"Too high up," Jimmie grinned. "Too high up for me, anyway. I thought I'd die up there, on the night of the fire."

"In all the history of air navigation," Frank observed, soberly, "there was never a trip like that. When I think of the quick start, and the wind and the rain, the whole thing seems like a dream. How did he ever do it?"

"I don't know," Jimmie replied. "He boosted me into the seat, and the next I knew we were off, an' the fire was dropping away from us, an' the mountains were growing smaller, an' the peaks looked like warts on the world. I felt like I was fallin' over the edge of somethin'."

"And the wind?" questioned Frank. "Didn't it take your breath away?"

"Wind, nothin'," the boy said, scornfully. "There wasn't any wind where we were. We went along with it. It was like sailin' on a swift stream. Ned tuned the engine up to keep steerway, an' shut his teeth. Then, in half a minute, we were above the clouds, an' the moon an' stars were askin' what we were doin' up there."

"You're saying it well," Pat said, joining the little group. "If you were going so merrily before the wind, why did he want steerway?"

"You don't know much about the atmosphere," laughed Frank, answering for Jimmie. "If you did, you'd know that the air blanket of the earth is a good deal like a river. It has eddies, and currents, and ripples, and holes, too."

"You're good, too!" exclaimed Pat. "Holes in the air is about the best I ever heard!"

"Of course there are holes in the air," Frank replied, with the air of one imparting valuable information, "especially when there are fires beneath. And, let me tell you this, you old red-head," he added, with an exasperating grin, "when the air, driven swiftly by the wind, or what we call the wind, comes to mountain peaks, and tall trees, and sky-scrapers, it just backs up, just the same as water does when it comes to a dam, or any obstruction."

"Go it!" Pat cried. "Make it a good one! Where does this air go when it backs up?"

"It just hunches up," Frank replied, gravely, "and checks the flow back of it, and then eddies and swirls away, fit to twist an aeroplane into kindling wood."

"Of course," broke in Jimmie. "I've often read of aeroplanes dropping a thousand feet into holes in the air, and of their being swept against tall trees and buildings by eddies. It takes a cool head to run an air machine in a storm of wind, and that is where Ned won out."

"If he hadn't kept the aeroplane going with the wind at full speed," Frank added, "he would have been in a wreck the first half mile."

"The more I learn about the atmosphere," Pat said, "the less I like it. When you get me up in an aeroplane, just send word to the folks that I'm tired of life."

"Ned ought to have a Carnegie medal for what he did that night," Jack remarked, "and I'm going to speak to father about it when I get home."

"There is no doubt that he ought to have one," Frank said, "but the men who really deserve Carnegie medals never get them."

"You're an anarchist!" roared Pat.

"All right," was the sober reply, "but if I had the giving out of the medals I'd present them to men who work twelve hours a day and provide for families of eight on nine dollars a week--the men who never get rested, and who never have enough to eat. They are the ones who ought to have the medals."

"Most of them would sell the medals," Jack said, cynically.

"Well," Frank replied, "I shouldn't blame them if they did. I'd rather have a porterhouse steak in the interior than a piece of bronze on the outside."

"Don't talk about porterhouse steak!" pleaded Jimmie.

"Hungry, little man?" asked Pat.

"Hungry! I'm like one of the men Frank has been telling about. I never get rested, never have enough to eat."

The boys fell upon Jimmie and rolled him out of the tent.

"You get busy with fuel," Pat said, after they had given him plenty of "movements," "and I'll cook a steak a la brigand."

"We ain't got no steak," complained Jimmie.

"We've got potatoes, and bacon, and onions," Pat said, "and canned beefsteak. You just watch me. I used to cook steak a la brigand in the Philippines."

"Get busy, then," Jimmie said, "and Jack will help get the green wood."

"If you bring green wood here for me to cook with, I'll roast you over it," Pat said. "You get a lot of good dry wood that will make coals, and I'll show you how to broil a steak a la brigand."

"Why do you call it a brigand steak?" asked Jimmie.

"Because it takes a red-headed brigand to cook it," suggested Jack, dodging out of Pat's reach.

"Never you mind the name," Pat replied. "Get the dry wood and I'll broil a steak that will melt in the mouth."

"That old canned stuff?" asked Frank.

"Get the wood," ordered Pat, "and I'll show you."

There were a few dead trees--the sole reminders of a former forest fire in that green valley--close at hand, and the wood was soon gathered and placed in a great pile near two rocks which Pat had rolled to within a yard of each other.

"Here!" Jack called out, as Pat transferred the whole supply to the space between the stones, "there's enough fuel there for a week's cooking. Quit it!"

"My son," Pat replied, with a provoking air of patronage, "what you don't know about broiling a steak a la brigand would make a congressional library."

While the wood was burning down to coals, Pat cut a green slip about an inch in diameter at the bottom and peeled and smoothed it nicely.

"Is that to be used to enforce the eating of the steak?" asked Frank, winking at the others.

"To keep you from gorging yourselves," Pat replied, going on with his work.

In a short time he had the potatoes cut into half-inch slices. Jack had peeled them and, following directions with many grins, had also cut a round hole an inch in size in the middle of each slice.

"He's going to wear 'em around his neck, like beads," Jimmie suggested, looking carefully over the heaped-up dish.

The bacon was now sliced thin, as were the onions, and in the center of each slice a round hole was made. Then Pat opened a couple of tins of beefsteak--so called by the packers--and cut a hole in the middle of each slice. Then he strung a slice of potato on the spit, then a slice of bacon, then a slice of onion, then a slice of beef, until there was nearly a yard of provisions.

"I begin to feel hungrier than ever!"

Jimmie was dancing around the fire as Pat turned the spit. There were only coals now, and Pat kept the toothsome collection turning slowly, so as to broil without scorching. The smell of the cooking bacon and onions set the boys to getting out the tin plates and making the coffee.

The sun, which had been shining fiercely all day, now seemed to be working his way through a mist. The atmosphere appeared to be tinted with the yellow haze one sees in the northern states in autumn.

As the boys were keeping watch for Ned and the aeroplane, they noticed the change in atmospheric conditions, but attributed it to the rising vapor brought out by the heat of the sun.

"Say," Jimmie said, presently, "I smell smoke. I wonder if there's goin' to be another forest blaze here?"

"Of course you smell smoke," Jack said, watching the broiling supper. "We're cooking a steak a la brigand, ain't we?"

"Smells like burnin' leaves," Jimmie insisted.

"More like onions," Pat observed.

The boys crouched about the fire for some moments longer and then Jimmie arose and began to climb the wall of the cup to the west.

"I'm goin' to see about this," he said.

Frank laid a hand on his arm.

"You wait a minute," he said. "You can't climb that slope in less than half an hour, and Ned will be here before that. Look! He's coming now, like the wind!"

The aeroplane, high up in the hazy sky, was indeed making good progress toward the little cup in the mountain side. While the boys looked they saw it shift away to the west, whirl back to the east, dart off to the north and back again.

"He's huntin' for us," Jimmie said.

"He's investigating!" Frank cut in.

"Investigating what?" Pat demanded. "He's smelling of this steak a la brigand and is hunting for it. Let be. He'll find us."

The sky was growing more uncertain every minute, and puffs of smoke were seen out in the west, over the rim of the cup.

"The world is on fire, I tell you!" Jimmie cried, presently. "That's what Ned is shiftin' about for. If the blaze wasn't high up on the mountains we couldn't see the columns of smoke over the rim of the valley."

"Well," Pat observed, "the fire can't get in here. Nothing to burn."

"It can fill the cup with hot air and scorch us to death," Frank said, uneasily. "I think we'd better be looking about for a place to crawl into."

"Wait until Ned comes," Jimmie suggested. "He'll know what to do."

The aeroplane acted badly in the currents caused by the burning forest, but Ned finally managed to bring it down in the valley. The boys gathered about him, all excitement, and the steak a la brigand was for the moment forgotten in the joy at the return of the patrol leader and the anxiety to learn something of conditions out in the woods.

"It's going to be a great conflagration," Ned said, "but I think the aeroplane will be safe here. The whole slope is on fire."

"I wouldn't take chances on leaving it here," Frank advised. "I'd jump over the divide with it."

"I have been in the air three hours now," Ned replied, "and must have a rest. Besides, we must remain where we can, if necessary, help head off the flames. That is what we are here for, remember."

"Not to fight fires," corrected Frank, "but to find out who sets them."

"Anyhow," Ned replied, "we must fight the fire, if it gives us a chance, now that we are here. Now, what do you think that is?" he added, as a chorus of howls and cries came up from the slope on the west.

"Sounds like a country circus!" Jimmie laughed.

"That is just what it is!" Ned exclaimed. "Here! Help me roll the aeroplane into that nook, where it won't be trampled into splinters. Now you boys get behind it, and I'll get in front. Whatever you see or hear, don't shoot unless you are actually attacked."

The boys obeyed the commands without a word of comment, well knowing what was coming next. A breeze was sliding up the slope, bringing with it flying masses of smoke. Presently birds began to stagger through the heavy atmosphere, flying low, almost within reaching distance, as they had fled long before the mounting flames and were exhausted.

"I wish this would let up a moment," Pat said, "long enough for us to reach that steak a la brigand. It must be about done by this time."

"I'll go an' get it," volunteered Jimmie. "An' eat most of it on the way back."

"Then bring the coffee," cried Jack.

"Why can't we all go out there and eat?" asked Frank.

The boys were about starting with a rush when Ned caught two of them by the arm and stopped the others by a quick call. Through the smoke and the hot air on the rim of the cup, a great head, a head neither white nor black, but grizzly, was seen. Then a deer bounded over and crouched down in the valley. Next two mountain lions raced over the lip of the valley and halted growling, within a few yards of the boys.

"There goes our steak a la brigand!" Jimmie cried, as the rush of frightened animals showed under the smoke. "I'll eat one of them deer to pay for this," he added.

"You'll be lucky if one of these wild animals doesn't eat you," Jack said. "How would you like to be back in little old Washington Square just now?"

"Forget it!" was the boy's only reply.

"Will the fire get here?" Frank asked of Ned, as the wild creatures of the forest poured into the valley, regardless of the presence of the boys, unmindful of the proximity of each other.

"I don't think the flames will come into the cup," Ned replied, "but if the smoke settles here we shall have a hot time of it."

"Huh!" Jimmie cried. "The whole valley is full of mountain lions, an' bears, an' deer, an' snakes, an' rabbits. There ain't no room for any smoke!"

Then the smoke rolled away for an instant, showing a sun as red as a piece of molten iron; showing, too, a huddle of forest animals crowding together in the center of the valley. In their terror of the fire they had forgotten to be afraid of mankind--of each other!