Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.bookcove.net









[Illustration: “Full speed ahead!” roared Clay. “Our only hope is to
keep her dead with the current and fight her through.”]




  The River Motor Boat Boys on the Columbia

  OR

  The Confession of a Photograph

  By HARRY GORDON

  Author of
  “The River Motor Boat Boys on the St. Lawrence,”
  “The River Motor Boat Boys on the Colorado,”
  “The River Motor Boat Boys on the Mississippi,”
  “The River Motor Boat Boys on the Amazon,’
  “The River Motor Boat Boys on the Ohio.”

  A. L. Burt Company
  New York




  Copyright, 1913
  By A. L. Burt Company

  THE SIX RIVER MOTOR BOYS ON THE COLUMBIA




  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  I. CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN A MOTOR BOAT
  II. CAPTAIN JOE FOLLOWS A TRAIL
  III. ALEX FINDS USE FOR HIS KODAK
  IV. A NEW FACE ON THE RAMBLER
  V. WHAT TOOK PLACE ON THE TRAIN
  VI. MOURNING AN EMPTY KODAK
  VII. PIE THAT LIVED IN A GLASS HOUSE
  VIII. A WRECK AND A BABY BEAR
  IX. THE MAKING OF A CEDAR CANOE
  X. A RABBIT AND A SECRET MEETING
  XI. ALEX BECOMES A DETECTIVE
  XII. A BEAR, A FISH, AND A TREE
  XIII. A MYSTERY AND A FISH SUPPER
  XIV. A SWIFT AND PERILOUS RIDE
  XV. THE RAMBLER TAKES TO WHEELS
  XVI. TEDDY RECEIVES A CALLER
  XVII. CAPTAIN JOE TO THE RESCUE
  XVIII. CASE MAKES A HIT WITH DOUGH
  XIX. WHY THERE WAS NO VENISON
  XX. CAPTAIN JOE MAKES A DISCOVERY
  XXI. A CAMPFIRE HIGH ON THE HILLS
  XXII. THE SURGEON TURNS DETECTIVE
  XXIII. THE POLICEMAN MAKES A MISTAKE
  XXIV. MORE SURPRISES THAN ONE




CHAPTER I.—CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS IN A MOTOR BOAT.


The motor boat _Rambler_ lay at the very summit of the Rocky Mountains.
She was not in a lake, either, although there were lakes of ice not far
away. She was not in motion, and there was a great silence all around
her.

She lay, propped upright, on a platform car, and the car, with two
broken wheels, stood on a make-shift spur of track on the right-of-way
of the Canadian Pacific railroad. An unusual place to find a motor boat.
But listen.

The _Rambler_ was _en route_ from the South Branch, Chicago, to the
headwaters of the Columbia river. She had passed without serious
accident down Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinaw, through
the Sault Ste. Marie river and canal, and over the crystal waters of old
Superior to Port Arthur, where she had been coaxed to the deck of the
platform car upon which she now stood.

Almost exactly on the boundary line between Alberta and British
Columbia, the flat car had come to grief, and the trainmen had bunted it
to the spur and gone on about their business, promising to order a
wrecker at the nearest telegraph office. The disabled car tilted
frightfully to the rear as it stood on the shaky track, giving the
platform a twenty-five per cent. pitch, and causing the _Rambler_ to
take on a rakish air, like a swaggering person with his hat set on the
back of his head.

A few miles to the east was Laggan, sometimes called Lake Louise, which
is 2,368 miles from Montreal and 5,032 feet above the level of the
Pacific ocean, 500 miles away. About the same distance to the west was
Field, sometimes called Emerald Lake, 2,387 miles from Montreal and over
4,000 feet above tidewater. The highest altitude on the boundary at that
point is 5,200 feet above the ocean, and the motor boat was just about
there.

It was close to sunset of an April day, and the mountain pass was cold
and desolate. There was snow on the peaks, and a cold wind blew
whistling through the narrow cut in the gray rock. There was no living
figure in sight from the sidling platform of the car, or from the
foot-square windows of the _Rambler’s_ tiny cabin. The silence was
broken only by the uneasy wind.

Decidedly it was anything but cheerful outside. Inside, there was a
glowing fire in a small coal stove, and a shaded electric light brought
out the cozy furnishings of the place. The electric generators were not
working, the motors being silent, but there was in the accumulators
sufficient current for the light and the little electric stove upon
which a supper was cooking.

Those who have followed the fortunes of the _Rambler_ to the headwaters
of the Amazon will understand without further detail exactly what kind
of a craft she was. After returning from the South American expedition,
the lads had planned a trip to the Columbia river, and they were now on
their way to Donald, where the motor boat was to be launched into the
waters of that interesting stream.

The boys had worked hard in Chicago all through the winter, and when
April came they were ready for the journey, although their supply of
money was not as large as they had hoped to make it. Of the five who had
visited Cloud island and secured the store of gold hidden in that
semi-volcanic heap of rocks, however, only three were in shape to set
out on the proposed voyage.

Frank Porter, who owned the gold taken from Cloud island, had insisted
on financing the trip, but this the self-reliant boys would not listen
to, preferring to depend upon their own exertions. Julian Shafer, in the
interest of whose health the Amazon trip had originally been planned,
had acquired a little property through the exertions of Dr. Holcomb, the
physician who was treating him for tuberculosis, and had decided to
spend the winter and summer at Los Angeles.

So, of the five, there remained only Clayton Emmett, Cornelius Witters,
and Alexander Smithwick to carry out the exploration of the Columbia the
following spring. It was hoped, however, that both Frank and Julian
would be able to join their friends at some point lower down. The story
of the boys’ adventures on the Amazon may be found in the first volume
of this series.

On this night, then, “Clay,” “Case,” and “Alex,” as they were familiarly
called, were gathered around the coal heater in the cabin of the
_Rambler_, high up in a rocky pass on a mountain range, the range
forming the backbone of the continent of North America. There was plenty
of coal on the platform car, and so they had no fear of passing a chill
as well as a desolate night on the great divide. Also, the boys had
plenty of provisions, as there were numerous boxes on the car which were
to be emptied of their eatables and carried on board the motor boat
whenever the great river was reached.

The leasing of the car had eaten into the finances of the boys quite
seriously, but they anticipated living mostly on game and fish during
the run down the Columbia to the Pacific ocean. They had made no
calculations for the return ride to Chicago, believing that they would
be able to find employment at Portland.

Boy-like, they had figured on the future only so far as the end of the
river journey was concerned. A motor boat trip down the Columbia was too
fascinating, they declared, to be mixed up with any prosaic monetary
calculations!

“If we go broke,” Case had said, when the closing details were under
discussion, “we can walk back! I’d rather swim around Cape Horn and walk
back to little old Chicago than miss the days and nights we are going to
have on the Columbia!”

“You’re light headed!” Alex had responded.

“That will be an aid in swimming!” Case had replied. “Anyway, it is the
Columbia first. The future may take care of itself!”

This night in the mountain pass should have been spent on the Columbia
at or near Donald, but the boys were by no means discouraged. Case was
inclined to express annoyance and disgust at unfavorable conditions, but
really he was as courageous in the face of difficulties as either of his
companions. They had been left on the spur early that morning, and had
anticipated relief in the shape of a wrecking outfit before noon.

While the supper of bacon, beans, pancakes and coffee sputtered and
steamed on the electric stove and the heater sent out generous waves of
warmth, Clay arose and opened the cabin door, which faced to the west.
The wind immediately chased itself into the room, played tag with
everything movable, and went whistling cheerily out again.

At a shout of remonstrance from Alex, Clay drew the door shut and
stepped out on the deck of the _Rambler_. He stood for a second with the
wind from the Pacific keen on his face, the ruddy light of the setting
sun bright in his eyes, and then beckoned through the glass panel of the
door to the boys inside. Case was too busy over the pancakes to notice
the signal, but Alex increased Case’s anger by opening the door again
and forcing his body out against the wind.

The sun dropping lower, the pencils of light which touched the crags
were slipping away, leaving them indistinct in the gathering night, as
if the sunlight had brought them into existence with a touch and
condemned them to obliteration by withdrawing itself from their angular
sides. The boys stood for a second in silence, Clay listening.

“Huh!” Alex grinned, catching Clay by the arm and pointing to the wild
country to the west. “This makes me feel queer! Why, we might be the
sons of Noah, looking out of the Ark after it stranded on Mt. Ararat!
Here we are, in a boat up on the mountains, and there, below, is the
lifeless world! I wonder,” he continued, nudging Clay in the ribs to
give emphasis to his observation, “if we had a dove, and the dove should
be sent out, whether it would bring back an engine with a car fitted up
to drag this old hulk to the railroad hospital?”

“No dove would mind bringing a wrecking train back in his bill!” replied
Clay. “Of course not!”

“Well,” Alex insisted, “we’ve got to get help from some source. Two
trains have passed us to-day without a whisper of help. A steamer on the
ocean wouldn’t pass a wrecked boat like that!”

Clay bent his head and shielded his ears with cupped palms.

“There’s a train coming now,” he declared.

“That’s the wind!” Alex answered.

“Can’t you hear it pounding, pounding up the grade to the east?”
demanded Clay. “There!” he added, as a sharp whistle was borne faintly
to their ears against the rush of the wind, “didn’t you hear that?”

“Sure!” Alex replied. “And it isn’t a passenger, either. A loaded
freight, all right. Here’s where we get out!”

The roaring of the train wheels, the sharp hissing of the laboring
exhaust, the pounding of the straining drivers, came nearer and nearer,
then only the wind was heard.

“Phantom train!” Alex laughed. “Nothing doing!”

Case came out of the cabin and stood holding the edge of the door in his
hand, his eyes fixed on his chums.

“Do we get away now?” he asked. “I hear a train coming.”

“She is stalled on the grade, I guess,” Clay replied. “Anyway, she isn’t
coming any nearer.”

“Oh, well,” Case grumbled, “I suppose we can stay out here until the
railroad gets a new wrecking crew and a new machine made! Old Rip Van
Winkle’s little mountain stunt was a summer night on a sleeping porch
compared with this. If anybody should come along in the next hundred
years, just wake me up, will you?”

“Going to bed?” asked Clay, with a laugh.

“You bet he isn’t!” shouted Alex. “He hasn’t had his supper yet. Catch
him going to bed without pancakes and bacon!”

“And the pancakes are burning, too!” cried Case, entering the cabin and
slamming the door after him.

“Come on, Case,” urged Alex. “Let’s go down the grade and see what’s the
matter, and what sort of a train it is.”

“We’ll find out soon enough if we remain here,” Clay answered. “Besides,
we ought to be getting things propped up in the cabin, so there will be
a little furniture left when we get bumped out on the main track.”

“Oh, they’ll just pry the truck up with a jack, put in new wheels, and
we’ll sail away like a ship on a summer sea!” Alex grinned. “If you
won’t go. I’ll go alone.”

Before Clay could utter the remonstrance that was on his lips, the boy
was away down the grade to the east, his cap bobbing along the ties
ahead of his leaping feet, his hair flying in the gale.

Before he was well out of sight around an angle in the pass the rumble
of a heavy train was heard again, and directly the round, red eye of a
headlight met the ruddy illumination of the sun in the narrow pass. Clay
could see the smutty face of the engineer peering out of the cab window
as the engine toiled, panting, upward, and then he saw the fireman
looking over his shoulder.

Both were gazing, with no little wonder showing on their faces, at the
unusual sight of a motor boat perched on a platform car at the summit of
the Rocky Mountains. Clay stood hopeful for a moment, and then the train
roared toward the grade to the east, winding down like a snake in the
fading light.




CHAPTER II.—CAPTAIN JOE FOLLOWS A TRAIL.


Clay stood dejectedly for a moment, his hands in his pockets, his eyes
following the streamer of smoke which marked the progress of the
inhospitable train. Then the cabin door opened and a white bulldog with
friendly eyes and a monster of a jaw walked forth in a dignified manner
and sat down to look over the scenery.

“What do you think of that, Captain Joe?” Clay asked, patting the dog on
the head. “Isn’t that just about the worst luck in the world? I wish you
could grip that train by the cowcatcher and bring it back here. It ought
to have helped us out.”

Captain Joe, looking in the direction of the column of smoke, fast
disappearing, worked his lips into a snarl which showed a set of capable
teeth. He evidently agreed with Clay as to the moral character of the
person in charge of the train.

Case opened the cabin door and looked out, waving a pancake turner in
one hand. He smiled when he noted Clay’s discouraged attitude.

“Fine, eh?” he cried. “If I had in a book all the things the Canadian
Pacific people do not know about relieving a fellow in distress, I’d
have the biggest volume ever printed!”

“Perhaps the people who left us here neglected to notify division
headquarters,” suggested Clay, never willing to pass censure until all
the facts were at hand. “Anyway, we’re probably here for the night, so
we may as well make the best of it. Supper ready?”

“Hot on the table,” replied Case. “Where’s Alex?”

“He went down the grade, east, and will doubtless be back in a moment.
Flag him with a pancake, and he’ll come running!”

“Go bring him, Captain Joe,” ordered Case. “Go tell Alex that the last
call for supper is on in the dining car.”

Captain Joe wiggled his stumpy ears, agitated his excuse for a tail, and
turned a wrinkled nose to the north. In a moment he started away in that
direction.

“Here!” called Clay, “Alex didn’t go in that direction! Come here, you
foolish dog, that’s not the right way to go! Come on back here!”

Captain Joe looked back condescendingly, as if he realized that he was
doing business with a very young person who really did not know what he
was talking about, and, crouching down, uttered a low threat of a growl.

“There’s something in there,” Case decided, “some man or some wild
animal. Captain Joe doesn’t often make mistakes. I’ll get a searchlight
and take a look. He may have discovered something good to eat!”

“Be careful,” advised Clay. “It isn’t more than a hundred feet back to
the wall of rock, and whatever is in there, man or beast, is pretty
close to us. Wait until I get my gun.”

The searchlight revealed nothing save bare rock and stunted, starved
shrubs which grew protestingly in such shallow soil as had found its way
into the crevices of the rocks.

“You’re a rattle-headed dog, Captain Joe,” Clay admonished, as the boys
turned back toward the platform car and its cargo of motor boat.

But Captain Joe was not inclined to accept this reproof lightly. Instead
of going back with the boys, he bounded to a sloping shelf of rock and
uttered a succession of growls, menacing and deep-chested.

“There _is_ something up there!” Case commented. “It may be a bear.
There are bears in British Columbia, you know.”

“You are likely to know it, if you go up there,” Clay laughed. “I advise
you to keep away.”

“Do the bears of British Columbia talk?” asked Case, who was closer to
the dog and the shelf of rock than his companion.

“Yes; with their teeth,” answered Clay.

“Well, this bear, the one up on the rocks, is trying to coax the dog up
to him,” answered Case. “I heard him tell Captain Joe that he was making
a great mistake in looking upon him as an enemy, or words to that
effect. Captain Joe doesn’t believe him, at that!”

“You heard a voice up there?” interrogated Clay, hardly crediting the
statement. “I guess you are having a dream!”

Captain Joe passed out of sight in the dusk and his hoarse protests died
away. Clay called to him to come back, but the dog did not make his
appearance.

“I’m going after him,” Case declared. “He may get shot. There’s a man in
there, all right!”

Clay held his chum back with both hands and called again and again to
the dog. Directly Captain Joe returned, looking very much like a boy who
had been invited to a delightful excursion and then detained at home by
parental command. He crouched down at Clay’s feet, but kept his eyes on
the rocks above.

“I guess the dog knows,” Case argued. “You can’t fool Captain Joe. There
is some one hiding in the rocks.”

“Look here,” argued Clay, “we’ve been lying here since early this
morning, haven’t we? Well, that is only a narrow place, between the spur
and the almost perpendicular wall of rock, and we would have seen
anybody sneaking about, wouldn’t we? Why, I’ve been up there where the
dog went half a dozen times to-day, and there was no sign of a person
there, no sort of a place for one to hide in. You heard a wild animal
growling, that’s what you heard.”

“I guess I know what I heard!” Case contended. “Perhaps you’d better
tell me I’m stone deaf! I tell you I heard a human voice, speaking to
the dog!”

“If there was any one in hiding it was Alex playing some of his foolish
pranks,” insisted Clay.

“Oh, yes!” laughed Case. “The dog wouldn’t have gone to Alex if asked
to! Of course not! And Captain Joe would have made a bristle of his back
and growled at Alex like he did that fellow up there! Of course he
would! You can say what you like, but I’m going to see what it was
Captain Joe growled at. I need a little exercise, anyway!”

“It is a wonder Alex wouldn’t come back,” Clay remarked, as Case, armed
with a searchlight and an automatic, started away.

The boy turned back at mention of the absence of his chum.

“He may be in trouble,” he said. “He may have come across the man who is
hiding up yonder. I’ll look him up, all right.”

Night had fallen, a dull, windy night, with now and then a star showing
through driving masses of clouds. There would be a moon later, but now
the spaces below, the canyons and the lifting peaks, were as thoroughly
out of sight as if the sun had lugged them off with him across the wide
stretches of the Pacific ocean!

“You stay here and watch the boat,” Clay urged, in a moment, “and I’ll
take Captain Joe and go down the track. The dog will follow the trail
Alex left, and we’ll soon know where the boy is.”

Case grumbled not a little at this arrangement, for it was his nature to
be in the thick of any ruction within sound of his ears, but he finally
consented to remain with the motor boat and entered the cabin.

“I’ll make a light lunch of a couple of dozen pancakes,” he called from
the doorway, as Clay and Captain Joe passed out of sight in the
darkness.

Alone in the little room, the boy trimmed the fire, put on more coal,
removed a scorched pan of cakes from the electric stove, and then sat
down to listen and wait. He was by far too anxious and excited to
partake of the feast he had prepared for all three.

The wind lifted directly and howled more dismally around the boat,
tearing at the window sash and rattling the door as if with human hands.
Then Case turned off the electric light, switched out the cooking fire,
drew a chair covered with a coat in front of the coal stove, so that the
live coals and the flames might not show through the crevices about the
openings, and sat silent and, if the exact truth must be told, not a
little afraid.

The boy would have bravely faced almost any peril that came to him
openly and in the light of day, but this sitting alone, in the darkness,
with the wind storming like mad through the pass, more than five
thousand feet above tidewater, was a little too much. He wanted action.
He found himself unable to sit there alone and wait. Clay and Alex
seemed to be away a long time.

Finally he armed himself again and went out, softly closing the door
behind him in order that any lurking person might not know that he was
abroad. He shivered a moment in the cold wind and then crouched down
under one of the windows.

Once he thought he heard a call from the east, but the wind hissed in
his ears so insistently that he could not be sure that it was a human
voice he heard. He strained his eyes down the pass in the hope of seeing
Clay’s electric torch, but the darkness was not broken.

“They might at least give me a signal!” he mused.

But no signal came, and the lonely boy huddled closer to the side of the
motor boat and waited and listened. According to the schedule made out
in Chicago, he should now be on the deck of a floating boat, instead of
on the deck of a craft stuck up like a house on wheels on the planks of
a platform car.

Instead of sitting there in the wind at the very summit of the Rocky
mountains, he should have been viewing the never-failing panorama of the
Columbia river, somewhere below Donald, fifty or more miles to the west.
Besides being lonely, there was in the heart of the boy a feeling of
apprehension which he could not shake off.

There surely must be something wrong down the pass, he believed. Captain
Joe would follow the tracks left by Alex and Clay would follow the dog.
This should have brought the searcher to some disclosure long before. He
had decided to leave the boat and follow on down the trail when a sound
at the side of the car attracted his attention.

It seemed to the listener that some one was climbing up on the platform,
moving stealthily, still clumsily enough to be heard above the rush of
the wind. The boy sat perfectly still, ready with his electric
flashlight and his automatic revolver.

The intruder, whoever it was, came nearer, and Case knew that he had now
reached the floor of the car and was moving toward the motor boat. Even
if the lad’s position had enabled him to view the slow progress of the
intruder, which it did not, he could not have followed his movements
with his eyes because of the darkness.

There was nothing to do but wait until the skulker came under the prow
lamp of the boat. Then, by the turning of a switch from the corner of
the cabin structure, the boy could throw a glaring light over the whole
car as well as the deck of the motor boat. Thus revealed, and dazed by
the sudden illumination, the prowling man might easily be seen and
brought to terms.

Mixed with a sense of danger in the heart of the boy was a feeling of
anger at the impudence of the fellow, and with both emotions was merged
a curiosity to know what the chap’s motive could be, how he came to be
there, and what could be his object in hiding instead of approaching
openly. The footsteps moved forward over the planks of the car and a
trembling motion ran through the timbers of the boat as a weight tipped
it a trifle to one side in mounting to the deck.

Off to the east Case thought he caught a glimmer of light——not a white
strong light, such as would come from an electric torch, but a dull,
reddish glow, such as would be likely to come from the hot coals of a
campfire. As he looked, the glow grew, as if the coals, stirred by the
wind had burst into a brisker flame.

Then the boy heard the intruder approaching the door of the cabin, his
approach louder and more confident because of the darkness and silence
inside, and, reaching out, turned on the great electric light at the
prow.




CHAPTER III.—ALEX FINDS USE FOR HIS KODAK.


When the long freight train dashed by Alex without slowing down, he
stood for an instant frowning and shaking his clenched fist at the rear
brakeman, who swung his lantern in derision and passed into the caboose.

“Nice thing!” muttered the boy. “Now we’ve got to stop here all night!
Whee! Case will have a fit, all right! If this hard luck keeps up, he’ll
get so he can have two fits at a time! That will be fine!”

Alex was about to turn to the track again and walk back to the flat car
when the thought came to him that the conductor might have misunderstood
orders regarding the exact location of the sidetracked car and stopped
at the wrong place. Railroad men often did things like that, he
reasoned!

“He stopped, all right,” the boy muttered, “for there wasn’t a hint of
the rumbling of wheels in the air for full five minutes. Now, if he
didn’t stop to pick us up, what did he stop for? I’ll go and find out!”

It was a problem which, to the inquisitive mind of the lad, required an
immediate solution, so he faced east again and plodded along the track
in the gathering night. A short distance away he came to a spot where
tracks showed that the train had halted.

It was in a narrow canyon between two towering peaks, and, just off the
south rail, lay a great rock. Around it were the footprints, and also
the deep indentations of a crowbar, which had evidently been used by the
trainmen in prying the boulder off the steel highway.

“They came pretty near stopping here all night!” Alex mused, looking
over the ground. “That rock certainly would have stopped them _good_,
and, at that, some of the crew might have been taken away on a car
door!”

There was no doubt that a terrible wreck would have taken place had the
train struck the obstruction while running at full speed. But, because
of the steep grade and the heavy train, the momentum had not been great,
and the watchful engineer had seen the rock in time to prevent trouble.

“I wonder how that rock got on the track, in the first place?” the boy
muttered. “Doesn’t seem as if it could have fallen from that summit. If
it had, it would have been broken into bits.”

“I just believe some one put it there,” was the conclusion, as he
examined the ground. “I reckon some rough neck wanted to tip the train
off the track!”

This conclusion, hastily formed though it was, led to other insistent
questions. If the boulder had indeed been placed on the track by human
hands, where were the ruffians who had done it? Had they hidden in some
of the cars, or “on the rods,” and gone on with the train? Were they
still in that vicinity?

“I think I’d better be getting back to the boat,” the boy muttered, a
vision of bandits and train robbers peering out at him from the rocks
presenting itself. “If there are any Jessie James persons about here, we
boys would better keep together.”

Alex gave a parting poke at the great rock and turned around to look
over the country to north and south. There was little to see. On each
side of the tracks loomed a wall of rock. But, a short distance to the
east, the right-of-way curved off to the south, following a ledge of
rock which led downward. Straight ahead there was a dip, the earth
falling away from the tracks and exposing a vista of wild canyons and
rugged and forbidding crags.

As the lad turned he saw a red gleam in the canyon straight ahead. It
was not the glow of the sunset. It was too late for that. Besides, the
canyon was considerably lower than the floor of the pass, so the latest
rays of the sun would not have reached it at all. The landscape darkened
as he looked, and directly he saw leaping flames and figures passing to
and fro in front of the blaze.

“That accounts for the obstruction on the track, all right!” Alex
decided. “I guess we’ve gotten into a nest of thieves!”

“Well, you needn’t tell them what you’re thinking about!”

Alex turned quickly about, not at first recognizing the voice, then a
white body launched against his breast, nearly bringing him to the
earth.

“Down, Captain Joe!” he exclaimed. “Do you want to tip a fellow off his
feet?”

Then he looked up at Clay with a grin.

“I thought you were a train robber!” he said. “Wonder you wouldn’t scare
a fellow to death!”

“Why don’t you come up to supper?” asked Clay.

“Huh!” replied the lad. “Never you mind supper! Just come along with me
and see what I have found!”

“Gold?” asked Clay.

“Train robbers.”

“You’ll be finding red lions next!” laughed Clay. “Come on back to the
boat. I left Case alone, of course, to come after you, and there’s some
one prowling around.”

Alex emitted a low whistle.

“That’s one of my train robbers, then,” he said. “I’ve got a trained
band of ’em over in the next canyon.”

The boy pointed to the smouldering glow straight to the east.

“Hunters, probably,” Clay suggested.

“Hunters, of course,” Alex replied, “but they’re hunting something
besides wild animals.”

“If I had your imagination, I’d be writing fiction for the magazines,”
Clay answered. “Why do you call them train robbers?”

“Because they tried to throw that freight from the track—the freight
that just passed. The trainmen had to roll a rock off the track. That’s
what the stop was for.”

It was now Clay’s turn to express amazement by a low whistle.

“But why should they want to throw a freight off the track?” he asked in
a moment. “There’s nothing nourishing in the looting of a freight.
Suppose we go over and see who they are?”

“Well,” Alex replied, “I’ll go if you think best, but I’ll tell you this
first. That freight was running on the time of a passenger. See? Oh,
they’re train robbers, all right, and if there is any one prowling
around the boat it is one of the bunch. You may be sure of that!”

Captain Joe now moved away from the boys and approached the lip of the
canyon, where he paused and expressed disapproval of the men outlined
against the fire by a series of savage growls.

“Come away, Captain Joe!” ordered Clay.

The dog growled again, but drew away from the canyon.

“We can’t take him along with us,” Alex declared. “He would give us dead
away. We’ve got to slip up to the fire and find out what is doing
without making our presence known.”

“That seems to be the proper way,” admitted Clay.

“Go back home. Captain Joe!” ordered Alex in a whisper.

The dog understood and replied by a wag of a sawed-off tail that he
would go if the boys thought it best that he should, but that he wished
it understood that he did so under protest.

“Go back to Case!” ordered Clay.

Captain Joe gave one reluctant growl with his face to the canyon and
started away.

“He feels just like I used to feel when the big boys sent me out of a
ball game at Lincoln park,” Clay laughed. “He thinks there is something
going on here that he ought to be in with.”

When the dog disappeared from view the boys turned to the canyon.

“There’s a ridge we can follow,” Clay said, pointing, “and it will bring
us out some distance to the right of the fire, with a lift of rock
between us and our mysterious friends. Be careful, though, for it is
getting darker every minute.”

“If it wasn’t dark,” Alex grunted, “we wouldn’t be going into the canyon
at all.”

The boys made their way as silently as possible down the “hogsback,”
but, with all their caution, a dislodged stone now and then thundered
from under their feet to the bottom of the canyon. However, the wind was
still blowing a gale, and they hoped that this would drown the noise of
their advance.

It took them a long time to get down to the level of the campfire, which
now supplied all the light they had to guide them. There were a few
stars visible, but a low-lying mass of clouds was scudding overhead, and
these shut out what little light came from above except at rare
intervals.

“This doesn’t look much like a day on the Columbia!” Alex declared,
blowing warm breath on his half-frozen fingers. “Huh! It is cold enough
here to freeze the ears off a brass cat!”

“If the _Rambler_ could talk,” Clay said, falling into the mood of his
chum, “she’d be saying things about being taken on a cruise to the top
of the Rocky Mountains. Look out, now! The ledge turns here, and
straight ahead is a drop of a thousand feet, I guess, from the time it
takes to bring the sound of a rolling stone back to us.”

The adventurous lads turned with the ledge, crawling now on hands and
feet and keeping close to a ridge which formed the summit of the long
crag. Presently they came to a rock which blocked their way.

The campfire was just beyond the rock, so they did not attempt to pass
around the obstruction. They nestled down in the shelter of the boulder
for a time and listened, but the wind was so strong that it carried any
words which might have been spoken at the fire off to the east.

In moving about Clay bumped his face against a hard substance under
Alex’s coat.

“Say,” he asked, rubbing his nose, “what kind of an infernal machine
have you got under there? Are you trying to carry away a piece of the
mountain? Or just blow it up? You nearly broke my face.”

Alex clapped his hand to his side and Clay could feel him chuckling, his
body shaking with suppressed mirth.

“I’ve got the big idea!” Alex said, then. “That’s my dandy kodak you
bunted into! Had it with me, taking pictures, to-day, and forgot to
leave it in our luxurious private car. Lucky, eh?”

“I don’t see any luck in it for me,” grumbled Clay, still nursing his
nose. “Why don’t you keep out of the way when you go about armed like
that?”

Alex chuckled again and moved around the angle of the rock, toward the
fire. Clay seized him by the foot and held him back, squirming.

“You’ll find out if they are train robbers if you go fooling around
there,” he said. “What fool thing are you trying to do?”

“Leave go of my foot!” exclaimed Alex kicking like a mule. “I’m going to
get a snapshot for my private collection.”

“You may get a shot that won’t be much of a snap,” Clay replied, in
better humor. “Can you get by the angle of the rock far enough to do the
trick? I’d like a copy of that photograph myself.”

“Of course I can,” was the reply. “I can see four men at the fire now,
and they are all set for a good picture. Wait a minute!” he added. “One
of them is going to throw a lot of brush on the blaze. I’ll show you a
peach of a flashlight effect before long.”

The boy edged farther along, and Clay heard him snickering as he brought
out the kodak and waited for the right moment to come. Clay became
impatient, presently, and advanced toward him.

“Get back!” Alex whispered, almost in his ear, as he pushed against him.
“I had eight films in and I’ve used ’em all. And there’s a giant of a
man coming out this way. Get back! Take a tumble in some hole in the
ground! I guess he saw me!”




CHAPTER IV.—A NEW FACE ON THE RAMBLER.


When the prow lamp of the _Rambler_, in response to the turning of the
switch by the excited boy, flared out, Case saw a slender figure
standing close to the cabin door, which was closed. The lad’s first
impulse was to fire at the intruder, but the figure looked so shrinking,
so lacking in aggressiveness, the face showing under a man’s slouch hat
was so white, so appealing, that he lowered his weapon and called out:

“What are you doing here?”

There was no verbal answer, but the boy, for such the intruder appeared
to be, began slowly backing away, toward the railing of the boat.

“Stand where you are!” ordered Case, presenting his weapon again. “I
want to know something about this. Look up here!”

The other’s eyes, shrinking and afraid, looked for a moment into those
above the threatening revolver and then dropped.

“Where did you come from?” was the next question. “What are you doing on
board the _Rambler_? Why do you come sneaking up?”

Case thought he saw a quick start at the mention of the name of the
boat, but still there was no reply.

“Oh, come on!” Case advised, in a kinder tone, “you’d better talk. I
shall not hurt you. Did you get off that freight?”

Case had lowered his arm while speaking, and the intruder took advantage
of the fact. He leaped backward, over the railing, to the floor of the
car and jumped to the ground. It was all done so quickly that Case had
no time to prevent the escape, and that would doubtless have been the
last of the boy, so far as he was concerned, if a strange and unexpected
element had not intruded into the case.

When Case stepped forward to the railing of the deck and looked down, he
heard a cry of fright and saw a white figure and a brown one tumbling
about on the ground.

“Let go—let go!” came a voice from out the entanglement.

This was followed by a snarling growl in which Case recognized the
deep-chested voice of Captain Joe.

“Here!” the boy called out to the dog. “Let up, Captain Joe! Watch him,
old fellow, but don’t eat him up!”

The dog separated himself from the tangle and sat up, his wrinkled nose,
his twitching ears and jerking tail, apparently following every movement
of his late antagonist.

“Did he bite you?” asked Case, hastening down to where the boy lay, not
daring to make a move.

“I—I don’t know,” was the pitiful reply. “I think he tore my clothes,
though.”

“Lucky he didn’t tear your throat,” Case commented. “Get up and come
into the cabin. I want to know who you are, and why you are here. Keep
away, Captain Joe!”

The dog did not seem pleased with the idea of transferring his prisoner
to the custody of another, but he mounted slowly to the deck of the
motor boat and sat gloomily watching the two until the cabin door closed
against him.

“Well, that’s a nice way to thank a fellow!” his eyes seemed to say, as
he turned an ear to the east in response to the beating of wheels on the
upward grade.

There was another train coming, and Case opened the cabin door and
looked out Captain Joe greeted him with a dignity which was at once a
promise of forgiveness and a reminder of previous discourteous
treatment.

Case listened an instant and turned his face back into the cabin.

“I’m going out now,” he said to the captive inside, “but I’m leaving the
dog on guard. He’ll eat you up if you try to get away.”

With this cheerful remark he turned from the cabin and listened to the
steady roar of the approaching train.

“If you are hungry,” he called back, already moving away and leaving the
door open so that the watchful dog might be seen from the interior,
“there are cold pancakes and bacon on the table, and coffee on the
stove. We got supper a long time ago, but this has been our busy night,
so we haven’t eaten yet.”

There was an instantaneous rattling of dishes and Case smiled as he
peered through the open door. The prisoner was eating as if he had not
seen food before in a long time.

“Go to it!” laughed Case. “You’re welcome. And, say, if you know
anything about electric stoves, you might warm up that coffee. Or
perhaps you can do it quicker on top of the coal stove, if the fire
hasn’t gone out.”

The headlight of the on-coming train was now in the pass, lighting the
rails until they glistened again, bringing the platform car and the boat
set rakishly upon it out in bold relief. And just in front of the
engine, running at full speed along the ends of the ties, was Clay. Alex
could be seen clinging to one of the cab steps with the fireman
threatening him with a shovel of coal.

Much to Case’s delight, the engine drew up in front of the sidetracked
car, and the conductor came running down from the caboose, swinging a
lantern in his hand. He threw a volley of ugly words at Alex and stepped
up to where Case stood, leaning over the railing of the _Rambler_.

“Does that kid belong with you?” he demanded, flinging his lantern out
in the direction of Alex. “He might have been killed, making a catch
like that. Where is the boss of this outfit?”

“We are all bosses,” replied Case, not at all pleased with the abrupt
manners of the conductor.

“Humph! A mess of boys! Well, get a move on, here, and let us hitch you
on. We’ve lost time enough now.”

“You needn’t lose any more on our account,” Case replied, provokingly.
“Get busy just as soon as you like. In other words, ‘Fire, Gridley, as
soon as you are ready,’” he added, with a grin, repeating the words of
Dewey at Manila bay.

“I’d like to have the firing of you!” exclaimed the exasperated
conductor. “Here, boys,” he added, addressing a group of men who came up
from the caboose, “get the jacks under the car and put in two new
wheels. We’ve got to haul her down to Donald.”

There was then a great flashing of lanterns, a clashing of tongues, and
a groaning of steel screws as the jacks lifted the rear end of the car
high in the air. Clay and Alex dived into the cabin to straighten out
possible entanglements there and were amazed at coming upon a slender
stranger busy at the pancake griddle. They both stopped in the middle of
the room, which was not a very large one, and looked the questions they
were too breathless to ask.

“I was told to warm up the coffee,” the boy said, “and I thought I’d
cook some more cakes. I’ve eaten all you cooked for supper, and all the
bacon, too. I was hungry.”

“I should say so,” Alex responded. “There was enough cakes for six
harvest hands.”

“I’m sorry,” the slender boy said, apologetically, “and I’ll make it
right.”

“Forget it!” cried Alex. “It is right now.”

Outside the trainmen were letting the axle, clothed with new wheels,
down on the track, which they did with a spiteful bump. For an instant
all three boys lost their footing and came together with a dash which
nearly threw them to the floor. The incident brought them closer
together, socially as well as physically, and they were making friends
fast when the car was hauled out on the main line.

“You’re a new one on me,” Alex was saying when the conductor gave the
signal and the train went rattling off toward the Pacific ocean.

When the car was well under way Clay and the others began asking
questions of each other and of the stranger, who seemed nervous and
anxious to get away—eager to leave the boat, yet longing to remain!

“Where did you come from?” asked Clay, after the boys were gathered
about the table for the delayed supper. “Queer thing, your lighting down
on us here, at the summit of the Rocky mountains. Do you belong to the
gang over there by the campfire?”

The lad gave a quick start of surprise and shook his head.

“When did you get here?” asked Alex. “Was it you prowling around the car
just after sunset?”

The boy nodded, but did not answer the first question by saying when he
had reached that locality.

“How did you get here?” put in Case. “I don’t think you’ve walked to the
great divide.”

“Why, I came on that train,” was the reply.

The stranger did not say which train, but the boys took it for granted
that he referred to the freight train which had been held up by the
boulder blocking the way.

“Why didn’t you go to the campfire instead of coming to the boat?” asked
Clay, suspiciously. “It was nearer to the fire, and you must have seen
it, for the train stopped near the ridge that leads to it.”

“I was over there,” replied the boy, hesitatingly, “but I didn’t like
the appearance of things, so I came on and happened on your car.”

“What is your notion of those men at the fire?” asked Clay.

“I think they may be outlaws.”

“Just what I think!” Alex shouted. “Clay thinks they are hunters, but
he’s weak-minded sometimes! What makes you think they are outlaws?” he
continued, determined to have his own impression of the men sustained by
an eye-witness.

“Because I heard some talk about fleeing from justice.”

“There!” cried Alex nudging Clay. “Now will you be good? I’m glad we got
out of that locality just as we did, for I believe some one saw me
taking a snapshot and followed us.”

“I think you are dreaming,” Clay laughed, but the stranger gave a
startled glance about and crouched closer in the corner where he sat.

The boys noted his shrinking attitude and looked at each other
significantly. Just why he should show terror at the mention of the men
in camp was a matter which they would, they thought, inquire into later.

“When you get done talking to each other,” Case put in, sourly, “you
might tell me something about the campfire and the men you took a
snapshot at and got chased for your pains.”

Then Clay told the story and Alex added amusing frills by telling how
Clay had tried to pull him back by the legs so he couldn’t take the
snapshots he wanted.

“But I got the pictures,” the boy laughed, “just the same—eight of them.
One of the fellows was continually throwing mountain grass or some other
light stuff on the fire, and it was as good as a flashlight.”

“Will you let me see the pictures?” asked the stranger, showing great
interest in the recital.

“You’ll have to wait until I get them in shape,” Alex laughed. “I don’t
propose to take chances by having them out now. Would you know the men
at the fire if you saw them again?”

“I’m not sure,” was the reply.

“What were you doing on the freight train?” asked Case, abruptly.

“Just stealing a ride,” was the slow, bashful reply.

“You got off here when it stopped?” asked Clay.

“It was still in motion when I got off.”

“Where did you come from—where is your home?”

This from Clay, who had been studying the boy’s face curiously for some
moments. “What city did you live in last?”

“Chicago,” was the hesitating reply.

“What’s your name?” asked Case, as Clay turned his face away with a
quiet smile. “Why don’t you open up and tell us all about yourself?”

“There is nothing to tell,” was the grave reply. “I’m just a boy tramp,
I guess. But I’d like to have you answer a question,” he added, with a
flush on his pale face. “I’d like to know if it was one of the men from
the campfire who followed you, or—or some one else.”

“Was there some one else in there?” asked Clay. “You said you went there
before you visited the _Rambler_. Do you think there were men there whom
we did not see at the fire?”

“I thought there were men near the campfire who did not belong there,”
was the reply. “They looked so fierce that I was afraid and ran away. I
thought, perhaps, that you might have been followed by one of the men I
saw hanging about there—not by one of the campers.”

“Another mystery!” laughed Alex. “On the trip to the Amazon we picked up
a mysterious boy, and here, presto! we have another. But this boy seems
to know what he’s talking about, and the other one didn’t. At least, he
wouldn’t let us know that he did for a long time. Whew! I’d have climbed
up a star beam if I’d ’a’ known there were two gangs in the rocks. One
was enough for me!”

The conductor now came climbing back over the train to the platform car,
swinging his lantern spitefully. Clay opened the cabin door and stood
waiting for him to come up, waiting with a sense of impending trouble.

The conductor leaped lightly to the deck of the boat from the platform
of the car and stood holding his lantern up on a level with his eyes in
order that he might see better. Clay switched on the prow light and
stood watching him alertly.

Presently the conductor, now reinforced by a husky brakeman, stepped
squarely in front of Clay and flashed a pair of angry eyes at him.

“Stand out of the way!” he commanded. “I want to look inside!”

Clay stood stupidly staring for a moment and then stepped out of the
doorway.




CHAPTER V.—WHAT TOOK PLACE ON THE TRAIN.


There was no need for the conductor to hold his lantern aloft now, so he
set it down on the deck and glared into the cabin. The husky brakeman
crowded close to him, peering into the interior over his broad shoulder,
a cynical smile on his grimy face.

The conductor seemed disappointed at the result of his inspection of the
cabin. He gave a grunt and a shrug of the shoulders and turned to Clay,
who stood watching him with apprehension in his eyes.

“Where are the others?” he demanded, in an accusing tone of voice.

“We are all here,” replied Clay, doing his best to keep control of his
temper, for the manner of the railroad official was insulting.

“Only four?” the surly conductor asked, still looking suspiciously
around. “These four belong on the boat, do they?”

The strange boy seemed to shiver with cold or fear. But the door of the
cabin was open, and the wind sweeping over the moving train was cold and
piercing. In a moment the boy turned his face away.

“All belong here—now,” replied Clay, motioning for Case, who had an
angry answer on his lips, to remain silent. “We all belong.”

“Where are the men who got on at the pass?” was the next question.

“This boy got on there,” answered Clay. “He needed rest and food, and we
took him in. If any one else got on the train at the pass they are not
in the boat—have no right here.”

“Humph!” growled the conductor. “This brakeman says he saw two
rough-looking men swing on the train as it got under way and move back
toward the platform car. Your bill calls for only three passengers to go
with the boat, and I’m not going to have a gang of toughs loaded onto
me. There’s been too many holdups in this section now.”

“We are going to Donald,” Clay replied, still keeping control of his
rather unruly temper, “and we’ll pay the boy’s fare to that point, if
you think we ought to. We are not trying to sneak an extra passenger in
on you. The coming of the boy was accidental, as you have been told.”

“I didn’t come here to collect fares,” shouted the conductor. “I came
back here to spot a couple of bruisers who headed for this car. If I
find them they’ll hit the grit mighty sudden. Understand that?”

“Go as far as you like,” Clay smiled. “We have no interest in any men
who might have taken your train at the pass. Shall I pay for the boy’s
ride to Donald?” he added, putting his hand into a pocket.

“I’ll take the money for his fare, but I’ll throw the others off, just
the same,” exclaimed the conductor. “I believe you know where the others
are, and my advice to you is to point them out to me.”

“Why are you so particular about finding them in this car?” asked Clay,
smoothly, for he knew that the railroad official could make them no end
of trouble if he saw fit to do so. “Have you looked through the entire
train? Are there no other hiding-places to look over?”

“There was an obstruction placed on the track at the pass,” the
conductor said, then, in a more conciliatory tone, “and the men who got
on my train and started back toward this car are the ones who did it. It
is ten to one that they are up to further mischief.”

“But you were going to throw them off,” suggested Clay.

“That was a bluff,” admitted the other. “I thought you might offer to
pay their fare, as you did the boy’s. They will go down in irons if I
find them.”

“I see,” Clay rejoined. “Well, I think you are next to your job, and I’m
sorry I can’t help you. I don’t know why the men you speak of should
seek refuge in this car, but what you say about their starting back here
is probably true. If I see anything of them I’ll let you know. By the
way,” he added, “we have some fine coffee, piping hot. Wouldn’t you
gentlemen like a cup?”

Case made a sly face at the word “gentlemen,” and Captain Joe arose from
his rug under one of the shelf-benches and snarled at the heavy shoes of
the trainmen. Alex covered his mouth with one hand to check an outburst
of laughter. The conductor stared at the boy and kicked at the dog, as
if sensing ridicule, but addressed his conversation to Clay.

“Why, yes,” he said, taking in the fragrant odor of the coffee, “a cup
of something hot wouldn’t come amiss. We are having coffee in the
caboose right soon, but it is a cold night up here.”

“You’ll be welcome,” Clay answered, “and there are pancakes, too, if you
like them. The boys can make some in a minute.”

The trainmen drank two cups of coffee each and greedily devoured a dozen
pancakes, which Alex hastened to make. Alex was wishing that the coffee
would scorch their throats!

The meal over, the conductor’s face took on a friendlier look.

“At Calgary,” he said, “we were ordered to load on jacks and extra
wheels and pick you up here. News of the breakdown came there by wire
just before we started out. At Laggan there was a message waiting for us
saying that an attempt had been made to wreck a freight here. The crew
had telegraphed from Field, just west of here.

“Well, I naturally got the idea into my head that the breakdown here—or
back at the pass, rather—was just a plant, so I was suspicious when I
came up. I was told in the message received at Laggan to keep my eyes
open for the wreckers, and that is why I was so short with you.”

“You acted just as I should under the circumstances,” Clay hastened to
say, seeing that the conductor was inclined to be friendly and wishing
to remain in his good graces. “Now, what shall I pay you for the extra
fare to Donald? We don’t want to beat the road out of a cent.”

“The coffee pays for that,” smiled the conductor.

“Let us know if you find the men who jumped the train at the pass,” Clay
then said. “This boy thinks there are two groups of men back there, at
the pass, you know, and is inclined, from appearances, to be afraid of
one of them.”

The stranger turned frightened eyes toward Clay for only an instant and
then faced away again. The conductor saw the look and asked:

“What is this lad’s name, and where does he come from?”

“Comes from Chicago,” answered Clay. “We haven’t learned his name as
yet. We have been together only a short time, you know.”

“What is it, boy?” asked the trainman, not at all unkindly. “We are
sometimes asked to look out for kids who have run away from home to see
the world,” he added, turning to Clay, “and so I’ll just make a note of
this one’s name and address. Likely looking lad, eh?” he added.

“My name is Granville,” the boy answered, “Chester W. Granville, and I
lived in Chicago, in Peck court.”

“Humph,” the conductor remarked. “Not a very aristocratic place.”

“No, sir,” responded the boy, turning away again. “Ever frequent the
South Branch?” asked Clay, with a quiet smile.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply. “I often went over there, for I like to see
ships and tugs and launches moving about in the water.”

“And motor boats?” asked Clay, with another quiet smile.

“Of course,” was the reply. “Motor boats best of all.”

The conductor wrote down the name and address in a notebook and got to
his feet. Alex punched Case in the ribs and whispered in his ear:

“Funny name and address, I don’t think!”

“Perhaps,” Case whispered back, “but I’ll bet the lad is all right.
Anyway, I’ve heard that a lie is only a misstatement of fact to a person
entitled to know the truth, and his name and address is no business of
the conductor’s. I think the con. is just butting in on us to see what
he can find out. I don’t believe there are any such men as he describes
on board—if there are, they never got on at the pass.”

“Well, we’ve got another mystery with us!” grinned Alex as the trainmen
left, swinging lanterns to light the way. “A strange maverick of a boy
and two fierce-looking men! We’re getting all there is in this drama,
all right—red fire and all! If the Columbia river trip makes good with
the overland journey, we’re in for excitement—and then some. Say, Clay,”
he continued, “why did you ask Mr. Chester W. Granville if he ever
visited the South Branch in Chicago?” with a wink at the boy.

“Why,” Clay answered, “it seemed to me that I had seen him somewhere
before, when I entered the cabin and found him making pancakes. I had an
idea, when he said that he lived in Chicago, that I might have seen him
there, but the impression is an indistinct one. It seems to be connected
with some other matter which I cannot now bring to mind.”

“He ought to remember if he ever saw you before,” suggested Alex.

The boy said nothing, and Case and Clay prepared their bunks for a short
sleep. They would reach Donald before daylight, and so would have only a
short period of rest. The train was running fast over a roadbed none too
smooth, but that did not for a second keep them awake.

Alex and Gran, as the new member of the party was known from that night,
sat in the cabin and compared notes regarding life in Chicago for a
short time, and then Gran fell asleep on his bench and Alex went to the
prow of the _Rambler_, now bobbing about under the motion of the train
as if it had come back to its own in some wild river, and looked out on
the swaying coaches ahead. The moon had arisen, and there was plenty of
light at intervals, although the sky was still flecked with clouds.

Field was soon passed, and then the milder grade down to the valley of
the Columbia river began. The scene was such as the boy had long hoped
some day to see. The snow-capped peaks, the silver of the moonlight on
the lower crags, the heavy shadows of the canyons, the long lines of
steel binding together the Atlantic and the Pacific! He had heard many
tales of daring robberies and bloody feud encounters in that vicinity,
and looked upon every crag and canyon as the possible scene of an outlaw
gathering.

Presently he saw a figure running toward him along the tops of the box
cars. Now it stooped low, as if fearful of being seen, now it lifted to
full height and leaped from roof to roof. When it came nearer the boy
saw that it was not the conductor or the brakeman who had visited the
cabin some time before.

This was a larger man than either of the trainmen he had seen. The
shoulders were broad, denoting great physical strength, and the height
was not less than six foot three. Another peculiarity the boy noticed.
The arms were unusually long, even for so tall a man. As they swayed
away from the body with the motion of the train he saw that the fingers
dropped almost to the knees.

The face the boy could not see distinctly. It was covered with a great
beard and shaded by the brim of a cowboy hat. Directly another figure,
carrying a lantern, appeared on the top of the train. Alex heard a
shout, and then a pistol shot. The tall man in advance halted, limped
over to the side of the car, swung down a ladder and disappeared from
sight.

The second figure came running up to the car attached to the one on
which the _Rambler_ lay and shouted across to the boy:

“Where did he go?”

There was much noise and the wind was blowing against his voice, so Alex
could not make the other understand that the fugitive had gone down the
side ladder except by pointing. The whole scene had seemed so unreal to
the boy that he half expected to see the tall man bob up in the
moonlight from some dark canyon and continue his frantic flight over the
swaying coaches.

“Guess I got him!” shouted the other, lowering his lantern. “Here’s
blood on the roof. There were two of them, and both got away.”

Alex remembered the conductor’s story of the men who had swung on at the
pass, and was not altogether displeased at the thought that they had
been chased off the train. In the tall figure which had swayed toward
him for a time and then almost dropped, bleeding, from the car top, he
thought he had recognized the figure which had pursued him around the
angle of rock where the pictures had been taken. Feeling safer, he went
to sleep, and when he awoke the car was being detached from the train at
Donald.




CHAPTER VI.—MOURNING AN EMPTY KODAK.


The “private palace car,” as the boys called the platform car which had
carried the _Rambler_ out of Port Arthur, was being shunted from the
train to a siding near the river bank, and some one was pulling like mad
at Alex’s arm. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and struck out at the hand
which was annoying him. A chuckle came from the side of his bunk, and he
saw Case standing there with a most exasperating grin on his face.

“Get up!” the latter cried. “We’ll be afloat on the Columbia in less
than no time. Say, kiddo, but you’ve been sleeping some! Get up!”

“Where is the Columbia?” asked Alex hardly awake yet.

“Why,” laughed Case, “I forgot to take it in last night and so it froze
stiff on the roof. The boys are thawing it out with a flat iron. Where
did you think it was, silly?”

“You’re all right,” Alex grunted, dressing as fast as his hands could
move, “but you have foolish spells. Which way is the Columbia from here?
I’m in a hurry to get a look at it. My, but there’s a heap of fun coming
to us now. Good old river, eh, Case?”

“You know it,” replied the other. “Now, wait a minute,” he added, as
Alex made a move toward the door. “I came in here to talk with you.”

“You near broke my arm,” complained Alex. “What is it about? Can’t you
wait until I get a peek at the river? What’s the hurry, anyway?”

Case drew the boy down on the edge of the bunk and held him there a
minute until he quit struggling. Outside the boys were standing at the
prow of the _Rambler_, watching the car carrying them closer to the
dock, if such a primitive contrivance might be called a dock, where the
motor boat was to be launched. Glancing out through the glass panel of
the door, Alex saw that Gran, the stranger who had come to them so
strangely the night before, was standing in a dejected attitude before
Clay, who appeared to be talking earnestly.

“What’s Clay scolding Gran about?” he asked, then. “Looks like he was
giving him a good one. Let me go out and see about it.”

“That’s what I want to talk with you about,” replied Case. “We want your
advice, don’t you see. It is about the strange boy.”

“You’ve come to the right shop for sound advice!” laughed Alex. “What is
it about the boy that you want to know? I guess you have seen as much of
him as I have. I rather like the fellow, but he seems to have something
on his mind—something worrying him.”

“There is,” Case went on. “He insists on leaving us here, and won’t give
any reason for doing so. He says he has a good reason, and that is all
he will say about it.”

“But how is he ever going to get out of this desolate land?” asked the
other. “He can’t very well ride on the rods clear to the ocean, and
he’ll just about wear his feet out up to his knees if he tries to walk
out of the wilderness. I don’t suppose he’s got a cent of money. Say,
but do you believe the story he tells about coming to the pass on the
train that came near bunting into the boulder?”

“If he did,” Case replied, “he found some reason, pretty quickly, to get
on a scare about the men in the camp, or the men back of the camp.”

“He did seem to be scared of his life whenever the fellows were
mentioned,” admitted Alex. “Do you mind what he asked me? Wanted to know
if it was one of the men from the campfire who chased me when I took the
snapshots, or whether it was someone else?”

“I remember that,” Case answered. “Queer, eh?”

“Now, how did he know about there being someone else around there?”
continued Alex. “He must have made a pretty thorough inspection of the
place, for we saw no one except the men by the fire. But, say—”

The lad ceased speaking and sat looking at Case in a puzzled way, as if
trying to solve a knotty problem which had just come into his head. Case
noted the change of attitude and waited for him to go on.

“S-a-a-y,” the boy continued, in a minute, “I saw every man at the fire
quite distinctly, and there wasn’t one there as tall as the man who came
after me when I had the camera, or the man who went off the car last
night with a bullet in his back, or his side, or somewhere.”

Case looked at his chum with questions in his eyes. Then he laughed.

“You’ve been dreaming again!” he said. “Don’t sleep on your back, kid,
and you won’t have such terrible experiences.”

“Have I?” demanded Alex indignantly. “You just ask the brakeman what he
shot at last night, and then go and look at the top of the car. Perhaps
you can squeeze blood out of dreams, but I don’t believe it.”

“Well, why didn’t you tell us about it last night?” demanded Case.

“Because I was sleepy. I’m telling you about it now.”

It took only a few words to inform Case as to the events of the night
before. The boy looked perplexed as he asked:

“Are you sure that was the man who chased you when you were out with
your kodak? Say,” he went on, without waiting for an answer, “the con.
was right about two men swinging on at the pass, wasn’t he?”

“Sure he was. Yes, and I’m pretty certain that one was the man who
chased me around the rock. I don’t know why he should have done it. I
didn’t see him until he broke out of the darkness behind the ledge.
Queer thing!”

“Did he see you taking a picture, with the snoot of the kodak pointing
in his direction?” asked Case, with a smile that provoked Alex.

“Come, now, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” the boy exclaimed, “I suppose you can
tell me exactly why he chased me, and what his thoughts were as he shot
his long legs through the gloom! How do I know what he saw? I wasn’t
taking any picture of him.”

“How do you know that?” asked the other. “How do you know that he wasn’t
in view of the kodak? Sometimes you get a picture that you don’t know
anything about. Where are the pictures you took last night?”

“Haven’t taken ’em out yet,” Alex replied. “I’ll have to wait until I
can get a chance to develop them. There’s no hurry, is there?”

“I would just like to see what the pictures include, that’s all,”
answered Case. “There must be some reason for these men chasing us up as
they appear to be doing. Don’t you think so?”

Alex opened his eyes in wonder, evidently regarding Case as the
originator of a puzzle to which he only could supply a solution.

“Why,” he asked, presently, “you don’t think the two men got on the
train just because we were on it, do you? To my mind, they got on
because they didn’t like the looks of the ties as a means of
transportation. I guess you’ll find that that’s all there is to it.”

“Well,” Case replied, “I don’t know as I’m right, but it appears to me
that there others in the pass besides the campers, and that they had
some reason for getting hold of you. I’ll just bet you took one of their
pictures, perhaps as he was peering out from some shelter, when you
snapped the others. And I’ll wager you the washing of a mess of dishes
that they think you did, whether you did or not.”

Alex laughed silently for a moment and then asked:

“Where did you get it? You’re building a mystery about a tramp chasing a
boy who came too near his lair! Come, let’s go out on the bank and take
a look at the Columbia, our future home for many a bright day! We’ve
been guessing over nothing long enough.”

“Will you let me see the films?” asked Case, still in dead earnest.

“Sure! Just fish my kodak out of that mess on the floor and I’ll get ’em
out. You can see them well enough to learn if there really is any face
peering out from some nook behind the fire.”

Case found the kodak presently and brought it to Alex who took it into
his hand and opened it. Case saw him looking into the opening where the
films ought to be, and then heard a low laugh. He turned quickly to see
Alex tossing the kodak to the bunk.

“Where are the films?” he asked, as Alex sat down and chuckled.

“Oh, what’s the use?” the other asked. “What did you go and take ’em out
for? The chances are that you have ruined the whole lot.”

It was now Case’s turn to express incredulity.

“I don’t know what you mean?” he said, picking up the kodak.

“Oh, I reckon you know, all right,” grinned Alex.

“But what—”

“Give ’em up!” cried Alex. “You’ve gone and taken the films out of the
kodak! Then you come in here and ask me to let you see ’em! Give ’em up,
I say, or I’ll be doing something rash!”

The boy was laughing, but still he seemed in earnest. Case sat down on
the edge of the bunk and looked through the kodak.

“Where are they?” asked Alex nudging the other in the ribs. “The joke is
getting stale.”

“I haven’t seen them,” was the reply. “I hope you haven’t lost them, for
a whole lot might depend on having them.”

“Honest?” demanded Alex. “Cross your heart?” he added, with another
provoking grin. “You don’t for a minute think I believe you, do you?”

“You’ll have to, for I am telling the truth,” was the unexpected answer.
“I haven’t seen them.”

“Will you call Clay in here?” asked Alex in a moment. “I want to ask him
two questions. Don’t let Gran come with him.”

Case, understanding what the boy intended doing, went out to the prow
and sent Clay in, remaining there with the stranger. When Clay entered
the cabin and closed the door he was not a little surprised at the grave
manner in which Alex looked at him.

“Two questions,” Alex said.

“Go on, schoolmaster,” laughed Clay. “I’m sure I have my lesson.”

“One: Did you take the films from the kodak?”

“I did not,” replied Clay, with a shake of the head, a frown gathering
about his eyes. “I did not. What about it? Are they gone?”

“Two: Do you think this Chester W. Granville took them?”

“I do not think him capable of taking anything by stealth,” was the
quick reply. “But what is this about? Why don’t you answer my question?
Have the films you took at the campfire last evening been stolen?”

“They’re gone,” was the answer. “It may be a joke, but they’re gone, all
right. You say you didn’t take ’em, and Case says he didn’t, so what is
there to think except—”

“I don’t believe Gran took them,” Clay hastened to say. “I don’t think
he is that kind of a boy. Besides, he has had no opportunity, that I can
see. He couldn’t have taken them in the night without waking some of us.
I’m not a heavy sleeper, you know.”

“Did you hear the pistol shot in the night?” asked Alex with a suspicion
that Clay had slept sounder than he knew. “Come, now, did you?”

“I did not,” was the quick reply. “What time was it?”

“And you say that you would have heard the boy if he had opened the
kodak and taken out the films! Well, they are gone! Either he took them,
or some one took them while walking in his sleep, or some one sneaked in
during the night and stole them.”

“If any outsider had entered the cabin to get them,” Clay considered,
“he wouldn’t have opened the kodak in there and left it. He would have
made off the minute he got his hands on it, and opened it somewhere
else? Don’t you think that is right?”

“Sure I do,” replied Alex the frown on his face growing steadily. “Sure
I do. Then, that puts it up to this Chester person, doesn’t it?”

“But why should he steal them? Tell me that! And tell me another thing,
while your are at it. What was the shooting in the night?”

Alex again explained, in as few words as possible, just what had taken
place in the night. Clay saw more in the occurrence than Case had seen
and said so. He was plainly apprehensive of coming trouble.

“I really believe those fellows were following us,” he said, presently.
“And I believe the photographs have something to do with it. Well, that
may supply us with a little excitement. Have you been out in the town
yet? Something doing all the morning, while you’ve been sleeping.”

“Got up a short time ago,” replied Alex. “Now, look here,” he went on,
soberly, “if Gran didn’t take the films, who did? And, say, if he did,
he’ll be likely to duck away from us at the first chance.”

“He has been trying to leave us now,” said Clay. “He was about to jump
off the car when I stopped him. He says he has no intention of imposing
on us longer! It does look bad! Still, we don’t know why he should have
taken them. Let’s suspend judgment for a time. What?”

“Oh, I haven’t convicted him yet,” smiled Alex. “Only I want to get a
line of the films. That’s all. I want ’em. No, Gran would have no object
in taking them unless he was sent here to do that very thing. S-a-a-y,
Clay, suppose he was sent to us for that very purpose?”

Clay laughed and moved toward the door, Alex at his heels.

“He couldn’t have been sent for that purpose, for he was at the boat
before the pictures were taken,” he said.

“Yes, but, since then, he might have received orders from the men, I
believe there is something up here. Those men back there may be train
robbers, who don’t want any pictures taken. Understand? Gran might have
come west with them. He might have been sent over to us to get a line on
our intentions. Later, he might have been told to steal the films! It is
up to him to explain, anyway, but don’t be too hard on him. Suppose it
should turn out that the men in camp, or the men back of the camp, were
really train robbers? That would be awkward for Gran, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be awkward for the robbers if a kodak located them on the
scene of the robbery last night,” Clay replied.

“Last night?” repeated Alex. “What about a robbery last night?”

“The Pacific express was held up just the other side of the pass very
early this morning,” answered Clay. “The express and mail cars were
looted and the passengers robbed. The two men who boarded the train
didn’t do it, of course, but there were others there in the canyons!”




CHAPTER VII.—PIE THAT LIVED IN A GLASS HOUSE.


“Then,” Alex suggested, “we’d better be getting the _Rambler_ into the
water and sailing away. If the officers should decide to hold us as
witnesses, we’ll have a fine time on the Columbia, I don’t think.”

“That is just what I have been telling Gran,” replied Clay, “but he
seems to think that he ought to part from us here. He says he has no
money to share the expense of the trip with us, and that he will not be
what they call a star boarder on South Halstead street, Chicago—one who
never misses a meal or pays a cent. I like his independence, but I’d
like better to have him with us. Suppose you go and talk it over with
the lad. He’s pretty blue over something this morning.”

“Perhaps he wants to get away from us because he thinks we will be
suspected of knowing something about this robbery and followed,”
suggested Alex, all his suspicions coming to the front once more.

“And perhaps he wants to get away because he knows that we’ll suspect
him of taking the films. We’ve just got to keep him with us, for a time,
anyway,” the boy added. “We’ll tie him down if necessary!”

“Well, the very best thing I can suggest at this time,” Clay decided,
“is to forget the films, and the train robbery, and the way the boy came
to us, and go on about having fun with the Columbia river. Doesn’t it
seem that way to you? To get away is surely the easiest way to escape
any trouble connected with the robbery. I’ll go and tell Case about it,
and we’ll just cut everything out but the fun we’re going to have on the
river.”

“All right!” Alex agreed. “There never was any photographs taken in the
pass, and there never was a train robbery at the summit of the Rocky
mountains, and no boy ever came to us out of a dark canyon at night! Say
but we’ll have a lot of forgetting to do!”

“And Gran is not to know a word of what we have been talking?”

“Not a single, solitary word! Didn’t we agree that there never was any
films, and that there never was a robbery, and that Gran came to us out
of the clouds, dressed in red and purple, with his pockets stuffed with
treasury notes? Trust me to forget it all when I’m talking with him.”

Clay went forward and drew Case aside, leaving Gran alone on the prow,
and Alex promptly engaged him in conversation. The stranger was still
insisting on leaving the party there, when Captain Joe, who had been
running about the car for some moments, uttered a growl and started off
on a run toward the cluster of houses nearest the river.

Alex called him back, but the dog seemed to have discovered a scent by
the side of the car that he wanted to follow. While the boys stood
talking the car bunted against the upright beam which terminated the
siding, and the Columbia river lay glistening not far distant.

“Glorious, eh?” shouted Alex. “Say, but we’re bound to have some great
old times on that little rivulet!”

Gran turned away his face and remained silent. Alex grinned at this
proof that the boy really wanted to go with them. If his inclination lay
that way, a little argument would do the rest, he thought.

“I’ve got to leave you here,” Gran said, with a sigh.

“No,” insisted Alex, “we’ve been talking it over, and have made up our
minds that we can’t spare you. There are lots of places, we are told,
where it takes four to run the boat. There are rapids and falls which
necessitate taking the boat out of the water and making a carry. I don’t
think you ought to quit us now.”

The stranger’s face brightened in an instant. Alex smiled again.

“Oh, if I can be of any use,” the boy began, “I’ll be glad to go, only I
have no money, and I thought—”

“Never mind that,” Alex replied. “You’re going with us, all right. Is it
a bargain? Sure you won’t leave us when we aren’t looking?” he added.
“We’ll need your help, you know, in lots of places.”

“Come on, now, and get ready to send the _Rambler_ into the water!”
cried Clay, springing to the floor of the car and then to the ground. “I
wish we could run this car into the river and float the boat off, but
that can’t be done, so I’ll have to go and get skids and rollers and men
to help. While I’m gone, you lads get breakfast ready, and we’ll take
our last meal in this elegant old private palace car!”

“I suppose we can go over to the store and get a few things to eat?”
questioned Alex. “We’ll have time for that, won’t we?” he added.

“Surely,” was the reply. “And have some coffee ready for me when I come
back. Perhaps you can get a mess of fish. There’s the greatest salmon
stream in the world, running along at your feet and making faces at you!
But you must hurry up and get the food out of the boxes, all ready to
carry down to the boat as soon as she is in the river.”

“I’ll get the breakfast,” Gran volunteered. “I used to know how to get
up a swell dinner out of a cold potato and a sausage. If I’ve got to go
down the river with you. I’ll work my passage as cook.”

Clay and Case looked up at Alex who stood grinning.

“It is all right,” the boy said. “I showed Gran that we would need his
help, and he is too much of a gentleman to quit us. Get a square meal,
now, Gran,” he continued, “and we’ll cut out the store and be getting
the provisions out of the boxes. I guess we’ve got enough bacon and
condensed milk here to feed an army for a month,” he added, ripping off
the cover of a box and poking at the contents.

So Gran hastened into the cabin, from which the agreeable odor of frying
bacon, bubbling coffee, and browning cakes soon came, making Case and
Alex, still working at the boxes, hungrier than ever.

Before Clay returned, the strange boy appeared in the cabin door waving
a pancake turner in his hand, a pleasant smile on his face.

The knowledge that he was really welcome to go with the boys and the
prospect of making himself useful, had acted like a tonic, and from that
moment he was, apparently, as full of life and as ready for any
adventure that might come his way as were the others.

At times, however, he seemed sad and depressed, seeking solitude and,
while always willing to do his share of the work, refusing to join in
the by-play which his friends often indulged in. At such times the boys
respected his mood and acted as if they did not notice it at all. From
these moods of dejection, however, he soon emerged as bright and,
apparently, as merry as the best of them.

“Dinner ready in the private diner!” he cried, swinging his turner at
the boys. “The cakes are hot, the coffee is strong enough to lift the
boat, and the bacon is crispy as a winter morning in little old
Chicago.”

“It takes a cook to praise his own work!” laughed Case.

Clay came in directly, while they were eating, and all agreed that
Gran’s description of his breakfast had been realistic. The men came
before long with their skids and rollers, and before noon the _Rambler_
was rocking in the waters of the lordly Columbia river.

“Our dream has come true!” Alex whispered to Clay, as the last load of
provisions was deposited on board and the men paid off. “We are at last
on the Columbia, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the ocean, with a
long ride before us. Isn’t it just glorious, old pal?”

“Glorious!” repeated the other. “It is more than glorious, and there
never was any pictures taken in the pass, there never was any train
robbery there, and Gran came to us without a suspicion clinging to him.”

“Right you are!” Alex approved, “still, for the last time, mind, I
really would like to know what became of those films, and if there were
any faces in the photographs that I did not see in the glow of the
fire.”

“That is your last guess,” laughed Clay. “We are not going to have
mysteries tagging after us on this trip, as we had on the voyage up the
Amazon. We’re going to hunt deer, and bear, and jaguars, and have the
time of our lives! And fish! Just wait until we begin to take those big
yellow salmon from the river! Just you wait!”

“There’s one thing we forgot,” Clay observed, as the boys put away the
provisions in the odd nooks provided for them and saw that the gasoline
tanks were full, the electric generator in good working order. “We never
went up to wish that gruff conductor good luck.”

“He is a gruff one, all right,” Alex cut in. “He did put on a lot of
authority when he first came up to us, didn’t he, now?” he continued.

“But he calmed down when we filled him up with cakes and coffee,” Case
observed. “He didn’t turn out so badly, after all. There’s many a gruff
person in the world who can be quelled by a little courtesy.”

“But you wanted to fight with him,” laughed Clay. “I saw that by the way
you looked at him. That would have spoiled everything.”

“Good luck to him, anyway,” Case commented. “He must have squared us in
connection with the robbery, for no one here has asked us a word about
it. He probably told the natives that we left with him long before the
robbery took place at the pass. Don’t you think so?”

“What robbery?” asked Alex with a giggle. “It has been discovered that
there wasn’t any robbery at the pass, and that there never was any—.
Well, what’s the use of talking about a thing that never took place. I
wonder if Clay brought any pie along in the boxes?”

“Pie in a box—all the way from Chicago!” snorted Case. “You must think
they _can_ pie up there. But, say, how would a pie go just now?”

“That’s all you know about the haunts and habits of pie!” exclaimed
Clay. “In Chicago they have a species of pie that lives in glass. When
you want a bite you make a blanket of flaky dough and take it out of the
glass can, and then exposure to heat brings it to life in the shape of
pie! What do you know about that? Pie that lives in a glass can!”

“Did you catch some of them?” asked Alex, “because if you did I want to
see one perform. Which box is he in? Hurry up, and I’ll make the flaky
dough blanket in time for supper. PIE!” he added, lifting his eyes
upward in a devotional attitude. “I adore pie!”

“You’ll find berry pie, and pumpkin pie, and mince pie, and apple pie
sleeping peacefully in one of the boxes,” Clay replied, much to the joy
of the others, who executed a fancy dance on the deck and then came back
to ask more questions about the haunts and habits of pie. Whether it
came out in broad daylight, or whether one had to set traps for it and
catch it during the dark hours of the night. Clay only laughed and
fished out a two-quart can of pumpkin, which he placed tenderly on the
table.

“Be careful with him,” he smiled. “He will bite if you don’t make the
dough blanket light and flaky. I have known children to need the care of
a physician after being bitten by a bad pie!”

“That will do for you!” Alex responded. “When we need any one to tell us
about the haunts and habits and preferences of pie we’ll let you know.”

At this latest mention of the word “pie” Captain Joe, who had been
sitting gravely on the prow of the motor boat, gave a sharp yelp and
came trotting into the cabin, his ears lifted—what there was of
them—expectantly, his tail trying to make a great circle in the air with
only a couple of inches of stub in sight. The boys laughed heartily.

“Do you recognize the word, Captain Joe?” asked Alex patting the white
bulldog on the head. “I believe you do, you old scamp. Now, what kind of
pie would you like for supper, old chap?” he added, talking to the dog
as if he understood every word that was said to him—which was a habit
the boys all had.

“I don’t think they grow pie where you came from,” Alex observed, in a
moment. “Where do you think this beastie came from, Gran?” he went on.

“Chicago?” was the brief answer. “He looks like Halstead street.”

“Alex stole him, or bought him, or abducted him, or shanghaied him, at
Para, down near the mouth of the Amazon,” Case put in, “and came near
getting his head knocked off. Let her go, Clay!”

This last was called out to the boy busy at the motors, and the next
moment the voyage had begun. The _Rambler’s_ nose was turned down the
Columbia!




CHAPTER VIII.—A WRECK AND A BABY BEAR.


Donald, British Columbia, where the _Rambler_ was introduced to the
waters of the Columbia river, is pretty well up toward the Arctic
circle, about in the same degree of latitude, in fact, as the Great
Glacier of the Cascade range, still it is not so cold there in April as
one would naturally suppose. There is splendid summer grazing land
between the Fraser river, in that latitude, and the Pacific ocean.

Being so far to the North, one would expect the river, like a
well-behaved body of water, to run south at Donald, especially as the
mouth of the great stream is hundreds of miles in that direction, near
the thriving city of Portland, in the state of Oregon. But rivers in
mountainous countries have notions of their own, like wayward boys, as
to the proper course to pursue, and so the Columbia pours its waters
toward the North Pole for more than a hundred miles beyond Donald.

At Beaver the Canadian Pacific leaves the valley of the Columbia and
winds south to cross Dog Tooth mountains, a parallel ridge of the long
Rocky mountain system at Glacier House pass, while the Columbia pursues
its turbulent way to the northwest for a hundred miles or more, as the
river runs, until it rounds a great mountain peak and receives the
waters of the Wood and Canoe rivers at Boat Encampment. This is the
farthest point north for the Columbia, as the stream turns abruptly to
the south there and makes for Arrow lakes.

Between Beaver and Boat Encampment the river valley is narrow, and there
are no settlements to speak of. In many places the two ridges of the
Rocky mountains press down to the waters of the river. The country is
wild, and in April the summits to the east and west show snowy caps,
like stalwart nurses out in the city parks, guarding perambulators and
leading toddling youngsters.

The _Rambler_ passed Beaver long before sunset and entered the wild
region between the crowding mountain ridges. It was dim and uncanny
there long before it was time for the sun to withdraw his face from that
part of the world for the day, as the western summits shut out much of
the light that fell. The three lads, Clay, Case, and Alex who had
visited the wild places of Peru during the Amazon trip, were wild with
joy at coming back to the heart of Nature, but Gran, who was evidently
taking his first degree in the wonderful order of Mountain, Life, did
not take so readily to the dark shadows and the swirling eddies which
threatened to tear the _Rambler_ into bits in punishment for her
intrusion into the secret places.

When it became too dark to see the river for any distance ahead, the
boys anchored in a little cove cut out of the foot of a mountain by the
beating of waters, covering hundreds of years, and built a roaring fire
in the coal stove. As it might be some days before they would be able to
secure more gasoline, the motors were shut off, together with the
electric generators, and supper was started on the top of the coal
stove.

There was plenty of electricity in the accumulators, but the lads
thought best to use only the electric lights. Clay gave his attention to
the work of cleaning the motors, while Gran led in the preparations for
supper. The boys were hungry and tired, and were promising themselves a
sound night’s sleep as the supper cooked on top of the little coal
heater.

“Bacon and pancakes!” scorned Alex after a time. “I’m getting sick of
bacon and pancakes! What’s the matter with having one of the pies out of
the cage? I’m hungry for pie! Pumpkin pie! Ouch!”

“I suppose you know how to bake a pie on top of a stove!” commented
Case. “Why don’t you go out and catch a fish, if you are so keen for
something new for supper. There ought to be plenty of fish in this
roaring old river. Get the rowboat out and I’ll go with you.”

“All right,” agreed Alex, “we haven’t used the rowboat yet on this trip,
and we’ll see how she behaves in the Columbia. Untie her, and I’ll get
in and take the oars. Be careful now, and don’t jump in like a barrel of
bones. This current is treacherous! If we get a dip here it may be a
long time before we see sunlight again. Careful, now!”

“I don’t think you boys ought to go out in the rowboat,” Clay warned.
“Why don’t you fish from the _Rambler_, or wait until to-morrow for your
feast? It is too risky, just at night, and in unknown waters.”

But Alex was already in the rowboat, which was pulling hard at the line
in Case’s hands. The boy backed with the oars, and Clay helped Case on
the line, but when the latter was ready to jump for the boat the line
parted and Alex went swirling down the river at the rate of a score of
miles an hour. The boys stood aghast for an instant, and then Case
sprang for the motors.

“Wait!” Clay ordered. “You can’t turn on power until I put some of the
pieces back! I had it unfastened. Don’t touch it! I’ll see what can be
done! Get out your flashlights and guns. We’ll let the boy know where we
are, at any rate. I’ll have this motor ready in a minute.”

“Cut the anchor line, then,” cried Case. “We can’t let Alex go off in
that way. We’ve just got to follow him! Cast off the anchor!”

The excited lad would have sent the boat adrift in the current, in which
case she would have been dashed to pieces on the rocks in a very short
time, if Clay had not interfered.

“You must be crazy!” the latter cried. “Alex may be all right. We will
have power on in a minute, and then we can catch him, if we don’t bump
into a foothill or tumble over a sudden drop. Listen! I thought I heard
the boy calling. Answer him, you fog horn! You can beat me when it comes
to making a roar.”

For an instant there was only the sweep of the dark water against the
_Rambler_ and the call of birds high up in the sky—so high up that the
latest pencils of light from the setting sun touched their wings and
turned them into burnished gold. Then a long “Ha-l-o-o” came from down
the dark river. In a moment the sound was repeated, louder than before.

“That’s Alex!” cried Case. “He’s all right somewhere, it seems.”

“Yes,” Clay agreed, “he must have caught on something, for the current
would have carried him beyond hearing long before this. He may have
found a rock in the middle of the stream, or a small island. Hope so.”

“Hello, hello!” came the voice again. “Can’t you send down a light or a
gun? I’ve got into a mess here. Hurry up!”

“Suppose we send Captain Joe down with a string, and a rope tied to the
end of the string,” suggested Gran. “The dog would swim straight to him,
wouldn’t he? Then we could pull the boat back and Alex in it.”

“Fine idea!” cried Clay, “especially as the boy doesn’t appear to be
very far off. Call the dog and I’ll get a long rope and a string. If the
rope and string aren’t long enough to reach Alex we can pull the dog
back. Good chance to make Captain Joe earn his food. What?”

Case rushed into the cabin and looked about for Captain Joe. He was not
under foot in the middle of the cabin floor, as he frequently was. He
was not on his rug under one of the shelf-benches. He was not in the
cabin at all, and Case went out to the deck again, calling softly to the
dog.

“He isn’t out here,” Clay said. “I’ve found the rope, so hurry up with
the dog. He must be around here somewhere. Couldn’t have left the boat
without our knowing it, could he? Couldn’t have deserted us?”

“Well,” Case insisted, returning from a search of the boat, “the dog is
not here. What do you think of that? Where is he?”

“He was on board not an hour ago,” Gran declared. “I saw him back there
by the boat, the rowboat, I mean. Could he have started out after Alex
do you think? He certainly has gone somewhere.”

Clay whistled and called to the dog, but for a long time there was no
response. The mystery was, for a moment, baffling, and then it was
cleared in a breath.

Captain Joe’s voice came from down the river in a succession of deep
growls, followed by a different sort of snarling.

“That’s Captain Joe, all right,” cried Case. “He must have leaped into
the river and struck out after Alex. That’s it, I guess.”

“Never did in the world,” Clay insisted. “If he is with Alex he sprang
into the rowboat when no one saw him. That is one of his old tricks, as
he wants to be in the limelight most of the time.”

“Is that Joe?” called Clay, making a trumpet of his hands and calling at
the top of his voice. “Is Joe there with you, Alex?”

“Sure,” came back from below. “He is here, all right, and he’s got a
baby bear! Can’t you let the _Rambler_ down a little? I’m shipwrecked on
a ledge of rock. River turns here and I bunted into it and caught hold.
If you don’t take all night to get here, we’ll capture the bear. Captain
Joe has him by the leg, I guess.”

“Do you think he has a bear?” asked Gran, in a tone of disbelief.

“Just like him,” Case laughed. “You can’t get Alex into any scrape he
can’t get out of. If he should fall into a volcano he’d find an ice box
there. Oh, you needn’t laugh, Gran! That is just the kind of a boy he
is. We thought we had lost him at Para, Brazil, and he came back lugging
Captain Joe, and with a mob at his heels. Now he is cast adrift on the
Columbia river and finds a baby bear. But the question now is, how is he
going to get back to the _Rambler_? I’ll bet the rowboat is busted all
to flinders!”

“Few of your prophecies of evil have come true lately, Case,” laughed
Clay, busy with the motors, “so you may as well quit doing the prophet
stunt! Now, if you will come here and hold a searchlight under this
frame, I’ll put this burr on and start the machine.”

Case did as requested, and Gran hastened into the cabin to put the last
touches on the bacon which was frying in a skillet at the top of the
heater. He even grumbled a little because the supper was being delayed
by the accident which had broken the rowboat line.

“Alex!” called Clay, in a minute, “is it safe for the _Rambler_ to come
down there? What kind of a ledge is it you and the dog and the bear are
on? You might look around, while you are there,” he added, with a laugh,
“and see if you can find a fish for supper!”

“Oh, come on with the boat!” roared Alex. “I’m getting tired of holding
the rowboat, and Captain Joe is worrying the bear to death.”

“Have you honestly got a bear?” asked Gran “What are you going to do
with him? He might bite us,” he added, thoughtfully.

The boys heard Alex laughing and so understood that he was in no serious
predicament. Captain Joe seemed to be talking confidentially to the
bear.

At last the motors were ready, and the _Rambler_ dropped cautiously down
stream, under full control of the power and the helm. She passed the
ledge where Alex and the dog and the bear were, picking them up with her
flashlight as she went by, then pushed slowly up stream again, coming to
the ledge with the current against her. At last her prow struck on a
rocky bottom, and then she was held against the force of the stream by
half power.

What the flashlight revealed was a boy, white bulldog, and a bear cub,
all in a huddle on a level surface of rock about six feet in length and
about half that width. Alex had evidently been tipped out of the boat
when the ledge was struck, but had managed to hang on to the short line,
so the boat was safe. Captain Joe was down at the water’s edge with his
great paws on the back of the baby bear, which was trying its best to
get its teeth into action on the dog’s leg.

The broken boatline was very short, and so Alex was pretty close to the
water too. When the flashlight illumined the scene the bear cub gave a
savage spring and almost passed from under the paws of the dog.

Alex was heard to laugh and seen to grab at the bear, and then the whole
three rolled off into the river and the boat, thus released, swept past
the _Rambler_ and went bobbing out of sight. No effort was made to stop
it, for Alex and the dog were drifting too, both clinging to the bear!




CHAPTER IX.—THE MAKING OF A CEDAR CANOE.


“Drop down! Drop down stream!” Case yelled, excitedly, as Alex, Captain
Joe, and the baby bear swept by on the current. “If they get out of
sight they’ll drown!”

“What’s keeping them in view got to do with it?” shouted Gran “They will
drown anyway if we don’t hurry and get them out. Let me go in after
them. I’m a good swimmer, really I am. Let me go in and get Alex and
Captain Joe can save himself. See there! Alex is going under. Let go of
me!”

The loyal youngster would indeed have leaped into the river if Clay had
not caught him. Case was equally unreasonable, and wanted to send the
_Rambler_ straight over the struggling figures. Clay caught up the long
rope which he had prepared to attach to Captain Joe and tied it about
his waist. Then he took another rope and wound it about his neck and
shoulders. Case and Gran looked on in wonder and impatience.

“Now,” Clay explained, “I’m going to swing the boat in a wide circle and
meet that precious trio as we pass up the stream. When we get almost to
them, you, Case, take the helm, and you, Gran, catch on the ends of
these lines. Do you both understand, now—are you ready?”

The boat had swung around while the boy was explaining, and Alex the
bear cub, and Captain Joe were clearly revealed, just ahead, in the
glare of the strong searchlight. The cub, forgetting all fear of the
canine in the greater danger it was in, had climbed half way up on the
dog’s back, and the dog was swimming for dear life. Alex had caught an
oar as the boat swept away, and was calmly floating, well sustained by
the wood.

“S-a-a-y,” cried Case, almost choking with laughter when he saw that
Alex was in no immediate danger. “Can you people down there keep that
pose while I take a picture of you? That’s great! G-r-e-a-t!”

Clay now saw that there was no pressing necessity for him to take a cold
bath just then, as Alex would be able to catch the line if it could be
trailed near enough to him. Later, he thought, some one might have to go
in in order to rescue Captain Joe, who was paddling along like a major,
with no expressed objections to the load of bear cub he was carrying on
his back. Case explained to the others that the only reason the dog did
not protest was because he was afraid he would get his mouth full of
water if he engaged in any conversation regarding the riparian rights of
the bear. Gran alone looked grave in the emergency.

Presently the line was thrown and Alex seized it deftly and proceeded
hand-over-hand to the side of the boat. Captain Joe made greater
efforts, trying to keep to his side, but the current was too strong.
Clay dropped the _Rambler_ down as the dog fell away, and Alex instead
of mounting to the deck of the boat, caught the dog by the collar and
held on to him.

The cub bear did not take so kindly to this, for he snapped at the boy’s
hand, and Alex gave him a slight tap on the nose in return.

Case dropped his extra line to Alex with instructions to tie it to
Captain Joe’s collar. This was done, not without difficulty, for the dog
did not understand what was going on, and the bear cub made it his
business to attack the boy, so all three went under water more than once
before the feat was accomplished. Then Clay drew on the line and Captain
Joe went up serenely with the bear still on his back. The lads on the
deck were shouting with laughter, for the dog was now complaining at
carrying the cub.

In a moment Alex grabbed the cub, tucked it, in spite of protests, under
one arm, and was assisted, spluttering and dripping, to the deck of the
bear and all. Captain Joe, on his arrival on deck, at once shook water
over Clay and then gave his attention to the cub, but the boys drove him
off and hustled the baby bear into a warm corner by the heater.

Alex shivering with cold, soon followed, and the dog, making peace with
the bear for the sake of warmth, sat down in front of the stove and
regarded the preparations for supper with anxious eyes.

Then Gran made more hot coffee, and put on more cakes, and opened a can
of baked beans, and boiled potatoes, and soon a wonderful supper was on
the little table. The bear cub sniffed at the food, but curled up on his
rug again. He had probably been lost from his mother a long time, and
had been in the water before Alex came to him, and was worn out, still
he kept a keen eye on the dog.

“How did you come to get him, Alex?” asked Clay. “Nice bear, eh?”

“He was on the ledge, soaking wet, when the boat struck it,” was the
reply, “and the impact threw me plumb on top of him. Then Captain Joe
took a hand, or paw, rather, in the mess and he became a prisoner of
war. You just bet he’s a nice bear!”

“If you keep him, and we remain around here long, we’ll be apt to
receive a call from his mother,” Clay predicted. “What are you thinking
of doing with him? He’d make quite a nice meal! Bear meat’s fine!”

“Eat him!” cried Alex now clad in dry clothing, “I’d as soon eat Captain
Joe! What am I going to do with him? I’m going to keep him, and train
him up in the way good bears should go. He’s a pipin!”

“That’s pretty near slang,” Case remarked, “and the boy that uses slang
washes dishes. That was the rule during the Amazon trip, and we have
adopted it for this excursion,” he explained to Gran.

“Don’t talk to me about washing anything!” Alex cried, with a shiver. “I
never want to see water again. My, but it was cold in there.”

He paused and looked at the bear reflectively a moment and then arose
and felt him over, his advances being received with great discourtesy by
the bear, who had received the impression, it appeared, that he was to
be manhandled but not invited to supper.

“Let him alone, kid,” advised Clay. “You’ll get a bite that will make
you sit up and take notice that he has something more than white milk
teeth if you don’t. Where are you going to store this menagerie?”

“Why, he can just run around here like Captain Joe does,” was the reply.
“I was looking him over to see if the dog wounded him, but he appears to
be all right. Good dog, that! He knew that I wanted to add this teddy
bear to my collection. I’m going to give him to Captain Joe, the sailor
man, not the dog, when I get back to Chicago. He’ll like him for his own
sweet sake. Now, what do bears eat? Who knows?”

“Honey!” chuckled Case. “They rob beehives, I had a picture of one
tipping over a hive in my school reader. Why don’t you call him honey?”

“No, sir; Teddy is his name,” replied Alex. “Come, now, you fellows,
tell me what to feed him. Will he eat fish, do you think?”

“The Lincoln park bears eat fish,” Gran answered. “I’ve seen ’em.”

“They are polar bears,” Case explained. “The other bears eat bread and
nuts and acorns. I’ve seen the black bears dip their bread in the pool
and eat it in that way. Feed him pancakes, just for fun.”

So Alex seized a pancake from the table and held it under the nose of
the bear. The cub seemed to take more pleasure in the “just for fun”
experiment than the boy did, for he seized the cake and a good share of
the hand that held it out to him.

Alex yelled for him to let go and gave him a cuff on the nose. The skin
was not broken on his fingers, but the bear’s teeth had made
indentations which were a trifle sore. Teddy devoured the pancake
greedily and looked about for more. The boys threw him pieces, and he
soon became so tame that he would put his paw on their laps and ask for
food.

For a few days Captain Joe seemed to resent the intrusion of this new
pet, but Alex so Case declared, explained to the dog that he, himself,
had saved the cub’s life by riding him on his back, and after that there
was peace between the two.

Teddy did indeed like honey, and everything sweet, for more than once he
emptied the sugar bowl, and the very next forenoon he consumed half a
pumpkin pie which Gran was saving for dinner. The cook rebuked him for
this with a club, and Teddy was more careful after that.

Contrary to expectations, the mother did not make her appearance, and
Teddy sailed away the next morning without a formal farewell—and seemed
pleased with his new quarters and his new friends. Before many days he
became a great pet with all the boys, though he always made unusual
protestations of firm friendship to whoever was doing the cooking!

The next morning Alex none the worse for his wetting, was astir long
before the other boys were awake. He had determined, during the night,
to make restitution for the rowboat he had lost.

“There’s plenty of cedar trees up here,” he thought, “and if I can find
a fallen one just the right size, I can make a canoe that will take the
place of the rowboat. Of course,” he mused, “it wasn’t exactly my fault
that the boat was lost. The rope broke when Captain Joe made a jump and
landed in the prow. Still, if I hadn’t been foolish with Teddy, the boat
never would have broken away from me.”

Where the great canyons came down to the water’s edge, cutting the
precipitous side of the mountains into ridges, there were plenty of
cedar trees, and the boy, after softly lifting the anchor and turning
the _Rambler_ down stream, watched long for a fallen tree of the size he
wanted.

It was doubtful if he could bring the boat close up to the shore, for
sometimes the land sloped gradually down, and sometimes there were
hidden rocks which had tumbled from the mountain side, but he decided to
try to do so as soon as he came to a suitable place, a place where there
were great trees growing close to the water’s edge.

A dozen miles down stream from the spot where the night had been passed,
the boy saw that the current, setting against the shore, had cut a cove
into a bluff. Certain that the water would be deep at the edge of the
drop, he worked the _Rambler_ in and was soon overjoyed to see that he
could stretch a plank from the railing to a ledge which, being followed
to the north, would lead to a canyon of some size, the bottom and
sloping sides of which were lined with magnificent cedar trees.

He cast anchor and laid out the plank. Then he turned about to see if
any of his chums were awake, but all were sleeping except Captain Joe,
who lay with his chin on his paws regarding Teddy, still asleep. Captain
Joe seemed to Alex to be asking the bear why he had presumed to use him
for a ferry boat on the previous evening, and the boy laughed heartily
at thought of the scene under the flashlight.

He beckoned to the dog, threw a rope around Teddy’s neck and fastened it
to the railing, thus making sure that he would not escape, and, followed
by the dog, stepped over the plank to the ledge, from which he passed to
the bottom of the canyon. The morning was sharp with frost, but the
atmosphere was clear as crystal. It was like looking into a calm sea of
blue, transparent glass to look up at the sky bending over the valley of
the Columbia. The breath of the cedars was sweet to the nostrils of the
boy, and the songs of the birds were pleasant things to hear.

“This beats Clark street!” Alex thought, moving about in the canyon in
quest of a fallen cedar tree of a size suitable for canoe-making.

A green tree would take too long to fashion into a boat, and one too
long on the ground would rot too soon, so he hunted for a long time
before he came upon just what he sought.

An hour later, when Clay, missing the boy and the dog, followed the
plank to the ledge and then a column of smoke to the interior of the
canyon, he found Alex sitting on a log watching a serpent of flame
running along the upper surface of a fallen cedar tree. The boy had made
a trench along the top of the log and poured kerosene into it. Then he
had set fire to the oil, and the tree trunk was gradually burning out in
the middle. A pail of water sat on the ground near the boy, and as Clay
watched he saw him arise and wet the edges of the trench, so that only
the center of the log would burn. The flames, reinforced now by dry
limbs gathered from the thicket, were already deep down into the heart
of the long log. Clay’s approach was announced by the dog, and Alex
looked up with a curious look of perplexity on his freckled face.

“What are you doing, kid?” Clay asked, looking about.

“Can’t you see,” replied the boy, shrugging his shoulders, “that I’m
putting the roof on this new ten-story building? What do you think I’m
doing? Even Captain Joe knows that, don’t you, doggie?”

The dog said he did, in his own way, and Clay sat down by the side of
the log.

“Somehow,” he said, “it is perfectly natural for people to ask foolish
questions. I knew that you were making a canoe, Indian fashion, yet I
asked that question. Why didn’t you let me help you? You’ll have a long
job if you wait for that whole log to bum out, and you’ll have a long
canoe, too.”

“When it burns out about twenty feet,” Alex replied, “we’ll saw it off
at both ends, sharpen it up, dig out the charred wood, and have a canoe
that will serve the purpose of the boat I lost. Don’t you think so?”

“Of course,” replied Clay, “but you needn’t think you’re going to have
all the credit of making this canoe. I’m going to stay right here and
keep the fires going while you go to breakfast. The boys are wondering
where you are, and Teddy looks as if he had lost his best friend.”

“All right,” Alex replied. “I think a little breakfast would come in
handy just now. I’ll leave Captain Joe to protect you.”

“That will be nice!” laughed Clay. “Captain Joe can do it, you may be
sure. When you return, bring the big saw and some knives with you. I
guess the chopping knife will be about right to dig the charred wood out
with. You needn’t hurry, for this fire must burn a long time.”

Alex started away, but turned back with a thoughtful look on his face.
Clay smiled, for he thought he knew what was in the mind of the boy.

“Say,” Alex said, almost in a whisper, “you haven’t come across the
films yet, have you? I’d just like to know where they went to.”

“There never were any films,” grinned Clay. “You know the bargain. Now,
run along to the boat and get your breakfast. No films, remember!”

Alex hastened away and Clay sat for a long time watching the flames
eating into the log, then the dog sprang up with a bristling back and
gave warning of some one or something creeping through the trees.




CHAPTER X.—A RABBIT AND A SECRET MEETING.


“What is it, Captain Joe?” Clay asked, as if Captain Joe could turn
around and tell him what he saw in the thicket under the cedar trees.
“Go slow, old fellow, for it may be a beast you can’t handle as easily
as you handled the cub. Better keep back until I get out my gun!”

Captain Joe continued to snarl at the thicket, and Clay advanced a few
paces and peered under the underbrush which was clinging for fragile
support to the floor of the canyon.

He saw a human figure moving about, a tall figure bending low and
parting the bushes to look out upon the burning log. The description
Alex had given of the man who had pursued him around the angle of rock
at the campfire near the pass at once came to the mind of the boy.

Clay moved away, so that one looking into the space where the log lay
would not be able to see him, whistled softly to the dog, and waited.
Captain Joe retreated with a growl of defiance and crouched down at the
boy’s feet, still keeping his eyes on the thicket straight ahead.

The intruder had evidently not seen nor heard the dog, and had no idea
that he was watched, for he pushed the bushes aside and stepped into the
opening. There he stood, a figure massive and muscular, looking
curiously at the burning log for some moments.

Clay observed that he limped slightly as he walked, and noted, too, that
his hands hung almost to his knees when dropped to his sides. The face
was masterful and intelligent. The fellow was evidently the same who had
been shot by the brakeman on the Canadian Pacific train.

“Now,” thought the boy, “how the Old Harry did he get here? And why is
he here? It certainly looks as if we had been followed from the pass by
this chap.”

The more Clay thought of the matter, the firmer became his conviction
that the man he saw had twice before appeared in their journey from the
Rocky mountains to that point. He might have been one of the campers, or
he might have been hidden in the canyon back of the fire.

Gran had suggested the presence of a party not in view from where Alex
had taken the snapshots. He had given no reason for this supposition,
but Clay had come to the conclusion that it was a correct one.

Clay regretted then that he had not secured more definite information
about the train robbery at Donald. He had not even learned whether any
one had been arrested charged with the crime.

If the campers had been questioned and released as innocent, then it was
certain that others had been in the pass at the time they were enjoying
themselves before their fire. The men who had held up the train must
have been already on the ground!

But, even then, this man and the companion who had swung onto the train
which had towed the _Rambler’s_ car away might have had no connection
with this second party. They might have been merely loungers, waiting
for an opportunity of getting out of the mountains without contributing
to the treasury of the railroad company.

But why had they followed the _Rambler_? How had they managed to get
into the valley of the Columbia ahead of her? Clay took it for granted
that the conductor had told the truth, and that there were two on the
train. He also accepted as true his impression that the second man was
not far away.

There were many questions connected with the appearance of the fellow at
that place which Clay could not answer, and so he gave them all up and
devoted his whole attention to the intruder and his movements. The man
stared about the little clearing for a minute as if expecting to meet
some one there, and then limped out in the direction of the ridge near
which the _Rambler_ lay.

Captain Joe seemed anxious to interview the fellow and ask him a few
questions, but Clay kept close hold of his collar and held him back when
he would have bounded forward. The dog resented this, but kept quiet.

The long-armed man followed the canyon to the river front, glanced
cautiously up to the spot where the _Rambler_ lay, and crouched down in
the shelter of a rock, as Clay thought, to wait for definite information
regarding the situation on the boat.

Clay, following and watching, saw Case, Alex and Gran standing on the
deck examining automatic pistols. He could not hear what they were
saying, but their gestures indicated that they were thinking of going up
on the mountainside to look for game.

The tall watcher seemed to interpret the situation just as Clay did, for
he turned away with a shrug of his shoulders and disappeared in the
canyon, which parted just below the place where Clay stood, one dip
running to the northeast and one to the southeast. He took the one
pointing to the southeast, passing near the boat, and was soon lost to
view.

Clay made no attempt to follow him. Indeed, the sudden appearance of the
fellow there seemed so unaccountable, so impossible, in fact, that the
boy almost doubted the correctness of his eyesight. Still, there was the
testimony of Captain Joe, who was more than anxious to follow the
fellow, and this was not to be disputed.

The boy resolved not to mention the matter to his chums. It could do no
good, and, besides, such a course would prevent a great deal of anxiety
on the part of the strange boy, who still shuddered at mention of the
pass and the happenings there. Directly Alex came running up.

“How’s the boat-builder by this time?” he asked. “Going along all right,
eh?” he added, as he noted the progress made by the fire in the heart of
the log. “I’ve brought the saw and the knives, as you see,” he
continued, throwing the tools down on the ground, “and we’ll have a
cedar canoe in about two minutes and a half.”

He brushed away a mass of coals and cut sharply into the bottom of the
burn with a hatchet. The result of his examination seemed to be entirely
satisfactory, for he rolled the log over, tipping out the fire and
crushing it out by rolling the log over it.

“The burn is deep enough,” he said. “If it had burned a few minutes more
it would have weakened the bottom. Now, I’ll bring some water from the
river, put out the fire inside and begin chopping. We’ll have a canoe
we’ll be proud of before long. Great idea, what? Do you think you can
ride in it after we get it launched?” he added, with a wrinkling nose.

“Of course I can,” replied Clay, indignantly. “All you’ve got to do in
order to ride a cedar canoe is to keep your head and your balance.”

“There’s one more thing you’ve got to do,” Alex laughed.

“What is it?” asked the other. “Tell me about it, so I’ll know!”

“You’ve got to get used to riding under water about half the time,”
announced Alex gravely. “When it tips over you’ve got to hang to it and
wait for the top to come around to the sky again. Do you think you can
get used to journeys under water? I think they’ll be rather pleasant.”

“Where are Case and Gran?” asked Clay, after they had chopped for an
hour at the blackened wood. “I hope they aren’t thinking of leaving the
boat alone. That will hardly be safe, in this wild place.”

“Why,” replied the other, “they were talking of going up on the mountain
after game for dinner when I left. They think they can shoot.”

“One, at least, ought to remain in the boat,” Clay suggested. “When we
return they may go hunting together if they want to, only I wouldn’t
advise a long stop in this valley. We’d better be on our way, I think.”

“I reckon that’s right,” Alex agreed, “for, come to think about it, Gran
was going alone, but I’ll go and tell them both to stay on the boat.
Have you noticed Captain Joe?” the boy continued, pointing to the dog,
now snarling at a thicket farther up the canyon. “He seems to have found
something. I’ll go and see what it is.”

Before Clay could offer objections, the boy was away, chasing along
through the brush on the heels of the dog. Presently Clay heard a roar
of laughter.

“He’s got a rabbit!” Alex shouted, “and he’s making as much fuss as if
he had another bear. I guess we’ll have some fresh game for dinner now,”
the boy continued, making his appearance with an animal which looked
something like a rabbit, but was larger and evidently more ferocious,
for the dog had torn it not a little in making the capture.

“I wonder if it is good to eat?” Clay asked, thankful that it was
nothing more than a rabbit, or something akin to the rabbit which
Captain Joe had scented out.

He had, as will be understood, feared that the intruder with the long
arms had returned to that vicinity. Besides, the capture of the rabbit
if such it was, would make a hunting trip, such as Case and Gran had
planned, unnecessary at that time. The boy was overjoyed at the outcome
of the incident, and asked Alex to carry the capture to the boat and
talk with the others about eating it, also to warn them against leaving
the boat alone, even for a minute.

“I’ve got a book on natural history,” the boy exclaimed, “and I’ll look
up the pedigree of this beastie. When I get back to the South Branch,
I’m going to write a book entitled: ‘Wild Animals I Have Never Met
Because I Could Run Faster Than They Could.’ Don’t you think a volume of
that character would make a hit in the literary world?”

“Bound in calf, or sheep?” asked Clay, with a broad grin.

“Bound in bear!” explained Alex. “And bound to win!”

“Go on to the boat!” commanded Clay, “and see about having that rabbit
cooked for dinner. Then come back here and help me get this canoe into
the river. We can finish hewing it out any old time. Just now, I am
anxious to be on our way. I don’t like this dark valley.”

“It certainly is a wild one,” Alex answered as he darted away.

Clay drew a long sigh of relief as the boy disappeared in the direction
of the boat. He did not quite like the idea of running away from the man
who had three times shown a disposition to pursue them, still, he
believed that the wisest course was to avoid trouble if possible.

He would have given a good deal for information regarding the purpose of
the fellow. He would have endeavored, then and there, to have forced a
meeting only for the fact that an unsatisfactory conclusion of a
struggle might have spoiled their long-planned trip down the Columbia.

Alex returned, presently, with the information that it was really a
large rabbit Captain Joe had caught, and that it was to appear on the
dinner table in the shape of a stew. By this time the canoe was taking
form, and the boys rolled and pushed it to the river.

Once there, they tied it to a strong line and fastened the line to the
_Rambler_. The further work of cutting out the wood could, they planned,
be done at any time. Clay was not quite certain that the cedar was in
good condition, for the fire had done quick work. He had read that
Indians, when they resorted to making this kind of canoes, usually
required three or four days in which to hollow out a large log.

When Clay got back on the _Rambler_, he went straight to the cabin and
began another hunt for the films. He had always believed that the
disappearance of the pictures had been accidental, but now he wanted to
make sure that they were not in the cabin.

Somehow, the lost photographs were associated in his mind with the men
who, he imagined, had seen the pictures taken. The man he had seen in
the canyon was one of these.

While he hunted in every conceivable and inconceivable place, Alex came
in and closed the door behind him. The rabbit stew was simmering on the
heater and coffee was bubbling on the electric stove. Alex busied
himself about the latter, as if to account for his being there with the
door closed, and looked at Clay with wise eyes.

“I know why you want to get away from here right quick,” he said. “I
know about the man you saw in the canyon. He was there when I went in
after the rabbit, and there was some one with him. Now, who do think it
was? Give you three guesses.

“Give it up?” he went on. “Well, it was Mr. Chester W. Granville!”




CHAPTER XI.—ALEX BECOMES A DETECTIVE.


“It doesn’t seem possible!” Clay exclaimed. “What could have Gran been
doing there? Could you hear what they were saying?”

“Not a word,” was the reply; “they talked in low tones.”

“But I thought Gran was on the boat.”

“Well, he left the boat, alone, just after I did. I saw him go across
the plank and pass into the canyon. Then he turned in another
direction.”

“He was back in the boat when you returned with the rabbit?” asked Clay.
“Of course, he must have been. Well, then, he had very little time to
visit with that fellow. It is a queer proposition.”

“I should say so!” Alex agreed. “Are you going to say anything to him
about it—let him know that we are wise to his doings?”

“I think not,” was the slow reply. “If there is something between the
boy and these men, the way to find out what it is, is to keep still and
sleep with our eyes open. Strange that we should have a mysterious
passenger on this voyage as well as on the one up the Amazon!”

“I hope this one turns out as rich as the other,” Alex grinned.

The breakfast, when finally prepared, was a light one, so the boys had
dinner early and then got under way. It was much more convenient cooking
when the boat was not trying to turn handsprings in the river. Now and
then they came to rapids which any ordinary caution would have warned
them to hesitate before entering, but Clay was anxious to get as far
away from his pursuer as possible in the shortest time allowable, and so
took chances.

In the middle of the afternoon they came to a quiet piece of river some
distance above a stretch of rapids, around which the boat would have to
be carried. They decided to remain here for the night, making ready
during the afternoon and evening to convey the _Rambler_ around the
falls early in the morning.

Clay was careful to anchor the boat on the west side of the river. They
had come a long distance, and if the unwelcome visitor of the morning
had indeed succeeded in keeping up with them by taking to the stream in
a light boat, he would have to show himself if he passed, or even if he
came within a hundreds yards of the _Rambler_ during the afternoon.

“Now,” said Case, as the boat lay rocking in a small cove, “I’ll go and
catch a fish and show you how to cook it. Here we’ve been on the river
two days and haven’t had a bite of fish yet. That is what I call a
burning shame. Do you think I can ride that log of a canoe to the shore?
I’ve got to do my expert cooking under the leafy trees, you see, and so
I’ve got to use the canoe.”

“You might try it,” Clay laughed. “Alex went after fish last evening and
caught a bear, so there is no knowing what you may get.”

“Perhaps an elephant!” laughed Gran.

“Or a bold train robber!” Alex put in, just to see what Gran would say
at the mention of the incidents at the pass.

Gran looked up quickly, but there was no surprise in his face. Instead
he smiled and pointed to a grove of tall cedars on the shore not far
from the edge of the stream.

“That looks like a fine place to fish for train robbers,” he said. “I
have a great mind to go ashore with you to see you get the fish, and
help cook it. I know something about cooking fish!”

“Wait until he gets his fish,” Alex said. “When he comes up with a
corker, big enough for all of us, I’ll help him cook it. I used to cook
in the South Branch until the policeman on the beat came to the cabin
and asked for my pies and things. You know I did, eh, Clay?”

“Yes,” replied Clay, gravely, “you used to cook so well that the
policeman got the habit of asking who cooked the coffee before he tasted
it. If you made it, he had business outside right away.”

“You’re having another dream!” shouted Alex. “If you think I can’t cook,
just watch me serve the cold beans to-night.”

“That is where you shine,” laughed Alex, “serving cold beans!”

During this conversation Case had been getting out his fishing tackle
and leading the canoe around to the side of the _Rambler_ nearest the
shore.

“Are you going with him?” asked Clay, of Gran, hoping to receive an
affirmative reply, for he had decided to follow the lad if he went into
the forest alone.

He was not taking to this role of a spy kindly, for it was with many
twinges of conscience that he had made up his mind to keep a close watch
on the boy.

“I think I’ll go,” Gran, in a moment, answered. “I want to see the big
woods. While Case is cooking his fish on the bank, I can do some
hunting. Another rabbit stew would be about right. I always liked rabbit
stew! We’ll need it, too, if Case doesn’t catch any fish.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Case broke in. “I’m the one that put the
salmon in the Columbia river.”

“How are you both going to get ashore in that canoe—only half finished
as it is?” asked Clay, presently, as Gran brought his gun and one of the
searchlights from the cabin. “You can’t swim there, very well, for the
water is too cold for pleasure, as Alex discovered not long ago. I don’t
think two can ride in that contraption at the same time,” he added.

Alex scratched his head. It was plain to Clay that the boy was on the
same line of thought as himself. He, too, wanted Gran to go ashore so
that he might be followed.

How was it to be arranged so that the canoe could be brought back to the
_Rambler_ after each boy had landed? Then the boy laughed softly to
himself, wondering that he had ever given the matter a second thought.

“I’ll tell you!” he cried. “I’ll tie a long rope to the canoe, and when
Case gets ashore I’ll pull it back. Then, when Gran gets ashore, I’ll
pull it back again, so there will be no chance for any one to steal it.”

“Great head, Alex!” grinned Case, dropping off into the canoe and tying
a longer and stronger line to the prow, in order that it might be drawn
back to take Gran to the shore. “You’ll be president of some small
country town yet. Now, don’t pull on that line, young man,” he
continued, as the rope slipped through Clay’s fingers. “Just let her
play out easily, and I’ll have no trouble with the old scow!”

He paddled to the shore easily enough, landing on a little sandy spot
where hundreds of years of wash of water from the hills had ground soft
rock to bits. Back of him ran the forest of cedar, and back of that the
western ridges of the Rocky mountains.

“Pull her back, now!” he cried, taking his fishing tackle out of the
canoe, “and have Gran bring some matches. I forgot it.”

“Where are you going to get your fish?” mocked Alex. “There are no
fishes along that shallow shore.”

“Never you mind about that!” answered Clay. “See that pool just below
the rock? Well, there is a big one in there that I’m going to have for
supper. When I get him caught, you can come and help get his feathers
off, Alex.”

“All right,” Alex answered, pulling the rude canoe back, very glad of
the suggestion that he go ashore with the boys, “I’ll be there watching
you when you haul him out.”

Gran now entered the canoe and paddled ashore. The new canoe was not
much of a craft. It was just a cedar log on the outside and a black
trough on the inside. Still, the boys figured that it would save them
many a wetting, for there were places shrewd smile on his face, and Alex
knew just what that smile meant.

“Do you think he’ll meet our Robin Hood friend again?” Clay asked.

“I think he wants to meet some one,” was the reply. “He never went
ashore just to hunt. Who’s to go after him?”

“Perhaps you would better go,” Clay answered, reluctantly, for he was
aching for a turn in the woods. “He’ll not suspect you of anything more
than a trick if he sees you following him.”

“What did he take that searchlight for?” asked Alex.

“I can’t answer any questions about the boy,” Clay replied, with an
expressive shrug of the shoulders. “He appears innocent, loyal, and
honest, but he is mixed up in some game which I believe him to be
playing under compulsion. You see if it doesn’t come out that way.”

“While I’m away,” Alex went on, “you might take another look for the
films. It is quite important that we get them.”

“And when we do,” Clay interrupted, “what do you think we will find
there? Just give a guess about it!”

“Unless I’m mistaken,” the other replied, “we’ll find a picture of a
tall man with long arms peering out of a canyon back of a campfire.”

“Just my notion! But who is this tall man with long arms, and why does
Gran meet him in the forest, and say nothing to us about it? If he is in
trouble, why doesn’t he put it up to us to help him?”

“Well, well, well,” chuckled Alex, “here we stand talking about films
that never existed, about a campfire that never was, about a pass never
on any map, about a pursuer who never lived! And over there on the shore
Case is building a big fire. Now, Clay, just remember that there never
were any films! We’re not going to have this trip spoiled with any
mystery! What is Case building his fire for before he catches a fish?”

“He’ll probably dig a hole in the ground, fill it full of hot rocks, and
make a regular oven of it, before he gets the fish. Then, when he has
the bird, fresh from the river, he’ll heat up the rocks again, wrap the
fish in leaves and put it into the oven, with hot rocks on top of it and
under it, and cover the whole outfit up with leaves and earth.”

“Is that the way to bake fish in the woods?”

“That surely is the way,” answered Clay. “Now, you see. Gran has gone
into the forest. Perhaps you’d better be getting ashore.”

“I just don’t like this sleuthing business a little bit!” the boy
grumbled, as they drew the canoe back to the _Rambler_.

“It seems to be necessary,” Clay replied. “If we are ever to acquit
Gran, in our minds, of all crookedness, we’ve got to know the truth, and
the only way to learn the truth, it seems to me, is to find it out for
ourselves.”

“That’s just it!” Alex agreed. “If this was to be done to get the kid
into trouble I wouldn’t be mixed up in it, but as it is to get him out
of trouble. I’ll go to the limit.”

Alex paddled off to the shore, which was not very far away, and Clay saw
him stop for a moment and talk with Case then dive into the forest. By
this time the sunshine had left the valley of the Columbia. Away over to
the west, beyond the ridges, it would shine on the broken country—on a
new world in the making—for an hour or more, but here its rays were
stopped by the peaks which shone, white and still, above the cedars.

Clay sat for a long time, watching Case angling for the “big one,” he
had mentioned, and listening to the call of birds high up in the air.
Like all feathered things they were abandoning the lower levels and
sweeping in swinging circles up into the sky to catch the latest rays of
the sinking sun. Their wings glistened golden in the light and their
musical voices came down soothingly.

Case caught his fish, after a time, and proceeded to heat more pieces of
broken rock for his primitive oven. Clay sat watching him piling embers
on the mound after he had filled it with leaves and earth. It was
growing dark there now, and no hint of the return of Gran or Alex had
come. Finally Case called from the shore:

“I’m going to bring this fish over to the _Rambler_ directly. Have you
got the coffee and potatoes ready?”

No, Clay had not once thought of the coffee and potatoes, he had been so
busy watching Case and thinking of what might be taking place in the
forest.

He hastened to the cabin, built up a great fire in the heater, set a
kettle of potatoes over, switched on the electric stove, put the
coffee-pot on, and then turned to the little table.

Captain Joe, who had been asleep when Alex left, which accounted for his
being there at all, lay on the floor playing with Teddy. The two had
already become firm friends.

The sight of the dog brought a notion to Clay’s mind. Why not send
Captain Joe into the forest to look the boys up? He would do it, if told
to, and would be sure to come back if he failed to find them.

“Here, Captain Joe,” the boy said, “don’t you want to go and find Alex?
Put on your hunting shoes and go find Alex.”

Captain Joe sprang to his feet instantly, tumbling Teddy over in a heap
as he did so and, advancing the deck railing, looked over to the woods.
Clay took one of Alex’s shoes and one of Gran’s handkerchiefs into his
hands and let Captain Joe sniff at them.

“Now you know whom to look after,” he grinned at the intelligent dog,
“and won’t go loafing around Case, even if he is cooking supper.”

Clay got the dog into the canoe, though it was a wonder, more than once
during the operation, that it didn’t tip over, and, taking up the
paddle, started for the shore.

Case saw him coming and ran toward the shore to meet him. Captain Joe
arose to get foothold for a spring, and the canoe went over, landing
both the boy and the dog in twenty feet of water. It did not take them
long to get to the shore, where Captain Joe cleared himself of water by
a few vigorous shakes and Clay threw off his outer clothing to dry them
by the fire.

“You’re a fine dog!” grumbled Clay, as he stood before the blaze of dry
cedar branches. “I give you a chance to have a run on shore, and you go
and give me a ducking in the river!”




CHAPTER XII.—A BEAR, A FISH, AND A TREE.


Captain Joe, in his best manner, offered the most abject apologies for
his conduct, and ended by rubbing his wet muzzle against the boy’s hand
and receiving a forgiving pat on the head.

“If you’ll look after the boat, a little while,” Clay said, shivering,
“I’ll go out with the dog and look for the boys. There may be something
wrong with them. They should have returned an hour ago.”

“If they don’t get back right soon,” Case remarked, “they won’t get any
fish. The oven was hot when I put that big one in, and it won’t be long
before supper will be ready.”

“I’m uneasy about them,” Clay admitted.

“Then you go back to the boat,” Case advised, “and let me look after the
kids. You’re shivering with cold! I’ll take Captain Joe with me, and
we’ll dig ’em out in no time. Then we’ll bring the fish on board and
have a feast. I suppose you have the other things nearly ready?”

“Why, yes,” Day remembered, “I put the coffee and potatoes over, and
they’ll be spoiled if I don’t hurry back. You’ll have to hunt up the
boys after all. I’ll get right back to the boat and get dried out.”

“But look here,” Case cried out, as Clay started toward the primitive
canoe, “how are we to get on board if you take the boat back?”

“I’ll tie a cord to the line and throw it back,” Clay solved the puzzle,
picking up a stone. “I suppose I can throw a rock sixty feet?”

“All right,” laughed Case. “I didn’t think of that. Now you get back and
dry yourself. And get supper ready, and don’t throw the line to the
shore until you hear us calling.”

Clay paddled back to the _Rambler_, and Case, led on by the dog, started
off into the cedar thicket. At first Captain Joe trotted along calmly in
the white circle thrown by the electric candle in the boy’s hand, but as
he penetrated deeper into the forest, following a wide canyon running
between two precipitous ranges, he became excited and dashed on so
rapidly that it was with difficulty that Case kept pace with him.

It was dark as a pocket in the forest, and the underbrush made progress
difficult, but the boy and the dog kept resolutely on for nearly half an
hour before coming to a halt. Then Captain Joe bristled his back, showed
his teeth, and emitted a succession of threatening growls.

“What is it, old boy?” asked Case, hoping that the boys were not far
off, as he was becoming weary as well as fearful for their safety.

Captain Joe advanced through a thicket for a few paces and then backed
out, showing that, whatever it was that he was investigating, it was not
very far away. Case did not urge him on, for he did not know what peril
lurked in the darkness of the undergrowth. The dog continued to growl,
but did not again advance into the tangle from which he had just
emerged.

There was no wind whatever in that sheltered place, and there was only
the roar of the rapids below the _Rambler_ to break the silence, except
that now and then a night bird flew protestingly from a perch in a
nearby tree and winged to a more secluded position. Case stood with his
light on the thicket for a moment, listening.

Then he heard a giggle from a great cedar in the middle of the tangle of
bushes. It was not a laugh, but a positive giggle. The tree, only forty
or fifty feet away, was thick of bough, and Case could not see into its
top, but the giggle was repeated, and he walked forward.

There was no mistaking that giggle! Alex was hiding in the tree! Clay
supposed that the boy had seen the light coming and had climbed the
cedar for the purpose of playing a joke on his chum, so he walked on
into the tangle at its foot and called out:

“Alex! Come out of that, you crazy loon! What are you doing up there,
anyway? Come down or I’ll send a couple of bullets up there.”

The giggle came louder than ever, and Alex’s voice came down from the
lower boughs of the tree.

“You might keep your light going,” the lad up the tree said, in a casual
manner, “for if you let it switch off you’ll probably receive a visit
from the grizzly bear that has been keeping me up in this tree for a
couple of hours. And keep Captain Joe away. His Grizzlyship could kill
him with one poke.”

“A grizzly bear down here!” cried Case, and the next minute he was some
distance away, whirling the light swiftly around his head.

“The grizzly will like that, I know,” Alex said, calmly, from the tree.
“He’s a sociable kind of a bear, and has been inviting me to come down
and accept of a furnished room inside of him. Suppose you take a shot at
him, old man? I don’t think he intends going away until he sees my
finish. And, if I were you. I’d climb a tree before I shot. He tells me
that it annoys him to be shot at.”

“You everlasting, concentrated essence of cheek!” cried Case. “Why don’t
you shoot him yourself? He’s your bear! What?”

“I clipped one of his ears,” replied Alex, “and then my gun dropped to
the ground and he ate it. At least I heard a crunching that sounded like
eating a piece of steel. I haven’t got my searchlight, because I had to
throw it at him when I climbed the tree.”

Case took the hint about getting up in a tree, while Captain Joe looked
on in red-eyed wonder. He could not understand why the boys did not help
him capture or kill the big beast sitting at the foot of the tree.

The grizzly had set up a protest at the interruption of his silent wait
under the tree for the supper he had ordered, and was now sniffing
toward the bushes where Captain Joe stood. He kept out of the circle
thrown by the searchlight as much as possible, but was evidently
determined to make a stand right there for his stomach’s sake.

The light wavered and traveled about considerably while Case was worming
his way up to the branches of a tree, and so, in the uncertain light,
the bear kept going bravely nearer to the dog. Captain Joe did not
retreat. So far as Case could see from his place of safety, the dog was
getting ready to do battle.

“Here, Captain Joe!” Alex called, “you’ll get your dome of thought
dented if you go fooling with that grizzly. He’s been raised a pet, and
doesn’t like to have dogs seek his society.”

“‘Dome of thought dented’ is slang,” Case put in, from his tree, “and
you’ll wash dishes to pay for it.”

“All right,” Alex replied, submissively, “you just dent the grizzly a
few and I’ll wash the dishes. I’m hungry, and I’ve a notion that Gran
has deserted, and I want to get back to the cabin. If I should appear on
South Clark street in my present apparel, the police would pinch me for
neglecting to patronize the clothing stores. See?”

“The bear got you, did he?” asked Case, anxiously. “Did he hurt you?
Guess you got up the tree just ahead of him! What?”

“A thousandth part of an inch ahead of him,” Alex answered. “He got part
of my jacket and the most of my trousers. Hurry up and shoot.”

Case knew that the situation was serious, for, unless he could succeed
in killing the grizzly, the beast might remain on guard all through the
long night Clay might hear the shots and come to the rescue and he might
not. Alex’s shots had not been heard at the river. Still, in spite of
all, he could not resist the inclination to laugh at the boy’s
description of his attire.

“I can’t shoot him unless I can see him,” he replied. “He’s in the
thicket now, trying to look Captain Joe out of countenance. Whistle to
the dog, and when he gets under your tree the bear will follow. Then
I’ll turn on the flashlight and shoot.“

“Great wisdom, considering your lack of early training!” cried Alex.
“Here, Captain Joe!” he called, “Come away from that bear and look up
into this beautiful tree! Come on, old snooks!”

The dog sprang away from the grizzly and backed, snarling, to the very
trunk of the tree. Looking up, he saw his master among the branches, and
straightway tried to climb up to him, an undertaking which was as loyal
as it was impossible.

The grizzly sprang forward and lifted a huge paw to strike the dog, and
that would have been the finish of Captain Joe if Case had not acted
promptly. The circle of white light fluttered over the bushes for an
instant, struck the bole of the tree just above the bear’s head, and
then dropped to his neck, where it rested.

The bullet struck the bear where the spotlight rested, at the base of
the brain, and he dropped to the ground, dead to all intents and
purposes, though his huge body contorted on the underbrush for a moment,
and once or twice he endeavored to rise to his feet. The bullet had
broken the spinal column and entered the brain. As the motions were all
automatic, they soon ceased, and then Case and Alex after other shots
had been fired, came sliding down out of their trees, each grinning but
white of face.

“That was a good shot, kid!” Alex said. “You ought to have the hide for
a rug!”

“I’ll have it in the morning, all right,” Case answered. “Just now we’d
better get some steak and hustle back to the _Rambler_.”

“But you said you’d have fish for supper!” suggested the boy.

“How long do you think a fish will remain fit to eat if kept in an oven
after being cooked through?” demanded Case. “My fish was ready to take
up when I came out after you, and that’s more than half an hour ago. By
the time we get back it will be burned to cinders.”

Case threw the light over the boy and broke into a laugh, serious as the
danger had been. The clothing was almost torn from Alex’s back, and
drops of blood were trinkling down.

“He almost got you!” Case exclaimed.

Captain Joe approached his fallen enemy and then looked up at the lads
with a gleam of admiration in his red eyes.

“The dog knows,” was all Alex said on the subject. “But, come,” he went
on, “let’s get back. Gran’s eloped, and we needn’t wait for him.”

“Eloped!” repeated Case, turning the light on his friend’s face to see
if this was not a new joke. “Eloped with whom?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the boy, determined not to tell anything
about the meeting of the morning; “I saw him in here, just up there at
the angle of the canyon, talking with a man, and then the bear came
along—and I entered into conversation with the bear!”

“Did Gran see you?” asked Case, wondering if the strange lad had
observed Alex’s peril and failed to protect him.

Alex shook his head and plunged forward through the trees. Captain Joe
barked at his heels a moment, and then ran back to the bear, where it
lay on the ground under the tree.

“Wait!” Case called. “You needn’t run away from me! Captain Joe is
asking you to come back and take the grizzly with you. He wants some of
that meat for his supper.”

Alex returned and the two boys skinned a shoulder and secured quite a
quantity of bear meat, after which they resumed their tramp to the
river. During this time Case had said nothing more to Alex about the
disappearance of Gran He did not like the abrupt manner in which his
questions had been answered, and resolved to let the boy tell what he
knew in his own way and at his own convenience.

It took them a long time to get back to the river, and even then they
found themselves some distance below the point where the _Rambler_ lay,
and where the fish had been cooking. The long, foaming rapids lay in
front of them, indistinct in the dim light of the stars.

It would be impossible for the _Rambler_ to drop down to them, for the
rapids would have drawn her in, even with her full power opposing, and,
besides, there was the fish, which might be worth uncovering. So the
tired boys trudged slowly along the rocky bank, sometimes turning into
the interior to avoid coves, and saw, in the darkness, danger rockets
ascending to the sky from the deck of the _Rambler_!




CHAPTER XIII.—A MYSTERY AND A FISH SUPPER.


“Clay is getting anxious!” Alex observed, as a red rocket went hissing
toward the stars. “He’s taken the right course to hurry us, at any
rate,” he added. “It is a good thing we brought those rockets along with
us. We may need them sometime worse than we do now.”

“How do you know how badly he needs them?” demanded Case. “You have been
away for hours, and it is more than an hour since I went into the forest
to search for you. A great deal may have happened in that time.”

“But Clay is safe enough,” Alex insisted. “If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be
capable of sending up rockets. If any one had attacked him, or he had
met with a serious accident, he wouldn’t be doing that, would he?”

“I hope you are right,” Case replied.

“He’s just sending a notice, in red fire, to us that supper is ready and
waiting,” Alex laughed.

Captain Joe began to scurry on ahead, doubtless smelling the odor of
supper from the cabin, but Case hastened to order him back. At the same
time the boy shut off his searchlight and reloaded his automatic.

“It may be just as well to come up to the _Rambler_ quietly,” he
advised. “After all, we don’t know what is going on there. And I’m going
to see about that fish, too, unless there are loud cries for help from
the _Rambler_! I had a hard time catching that bird, and I’m not going
to lose a fish supper if I can help it. It may be done just right at
this minute. Who knows?”

“If we break our necks falling over these rocks, and drown in some of
these pools, and brain ourselves on a fallen log, and kill ourselves in
several other ways,” Alex grunted, “we won’t want any fish for supper.
This traveling in a desolate land in the night without a light is just
about the fiercest proposition I ever came across.”

Indeed it was slow work, and hard work, following the rugged, broken
river line, but the lads pressed sturdily forward, notwithstanding the
complaints of Alex and they soon came to a point from which the lights
of the _Rambler_ cabin struck out on their uneven pathway. The deck of
the motor boat was deserted, and there was no one in view in the cabin,
so far as the lads could see, through the two small windows on the shore
side.

Directly, however, they made out a figure moving about in the cabin,
evidently stooping low in search of something. Then the great prow lamp
was turned on and the deck, the bulk of the cabin, and the swift-running
river for many yards about were illuminated.

“There!” whispered Alex. “Didn’t I tell you he was safe and sound?
You’ve got to go some to get Clay into a mess he can’t get out of.”

As the boy spoke Clay appeared on deck with another rocket in his hand.
Case was about to call out to him not to waste it, but Alex motioned for
him to wait.

“Let’s see about the fish first,” he proposed, “and go on board with a
meal that will make him lick his chops like a hungry cat. Cooked fish
and bear steak will make him take notice, eh?”

“If you keep on talking slang,” Case reproved, “you’ll have to wash
dishes all the rest of the trip. I’m not going to warn you again!”

“I’d wash a bushel of dishes if only I might empty them first!”
exclaimed the boy, pressing one hand to the waistband of his torn
trousers. “There never was a boy so empty as I am right now!”

By this time the rocket was showering a brilliant red light in the sky,
and the boys were arrived at the place where the fish had been consigned
to Case’s rude oven. As the latter bent over to uncover the contents of
the pit Clay saw them from the deck and called out:

“The fish is here, piping hot on the stove. I was just telegraphing to
you about it Wait, now. I’ll throw the line across, and you can draw the
boat over. You don’t deserve any supper, but I’ll forgive you just this
once. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“Is that the cause of this Fourth-of-July celebration?” asked Alex. “If
I sent up rockets every time I had something to tell, there would be
something doing in the heavens every minute of the time.”

“That is no fairy tale!” Case agreed. “Only you know so many things to
tell that ain’t true!”

A slender line came whizzing through the air, secured to a small rock,
and Case caught it deftly and proceeded to draw in the heavy rope which
would bring the impromptu canoe to the shore. Captain Joe was first in
when the boat, if such it may be called, came to the water’s edge, and
Case signaled to Clay to pull him across.

“Why not let me in?” asked Alex.

“All right,” grinned Case, “you may go if you want a ducking. The dog
gave Clay a soaking this afternoon.”

So the canoe started off with Captain Joe as the only passenger. As if
to prove good character and make amends for the mishap of the afternoon,
he sat with dignity in the middle of the burned trough, and never
stirred until Clay assisted him to the deck of the _Rambler_.

Case and Alex were soon aboard. They halted at the door of the cabin,
anticipating a flood of questions, but none came. Clay said not a word
about the delay for an instant.

Then Alex turned his back, and the boy saw the ravages the grizzly had
made in the wardrobe of his friend. He said nothing, even then, but sat
back on the railing and held his sides. Indeed, Alex was pretty well
stripped. Captain Joe looked up into Alex’s face as if asking why he had
introduced a new style of dress into the wilderness.

“The grizzly did that, eh?” Clay asked, presently. “It is a wonder he
didn’t climb the tree after you?”

“Tried to,” replied the boy, looking Clay over as one looks over the
face of a fortune teller who has described an actual event in the past,
“tried to, but I dropped matches down on him. They burned his snoot, and
he quit. But how is it that you know about that? Did you follow Alex
into the wilderness? Who told you about the tree and the bear?”

“When you got the fish out of the oven,” asked Case, as soon as the
other had asked his questions, “didn’t you take a turn in the woods?”

“No,” replied Clay, with a quizzical smile, “I haven’t been into the
woods at all. Never went farther than the shore.”

“Then you must be Sherlock Holmes, Jr.,” insisted Alex. “The bear came
on the stage more than a mile from here, and you couldn’t have seen him
from this spot. What is there about me that tells you that I was treed
by a bear? Come, now, smarty, tell me!”

“Your clothes!” laughed Clay. “You have no idea that I would lay it to a
fish coming up out of the river and biting you, have you?”

“Smarty!” repeated Alex. “If you know so much about what took place in
the woods, tell me what has become of Gran. Come on, now.”

“Gran has gone over the rapids!” was Clay’s astonishing reply.

Case and Alex looked their amazement, but did not reply.

“He went past here in a boat, a boat that looked to me like the one we
lost, and—”

“Yes, he did!” Alex cut in. “I saw him out there in the woods. He was
standing under a tree, and there was a—”

“He must have had to hustle to get to the river before we did,” was all
Case said. The mystery was too deep to talk about.

“You remember the waterproof paper and envelopes we brought with us,”
Clay went on, glad that Alex had stopped short in his explanation, “well
it seems that he had some of both with him. How long he’s been carrying
them in anticipation of an emergency like this one, I don’t know, but it
seems that he had waterproof envelopes and paper with him when he left
the _Rambler_.

“Well, what’s the answer?” asked Alex fidgeting about.

“Slang!” cried Case. “I know who’ll wash dishes to-night!”

“Not very long ago,” Clay went on, taking a sheet of paper from his
pocket, “I saw a boat drifting down upon the _Rambler_. There were two
figures in it. One was rowing, evidently just to keep steerway, and the
other was laying on the bottom in the prow.

“When the boat came in the circle of the prow lamp, I saw that it was
the one that got away from us where we found Teddy, and also that the
figure in the prow was resting in a position which indicated an attempt
at hiding away from whoever might see the boat from the _Rambler_.

“Robin Hood, and Treasure Island, and Robinson Crusoe are dull history
compared to this voyage!” exclaimed Alex drawing closer. “A man hiding
in the prow of a stolen boat! Go on with the dream! You’ll wake up
directly and find the fish cold!”

“In a second,” Clay resumed, with a tolerant smile, “I saw that the
person in the prow was Gran, and that he was trying to signal to me. The
boat came along pretty fast, and I didn’t catch on to what he wanted
until it was close at hand. Then he lifted one hand up over the edge of
the boat and threw something up stream. The boat moved on down before
what had been tossed into the water came to the prow of the _Rambler_. I
reached down with our dipping net and got it. Here it is:

“‘Alex treed by a bear. Case approaching. You’ll hear from me later.
Keep your eyes open. Don’t lose the f——’

“That’s the end of it,” Clay went on. “Now, who’s ready to give the
answer? Who rowed Gran away? Why? What word had he started to write when
he stopped?”

“You’ve got me going!” Alex exclaimed. “I’m no mind reader!”

“What about it. Case?” asked Clay. “What’s your answer?”

“I’m just out of answers,” Case laughed, though there was a worried look
on his face. “Look here!” he went on, “we’ve been trying to escape the
mystery stunt ever since we returned from the Amazon. Now, suppose we
quit guessing and wait for the answer? No one knows a thing about that
boy, and that’s the answer, so far as I know what it is!”

Clay and Alex exchanged significant glances when Case was not looking in
their direction. They both had a suspicion as to what the word beginning
with “f” would have been had it been completed!

Their supposition that the word would have been “films” increased their
wonder and added to the mystery. To tell the truth, they had both
believed that, for some purpose of his own which he would be able to
explain satisfactorily later on, Gran, had removed the films from the
kodak, and now, if their suspicions were well founded, he was asking,
under strange circumstances, that they be well taken care of!

Case went into the cabin and found the fish safe under a tin, secured by
a heavy weight, on the table. Teddy was sniffing about, and Captain Joe
was reproving him for his inquisitiveness by biting at his inch or so of
tail.

“Now,” Alex said to Clay, “what about it? The message from Gran, the
message sent adrift in the river and caught by you, seems to indicate
that the boy never took the films—that he thinks we still have them in
our possession—that he considers them very important! If he didn’t take
them, who did? Say,” he went on, with a look into the cabin, where Case
was getting out dishes and fighting the bear cub to keep him off the
table, “isn’t it about time we annexed the wisdom of Case? The only
reason we had for keeping all this from him was that there would be no
talk about it which Gran might overhear.”

“Of course we’ll tell Case,” Clay replied, “but I thought that there
never were any films, never any robbery at the pass, never any
long-armed man talking with Gran in the cedar canyon!”

“All right!” grinned Alex, “I’ll tell Case, and then we’ll cut it all
out of the menu. We’ve got to do it in order to have any fun on the
Columbia river. But where will Gran end up if this thing keeps on?”

“That must go with all the rest,” Clay replied. “But Case is beckoning
us into the cabin and we’ll see about that fish. Of course I’m eager to
hear about the bear and the tree, but you can tell me about that after
we see what Case’s fish is like.”

The fish was excellent, and even Captain Joe and Teddy were given all
they wanted of it. Now and then, during the meal, the boys looked
gravely over to the place usually occupied by Gran, but nothing was said
of the boy’s strange departure until the fish had disappeared. Then Clay
told of the meeting in the cedar canyon, and of other strange actions on
the part of the absent boy with which the reader is already acquainted.

Case was loyal to the absent one, and all three boys decided to go down
the river slowly, in the hope that Gran would in some way escape from
his mysterious companion and return to his friends.

“But how did he get back to the river so quick?” asked Alex. “He was
away back there by the bear tree when I last saw him.”

“There is a bend in the river to the south,” Clay answered, “and the man
who took him out evidently had the boat hidden there. By going to the
shoreline at the bend he would save half the distance. I figured that
out before you boys came back.

“And then,” Clay went on, “you came out at the rapids, and so lost
considerable time. The question which puzzles me most is not how he got
out, but why he went away.”

“And in our boat!” exclaimed Case. “The thief must have been just below
us when the boat broke away. Well, we’ll get it back when we get hold of
the scamp. It may be days before we see Gran again, so there is no use
in asking each other questions. We’ve got to get the _Rambler_ around
the rapids in the morning, and I’m going to bed.”

“I move,” Alex added, rising, “that we anchor out in the river. We are
too close to shore. I don’t want any ruffian sneaking in on us in the
night.”

This was agreed to, and the anchor was lowered over a bar near the
middle of the stream. This precaution taken, the boys crept into their
bunks, but not for long. The mysteries of the night were not yet over.




CHAPTER XIV.—A SWIFT AND PERILOUS RIDE.


It was midnight by Clay’s watch when the boy heard Captain Joe making a
great argument out on the deck of the motor boat. He hastily drew on his
trousers and a thick coat and stepped out of the cabin.

As he did so the boat rocked frightfully, nearly throwing him from his
feet. Seizing hold of the railing, he switched on the prow lamp and
sprang to the motors.

There was no doubt in his mind as to what had taken place. The anchor
chain had either broken or been cut, and the _Rambler_ was swinging down
into the rapids. He called excitedly to the sleepers and set the craft
in motion.

The motors responded nobly, but the full power of the machines was not
sufficient to change the direction. Stern first, the _Rambler_ was
drifting with the swift current He could see the waters on either side
foaming over rocks, feel the grating of the sides and bottom of the boat
on obstructions beneath the boiling surface.

Case and Alex came bounding out, their eyes half-closed from sleep,
their automatics in their hands. For an instant, in a quieter stretch of
river, Clay felt the boat spring up stream in answer to the powerful
motors, but directly the motion shifted again.

“Put up your guns,” the boy shouted to the others. “You, Case, come here
and keep the motors in full action. You, Alex get a pole and stand at
the prow. Do the best you can to keep the boat off rocks. She is bound
to go down, and we’ve got a fight on our hands. Steady, now.”

“What is it all about?” asked Case, his voice only dimly heard above the
rush of waters. “The chain must have been cut!”

Clay did not answer, but took the helm and managed to swing the boat
into a smoother bit of water near the east shore. The current swept
against the upper side, nearly tipping her over, as she swung, but in an
instant the prow turned down stream and the boat righted a little.

“Keep her to the shore!” shouted Case, frantically. “We can never ride
those rocks. Keep her toward the east bank, Clay, for heaven’s sake, or
it will be all over with us. What are you doing?”

“Full speed ahead!” roared Clay. “If we should strike a rock while
headed for either bank we’d go over in a flash! Our only hope is to keep
her dead with the current and fight her through!”

That was a wild ride. Time and again the boat grazed great rocks, and
more than once Alex’s pole prevented a head-on collision with
half-exposed boulders against which the mad waters swirled with terrible
force, sending spray high up in the air. Wherever there was a setting of
the current Clay led the boat.

Believing that the water would be deeper, the course freer of
obstructions, where the current swung, the boy followed the drift for a
mile or more without serious mishap. The prow light showed a rush of
current the like of which the boys had never seen before.

Now the sweep wound off to the right, now to the left, now it dove
straight at a boulder only to turn aside at the last moment because of
the water already banked against it. The _Rambler_ was light, and the
swift motors gave her steerage way over the current, so in many cases
she went over hidden rocks where a boat only drifting would have struck.

Presently a deeper roar than that about them reached the ears of the
boys, and they almost held their breath as a high wall of rock loomed up
directly in front. The current set hard against this bank and fell away
in foam on a curving shore below.

“Now we are in for it!” shouted Case. “If we strike that rock we go to
pieces. It seems all clear below.”

Clay turned the prow away from the obstruction, but as he did so the
current caught the broadside and whirled her round and round, seemingly
a motor boat doomed to destruction after a hard fight for life.

But, when all seemed lost, a kindly fate sent the _Rambler_ against a
round rock and held her there, tipping frightfully, until the prow
swayed away from the precipice against which the current was pounding
with a noise like thunder. Clay saw the opportunity and headed the boat
out a trifle and put the whole force of the motors against a rushing
eddy which swirled just ahead.

The counter current caught the boat and swung her farther away from the
rock, but not far enough away to prevent her coming within a yard of it.
A minute later the _Rambler_ dropped into clearer water, and Clay swung
her away from the banks of foam which clung to the curving shore below.
The rapids were behind!

Clay wiped the perspiration from his face and called to Case to shut the
motors down to half power. This done, the boat traveled easily in the
direction of an island of rock not far away.

“Shall we land there?” asked Case, speaking at the top of his voice, for
the tumbling water still sent up its clamor. “I think I see a ledge
where we can get out if we want to.”

“What for?” screamed Alex. “Let’s get away from here.”

Clay motioned to approach the ledge, and in three minutes the boat lay
still, with her nose against a low shelf which ran a part of the way
round the rocky island and then ascended to the very top.

“The anchor is gone,” Clay said, regretfully, “so we’ll have to hang on
here with our hands. That is, unless we can find something to tie to.
Look about, Alex and see if there isn’t a peak we can throw a rope
about. I’d like to see what there is on the top of this boulder.”

Alex sprang to the ledge and walked a few paces. Then he called back,
pointing as he did so. There was a steeple of rock just in front where a
rope might be made secure. In a minute the boys were out of the
_Rambler_, and she was tied safe and sound.

“That was a wonder!” were Alex’s first words. “A wonder!”

“Seems good to get my feet on something solid once more!” Case said. “I
thought, at one time, that we were out a motor boat, cheated of a ride
down the Columbia river. I wonder if there are many places like that?”

“Lots of ’em!” Alex answered, with a wink at Clay. “Most of them have to
be passed in balloons! Isn’t that right. Clay?”

But Clay was climbing the winding ledge to the top of the rock which
formed the little island and made no reply. While Alex and Case were
discussing the peril they had just passed and expressing opinions as to
how the _Rambler_ came to be adrift, the boy was mounting to the summit
for the purpose of examining the river below, so far as it was possible
to do so in the night time, with only the stars in the sky.

Directly he called to the boys, and they went bounding up the ledge,
half anticipating something in the line of trouble. They found Clay
standing in the middle of an almost round and level space about twenty
paces across. On every side, save that where the ledge wound up, there
was a sheer fall to the water. It was a very Gibraltar of a rock.

“Look at this, boys,” Clay began, “there’s been some one here within
less than half an hour. And there’s been a fire here, too, a fire built
of dry sticks brought from the shore. Here are the embers, still alive.”

Alex nosed about the summit for a minute and came back to the others
with a paper from which emanated a peculiar odor in his hand.

“They didn’t cook here,” the boy said. “There are no signs of the fire
having been used for that purpose, no scraps of food about, so I looked
around to see what the fire was built for. I think I have found out.
Look at this.”

“This,” was the paper he had found. Clay took it into his hand.

“Do you know what it is?” asked Case. “I think I do.”

“Well, unless I’m very much mistaken,” Clay answered, “this is a bit of
paper which once wrapped what we call ‘red fire,’ used for lighting up
parades, and also for signaling. The people who made this fire used it
to signal from. There is no doubt about that.”

“Then there are two parties about here, perhaps three!” exclaimed Alex.
“I think we’d better get into the _Rambler_ and scud for the Pacific
ocean. This is getting too thick for me.”

“I wonder if the men who built this fire, and who signaled from this
rock, waited here for the _Rambler_ to come down to them a wreck, with
her crew drowned and pounded into unrecognizable masses by the rocks? It
looks that way to me.”

“They wasn’t waiting here to give us any Christmas presents!” laughed
Alex. “Come on, let’s be on our way! I don’t like the looks of things
hereabouts, and Captain Joe is calling to us from the boat. Hurry up!”

Clay examined the dragging end of the anchor chain when they returned to
the _Rambler_ and discovered that it had been broken by prying one link
open. It must have taken a strong tool and a powerful hand to make the
break in the massive chain.

“What’s it all about?” demanded Case, as the motors were started once
more, and the boat cut away through the water. “What are they after us
for, I’d like to know? What are they after Gran for?”

“Answer in our next issue!” grinned Alex, wrinkling his nose at Teddy,
who was trying to crawl up the table leg.

“I’m going back to bed,” Case announced, sleepily. “There’s nothing
likely to happen, and the conversation carried on by you fellows is
irrelevant and immaterial. It will be three hours before daylight shows
out on the plains, and four or five before this wrinkle in the world’s
surface gets any of it.”

So he crawled off to his bunk and Captain Joe took possession of the
sleeping place usually occupied by Alex while Teddy climbed into Clay’s
bunk and curled up with his sensitive little nose on his paws.

“I’ll sit up with you to-night,” Alex said to Clay, “for I want to talk
with you. First, when are we going to get out of this?”

“I’m tired of mystery,” Clay replied. “Right now we’re headed for the
ocean!”




CHAPTER XV.—THE RAMBLER TAKES TO WHEELS.


“Straight through?” asked Alex who did not like the idea of overlooking
the hunting and fishing along the river. “I’d like to get a shot at a
bear and a deer before we strike tidewater.”

“You have already had a shot at a bear!” laughed Clay.

“Oh, yes, but that didn’t count. I was too high up in the air to take
good aim, and I lost my gun, too. No, that doesn’t count.”

There was a long silence, during which Clay watched the moon coming up
over the Rocky mountains, plating the rippling river and the brown crags
with silvery light. The air was still, only the murmur of the water and
an occasional protest from a bird breaking the silence.

“It’s glorious!” Alex declared, presently. “We’ve got to the point where
we can appreciate a little quiet. If Gran could come walking in on us
now, things would be about right, don’t you think?”

“Just about right—provided Case could catch another fish like the last
one,” was the reply. “I don’t know what to think about Gran.”

“I don’t think about him at all,” Alex hastened to say. “I’ve got rid of
it all! I’m waiting for the puzzle to solve itself.”

“Where did the boy come from, and where is he going, and why did he come
to us at the pass, and who is he, and why is he meeting strangers in the
woods without our knowledge, and has he been carried off by force? And
many other wheres and whys,” Clay laughed.

“I give it up!” was Alex’s reply. “As I said before, I’m waiting for the
puzzle to solve itself. When it does, we’ll know where my films went to,
and that will help some. That’s the key to the whole thing—the film
robbery heads the list.”

There was nothing more to talk about, for no amount of guesswork could
unravel the mystery, and no combination of words seemed capable of
throwing a single ray of light on the matter. The _Rambler_ ran on
through the night, carrying prow lights and side lights, and covered
many miles before the morning sun lifted over the mountains and looked
down on the river.

“What about loitering around for a time in the hope of finding Gran?”
asked Case, as he came from the cabin, rubbing his eyes, and noted that
the _Rambler_ was under full speed. “We ought to look for him, anyway.”

“We’ve given that up,” Alex answered. “We’re going right on about our
business, fishing and hunting, and having all the fun we can, regardless
of all mystery. We might look for Gran a thousand years, in this
wilderness, and never find him. Also we might hunt for our lost rowboat
until sheep grow wings, and never set eyes on it. Some one stole the
boat, and some one abducted Gran. That’s all there is to it.”

“Yes,” Clay said, comings to the assistance of the boy, “that is all
there is to it By to-morrow morning, if we keep on at this rate, we’ll
strike the place where the Columbia skirts a mountain and turns squarely
to the south. At that place there is a human habitation or two, and we
may hear something of the boy there. In the meantime, it is you to catch
another fish.”

“For breakfast, too,” chimed in Alex who seldom was out of healthy
appetite. “I’m tired of pancakes and bacon, and fried mush, and boiled
potatoes, and canned beans. Oh, oh,” he shouted, jumping to his feet,
“there’s the bear meat!”

“I don’t know whether the grizzly will make good eating?” Clay said,
“but we can soon find out If you’ll get Captain Joe and Teddy out of the
way, I’ll fry a few slices.”

“I bar that!” Alex exclaimed. “I don’t like fried bear meat. Say, what’s
the matter of parboiling the meat and making a bear stew? That will be
all right. We’ve got potatoes, onions, turnips, rice, and lots of things
to put into it.”

“I wish we had a cabbage!” Case observed. “There never was a good stew
that wasn’t part cabbage. Don’t they can cabbage?”

“Never heard of canned cabbage, but when we come to the salmon canneries
down the river we can find out about it. You go and get the fish for
breakfast, and we’ll have the bear stew for dinner. Just take the canoe
and paddle ashore and fish in some quiet pool.”

Case clapped his hands to his sides in quick remembrance.

“The canoe?” he repeated. “Who’s seen the old trough since the run we
made through the rapids? Of course it was all banged to bits. Now, what
are we going to do?”

“Make another,” Clay responded. “We can make another in a day, or we can
wait until we get to Boat Encampment and buy one.”

“Then we’ll buy one,” Alex put in. “It is too much of a job to burn one
out. We can buy one for a few cents, of an Indian.”

“And another thing,” Case observed, “where is that bearskin rug you were
going to have?”

“Back there in the woods,” was the slow reply.

“Fish off the back end of the boat,” suggested Clay. “There are fish in
the middle of the river as well as in the quiet pools.”

The loss of the primitive canoe was seriously felt, for there were not
many places where the _Rambler_ could get close to the shore. Also Alex
mourned the loss of his bearskin. Finally Case caught a five-pound fish,
and the choice parts of it were soon frying on the stove.

After breakfast Alex proceeded to make his bear stew, and Clay tinkered
at the motors to make sure that they were in good order.

“If they had gone back on us when we were in the rapids,” he explained,
“we should have been drowned, every one of us. It was the headway of the
boat that kept us going right. I’m strong for these motors.”

It was a beautiful morning in one of the most picturesque districts in
the world. There were white caps on many of the peaks, and the dark
green of the cedar foliage and the brown of the rocks contrasted well
with the sun-kissed waters of the river. There were bird-songs in
plenty, and here and there a great fish leaped above the surface, as if
to inspect this strange thing which rode upon the waves instead of, like
a gentleman, diving under them!

After a time the valley of the river broadened out on the west until a
great stretch of forest lay between the shoreline and the distant
elevations. Perhaps the word valley has been used wrongfully. The
country in that part of British Columbia is really an upland plateau,
with mountain ridges lifting still higher.

From its source near the Kootenay lakes the Columbia falls hundreds of
feet in rapids and foaming cascades before it reaches the Pacific. It is
a vagrant stream, winding this way and that, washing mountains and
sweeping past high levels of tableland. There are salmon in the river
and all kinds of wild game in the canyons and forests it skirts, so it
is an ideal water course for such a trip as the boys had started out on.

About noon, when the sun shone hot above the dancing waters, the
_Rambler_ came to another drop in the valley. The boys could hear the
water tumbling over rocks, and the growing current told them that the
falls, or rapids, whichever they were, were not far away.

“I think we’d better get to shore here,” Clay observed, “and take a look
ahead. I don’t want another experience like that of last night. It is
only by the greatest of good luck that we are alive this morning.”

“That’s the truth,” Case exclaimed. “And somebody is mourning over a
plan that didn’t work. I wonder if they think we are dead?”

“We’ve cut out all that!” Alex broke in. “We can’t have any fun if we
keep our minds bent up into exclamation points all the time. Look!” he
continued, changing the subject, “there’s a place where we ought to be
able to bring the _Rambler_ right up to the shore.”

The place at which the boy pointed did look inviting, and so Clay headed
the boat in that direction. There was a break in the high bank of the
stream, and it looked as if there might be a pool inside which would
make a desirable harbor.

When they came to the broken bank they saw that a small rivulet entered
the Columbia there, and that its waters, in some period of flood,
undoubtedly, had carried a quantity of soil away, leaving a pond west of
the river line—a pond which seemed to be deep enough for the _Rambler_
to float in. Also this pond was almost shut in from the river, the
scrubby trees growing there filling in between the two bodies of water
except where the channel cut the natural levee.

“This is a beauty!” Alex cried, as the _Rambler_ felt her way through
the opening. “We might hide away from a fleet of police boats here!”

Captain Joe seemed to agree perfectly with this expressed opinion of the
locality, for no sooner was the _Rambler_ within reach of the shore than
he sprang out and began investigating the situation. Teddy climbed to
the railing of the deck and would have followed the dog only for the
fact that he was tied to the prow by a long rope.

Alex was off the deck almost as soon as the dog, and the two engaged in
a wrestling match on the grass, a contest in which the boy came off an
easy victor on account of the dog not being posted on tricks of knocking
an opponent’s feet out from under him. This over, the dog started off
into the forest, looking back as if to inquire why Alex was not coming
along with him for a romp in the jungles.

“I believe I will take a turn in the forest while you look over the
rapids,” Alex said, his eyes following the dog longingly. “We can have a
run for half an hour, and then get back in time for the start. Anyway,
why not remain here all night? That would be fine.”

Before Clay or Case could offer objections, the boy and the dog were out
of sight in the thicket. Their brush-tramping footsteps were heard for a
time, and then there were no indications that they had ever entered the
woods at all. Clay smiled as he looked at Case, following the course the
two had taken with his eyes.

“After we have a look at the rapids,” Clay promised, “we’ll go hunting
in there. Unless I am much mistaken, we’ll find deer not far away from
this valley. Venison would make a hit with me just now.”

“That sounds good to me,” Case answered. “We ought to get fresh meat
before long, for our bacon is giving out. Now for the rapids!”

The rapids were more formidable than the boys had expected to find them.
The bed of the river seemed to drop away several feet to the north, and
the narrowing channel was spotted with boulders which fretted the
current into foaming eddies. There seemed to be no main channel, such as
Clay had followed through the peril above.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to put on the wheels,” Clay observed as he stood
looking over the swirling surface of the broken river. “We can never
sail the _Rambler_ through there. Anyway, suppose we look for a place
level enough to run the boat through. This bank looks good and level,
and it seems to remain so for some distance, skirting the rapids like a
highway. Do you know where the wheels are?”

“Certainly,” replied Case. “They are under the floor in the prow.”

The boys returned to the _Rambler_ and lifted a hatch in the deck close
to the forward stem. From the cavity underneath Case drew four wheels of
about two feet in diameter. They were of iron, light as possible, with
broad tires. Next came two long iron rods, with fittings at each end for
the wheels. These were the axles. Then came great staples, shaped like a
horseshoe, washers, and screws.

“How we ever going to get them on?” asked Case. “We neglected to hold
dress rehearsals with these things!”

“I’ve studied that all out,” Clay said, proudly. “We’ll have to take to
the water to screw these horseshoe staples onto the sides of the boat.
There are four iron plates with screwholes where they go on. Oh, come
on! I’ll show you as we go along.”

The boys worked steadily, understanding, and fortune favored them, so,
in a couple of hours the wheels were in place, and the prow of the
_Rambler_ was out of water.

“Now, when Alex comes,” Clay said, “we’ll pull her out.”




CHAPTER XVI.—TEDDY RECEIVES A CALLER.


The sun dropped out of the sky above the valley, glinting the rough
elevations to the east with golden light, but throwing long shadows
where the _Rambler_ lay, half in the water and half out. Still, Alex and
the dog remained away, and there were no indications of their approach.

“The next time Alex leaves the boat,” Case grumbled, “we’ll tie a rope
to him, so we can haul him back. He holds the blue ribbon for getting
lost and meeting with foolish adventures.”

Teddy, the cub bear, by this time a chosen chum of the white bulldog,
sat up on the prow of the _Rambler_, listening for the return of his
playmate, his small ears bent forward expectantly. Occasionally he
turned his nose to the west, sniffing at the light breeze now blowing
from that direction. Clay called Case’s attention to the movements of
the cub.

“I believe he scents Captain Joe!” the boy said. “He appears to be
uneasy and expectant. The little chap has us beaten when it comes to
discovering an approach not yet in sight. Anyway, he scents something.”

The boys were not in the boat, which lay at a great angle, the prow
being on the land and the stern in the water, but were standing half
concealed in the undergrowth which here fringed the natural levee. As
the shadows grew longer, the boat more indistinct, a rustling was heard
in the brush away to the west, up the rivulet, and then a heavy figure
shambled into view. Case caught Clay by the arm and whispered:

“That’s Alex coming back with some of his monkeyshines! We’ll just lie
still and see what he’ll make of the rakish attitude of the _Rambler_.
Captain Joe is not with him, so he must have told the dog to lay low
while he plays a trick on us. We’ll show him.”

The figure which had left the undergrowth was merely a dark bulk, moving
cautiously toward the boat, on the same side of the pool as that on
which the boys stood. It was without outline, and would not have been
observed if it had remained stationary. It drew nearer to the _Rambler_
noiselessly, like a person resolved to surprise an unsuspecting foe.

Teddy now began uttering low, coaxing whines, almost like those of a
puppy at sight of its mother, and the boys hastily drew out their
automatics and their searchlights, without which they never left the
boat. The moving figure sprang forward, and then the growl that came out
of the darkness left no doubt in the minds of the boys as to what it was
that was paying a visit to their boat. Case pulled Clay by the arm
again.

“That is a grizzly!” he cried. “A grizzly weighing about a ton and a
half, come to see if Teddy is perfectly contented in his new home.

“Don’t shoot!” warned Clay. “We may not be as lucky as you were in the
bush back yonder, and a wounded grizzly is a wicked thing to fight. Wait
and see what she will do. Sure as you live, she’s going to board the
_Rambler_! What do you think Teddy will do?”

“The question with me,” Case replied, “is not what Teddy will do, but
what the bear will do. She can make a mess of that cabin in about a
minute and a half! If I thought I wouldn’t hit Teddy, I’d shoot and
frighten her off. Wish we could reach the switch that throws on the prow
light! That would give her a shock, all right.”

“Oh, let them have their visit!” Clay replied, with a silent but
pronounced chuckle. “We ought to feel grateful to the bear for going to
the trouble of calling on us. I hope Captain Joe will keep away for a
while yet. He would make trouble, I’m afraid. Hear the two talking
together! I’d like to know what kind of a tale Teddy is telling.”

Teddy was whining like a puppy and the newcomer was uttering low and
threatening growls. It was evident that she knew that hostile creatures
were not far away. The boys could see only the dim figures moving about,
but it seemed that the bear was trying to coax Teddy away, and that
Teddy was trying to obey but was held back by the rope.

“She’ll bite through the rope!” Case whispered, “and Teddy will get away
if we don’t do something before long. Alex wouldn’t like to lose the
little scamp. Suppose we throw a bit of electricity at her,” he went on.
“She might run at the sight of the light.”

Presently they heard a crash in the cabin, as if the grizzly had taken
full possession there and was rearranging the furniture to suit her
personal tastes. It sounded as if she had climbed up on the table and
broken it down with her great weight. Clay’s whispered estimate was that
she must weigh nearly a ton.

“I know what she’s doing,” Clay chuckled. “There is a box of sugar on a
shelf near the door, and she is trying to get that. She’s got her nerve,
to invite herself to supper and then break the furniture!”

A shot and a loud call now came from the dark forest, and Captain Joe’s
deep voice came booming out of the shadows. The boy and the dog were
returning, and the situation was becoming more complicated.

“If Captain Joe comes up,” Clay whispered, “he’ll attack the bear, and
she’ll give him one swipe and then there won’t be any Captain Joe. We’ll
have to turn on our lights and shoot. Only be careful!”

The dog’s voice came nearer and nearer. It was evident that Alex was
bringing in some kind of game, and that Captain Joe was making a kind of
triumphal progress for him!

The grizzly was now making a great noise in the cabin, and Teddy was
expressing his anger at the lack of attention. The boys crept toward the
boat and waited for the bear to emerge from the cabin, so they could get
a shot at her, but she seemed satisfied with the trouble she was making
on the inside and remained there. Clay moved along toward the prow, his
automatic ready for use.

“What now?” demanded Case, keeping at his side.

“I’m going to turn on the prow light,” Clay replied. “We can’t do any
shooting by the light of the electrics. If she moves at all, as she
will, of course, she’ll be in the dark. Don’t come with me, but get
where you can shoot without hitting me. I’ll be at the back of the boat,
understand? Alex and the dog are not far away now, and so we’ve got to
do whatever is done right quick. Don’t miss when you shoot!”

“I won’t miss if I can help it,” replied the boy. “You don’t think I
want to be devoured by the bear, do you. Shoot straight yourself!”

Clay moved slowly back, entered the water, clinging to the side of the
boat, now rocking violently because of the tumbling going on inside the
cabin, and finally reached out for the electric switch.

When Alex and Captain Joe emerged from the thicket, a second later, they
saw a sight which stopped their breath as well as their legs for an
instant. The deck of the _Rambler_ lay at an angle of about thirty
degrees, cocked up on wheels in front and resting in the water at the
rear. On the prow sat Teddy, all wound up in his rope because of his
twistings to get away, and from out the door of the cabin looked the
stolid face of a huge grizzly bear, her little eyes flaming with rage,
her teeth showing where the snarling lips were drawn back. Neither Clay
nor Case was in sight.

Captain Joe bounded forward at first, but stopped at a call from the
boy. Teddy sat up straighter and welcomed the dog with a whine, thus
transferring his loyalty from the bear to the canine.

“Hey, there!” Alex called out. “Where are you? I didn’t know we kept
furnished rooms to rent on the _Rambler_! Who’s your new tenant?”

Then shots came from the prow of the boat and bruin rushed for the deck,
but the incline was considerable and one of the shots had taken effect
in her shoulder, so she fell and rolled, snarling, back to the door of
the cabin. More shots came from the prow, and she arose and struck at
the air with her great paws, as if trying to meet the bullets with all
her brute force.

Presently she fell, wounded to the death, and then Alex saw Case and
Clay enter the lighted space and fire shot after shot at the bear.

“Save the lead!” the boy called. “Come back, Captain Joe!”

But Captain Joe had no intention of missing the final act in the tragedy
in progress on the deck of the _Rambler_. He sprang to the side of the
boat, looked up at the elevated prow, expressed his disapproval of the
arrangement by a low growl, and, walking back, entered the rivulet and
so climbed over the lower end of the vessel, where it lay down in the
water. Teddy watched him with twinkling eyes as he approached the body
of the bear. Satisfied that the grizzly was harmless, the dog slipped up
to the cub and looked him over. The boys broke into laughter.

“Captain Joe knows that there’s been trouble here,” Clay said. “He is
sizing up the damage. Wise old scout, that.”

“Suppose we size up the damage in the cabin?” Case exclaimed, darting
through the doorway and switching on the lights.

The cabin was in a mess, to express it mildly. Bruin had broken down the
table while trying to reach the sugar, and the bear stew left over from
dinner was standing in puddles on the floor. The coal heater was
standing at an alarming angle—one of the legs having been knocked out
from under it. The bunks looked as if the bear had tried to sleep in
each one of them and found them all inconvenient on account of size.

“Never mind,” Alex cried, “I’ve got plenty of game out on the bank.
We’ll have a partridge supper, and give Teddy an extra share for
bringing this big fellow here. Say, but he’s a monster, isn’t he?”

“That is a she bear,” replied Case. “A she bear, like the one that came
out of the wilderness and devoured forty children because they called a
prophet names. I hated to shoot her, because she came here as a guest,
but I thought I’d rather eat her than have her eat me.”

“Teddy seemed to make friends with her until Captain Joe arrived,” Clay
declared, “but when the dog showed up the cub’s allegiance turned to
him. Which is the way of the world, after all!”

The boys set to work straightening up the cabin and, this accomplished,
they dragged the great carcase of the grizzly to the shore and proceeded
to skin it. Some of the meat was laid away for the next day, Alex’s
catch providing for the supper that night.

“We’ll have to draw lots for the rug the hide will make,” Clay said, as,
hunter fashion, they worked salt into the green skin and hung it up.

“I ought to have it,” Alex insisted. “I shot the first bear.”

“Case ought to have it,” Clay advised, “because he shot this one.”

“Oh, well,” Alex considered, “we’ll all have this one in the club room
we’re going to fit up in Chicago this winter.”

“Now, about supper,” Case began, as they all assembled on the deck
again. “How are we going to cook supper on this tipsy old boat?”

“We can build a big fire on shore,” suggested Clay.

This was finally agreed to, and a roaring fire soon shot up in the
tangle on the north bank of the creek. There supper was cooked and
eaten, and then thoughts of sleep came to the tired boys.

“I think we’ve done wrong in building this fire,” Clay said. “We might
just as well have sent up rockets telling our enemies where we are.”

“I don’t believe there’s any one within forty miles of us,” Alex put in,
optimistically.

“What about the signals burned on the rock up stream?” asked Clay.

“Oh, that was a long way off. We’d better be thinking of how we’re going
to pull this boat around the rapids than worrying over people hidden in
the bushes, watching Case eat more than is good for him. He’s a
wonderful hand at table,” he added, as Case threw a potato at his head.
“But, then,” he added, in a conciliatory tone, “I’m something of an
eater myself.”

“Who’s going to watch to-night?” asked Case, presently. “Some one ought
to. I don’t think we ought to take chances, here on the shore. There may
be more bears in the woods.”

It was finally arranged that Case should watch until midnight, and that
Alex should relieve him then. Somehow, there was an uneasy feeling in
the air.




CHAPTER XVII.—CAPTAIN JOE TO THE RESCUE.


Clay went to his bunk early, but could not sleep. The events of the day
had been exciting, and the danger was not yet past. Besides, his bed
sloped with the body of the boat, and he had a sense of trying to sleep
standing up. He could hear Alex tumbling about in his bunk, censuring
Captain Joe, who seemed to be going through some kind of a performance
for the exclusive benefit of Teddy, the bear cub.

Case was moving about on deck, and Clay smiled as he imagined him
clinging to the railing to keep his footing on the tilting planks. The
prow lamp was out, and there were no lights in the cabin. There were
stars early in the evening, but clouds came up after a time, and it was
dark as a chamber in the Mammoth Cave before ten o’clock.

Presently it began to rain. The water fell in great sheets, and the
wind, rising steadily, drove it into every crevice in the light
sheathing of the cabin. The drops drummed on the deck like hailstones.

Clay heard Case enter the cabin to prevent getting soaked, and heard him
talking to Teddy, whom he seemed to have taken into his arms. Then the
tired boy dropped off into sleep.

When he awoke Case was shaking him by the shoulder, and the boat was
rocking and bobbing up and down, as if in the water the whole length,
and not half in, as it had been when he went to sleep. He sat up on the
side of his bunk and saw that every light on the boat was burning.

“Why don’t you switch off the lights and let me sleep?” he asked.

“Hear it rain!” Case advised. “And feel the _Rambler_ nodding to the
rising water! Do you know where we can find that extra anchor?”

“It ought to be in there where the wheels were,” Clay replied, getting
out on the floor and stumbling over Teddy, who at once retaliated by
biting and clawing at his bare legs. Case drew the cub away by the tail.

“You’ll get put on the dunce block, Mr. Teddy,” he said, “if you don’t
cultivate better manners You’re always under foot, like a pet pig on a
ranch. No,” he went on, addressing Clay, “I’ve looked in the prow hold,
and everywhere else I could think of, and the extra anchor is not in
view. I wish I had by the neck the rascal who cut away the one we were
using.”

“Why do you want the anchor?” demanded Clay. “Do you think the boat will
float straight up in the rain? We can find the mud hook in the morning.”

“Use one of your own jokes to weigh the _Rambler_ down,” advised Alex
tucked up in his bunk. “They’re heavy enough to weigh an ocean steamer
down.”

Case removed Alex from his bunk, all bundled up in blankets, and rolled
him about on the floor, not as a punishment for a too personal
suggestion, he explained, but for the good of his digestion. Teddy
assisted in the manipulation of the lad, and Captain Joe actually
laughed.

“When you’ve finished with that monkeyshining,” Clay said, “perhaps
you’ll tell me why you want the anchor.”

“Just you go out and look,” was all the answer Case made.

Clay did not go out and look, for it was raining steadily, and he would
have been wet to the skin in a minute, but he went to the door and
looked out. The little valley of the rivulet was a brimming ocean of
angry water, and the natural levee which separated it from the Columbia
was out of sight. In fact, there was a current running over it!

The _Rambler_, weighed down to some extent by the iron wheels which had
been put on the afternoon before for the purpose of running her over the
shore to the smooth water below the rapids, was still in what had been
the sheltered pool, but the boat had floated, and the wheels were fast
against the levee.

Whenever the water should lift the boat so that the wheels would clear
the levee, then the _Rambler_ would drift out into the raging stream,
and the experience of the previous night would be re-enacted, with a
different result in prospect. It was another trying situation.

“How in the dickens did this valley get so full of water, all at once?”
he asked, turning back to the cabin. “This is serious!”

“There must have been a cloudburst on the mountain,” Alex suggested,
arising and looking out at the yellow sweep of water, now far above the
spot on the bank where the cooking fire had been built “Looks like
another flood.”

“There is no soil here to catch and hold the downpour,” Case explained,
“and this valley drains a lot of country, which seems to be mostly
standing on end. The result is that a heavy rain here will send a lot of
water into this depression, and there you are!”

“And it will send the _Rambler_ over the rapids!” Alex exclaimed, “if we
sit around here and wait for it to raise a few feet more.”

“I don’t know what we can do, I’m sure,” Case said, dejectedly.

“Perhaps the river will rise so we can shoot the rapids,” Alex
suggested. “That would be easier than rolling the boat around. I don’t
feel no nourishment in treating a boat like a wheelbarrow.”

“Do you think we might do that?” asked Case, turning to Clay.

“We can tell by looking,” was the reply. “This whole valley is a larger
repetition of the little one the rivulet fills to the brim every time it
rains. For a hundred miles, here, the valley of the Columbia is narrow,
with mountains on either side. The rain, comes off the slopes in sheets,
and there is no reason why the Columbia should not rise six or eight
feet during a storm like this.”

“If it does, shall we risk it?” asked Case.

“I vote for risking it!” Alex shouted. “What’s the use of going for a
boat ride and then trundling the old thing along on wheels?”

“Well,” Clay said, to change the subject, “all we can do now is to get
out a long, strong rope and tie up to one of the cedar trees. Who’ll
swim out with it? It will be like taking a morning bath!”

“I will!” Alex replied. “I want a good swim, anyway. I’ll put on an old
suit, so I won’t get scratched if I go to the bottom over a nest of
briars, and carry the rope to that big tree near where we built the
cooking fire. The rope will hold the _Rambler_ all right, will it?”

“It certainly will,” Clay responded. “There is nothing to fear from the
rope, but you must be careful and not get into the current that is
sweeping out into the river. No one could swim against that.”

“I’ll be careful, all right!” grinned the boy. “I don’t want to do any
long-diving stunts here. If I should go under out there I might not come
up until I reached the ocean, which would be too long without food.”

The boy put on an old suit which water and mud would not injure and,
taking a light cord, fastened it about his neck and leaped into the
swift-running water. He had little difficulty in swimming straight to
the tree and, drawing the rope to him by means of the cord, secured the
boat to the great cedar by the heavy cable. Then he turned back.

The lights from the boat lighted up the pool, or what had been the pool,
and Case and Clay could see the boy sporting about in the water, now
trying to mount a log which the current was carrying down, now dodging
out of the way of a mass of boughs which obstructed his passage.

“There’s something floating down that looks like a paper!” he finally
cried, “and I’m going to get it. Just watch me, will you?”

He struck out into the swift drive of the rivulet and swam boldly for a
few strokes, missing the paper at first, but finally overtaking it. When
he turned back the boys could see that he was in distress. He was
swimming with all his strength, but he was being carried out. The sweep
of the tide was too strong for him.

“That’s a fine thing!” Case shouted. “Turn in, kid! Turn in to the bank!
Don’t try to swim against the current. Turn in!”

Alex did turn toward the bank, but the water swept him on, and he passed
the _Rambler_ with a white face showing under the lights.

“What can we do?” asked Clay, half crazy at the situation. “We can’t do
a thing! The ropes are all attached to the tree. Alex,” he called, “try
to turn toward the shore! You can’t swim against the whole river! Face
the other way, down stream, and point for the shore!”

There was now a roaring in the boy’s ears, and the water seemed a
desirable place to rest! After he had lain inactive a moment he would
have the strength to swim out! Many a tired swimmer has been deceived by
the same ideas that came to Alex—and never came out again except by the
aid of human hands!

The despairing boy saw the cascade just ahead and knew that, once over
the falls made by the natural levee, he would be in the open river and
beyond assistance. Still he swam, desperately, putting out his last
ounce of strength. The lights from the boat did not shine brightly where
he now was, and the turbulent river beyond looked dark and cold.

Then a white body struck against his back, there was a pull at his neck,
and he knew that, slowly, surely, he was winning against the current. He
realized that Captain Joe was holding him by the shoulder and, while
half supporting him, swimming for dear life!

The boys on the _Rambler_ watched the struggle helplessly. Captain Joe
was doing more than either of them could have done. Now the swimmers
gained a trifle, now they were swept nearer to where the flood tumbled
over the levee. Captain Joe naturally drew toward the shore, and this at
last brought them to safety.

After a long pull they came to a portion of the levee where heavy shrubs
still resisted the rush of the water, and Alex grasped them and, after
breathing for a minute, worked his way to the shore, Captain Joe still
clinging to him, for the dog was well-nigh exhausted. Clay and Case set
up great shouts when the two started up the bank of the swollen pool.

They would still have to swim to gain the _Rambler_, but this was not at
all risky, as there was little current between the bank and the boat.
Indeed, if Alex had kept to this part of the expanse of water instead of
swimming out into the current after the paper, he would have had no
trouble in returning, and Captain Joe would have had no opportunity to
show both his loyalty and his intelligence.

When the two clambered up on the deck of the _Rambler_ they met with a
reception which disclosed the affection that existed between the boys.
They shook Alex by the hands, and the shoulders, and called him “a great
dunce” for swimming out into the current, and then shook hands all over
with him again! And Captain Joe was petted and fondled to his heart’s
content. Even Teddy, the bear, threw his short arms about the neck of
the big white bulldog and gave him a hug!

“Don’t you ever think he doesn’t know all about it!” Clay explained.
“Teddy was just as anxious as any of us, and I thought I heard him
scolding when you struck out into the middle of the flood. Captain Joe
was positively disgusted then!”

“Was it hard to get him into the water?” asked Alex.

“Hard to get him into the water!” cried Case. “Why, he was in before we
knew anything about his intentions. That is some dog!”

Rain was still falling, and the boys decided to build a great fire in
the coal heater and sit by it until morning. Should the river continue
to rise, they thought, they would make the attempt to ran the rapids.

“The high point won’t come until this water has had time to get into the
river and swell it opposite this point,” Clay explained, “but we may as
well sit up as to go to bed and lie awake thinking what a confounded
numskull Alex is. Still,” he added, “we should have missed the little
rascal. I’m strong for a medal for Captain Joe!”

It rained steadily all night, and when daylight came it was only a blur,
for the clouds were heavy and low, and the rain seemed to fill all
space. The river was up to the top of the levee, and the _Rambler_ was
pulling at the cable fastened to the cedar. The valley, so far as they
could see, was a moving flood of yellowish water.

“If this keeps up until noon,” Clay said, “I’ll be inclined to take a
jump at the rapids. What do you say, lads? Of course we’d have to take
the wheels.

“I’m for it!” cried Alex and Case, in a breath. “Lead us to it!”




CHAPTER XVIII.—CASE MAKES A HIT WITH DOUGH.


“The river is running like a mill-race,” Case declared, at noon, as he
looked over the surging mass to the east of the spot where the _Rambler_
lay, “and the rain is stopping, so I don’t think it will get any higher.
Shall we set the motors going and try to run down? I’m getting weary of
staying here.”

“You may wish yourself back a good many times before we pass the
rapids,” Alex said. “If you think it’s any fun to breast a strong
current, just jump in there and try it. Then you’ll see!”

“I’m not curious about high currents,” grinned Case, taking a glass and
looking down the river. The _Rambler_ lay above the fringe of stunted
bushes which had hidden the pool on their approach, and so the boy could
look a long way down the stream.

“I can’t see a single rock sticking up,” he said, presently. “The
current sets toward the other shore, and looks safe, but it is making an
awful noise! It must be ten feet above yesterday’s mark. Let us get
ready.”

“I’m for getting dinner first,” Alex interrupted “I don’t want to fill
up on river water! We can fry some of the bear meat, and get up quite a
meal in a short time. I like bear better in a stew, but we’ll have to be
content with fried meat this time.”

“Both the bears we have met were in a stew!” joked Case.

“And they had us in the stew with them, too,” Alex replied.

So the boys cooked bear meat, made biscuits out of flour and baking
powder, and ate dinner. Then they washed and put away the dishes and got
ready for the exciting run ahead of them.

“We don’t know what is below the rapids,” Clay suggested, as the boat
under full power, shot out of the pool and took the center of the
stream, “but we’re likely to find out right soon. Keep by the motors.
Case, to see that nothing goes wrong with them, and you, Alex stand by
the prow with your pole, and we’ll break the speed record for motor
boats of our class. It doesn’t make any difference how fast we go here
if we don’t strike obstructions. We’ll be through all the quicker.”

The boys were agreeably surprised at the ease with which the journey
through the rapids was made. The _Rambler_ rocked frightfully, at times,
but the high speed at which she was going kept her in fairly good water,
under the influence of the helm.

In a very few minutes she lay in a basin below the cataract. The water
ran swiftly in the basin, of course, for the great mass above was
forcing it on, but there were no obstructions and no dangerous eddies.

The whole valley to left and right appeared to be under water clear up
to the foot of the hills. The boat was kept under motion until the light
began to die out, and then tied up to a tree in a dell which had been
dry only the day before.

“Now,” Case said, switching on the lights in the cabin, “I’m going to
celebrate the escape of Hairbrained Alex by making a batch of bread.
Real bread, I mean, of hops and white flour. If I eat any more pancakes
I’ll be as flat, mentally, as they are physically.”

“I don’t believe even the bear or the dog will eat bread you make,” said
Alex, “but you might make some. We may be able to use it for an anchor.
Go ahead, Case, and I’ll catch a fish for supper.”

“Where’s your oven?” asked Clay. “We can bake biscuit under a pan on top
of the coal stove, but there are no pans on board the right size to fit
over a couple of loaves of bread. They are too large or too small. We
neglected to buy an oven.”

“There’s a granite iron pail here,” Case laughed, “that will fit down
tight over the bread on top of the heater. I’ll mix up the dough, and
we’ll have it all ready to bake before we go to bed. I’ve seen bread
made lots of times, so I guess I can do the trick.”

He took four packages of compressed yeast and put them in a cup to
dissolve, first heating the water to blood temperature. Alex watched him
with a grin on his face.

“Why don’t you put in some yeast?” he finally asked.

“That’s just what I’m doing,” Case replied, “and I’ll get along just as
well if you go and get that fish. We’ll want him for supper.”

Alex snorted and went away, pulling the bear cub along with him. Captain
Joe still stood watching the making of the bread.

When the yeast was dissolved, Case emptied a large quantity of flour
into a great dishpan and stirred the yeasty water into it Clay, who
entered the cabin at that stage of the proceedings, hastened to ask:

“How much bread are you thinking of making, little cook?”

“Never you mind me!” retorted Case. “I’m making this bread. You don’t
have to eat any of it. Go on, now, and leave me alone. Ships’ cooks are
never questioned by the officers or the passengers.”

Clay went out to help Alex catch his fish, and Case mixed the dough up
lightly, making almost a panful. This done, he switched on the electric
stove, placed a square pan, inverted, over the cherry-red coils, laid a
board over that, and set the pan of dough on to “rise.”

“That ought to be up so we can bake it to-night,” he thought. “I’d have
made bread before if I had known how easy it was.”

“What do you do next?” asked Clay, standing in the door of the cabin.

“After it rises,” Case answered, not a little proudly, “you mix it up
good and hard and put it to bake. We ought to have bread enough out of
that batch to last us a week. I can bake only two loaves at a time under
the pail, but time doesn’t count for anything with us, and the dough
will keep.”

The rain had stopped, and the boy went out on deck to see how Alex was
succeeding in his quest for a fish supper. Conditions seemed to be
wrong, for the boy had not had a single bite.

After a time the lads decided to open beans and make a supper of them,
with pieces of fried meat which had been left from dinner. Case brought
the beans and meat out on deck, under the prow light, and they soon
satisfied their hunger.

The boys sat out on deck for a long time, and then Case went in and
switched off the electric stove. Teddy sat there watching the dough
lifting in the pan, and the boy left him there, thinking that he would
soon crawl into one of the bunks and go to sleep. Then Case went out
where the other boys sat looking over the rushing water.

“That dough is coming along fine,” he exclaimed, proud of his
achievement, “and will be ready to mix with more flour before long. I
don’t see why women make such a fuss over baking. It is just as easy as
mixing pancakes. We’ll have plenty of bread now. I’ll make it often.”

The clouds slipped away and the stars looked down. The strong electric
light on the prow showed wreckage of all kinds drifting past There were
trunks and limbs of trees, some green, as if the water had undermined
the roots of live cedars.

While they sat there, laying plans for the future, something which
looked like a battered rowboat came sailing down. It surely was a
rowboat, they discovered, as it came nearer, and Clay took up the glass
and waited for it to come into the circle of light.

“Boys!” he cried, as the wreck flashed into view and then disappeared
down the river, “I believe that was what is left of our boat. It looked
like it, anyway! Now, how could that come here?”

“Caught in the flood,” Alex said, grimly. “I don’t wonder that it is a
wreck in that case. I’m a good deal of a wreck myself to-night.”

“The last time we saw the boat,” Case remembered, “it passed us, and
Gran was riding in it, and a long-armed man was rowing like mad. It
ought to be below us. I wonder if they were tipped into the river when
the boat was crushed.”

“Sure it was our boat?” he asked. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“It was the wreck of our boat,” Clay insisted. “Well, it is only one
more mystery for us to forget. I wish Gran was here to-night.”

“So do I,” cried Case. “He’d be tickled half to death to get some of my
bread!”

“I hope the poor boy isn’t lying at the bottom of the river, somewhere,
or drifting in this yellow flood,” Clay said. “I would give a great deal
to know why he left us.”

“He tried to tell us something in that paper,” Alex cut in. “I wish he
had had more time to write. I guess that long-armed chap just grabbed
him and started away. We’ll catch up with him yet, if he isn’t dead.”

The boys talked for a long time, Captain Joe snoring at their feet and
Teddy somewhere in the cabin. They would have been on their way that
night, only they were entirely ignorant of the character of the river
below them. There might be more dangerous rapids close at hand.

“Case,” Clay said, at length, “why don’t you go in and look at your
bread? You turned off the heat, and it will be getting cold. Then we
won’t have any bread—which would be a shame.”

“I clear forgot about it,” Case answered. “HI go right in and look after
it. It won’t get cold, for the pan under it and the board and the stove
are warm, or were when I switched off the electricity. Guess I’ll mix it
now. It must be about time. Who’ll stay up and help me bake it?”

“I will!” answered Alex. “I’m just hungry for bread.”

Case went into the cabin and turned on the lights. The first thing he
saw was a great heap of what seemed to be snow banked high against the
table where the electric stove stood. But it was not banked up so
securely that it was not pushing out over the floor.

Then he saw that the pan of dough had “risen,” and that it was dripping
down over the stove, over the table, and over the floor. It seemed to
the amazed and disgusted boy that there was a barrel of it on the table
and another barrel on the floor. It looked as if a spring of dough had
bubbled up out of the pan and started to make a dough pond of the cabin.

Clay and Alex heard him trying to gather the dough off the table, and
stepped into the cabin. They took one look and fell down on the floor,
screaming with laughter. Case turned angrily away.

“You seem to think it funny!” he said.

“Funniest thing I ever saw!” roared Alex. “What are you going to do with
all that stuff? You’ve got enough there to feed a bread line. Oh, my!
Oh, my!” and he rocked back and forth and shouted.

“I’m going to get this pile on the floor out into the river,” Case
answered, beginning to see the humor of the situation. “That in the pan
is clean and all right, and will make splendid bread.”

He took a broom and began pushing the mess on the floor toward the door,
but it was too sticky. After the second muscular exertion in that
direction he stopped and leaned heavily on the broom.

The white heap was lifting straight up in the air.

“Glory be!” shouted Alex. “If it isn’t rising yet. Lookout, or it will
push the roof off the cabin! Look at it! Look at it rise!”

The dough continued to move. It shunted this way and that, then actually
sprang toward the boy, who leaped back in amazement.

“It is chasing him!” chuckled Alex. “The white ghost of the bread that
never was is chasing Case! Oh, hold me, some one! He’d have made bread
before if he had known how easy it was! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

The next moment it _was_ chasing Case! Teddy, struggling under the
sticky stuff, got to his feet and moved toward the door, trailing dough
after himself in great stringy masses.

Case sat down on the edge of the table and roared. Clay hastened outside
to have his laugh out, and Alex just rolled on the floor, connecting
with the dough in more places than one and looking, when he arose, like
a baker who had slept in his mixing trough.

“I told you to put a little yeast in!” cried Alex. “I guess you did it,
all right. Now, you’ll have a time giving Teddy a bath I Why not put him
in the oven and bake him? We’ll have lots of bread now! Wow! Wow!”

Case chased Alex out of the cabin and set to work cleaning the bear. It
was a thankless task, for Teddy resented his efforts, and seemed to be
complaining that a cub couldn’t even go to sleep under the electric
stove without having his fine bearskin coat all mussed up!

After the boy had done his best Alex turned in and assisted in the
further work of preparing what dough was left for the oven. He chuckled
to himself all the evening, and talked knowingly to Teddy when that
abused little bear came to him for sympathy.

“When you see a printer making bread,” he instructed the bear, as he
washed flour and yeast out of his eyes, “you want to climb a tree. Case
means well, but he knows about as much of the manufacture of bread as
you do of the Federal constitution! Next time you see him melting up
yeast, you take to the woods. It will be safer there!”

But, in spite of this sarcasm, Case stuck to his job until the bread was
baking under the granite iron pail on the heater. As luck would have it,
his efforts proved successful, and the lads had hot bread and butter
before they went to bed.

There was little need, they thought, of keeping watch that night, for
the _Rambler_ was tied up quite a distance from the river, in four feet
of water, which was flowing over a piece of ground which had been dry
not long before. They were out of sight from the center of the stream,
and no one would be likely to wade or swim through the inundated country
to get to them.

In the morning when they awoke the sun was shining above the valley of
the Columbia and it was late. They paid little attention to the hour,
however, for they were in no hurry now, and, besides, there was
something more important for them to consider.

This was how to get the _Rambler_ back into the river! During the night
the water had run out and left them stranded!

“Tell you what we’ll do,” suggested Alex. “We’ll have Case make some
more dough, and that will raise the boat up so we can slide her in!”

“All right,” Case declared, “have all the fun you can, but you won’t get
any more of that bread. Teddy and Joe ate it up after we went to sleep.”




CHAPTER XIX.—WHY THERE WAS NO VENISON.


A golden morning followed the day of storm. A golden morning on the
Columbia river! Still, the lads were in no mood to enjoy the beauties of
Nature as shown in her wilder moods. The _Rambler_, as has been said,
was stuck fast in the mud, some distance from the ever-receding water.

“The rocks are showing again,” Alex observed, looking down the river
with the glasses, “and it looks as if there were falls ahead.”

“The Columbia river,” Case grumbled, “seems to me to be pretty sudden.
She climbs up a couple of rods one day and drops down the next. I wish
she’d kept up until we got through this valley.”

“That’s all the fun of it!” Alex insisted. “If you want to live a life
of idle pleasure, just you go and get into a scow on a country
mill-pond. We came out here for adventures, didn’t we?”

“From the looks of things,” Case continued, “we ought to have brought a
house-moving machine with us. How are we ever going to get this boat
back into the river. We might hunt and fish here until another flood
comes along,” he added with sarcasm in his tone.

“That would suit me, all right,” Alex returned. “I don’t care how long
we remain here. There’s plenty of game in the woods, and, now that you
have learned to make bread, we are not likely to starve to death.”

Clay who had been roaming around in the sticky soil which the river had
deposited on the inundated lands, now came rushing up to the boat.

“Get out the rifle!” he said, speaking softly to Case. “There’s a fine
deer back there in the thicket. We’ll have venison for dinner.”

All was excitement in a moment. Case brought out the magazine rifle, and
all three started for the thicket where Clay had seen the deer. Captain
Joe was left in the cabin, with instructions to devour any stranger who
should try to scrape his acquaintance.

The boys walked cautiously for a short distance, then Clay stopped and
pointed to a dense growth of bushes and brambles just ahead. Out of the
tangle lifted the head of a deer.

“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Alex in a whisper.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Clay replied. “She stood just like that
when I went away to get the rifle. She must have heard me working my way
through the undergrowth. Maybe she’s dead—killed standing!”

“Dead!” Alex grinned. “Don’t you see her move her head? There, she’s
pulled it down now, so there’s nothing to be seen of her. Did you ever
see handsomer eyes in a creature’s head?” he added.

“Looked like she was asking us to come and help her,” Case declared.

“I noticed that,” Clay mentioned. “I wonder what is the matter with her.
I’m going in there to see. Keep still, you fellows.”

Clay crawled through the thicket on his hands and knees, parting the
bushes right and left, and making as little noise as possible. Directly
he lifted a hand out of the undergrowth and motioned for Case and Alex
to follow him. The deer had again raised her head above the tangle and
stood looking at the boys with pleading eyes.

“Never saw anything like that!” Alex muttered as he made his way through
the bushes. “I never knew a deer could look a fellow in the face that
way. I though they’d run away. Maybe she’s hurt.”

When they came up to where Clay lay in the thicket they found the deer
only a few feet away, standing over something lying on the ground.

“Why doesn’t she run?” asked Case. “What kind of a deer is that? She
must be foolish in the head most of the time.”

“Slang! You’ll wash dishes!” declared Alex.

“No slang about it,” reiterated Case. “That’s just plain talk.”

“Can’t you see what the trouble is?” asked Clay. “There is a young fawn
there, caught in the briars, and the mother won’t leave it.”

“I can see it now!” Alex cried. “Pretty little thing!”

“That will make good eating, too,” Clay observed, turning his face away
as he spoke. “Come, now, who’s going to shoot first? Better shoot to
kill, for the deer may run away when she hears the report.”

Case and Alex looked at each other an instant and then sat down on the
ground and watched Clay, who was still looking the other way.

“I don’t believe I want any venison,” Alex exclaimed.

“I never did like venison!” was Case’s comment on the situation.

Clay turned and looked his chums over in mock anger.

“Just when I find a deer for you!” he cried. “Just when you’ve got a
chance you may never have again, you go and back out. What’s the matter
with you boys? Think the deer is not fit for food?”

“I’ve lost my appetite for venison, that’s all,” Case explained. “You
can shoot if you want to. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo, deer!”

He arose and waved his hands at the animal, shouting at the top of his
voice. The deer stepped away a few paces but came back at the bleat of
the fawn. Clay regarded the boy with an amused smile.

“You tell me I can shoot, and then you go and scare her away,” he
complained. “What is getting into you boys?”

“Did you see her eyes?” asked Alex. “If you shoot her we’ll leave you
here in the wilderness. I’m going to see what’s the matter with the
little fawn. Is this the time of year for fawns?”

The other boys answered that they did not know, and Alex said that he
didn’t think it was. But there was the fawn, with the mother watching
over it, whether it was the baby deer season or not. The deer bounded
away as Alex approached, but stood watching as he lifted the fawn.

“Just got wound up in vines!” the boy cried. “Come and see what a clever
little chap it is! Wish I could keep it.”

“Nix! Not on our boat! Not with the mother looking at us like that!”
declared Case, who had stepped up to the fawn.

The little creature was soon untangled, and set down in a clear space as
near to the mother as the boys could get. The deer did not seem to fear
the boys, for she stood nosing over the baby for a long time. Then she
led him away into the forest. Clay insists to this day that she bowed
her thanks as the bushes closed behind her!

“There!” Clay shouted, in pretended anger. “You’ve gone and let many a
supper get away from us. What do you mean by letting that deer run away
in that manner? You’re nice fellows to go hunting with!”

“Run after her and murder her if you want to,” Alex remarked. “The woods
are open to you, and you have the rifle. Go on and do it!”

Clay laughed in a bashful manner. Someway boys never do like to let
others know that they are possessed of sentiment!

“I wouldn’t shoot that deer, not if I was starving!” he said. “I would
always see her eyes looking out of the shade at me!”

“Don’t you ever think I didn’t know that!” Alex answered. “I guess we
are a lot of babies, after all. Now we’ll have to eat bear meat for
dinner, I can eat bear, for the bear would have eaten us if he had had
half a chance. But the next thing is to get the _Rambler_ into the
river. That won’t be no merry picnic, I can tell you. Wish we had left
her in.”

The boys made the boat as light as possible and then worked her along
with handspikes cut from the woods. It was slow work, and many a time
they stopped to breathe and joke over the job. Alex finally suggested
that they put the wheels under and so make easier work of it.

“In this muck!” laughed Clay. “Why, those wheels would sink into this
mess up to the hubs, and we should never be able to move them. No, we’ve
just got to nudge her along in this way until we get to the slope that
leads down to the river, and then she’ll go easier.”

It was noon before the prow dropped into the water. The boys were tired
and disgusted, but they had been taught a lesson which they did not soon
forget. They were lifted to banks by floods after that, but they did not
permit the _Rambler_ to lie there until the current ran out from under
her! After dinner they started the motors again and speeded down stream.

The country was still wild on both sides of the Columbia, and the boys
took plenty of time passing through it. There were many things to see
and, besides, they still had half-hearted hopes that Gran would come
back to them before they left that valley.

But Gran never showed up. The last thing they had seen that reminded
them of him—aside from the half-conscious remembrance of the boy that
was always in their minds—was the wreck of the rowboat which had drifted
down the river during that day of the flood.

It was a week before they came to the great bend of the Columbia. Here
they found stores and traders’ houses. They camped out on the batik of
Canoe river and remained there two days, laying in provisions and
getting acquainted with the people. During their stay there many came to
look over the _Rambler_, and every one lifted brows in disbelief when
told that the beat had found her way through the two long and dangerous
rapids which lay above.

The boys made no attempt to remove the disbelief from their minds. It
really did look like a pretty stiff yarn, so they let it go, loaded in
their purchases, and turned the boat south on the great river, about two
hundred miles above Upper Arrow lake.

At Boat Encampment the boys had asked, quietly, of course, if any man
answering the description of the long-armed fellow who had appeared and
disappeared so suddenly had been seen thereabouts, but no one seemed to
have seen him, or to have seen a boy answering Gran’s description. It
was said that any one passing the place would be certain to be observed,
so the boys sailed away with the notion that the two were still up the
river.

There followed a number of restful days on a smooth river. There were
rapids and falls, of course, but nothing to bring the lads into peril of
their lives. They loitered along with the current, stopping at night and
often not starting on again until the middle of the day.

The boys will never forget those golden days. They fished and hunted,
sat around roaring campfires at night, slept in the warm sunshine when
inclined, and read stories of that wonderful land. There was only one
trouble over which they brooded.

Gran had disappeared. During the time he had shared the cabin with the
boys, since he had come to them so mysteriously at the summit pass, he
had endeared himself to them all. Beside the loneliness they felt at his
sudden departure, there was always the undefinable feeling that he might
be in serious trouble and expecting them to come to him.

“If we knew that he had left us voluntarily,” Clay said, one day, “we
might be able to drop him out of our minds, but we don’t know that. In
fact, it seems to me that he was forced away.”

“But he wasn’t tied in the boat,” Alex argued. “I guess he might have
jumped out when he came to the _Rambler_. We would have shot that
long-armed humbug to pieces if he had tried to stop him.”

“There are ways of forcing a fellow along besides tying him up and
carrying him off,” Clay replied. “The man we saw him with may have some
grip on him which we do not understand. We’ll have to wait.”

“That old train robber!” cried Alex. “What kind of a hold could he have
on Gran? I just believe the boy was afraid to stir when he passed the
_Rambler_ that day. Wish I’d shot that big stiff!”

“Besides,” Clay went on. “Gran passed us that note. It was hastily
ended, as if he had been interrupted in writing it. And when he threw it
out into the river he made sure that the man who was rowing did not see
the movement.”

“The sneaking hold-up man!” Case broke in, angrily.

“We don’t know anything about him,” Clay concluded. “We have no proof
that he assisted in robbing the train. In fact, we know that he did not,
for he was on the train that carried us into Donald.”

“But he might have put up the job,” insisted Alex.




CHAPTER XX.—CAPTAIN JOE MAKES A DISCOVERY.


And in this way all their discussions concerning Gran and the mysterious
man ended. There were no signs to go by. They hadn’t a thing to point to
as an established fact in connection with the boy except that he had
come to them in trouble, had been assisted, and had been grateful.

And there were no clues to connect the long-armed man with any crime
whatever. The boys knew that he had not been present at the robbery of
the train, and that is all they did know about him, except that he had
followed on after them and either coaxed or forced Gran to desert them.

The larceny of the films was still a mystery. No one save a member of
the party could have taken them, they thought. No one except a member of
the party would have been likely to have opened the kodak and taken the
films out right there in the cabin. An outsider, it was certain, would
have taken the kodak with him and opened it at some less perilous time.

So far as the robbery was concerned, the boys had believed that Gran had
taken them. They had held that opinion until the note had been fished
out of the river. The note had started in to say something about the
films. If he had stolen them he would not be apt to talk or write about
them to the boys.

But the great point in connection with the films was this:

“Why had they been taken?” This question was more important to their
minds than the one which all had asked at first: “How had they been
taken?”

There was an indistinct notion in Alex’s mind that he had seen dark
faces behind those sitting in front of the fire at the pass. He believed
that he had secured some fine pictures of the campers, as he called
them, and was of the opinion that if other faces had peered out from the
shelter of the rocks just at the right moment they, too, would have
entered the photograph in distinguishable positions.

Who were the men loitering back there in the shadows? Were they the men
who had held up the train? And was this the reason why they could not
afford to have even one of their faces show in a photograph taken at
that spot, at that time?

They all believed that Gran could clear up a good share of the mystery
if he saw fit to do so. They had believed all along that he would tell
all he knew about that night just as soon as he became more intimate
with them. But he had left, voluntarily or by coercion, without
referring to the matter except at the end, when he had written the word
“films” in the note he had cast out on the river.

The boys talked little of the mystery which surrounded the appearance
and disappearance of Granville, but they thought about it a lot.

It is not far from thirty miles, as the river runs, from Boat Encampment
to Gold creek, which flows into the Columbia river about west of Glacier
lake, far up on the eastern ridge of the Rocky mountains. Here the lads
found themselves, one night, sitting around a great fire on the northern
bank of the creek.

Gold creek has its source in the western heights of the mountains
running along on the west side of the Columbia river during its course
to the north. At that point the two branches of the river are only about
thirty miles apart, but there is a high range of mountains between the
two currents. Gold creek penetrates so far into the hills where it has
its source that a few miles farther to the east would send its waters
into the eastern branch of the Columbia.

The boys were enjoying themselves that night. Captain Joe and Teddy were
out on the bank, sporting about, chasing each other into the low bushes
which fringed the creek. The bear had become so tame that it was not
necessary to keep him tied.

In fact, Alex declared that he would follow them to the end of the earth
if they tried to get rid of him. Captain Joe made much of the cub, and
the boys called it a happy family.

As they sat there by the campfire a long, faltering call came from
darkness to the east. The mountains come close to the valley there, and
Gold creek runs fast. The voice they heard seemed to come from the creek
itself.

Captain Joe gave over playing with the bear and darted away. The boys
called to him to come back, but he paid no attention to them. His
conduct was so unusual that all started up to ascertain the cause of his
disobedience. But before they were fairly on their feet he was hidden in
the darkness. The astonished boys looked at each other in silence.

Then Clay hastened back to the fire and threw on more lightwood, sending
the flames high up above the bushes. He also hastened to switch on the
electrics on board the _Rambler_.

“There is some one in distress up there,” he concluded, “and we’ll give
them all the light possible. Strange thing about Captain Joe.”

“He never did a thing like that before,” Case commented.

“I’m afraid he’ll get into a mix-up with a bear,” Alex observed.

“But that wasn’t a bear that called!” laughed Clay. “That was a human
voice, and it sounded as if the one who called was about all in.”

“That’s the way it sounded to me,” Case agreed.

“It may be the man who stole the boat and took Gran off in it,” Alex
suggested. “He may have started across the mountains and become lost.”

“He wouldn’t be calling to us,” Case said, with a superior smile. “He
will be apt to stay away from us! At least, I should think he would.”

“Huh!” commented Alex. “He wouldn’t know whose fire it was, would he? He
might think it some hunter’s camp. Besides, I have a notion that he
thinks we were drowned when he cut the chain of the anchor. No, he
hasn’t any idea that we are here. I hope it is him. Then we’ll get some
news of Gran Listen! There it comes again, and it is not very far away,
either. That weak voice never traveled far.”

The call was repeated again and again, and all the boys left the fire
and started off up the creek, not forgetting to take their electrics and
automatics with them. There were stars in the sky, but it was dark under
the trees along the bed of the creek.

When they were a few paces from the fire the voice called again,
faintly.

“Pretty close by!” Clay observed. “I wonder where Captain Joe is? He
ought to be showing up somewhere. Hope the fellow, whoever he is, won’t
mistake him for a grizzly and shoot him. There’s his voice now.”

Captain Joe was indeed close by, sending a long, heavy call into the
darkness. He seemed to be no farther away than the one who had called
for assistance. The boys moved forward swiftly.

“He’s found the stranger!” Case exclaimed. “I know by the sound of his
voice that he has treed something. Good old Captain Joe!”

Directly the dog came out of a thicket, leaped joyfully about the feet
of the boys, gave utterance to low growls of satisfaction, and ran back
into the undergrowth, as if inviting the lads to follow on and see what
he had discovered. They were not slow in accepting the invitation.

Clay was in the lead, his searchlight on the ground. Presently he came
to a little shelter made of fresh boughs and stopped to investigate.

“That’s been built within a short time,” he declared, as Case and Alex
came up. “But where did Captain Joe go so quickly?”

“He’s probably inside that hut,” Case replied. “He ran that way.”

The next moment the dog peered out from under the stacked up boughs,
seeming to say to his friends that he had found some one there.

“I guess he has, all right,” Clay said, when Alex expressed this idea.
“He has found a human being, for there are empty tins about, as if some
one had eaten here. Come out, Captain Joe!”

But Captain Joe did not obey. Instead, he retreated under the boughs and
growled a further invitation for them to come into his parlor!

Clay pushed his light farther and opened the overhanging mass of
foliage. What he saw inside was a slender figure lying on a rough bed of
leaves and grass. At the side of the figure were several tins of food
which had not been opened. Captain Joe was bending over the face, which
lay in the shadow, caressing it with his soft tongue.

Clay pushed the dog away and lowered his light. Then the cry he uttered
caused Case and Alex to rush through the sheltering boughs and stand by
his side. In a moment all were on their knees at the side of the figure,
now lying with closed eyes.

“It is Gran!” Clay shouted. “It is Gran come back to us!”

“He’s dead, I guess!” was Alex’s sad comment. Clay bent forward and took
the boy’s hand into his own.

“No,” he said, “he is still alive. Now, how the Old Harry did he ever
get here? And what is the matter with him?”

Case pointed silently to one leg, lying off the rough bed. There were
rude splints tied to it with strips of cloth torn from the boy’s
trousers. The garment had been cut from the leg, and it could be seen
what the splints meant.

“He’s fallen and broken his leg!” Case exclaimed. “Poor chap!”

“And he built this shelter to die in!” faltered Alex. “I wonder if he
will ever come back to consciousness?”

The shelter had evidently been constructed by the injured boy with the
intention of resting for a time after his bungling attempt at
leg-setting. The food he had brought there had been set out in orderly
array within reach of his arm as he lay on his couch of foliage, and a
dish of water—a two-quart basin which forest travelers sometimes use to
cook in—sat not far away. An attempt had been made to build a fire near
the hut, but this had not proved a success. Burned matches lay around,
but none of the dry sticks had caught fire.

“He was making a fight for life, all right, poor little chap!” Clay
said, wiping a suspicious moisture from his eyes.

“I reckon he called to us with his last strength,” Case muttered.

“I’m afraid so!” Clay answered. “Well, how are we going to get him to
the boat without causing him great suffering? He ought to be moved right
away, before he comes back to his senses.”

“I’ll run back to the _Rambler_ and bring a long board there is under
one of the bunks,” Case suggested. “Then we’ll carry him on that, just
as if it was a stretcher. We’ll give him his old bed in the cabin, and
when he comes to he’ll be so glad to get back that he won’t know he’s
got a broken leg!”

The boy was away like a shot, and presently returned with the board.

Gran was lifted gently on the improvised stretcher and carried, as
gently as the uneven nature of the ground would permit, to the boat. He
did not open his eyes during the removal, and the boys became
frightened, fearing that he was indeed dead. Alex hustled around and had
water on the stove heating in short order.

“He’s got to have hot water on that leg,” he said. “I guess I can take
that swelling down a little. Now, do you think you can tell, either of
you, how bad the injury is, and whether the bone is splintered or just
broken short off?”

Clay cautiously applied a hand to the injured limb, feeling on both
sides of the splints. In a second he looked up with a smile on his white
face and added more fuel to the fire so as to hasten the heating of the
water. Case and Alex looked at him questioningly.

“The little hero set his leg himself,” Clay said. “I don’t know how he
ever did it! The bones are back in place, and the flesh is not at all
bruised. The brave little chap! How did he ever do it?”

“He probably killed himself doing it,” wailed Alex. “He fell down some
precipice and crawled miles to a spot where he could get wood for the
splints. Crawled miles with that broken leg and carried his food with
him! He’s a little hero, that’s just what he is!”

There was no sleep for the boys that night. Gran, worn out by suffering
and over-exertion, lay until daylight with his eyes closed.




CHAPTER XXI.—A CAMPFIRE HIGH ON THE HILLS.


There was quite a celebration in the cabin when, at last, just as the
sun came into view over the mountains, Gran opened his heavy eyes and
looked about. All three boys were at his side instantly, and Captain
Joe, who seemed to claim precedence by right of discovery, put his great
paws up on the bunk and addressed soft phrases in dog talk to the
patient.

“For my sake don’t tell him that he mustn’t talk, now!” Alex broke out.
“Of all the chestnuts of fiction that is the worst! Let him get his
troubles off his chest! Hello, Gran, old top! How are you?” he added,
wrinkling his freckled nose at the boy on the bunk. “Brace up!”

“And don’t you dare to look wildly around and say, ‘Where am I?’” Case
threatened, taking up the mood of the first speaker. “That is another of
the terms kept standing in all printing offices. You’re looking fine
this morning, old man!” he continued, determined to cheer the boy up to
the point of a smile if that were possible.

“What kind of a foolish house do you think we keep here, Gran?” asked
Clay. “These lads are doing a lot of talking, but neither one has made a
move to get you something to eat. What will you have? Fish, partridge,
bear or baked beans? Apple pie, dried apple pie, red apple pie, or
pie-pie! Give a name to it, and you’ll be feeding like a king in no time
at all!”

Gran laughed at the waiter-like tone and manner, and tried to sit up,
but was glad to lie down again.

“I know where I am,” he said, “but I don’t know how I came here. I guess
the _Rambler_ is going somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

“You don’t know where you’re going, but you’re on your way!” chanted
Alex. “Well,” he continued, “you’re going down the Columbia river,
according to schedule, and that is enough to know. That’s all any of us
know. We came around by Canoe river, and you came across the mountains,
and we beat you to it.”

“Yes, I came across the mountains,” Gran said, weakly, “and got a
tumble, and had a fright of a time getting down to the river valley. I
saw your lights and that’s about all.”

Not a word about why he had left the _Rambler_, or where he had put in
his time since then, or how the rowboat had been obtained and, later,
wrecked! Not a word about the man in whose company he had last been
seen! Not a word about the missing films! Not a word calculated to clear
up any part of the mystery!

“You did a good job setting that leg,” Clay said, to break the awkward
silence. “You must have had a bad time doing it, too.”

“I did,” Gran confessed. “I had a wretched time. I tied my foot to a
tree, after I had the splints bound lightly on, and dropped down a bank.
I heard the bones snap back into place, and knew that the splints were
holding them there, and went to sleep!

“It was a long time before I sensed any pain again. Then I got back to a
level spot and tightened the splints. Are they still on?”

“Still on, and right as a book!” exclaimed Alex. “You’re a brick!”

“That was after you got to the valley?” asked Clay. “How far had you
walked with that broken leg before you found splints and mended it?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” was the reply. “It seemed that I was out days and
days, and a bear came and sat by me, and Captain Joe drove him off, and
then I woke up in the cabin of the good old _Rambler_!”

The boys exchanged significant glances. Was it true that the dog had
driven off a grizzly, or was the boy telling what he saw after his brain
had become affected by suffering? They asked no questions, for the boy’s
eyes were closing, and they knew that he needed rest more than they
needed information. In a minute the lad was resting easily.

“What do you make of it?” asked Alex as the three boys stood out on the
bank, Captain Joe capering clumsily about them.

“What do I make of what?” demanded Case. “Talk United States.”

“I guess you are sparring for time!” laughed Alex. “So you don’t know
what to make of it? You haven’t a thought in your head?”

“That is the truth of it,” Case returned. “I don’t know why Gran doesn’t
say something about his desertion of us. I have given up trying to think
that out, so we’ll build up more fire, get a bed of coals, and broil
bear steak for breakfast. I’m getting hungry, and I guess Gran will need
a little sustenance when he wakes up. Say, wasn’t it a blessing that we
came along just as we did? Otherwise, he would have died. Never could
have made his way out with that broken leg!”

While Clay and Case broiled bear steak and made coffee Alex whistled to
Captain Joe and started away. Taking the course pursued the previous
evening, he soon came to the rough shelter which the injured boy had
prepared. There he sat down and held a threatening finger up to the nose
of the white bulldog.

“Tell me, Captain Joe,” he said, gravely, “did you find a bear here last
night, and did you drive him away? Tell me, quick, old fellow.”

The dog turned away with a sniff and circled around the hut. Alex
followed, soon coming upon claw tracks in the earth. He turned to Joe.

“I believe you did!” he cried. “Now, if you please, will you go show me
where that bear is? I want a short conversation with him. What?” Captain
Joe started off in the direction of the high ridges to the east, and
finally paused at the opening to a deep cavern in a towering cliff. Alex
looked in and sniffed inquiringly, after which he backed out and turned
toward the campfire, Joe marching along at his side.

“You’re a wonder, dog!” the boy exclaimed. “You’re a wonder, and no
mistake about it! I’ll have you put in a book when we get back to Chi.”
Captain did not seem to take kindly to this proposition, for he hastened
back to the fire and lay down with his nose cuddled between two rather
dirty paws. Alex came in in a moment and told what he had seen.

“I guess the dog did see a grizzly,” Clay decided, “and drove him off.
It is a wonder he didn’t get his ears boxed!”

“Our lights probably had something to do with the retreat of the big
brute,” Case suggested. “I wish we had found him there!”

Gran ate bear steak and drank coffee when he awoke, and the boys loafed
about the _Rambler_ and made merry. During the day the injured boy
talked of almost everything except the things in which his chums were
interested.

He told of some of his experiences in crossing the mountains to the
headwaters of Gold creek, but did not say how he came to be in that wild
region all alone, nor why he had written the note saved from the river.
Naturally the boys were consumed with curiosity, but they asked no
questions, leaving the solution of the problems to time and to future
moods of their patient. Gran’s leg mended fast, and he was soon as full
of fun as the others. Still no hint of the reason for his disappearance!

All the boys enjoyed the leisurely progress down the river which
followed. They were often obliged to work their way around falls and
long, foaming rapids, but they did the work cheerfully, and took all the
more comfort in smooth stretches of water when they came to them. Below
Gold creek the valley widens to the west, and a high plateau presents a
vast area of growing timber. Only a short range of mountains divides
this fertile stretch of country from the high plains drained by the
Fraser river.

The boys tied up one night at Seymour creek which flows into the
Columbia from the west, about thirty miles below Gold creek, and made a
camp on shore.

“This,” Clay, said in the morning, “is one of the finest timber sections
in the world, and I’m not going to run through it. Some day there will
be great farms here, with wheat growing luxuriantly during the short
season. Now there is plenty of game, and I’m going to get some of it.”

“I think I’ll take a trip to Sir Donald mountain,” Alex said, pointing
across the big river, where the white cap of the peak shone in the
sunlight. “I want to see how the country looks from the roof.”

“You should have been with me on my excursion over the mountains!” Gran
remarked. “You’ll find it cold up there, and you’ll find slippery rocks
and precipices which reach down into the bowels of the earth!”

“I want to see things!” Alex exclaimed. “If I had been looking for a
peaceful life, I would have rented a boat in Chicago and sat out in the
South Branch with it! Me for the high spots!”

“I think I’ll go along with him,” Case observed. “I want to see the high
spots, too, and, besides, I may be able to keep this rash youth from
getting treed by a grizzly again! He’s always getting into trouble!”

Clay finally agreed to remain with Gran during the day, and the two
adventurous boys were landed on the east side of the Columbia, not far
from the mouth of Six Mile creek, close to the foothills which rise to
the greater elevation of Sir Donald mountain. It was early on a splendid
morning in early spring, and the boys felt the influence of the time
moving the blood swiftly in their veins. Youth was in their every
movement and the spirit of adventure sung in their ears!

It was a long walk to the place where the mountain asserted itself above
the hills, and, a little over half way there, the lads stopped, and sat
down on a rock to eat the sandwiches of bread and bear meat which they
had brought with them. Around them was a rugged country, several hundred
feet above sea level.

Although the bulk of the mountain was still some distance to the east,
there were canyons and lifting crags all about them. Just below, the
thin thread of Six Mile creek glistened in the light of the morning. The
springs which give rise to this stream are far up in the mountains, and
melting snow has much to do with the quantity of its waters.

“Straight east of where we are,” Case said, as they ate their dinners,
“are the rapids we had such a time passing.”

“No,” Alex answered, looking at a map, “the rapids are some miles to the
north. Straight east of this point is Beaver, where the Canadian Pacific
turns south toward Rogers pass and Glacier House.”

“Guess you are right,” Case admitted, looking over Alex’s shoulder. “And
just a little way to the south is Donald, where we took to the river.
Just think of what a country this is! We have traveled something like
two or three hundred miles, as the river runs, and yet we are not more
than fifty miles from where we launched the _Rambler_! What a country
this would be for outlaws to hide in! Train robbers, for instance!”

“For all we know,” Alex replied, “the men who held up the Canadian
Pacific train, the men who have been following us, so far as we can
judge, may be hiding in here! To tell you the truth, old chap, that is
one reason why I wanted to come here. Last night, while looking over
this way, I saw the smoke of a campfire right about here. It was a big
fire, for it lighted up quite a space, and I could see people moving
about.”

“Shadows!” Case answered, scornfully. “You never could see people in the
night at this distance from our camp.”

“Remember,” Alex insisted, “that they were high above us, and that the
fire shone on a face of rock back of them. Remember, also, that the
smoke went straight up and gave me a good view of a blazing fire.”

“Oh, well,” Case decided, critically, “you might have seen figures
moving about. You had your glass, of course?”

“Certainly. Well, there were people camping over here, and I thought I’d
like to see what kind of people they were. I said nothing to Clay about
my motive in coming here, because he thinks I’ll be getting into trouble
enough with peaks and canyons, without hunting up mysterious camping
parties in the Rocky mountain district.”

“I’m glad you didn’t mention it to him,” Case mused. “He would have been
anxious about us. Just as if we aren’t big enough to take care of
ourselves. Have you seen the place where the fire was yet?”

“Yes,” replied the boy, “it is across this little valley, up against the
face of that rock. See, the rock is smudged!”

“Yes,” Case exclaimed, swiftly moving under cover, “and there are smudgy
looking men coming after us with guns in their hands! Duck, partner!”




CHAPTER XXII.—THE SURGEON TURNS DETECTIVE.


Case dodged deeper into a rocky depression as he spoke, and Alex was not
slow in following him. Three men, all carrying guns, were approaching
from the south, now in full view as they mounted an elevation, now lost
to sight as they dipped into a canyon. The boys watched them furtively.

“I wonder if they saw us?” queried Alex shifting about so as to look
over a stunted shrub growing on the edge of their hiding-place.

“I think not,” Case reasoned, “for they are headed farther to the east.
Looks like they were going up the slope in search of game.”

“I just believe they are the train robbers!” Alex exclaimed, in a
moment. “You know, we were talking, a short time ago, about what a cute
little place this would be for a fugitive to hide in.”

“And they may be hunters, or officers in quest of the robbers,” Case
amended. “Anyway, there’s their camp, to the left of that crag, and
we’ll work over that way as they get farther off. If they did see us,
and are hoping to capture us, the safest thing for us to do is to double
back, like rabbits. Come along!”

Keeping under cover of ridges, sneaking through depressions in the
broken surface, the boys moved toward the spot indicated by Case. In a
few moments they saw that the three men were bearing farther away to the
north and east. This fact relieved their minds of the suspense which the
sight of the advancing men had occasioned, and they made more open
progress.

Directly they came to the camp itself, and were delighted to see that it
was shut out of view from the direction taken by the men by a rocky
ledge.

It was a primitive camp, with boughs dragged up from below serving as
beds. The number of empty food tins scattered about indicated that it
had been in use number of days.

A great coat, ragged and soiled, yet still valuable in that exposed
position because of its thickness and evident warmth, lay on a rock near
the embers of a dying fire. After glancing carefully around to see that
they were still out of sight of the men, Alex picked the garment up and
began a search through the pockets, still whole and mostly empty.

“Have you any idea they left their cards in there?” grinned Case.

“Never can tell,” replied the other. “Sometimes people leave things in
pockets. Anyway there may be a tailor’s label on the coat which will
tell us where it came from.”

He drew out a paper as he spoke and tossed it to one side with the
remark that they were saving up fire-lighters.

“Now, don’t throw that newspaper away,” Case protested. “Hand it here!
It may show the town they visited last. Calgary, date, eh?”

“How old is it?” asked Alex at once interested. “When was it printed, I
mean. That may tell us something.”

“A week ago,” was the reply. “They must have secured it at Donald or
Beaver, for that matter. It will be new to us, anyhow, whatever date it
is. Not much of a newspaper, after all, though.”

“Just don’t be in a hurry!” Alex suggested, as Case laid the newspaper
down on the ground. “There is a marked item in it.”

“Oh, just a few pencil marks,” Case admitted. “Nothing to them.”

“It tells about the train robbers hiding in the mountains,” Alex
explained, reading over the headlines. “And here’s another item under
it. Listen to this, will you?”

“‘Chicago, April 1,’” the boy read aloud. “‘An unprovoked murder was
committed on Wells street late last night. Charles Stiven, employed as
barkeeper at a South Side saloon, was attacked by Richard Miller, of the
importing firm of Durand Miller, and shot to death. The injured man did
not die on the street where the shooting took place, but later expired
at St. Joseph’s hospital, after making a statement which is likely to
hang Richard Miller if he is caught. Miller escaped after the shooting
and had not been captured at the hour of going to press. No reason is
given for the brutal attack.’”

“Rather old news, that,” Case remarked. “Why, we were in Chicago when
that affair took place. Anything more about it?”

“Just a short description of Miller,” was the reply. “It says he is
unusually tall, with—”

The boy stopped and looked up at Case with a question mark in each
excited eye. Then he arose and held the paper out so Case could read the
paragraph where his finger was placed. The boy did so wonderingly.

“Unusually tall, with long arms,’” the boy read, following Alex’s slowly
moving finger. “Now, what do you think of that, young fellow?”

“That’s the man that was on the train,” Alex declared. “That’s the man
Gran talked with in the cedars! That’s the man who took Gran off in our
rowboat! No wonder the lad doesn’t want to say a word about his
adventures on the mountains. What can it all mean?”

“I’m going right back and show this to him!” Case cried. “I’m going to
know all about this. Gran’s got to come through on this, as the police
officers say. Don’t you think that’s what we ought to do?” he asked as
the other looked grave and doubtful.

“We’ve trusted him so far,” Alex replied, “and I see no reason why we
should not continue to do so. Besides, the boy is ill, and must not be
excited. But, look here, that man is undoubtedly still around here
somewhere. Why he sent the boy over the mountains alone is more than I
can say, but a man who will commit an unprovoked murder is equal to
almost anything! We’d better get back to the _Rambler_. He may try to
get the boy away again. We’ll look after this Mr. Richard Miller, all
right!”

“You just bet we will!” was the answer, and the boys, forgetting, for
the moment, the men whose camp they had invaded, crept out of the
tumbled rocks and, once out of range of the three men on the hills,
hastened toward the _Rambler_. Half way to the river, Alex paused.

“I wonder if the men we saw aren’t officers, looking after this Miller
person?” he asked. “They’ve got the description of him, you know.”

“No they haven’t!” chuckled Case. “I brought it away with me.”

“That was a foolish thing to do,” Alex protested. “Now they will know
that their camp has, been visited. I reckon we’d better get the
_Rambler_ under way just as soon as we get to it. If we don’t they’ll
find us and make trouble.”

Case agreed with this view of the matter, and, as they stood on the east
bank of the Columbia, waiting for Clay to run across and get them, they
decided to tell him all about it and to advise an immediate departure
for Upper Arrow lake, where Gran would, they thought, be safe.

Clay was not a little excited at the recital. He agreed with the boys
that they ought to leave at once, and preparations for departure were
accordingly begun. Gran looked on indolently at first, but finally
called Clay to his side and asked:

“Are you going to leave this section of country now?”

“Of course,” was the guarded reply. “We want to get to the Pacific
before snow flies, and we have a long way to go. Besides, we do not want
to remain too long in one place.”

“But you wanted to hunt over on the plateau, this morning,” Gran urged.
“And why did the boys come back from the mountain so soon? Is there
anything wrong?”

“Why, of course not,” Clay answered. “Only we have the moving-on spirit
to-day. We’ll drop down to Revelstoke and get a sight of the Canadian
Pacific right-of-way before night, or, at least, before morning. That
will connect us with civilization, at least,” he added, with a grin.

“I’m afraid the motion of the boat will hurt my leg,” Gran urged, not
looking Clay in the eyes. “I want to get well as rapidly as possible,
you know. Can’t you wait a few days—wait here?”

“I’ll talk with the boys,” Clay promised and went out. When he told them
of the request Gran had made, their eyes stuck out “good and plenty,” as
he afterwards expressed it. It was a puzzle to all of them.

“But why should he want to stay here?” Case asked, in amazement. “Why
shouldn’t he want to get away from a valley which must have unpleasant
recollections for him? He would have died in that hut if we hadn’t
happened along! And the man we’ve been talking about brought him to it
all by taking him away from us. It is the strangest thing I ever heard.”

“He went away with the man willingly,” Clay explained, “at least we saw
him make no attempt to get away when we were close at hand, and might
have helped him. Now, how do we know that he is not waiting in this
valley to meet this man again? This Richard Miller, who is wanted in
Chicago for the crime of murder. I suppose,” he added, thoughtfully,
“that there can be no doubt about the description? The man described in
the newspaper article is the man we saw on the train, the man who talked
to Gran in the cedar canyon, the man who was rowing when Gran passed
down stream and flung the note in the water?”

“Not a doubt of it,” Case asserted. “That is the man—Richard Miller, the
man wanted in Chicago to answer to the crime of murder.”

“But, look here,” said Alex always ready to defend Gran, “stop and think
a minute! If Gran went with this man willingly, why didn’t he stop long
enough to tell us he was going? Why didn’t he tell the man to row up to
the _Rambler_ and let him explain? Why was it necessary for him to put
what he had to say to us on paper, and then stop his writing in the
middle of a sentence. I don’t believe he left us willingly.”

“One reason why the man—this Richard Miller—did not let him come up to
the _Rambler_ was that he had our rowboat—the boat which had been cut
loose from her chain the night before. Say,” he continued, with a blush
and a laugh, “I’m getting this mixed. It was the anchor that he cut
away, and not the boat! At least, I think he did! He wouldn’t want to
come to close quarters with us after doing that, would he?

“Well, he might as well have cut the boat loose,” Clay said, “for he
stole it after it had drifted away. We saw him in it. That’s proof!”

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” asked Case, turning to Clay.

“Let’s stay here and see it out!” Alex interposed.

“That suits me!” Clay answered. “I haven’t lost confidence in Gran yet,
and, besides, there’ll be excitement in it, if what you boys say about
the men on the other side of the river is true—if they are really train
robbers. I think it will be fun to see it out!”

And so it was agreed that they should follow the wishes of the boy and
remain where they were for a time, although they all understood that the
reason given by the lad—that the motion of the boat might affect his
broken leg unfavorably—was not the true one. But another surprise
awaited Clay when he went into the cabin to acquaint Gran of the
decision which had been reached. The boy was half sitting up in his bunk
with a flush on his cheeks which had not been there before.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said, as Clay entered. “I am beginning to think
that my leg ought to have the care of a surgeon. You boys are all
anxious to be on your way, and so why not drop down to Revelstoke? I can
endure the short journey, all right, and we can remain there a few days
until the surgeon has had time to straighten me out.”

“We have all agreed to remain here,” Clay said, with a smile, “but we
can go on just as well as not. We need a glimpse at a town.”

“I don’t want to keep you here,” Gran went on. “When I spoke about
staying here I didn’t think I would need the attention of a surgeon, but
I begin to feel that one ought to be consulted.”

When Clay went out to the others with this new proposition they were
more puzzled than ever.

“Why did he change his mind so suddenly?” was the question Alex asked.
“There’s something back of all this. Do you think he heard us talking
about the train robbers?”

“He might,” answered Clay, and there the subject was dropped.

That night, without mishap on the way, they tied up at Revelstoke, which
is a small town where the Canadian Pacific takes to the valley of the
Columbia river again. They did not succeed in finding a surgeon that
night, the one located there being away, neither did they spend any time
about town, for they thought it best to remain on the boat with the
injured boy.

The next morning Clay found the surgeon at his office and sent him down
to the _Rambler_, himself remaining in a general store to purchase a few
luxuries for the lad. While there he heard considerable talk about the
chase after the train robbers, who were thought to be in that section.

“I’d like to be the one to catch them,” he heard a rough-looking man
saying. “It would be worth $10,000 to me. I need the money!”

“If I could only point them out,” another cut in, “I would be satisfied.
There’s a reward of $5,000 for just locating them.”

Clay left the store with the reward bee buzzing in his cap. They were
not plentifully supplied with money, and a portion of that reward would
be very acceptable. And the three men in the mountains! Perhaps they
were the very men wanted by the officers.

While he walked about, thinking the matter over, the surgeon came into
the one street of the place and stopped him, rather bruskly, he thought.
Clay had an idea that it was his fee he wanted.

“Where did you pick up that boy?” the surgeon asked.

“He came into the country with us,” Clay answered, not very pleasantly,
for he believed that the surgeon was interfering with something that was
none of his business. He turned away, but the other followed.

“You mean that he came from Laggan with you,” he said.

“How do you know that?” demanded Clay, getting angry.

“Well,” sneered the surgeon, “this boy’s description is among those of
the hold-up men. He, or some one looking remarkably like him, was seen
on the pass, in the company of the men who are believed to have held up
the Canadian Pacific train. I’m going now to notify an officer.”

Clay, for a moment, did not answer. What was there he could say?




CHAPTER XXIII.—THE POLICEMAN MAKES A MISTAKE.


“The boy was with us, in the _Rambler_, on a platform car on a Canadian
Pacific train, going towards Donald, when the robbery took place,” Clay
explained, directly, trying hard to keep his temper in the face of the
impudence and greed shown by the surgeon.

“You’ll have to prove that!” said the surgeon. “Why are you boys hiding
in that motor boat, anyway? Have you been carrying supplies to the men
who did the actual work in the robbery? And there was some one shot on a
train leaving the pass, on the night of the robbery. Was it a bullet
that broke the lad’s leg? You’d better be frank with me.”

“You ought to know whether the injury was caused by a bullet or not,”
replied Clay, beginning the story of the trip down the Columbia and
ending with the finding of the boy in the shelter he had hastily
constructed.

During the recital, however, he said not a word about the man who had so
often presented himself to their notice.

“That’s all very well,” the surgeon said, “but it only shows that the
boy is mixed up in some secret matter, even if you boys are not in the
game with him. Here comes DeYoung, the policeman, now, and I’ll turn the
matter over to him, but I want you for a witness to prove that I found
the boy and pointed him out to the officer. I want that reward.” “I
thought so!” Clay replied, scornfully. “That’s what you are working for!
Well, you won’t get it. I’ll attend to that!”

DeYoung, the policeman, now came up and held a short conversation with
the surgeon. Clay was not permitted to hear what was being said, but at
the termination of the conference the policeman, a member of the mounted
force, approached him with a scowl on his face.

“So you’ve been harboring a train robber, have you?” he demanded. “I
think I’ll take you all in and hold you for identification. I’ll go to
the boat now and get the boy. Come along, doctor, and assist.”

“But the boy mustn’t be moved! cried Clay, in alarm.

“Oh, mustn’t he?” snarled the officer. “We’ll see about that!”

“It will be all right to move him,” the surgeon said.

“Of course! And I’ll see that the boys are kept away from him, too.”

“It may be just as well to put them in separate cells,” suggested the
surgeon. “One of them may confess, after going hungry a short time.”

Clay was angry enough to fight, but he knew that such a course would be
worse than useless. These men had the power to do as they pleased until
higher officers were reached.

It will be understood, however, that he felt pretty ugly at the idea of
being parted from the injured boy. That would be a great deal worse than
having the river trip interrupted and being locked up in a Canadian
prison, he thought.

He argued with the policeman and the surgeon to no purpose. Their eyes
were fixed on the reward. The thought, the prospect, of receiving so
great a sum completely blinded their eyes to all sense of justice and
humanity. Clay resolved, then, that they should both suffer for their
brutality if they removed the boy and locked them all up.

He thought of telling the policeman of the men who had been hiding in
the mountains. To his mind these were the robbers. He believed that the
officer might gain the $10,000 reward by following his instructions, and
that he, himself, might secure the $5,000 reward by pointing out the
whereabouts of the men.

But he instantly banished the thought of helping the brutal officer get
a cent of the money. He would rather take the chance of letting the men
get away and losing his own share of the money offered for their arrest
and conviction.

Things looked pretty dark for the boys just then. If arrested and locked
up, the _Rambler_ would be at the mercy of the lawless men who
frequented the river there. Without doubt, all the stores would be
stolen. Even the boat itself might be taken. It looked like the end of
their long-planned journey down the Columbia river.

As the boy walked briskly toward the boat, accompanied by the two men,
he saw a man in uniform beckoning to the officer, who pretended not to
see him. However, he said to the surgeon, in a tone of great vexation
which Clay did not fail to note: “There’s Sergeant Wilcox! If he gets
his eyes on the boy before I do, he will claim the reward. He is too
soft to carry this thing through, anyway. He’ll let the boys talk him
out of the money. We’d better make haste to the boat. If Wilcox wasn’t
my superior officer, I’d take a crack at his head with a billy. He’s
always butting in!”

Clay had heard enough to convince him that Sergeant Wilcox was the man
he wanted to talk with! Should he prove considerate and reasonable, he
should receive the information which would be worth $10,000 to him—the
information which a little decency on the part of DeYoung might have won
for him!

When the policeman and the surgeon started toward the boat at a pace
calculated to get them there before Sergeant Wilcox could overtake them,
Clay hung back and DeYoung seized him by the arm to hurry him along. The
boy drew away and ran toward the Sergeant, who advanced to meet him.

“What’s the matter here?” the Sergeant asked, not unkindly.

“This officer has arrested me, and threatens to arrest my chums,” Clay
explained, “and I want you to hear my story.”

“Certainly, my boy,” replied the Sergeant “You don’t look like a very
hardened criminal,” he added, as DeYoung approached with a pair of
handcuffs dangling in his hands, “so I guess we won’t have you ironed.”

“This boy and his chums,” stormed DeYoung, “are connected with the train
robbers, and I have arrested them all as such. I’m now going to the boat
you see down there to take them all to jail.”

“One of the boys has a broken leg,” pleaded Clay, “and ought not to be
moved. And everything we have will be stolen if we are taken away from
our boat and locked up.”

“It won’t injure the boy to be moved.” the surgeon cut in, “and I’ll see
that their property is not molested. We, DeYoung and I, think we have
that reward cinched!”

“Oh, you do!” cried Clay, with flashing eyes. “You’d ruin us boys in the
hope of getting it, too!”

“The injured lad shall not be moved, nor shall he lock you up until we
have plenty of proof,” said the Sergeant.

“You’re a gentleman!” Clay burst out, tears of gratitude showing in his
eyes “You’re a gentleman, and I’m going to tell you where to find the
robbers! I should have told this other officer if he had acted half-way
decent. I think I know where the men you want are, at least, and you can
get them in a short time, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” almost shrieked DeYoung. “You ought to have
told me. I was the first officer you met. It was your duty to have told
the first officer you met!”

“Because you’re a brute,” answered Clay, secure in the protection of the
Sergeant. “If you’ll send him away, Sergeant,” the boy added, “I’ll take
you to the boat and tell you the whole story. But perhaps you’d better
get your men together, all ready to go after the robbers.”

“It is a plant!” cried DeYoung. “He wants to send us away so the robbers
can raid the town. Don’t you believe a word he says!”

“Go back to the station, DeYoung,” the Sergeant ordered. “When I want
any advice from you I’ll ask for it. And we can get along without your
company, too, doctor,” he added.

“But we claim the reward!” said the surgeon, angrily. “You can’t come
here with your high and mighty ways and insult me. I’m not under your
authority! We claim the reward!”

“Get out!” replied the Sergeant. “Come, young man, we’ll go to this boat
you are all talking about, and you can tell me the story or not, just as
you please. I’m working to do my duty, not expressly to win rewards.
DeYoung sees nothing but the reward, though he is a fairly efficient
policeman. I’ll have to transfer him into the woods farther!” On the way
to the boat Clay told the whole story, omitting nothing. He even told of
their suspicions of Gran and his strange disappearance, and of the three
men seen on the mountain, and where they might be found, provided they
had not moved on, which the boy considered doubtful.

“I understand the boy’s part in the game,” the officer said, “and think
you have the robbers located, all right. And now about this other
man—the fellow with the long arms. I think I have a line on him,” with a
queer smile. “I’ll show you some dispatches presently which concern
him.”

Clay opened his eyes in amazement.

“Is he one of the robbers?” he asked.

The Sergeant laughed heartily.

“I think I have a surprise for you,” he said. “You just wait a few
hours. You don’t know that I came here to meet this boat, do you?”

“Why, how did you know? What is the mystery? We’ve been clouded in
mystery ever since we left the mountain pass.”

“You’ll soon be out of it,” replied the Sergeant. “You’ll have a clear
field to start another puzzle column in,” he laughed.

“No more puzzle columns for me!” declared Clay. “But how did you know
about the boat coming here?”

“Why,” laughed the officer, “I even know the names of your chums! Second
sight, eh! I know where you started from, and all about it. I’ve been
waiting for you two days!”

“I give it up!” said Clay, and not another word would he say until the
boat was reached and a general consultation was held. Gran smiled when
the Sergeant was introduced to him and said:

“We have been waiting a long time for you, Sergeant Wilcox!”

“Now, what do you think of that?” asked Case. “I don’t think any more!”
laughed Clay. “I’m beyond being astonished at anything.”

“Is Gran under arrest?” asked Alex.

The Sergeant shook his head and held up a hand for silence.

“It is only a train from the east,” Clay volunteered.

“Is that our train?” asked Gran, looking up into the Sergeant’s face
with a confiding smile. “Is that OUR train?”

“I hope so,” replied the officer. “And now, Mr. Clay,” he added, “you
come with me to the station, and you may learn of something to your
advantage, as the newspaper advertisements say. The others will remain
here for the present.”

“We’re too paralyzed to make a movement,” suggested Alex.

Captain Joe arose to follow Clay and Teddy shambled up to the officer
and tried to climb up the official stripe on the seam of his trousers.
The Sergeant laughed and patted the bear on the head.

“You’re a happy family!” he said. “Come on, Clay.”

Gran waved a thin hand at the two departing ones and turned to Alex.

“You’re going to hear the end of the story directly,” he said. “I’m not
going to tell it, though.”

“Who is?” demanded Case. “We’ve been trying to tell it to each other
ever since you came on the _Rambler_ that night at the pass, and have
made up our minds that we don’t know it!”

“Of course not,” Gran said, and closed his eyes, leaving Alex and Case
half crazy with curiosity!

When the train drew up, the first man to leave the parlor coach made a
rush for the Sergeant and shook him warmly by the hand. This done he
looked Clay over with a curious smile on a face recently shaved clean.

The man was at least six foot three, and had very long arms. Also a
slight limp! Clay sat down on a trunk and waited.




CHAPTER XXIV.—MORE SURPRISES THAN ONE.


“This,” the boy heard Sergeant Wilcox saying, directly, “is Mr. Richard
Miller, of Chicago. And this, Mr. Miller, is Mr. Clayton Emmett, also
known as ‘Clay,’ recently from Chicago!”

Clay heard the words dimly. The world seemed turning around upside down.
Here was the man he had been accusing of all sorts of crime, from simple
larceny to murder, on good terms with the chief, in that district, of
the mounted police! It was enough to turn the lad’s head.

“I thought—”

Then Clay decided not to say what he had been thinking, and the three
set out for the boat, passing DeYoung and the surgeon on the way. They
both regarded the officer with scowls and threatening gestures.

At the boat the boy lifted on his bunk when Mr. Miller approached and
extended his arms. The man dropped down at his side.

“Daddy! Daddy!” they hear Gran saying.

“I’m going out somewhere and have another dream!” Alex said. “I’m afraid
I’ll never wake up out of this one. That is the man who stole our boat
and the man who cut our anchor chain!”

“Not exactly!” said Miller. “I’m going to tell you about that, after I
return something I have of yours.”

He reached into a pocket and brought forth a packet of films and
developed pictures. The pictures showed campfire scenes, and back of the
faces before the blaze was the face of a tall man, looking out in
wonder.

“Where did you get them developed?” asked Alex. “Where did you get them,
anyway? We always thought Gran took them.”

“I did,” admitted the boy, with a smile, “and gave them to Daddy, and he
had them developed at Donald and sent copies to the police at Chicago.
See that face back of the others? That’s Daddy.”

“Then he’s one of the train robbers!” declared Case.

“But he was with them, and the officers have his description, as well as
that of Gran,” Alex insisted when the officer shook his head.

“Yes, he was with them,” the Sergeant said, “and so was Gran, up to that
night. They did not know what the three men were there for, and when
they discovered that they were there to rob a train they left them, the
boy making friends with you boys and going on the _Rambler_, and the
father getting on the train and being chased off.”

“But why didn’t they both come to us and tell us?” asked Clay. “We would
have taken them both in.”

“But there was a charge of murder against Mr. Miller,” replied the
officer, “and he did not know, you boys so well then as he has learned
to know you since that night. He couldn’t make up his mind to trust
you.”

“We know what the charge is,” Alex said. “We found the newspaper which
the robbers left in their camp.”

“Richard Miller was in Wells street the night Stiven was shot,” the
Sergeant went on, “but he did not do the shooting. That was done by
Blinn, Carr, and Snow, the three men you saw in the hills, the three men
who held up the train.

“When the shots which killed Stiven were fired, Mr. Miller got out of
the way, naturally. He saw the faces of the three men, and started to
the Chicago avenue police station to inform the officers as to their
identity. On the way there he heard a conversation between officers
which informed him that he was suspected, and that the three men were to
testify against him.

“All he could do, under the circumstances, was to hide, unless he wanted
to be held without bail pending trial. He made it his business that
night, with the aid of a Pinkerton man, to locate the three murderers,
and from that day on he followed them, hoping that in some way they
would finally betray the truth.

“He followed them to many cities, and finally, when they came to the
Rocky mountains he sent for his son, Gran, to join him. Together they
joined the robbers and sought information which would clear the father
of the crime.

“The chance to prove his innocence never came to the father until the
night these pictures were taken. They located the robbers on the ground
where the robbery took place. When he left them that night, after Gran
had gone to the _Rambler_, he knew that the train was to be held up, as
a previous attempt had been made on the freight.

“He knew, too, that the pictures taken by Alex would prove sufficient to
convict them, as their portraits are in the rogue’s gallery at Chicago.
He tried to warn the conductor of the train that took the boat away that
a hold-up was in the air, but the conductor wouldn’t listen, and caused
him to be chased from the train—as he thought.

“However, Mr. Miller rode on the train, wounded by the bullet, to
Donald, saw Gran there for a minute, and arranged to have the films
taken so that he might have them developed. It was also arranged that he
was to purchase a rowboat and follow the _Rambler_ until the films were
delivered to him. Then he was to go away and have them developed.

“Father and son had many meetings which you never knew about, and when,
at last, the films were delivered to the father, he was afraid to go out
with them, as the officers were looking for him on advices from Chicago.
So he took Gran away with him, and, after the pictures had been made and
Chicago communicated with, the boy returned over the mountains, though
his father tried to get him to wait and meet you here.

“Then I came into the game. Mr. Miller came to me here with the story
and the pictures. He also told me where the boat was and how soon it
would be here. Then he went up to Calgary to shave and dress up like a
gentleman.

“But he did not know that the robbers had followed you boys into the
mountains in the hope of getting the boat, of capturing Gran, and
closing his lips forever, for they had suspicions that he had gone out
to betray them. They cut the anchor chain, hoping that you would all be
drowned in the rapids. But it was Mr. Miller who caught the rowboat and
used it until he left for this point. It was wrecked after he left it.
Anything else?” asked the Sergeant, as he concluded.

“Why didn’t they tell us all about it?” asked Case. “What was the use of
being so sly about it?”

“If they had understood you all then as well as they do now,” the
officer replied, “they would doubtless have done so.”

“Why did he chase me when I was getting away with the pictures?” asked
Alex pointing to Mr. Miller.

“Because I wanted the films,” laughed the other, “and I got them, in
time, as you all know!”

“I wonder why the robbers didn’t kill us while we slept, if they wanted
us out of the way, instead of cutting the anchor chain,” Case puzzled.
“I should think they would have made a sure thing of it.”

“I wondered at that,” the Sergeant said, “but I think now that they were
afraid that the murder would be discovered and that they would be
suspected. Anyway such a crime as that, when the river gave up the
bodies, would have filled this district with police officers, and they
would have made it very uncomfortable for the robbers. They doubtless
thought, too, that the rapids would do the work satisfactorily.”

“And the robbers built the signal fire?” asked Clay.

“Yes,” answered the officer. “At least that is what Mr. Miller thinks.
They must have separated, and wanted to get together again.”

“When are you going out after them?” asked Clay.

“I have a company of men forming now,” was the reply. “You boys remain
here a few days and you’ll see them brought in. Of course the boys who
saw them in the mountains and reported it will get the $5,000 reward
offered for locating the robbers. That will help some, eh?” he added,
with a smile.

“We can get along without it,” Gran broke in. “I guess Daddy has enough
money for us all. He’s spent $10,000 on this man-hunt, but he had to do
it, or forever live under the suspicion that he killed the man Stiven
and bought himself clear. The only thing for him to do was to follow the
murderers and keep with them until he knew that he could convict them.
They will never confess. We can introduce in the trial THE CONFESSION OF
A PHOTOGRAPH!”

There were many little details which the boys had wondered over set to
rights that day, and father and son told many amusing stories of their
trip out with the films. Until they had confided the whole story to the
Sergeant, they were in danger of arrest.

The Sergeant went out with a dozen men that night, and in two days was
back with the prisoners, who confessed to the robbery as soon as they
saw their pictures in the group by the campfire. Their “mugs” were
already well known to the police, and they knew that the pictures
showing them on the scene of the robbery just before it took place would
be sufficient to convict them.

“You will have no trouble in getting the $5,000 reward,” the Sergeant
said to the boys, as they were getting ready to move on down the
Columbia river. “By the time you reach Portland it will be waiting for
you.”

It may be as well to state that the money was awaiting them at Portland,
and that they at once planned another trip, this one to the Colorado
river.

Mr. Miller went back to Chicago with the robbers, and Gran, although his
leg was still useless, decided to go on with the boys. The father was to
meet them in Portland later. He was a very rich man. Gran always
declared that only for that he would have been hanged for the murder of
Stiven!

There was sincere regret at parting with Sergeant Wilcox, for he had
greatly assisted in straightening Out the tangle. He promised to meet
the boys later on, but under what strange circumstances they were to
meet again they had no premonition at that time!

And so, once more, the boys were afloat on the Columbia! With minds free
from mystery and financial worry, they spent the long summer, up to the
first of September, making their way to the Pacific.

There were hard days and night, for the river is rough and wild in many
places, but there were also sunny days when the _Rambler_ glided over
the water like a duck in a fountain pond!

And Captain Joe and Teddy, the bear, enjoyed the trip as much as the
boys did. When there were campfires on the shore at night the two had
many a run in the forest. And Teddy always returned, to sleep with his
soft little nose against the dog’s hairy shoulder!

Alex caught fish. Case made bread, and Clay hunted up the history of the
country they were passing through and read it to them in the cabin after
the amusement-filled days were over. It was in every way an ideal trip—a
summer trip over one of the grandest rivers in the world.

“I hope,” Clay said, one night in Portland, after it was all over, “that
we shall have as much fun on the Colorado.”

“It was pretty serious sometimes on the Columbia,” Gran said.

“Oh, yes, but we enjoyed it, except the time a bear wanted me to come
out of my tree!” laughed Alex. “The Colorado offers chances for just as
much excitement. Don’t you ever think we are going to a pink tea party
when we sail down the Colorado, through the canyons and over the
rapids.”

Whether or not the trip down the Colorado was a “pink tea party” will be
told in the next volume of this series: “The Motor Boat Boys on the
Colorado; or, the Clue in the Rocks.”

And Captain Joe and Teddy? They were as happy at the finish of the
Columbia river trip as the others, and as ready to go over to the
Colorado and do it all over again!

  THE END.