AN EMPTY CAVERN
Perhaps a dozen yards from the fire, Tommy stumbled at a figure
over which the falling snow was fast drifting. He called out to
Sandy, who was only a short distance away, and the two lifted the
unconscious form in their arms and staggered toward the fire.
"Why, it's nothing but a kid!" Sandy exclaimed.
"Don't you know who it is?" demanded Tommy.
"Never saw him before!" was the reply.
"It's Thede Carson!"
"Not that little monkey of a Thede Carson who's always getting the
Beaver Patrol into trouble?" demanded Sandy. "What would he be
doing up here? I guess you're losing the sense of sight."
"Sure, it's Thede Carson," insisted Tommy.
"Well, I guess he's about all in," Sandy volunteered.
"Get busy then, with your first aid," Tommy ordered. "Get some of
his clothes off and get to work with snow, or his fingers and toes
will drop off as soon as they thaw out."
"I don't believe it's the cold so much as it is exhaustion," Sandy
ventured. "He seems to have been running a whole lot, for he's
still panting, I reckon he just dropped down when he couldn't run
any further."
"I guess that's about right," Tommy admitted. "He doesn't seem to
be very cold. It may be that wound on his head," the lad added,
pointing to a long gash in the scalp which, judging from the state
of the lad's clothing, had bled very freely.
"What do you think of coming away up here in the Hudson Bay country
and picking a member of the Beaver Patrol right out of the woods?"
demanded Sandy. "We seem to find Boy Scouts wherever we go."
The boys worked over the exhausted lad some moments, and then he
opened his eyes.
"Now for the love of Mike!" exclaimed Tommy, "don't look around and
say 'Where am I?' The correct thing to say in these modern days is
'Vot iss?' Do you get me, Thede?"
"Why, it's Tommy!" said the boy.
"Betcher life!" returned Tommy. "Did you run all the way up here
from Clark street? Or did you come up in an aeroplane?"
Thede sat up and looked about for the tents and the boats.
"Why, this isn't the camp!" he said.
"We haven't got any more camp than a rabbit!" declared Sandy.
"We're lost! We've got to wait till morning to find our way back."
"It's a good thing you're lost!" exclaimed Thede. "I don't think I
could have held out until I reached the camp. You see," he went on
with a slight shudder at the recollection of his experiences, "I
left George a long distance off."
"Left George?" repeated Tommy.
"I couldn't bring him with me," answered Thede, with a slow smile,
"Where did you leave him?" demanded Tommy.
"Why didn't he come with you?" asked Sandy.
"Because," replied Thede, "just as he was reaching up to the wall
of the cavern to take hold of the Little Brass God, he got a tunk
on the coco that put him out for the count."
"What do you know about the Little Brass God?" asked Tommy.
"I've seen it!" answered Thede. "It sat up on a shelf on the face
of the wall, with its legs crossed, and its arms folded, and its
wicked face telling me where I could go whether I wanted to or not."
"I guess something's gone to your head!" declared Sandy.
"But I'll tell you we found the Little Brass God!" declared Thede.
"George came to the cabin, and we started out to find the camp, and
got lost in the storm, and brought up in a cave inhabited by two
bears."
Sandy regarded Tommy significantly.
"And we found a basement floor to the cavern, and went down the
elevator and found a man asleep in front of a fire with the Little
Brass God winking at him. Funny fellow, that Little Brass God!"
"You for the foolish house!" cried Tommy.
"Honest, boys!" Thede declared. "George came to the cabin and I
started home with him after Pierre left us alone together. The
storm chased us into a cave, just as I told you, and we kept on
going until we came to the place where the Little Brass God sat up
on the wall making faces at a man asleep at the fire.'"
"Go on!" exclaimed Tommy, at last understanding that the boy was in
his right mind. "Tell us about it!"
"And George said he would get the Little Brass God without waking
the man up. So he gave me his gun, and I was to shoot in case the
man made any trouble. Then, just as George was reaching for the
little Brass God, the man woke up and shot at him, Then the man
shot at me, and I shot at him, and then he got my gun away from me
and I ran out to find you."
"And you left George there in the cavern?" asked Sandy.
"I just had to!" was the reply. "I couldn't do anything with that
giant of a half-breed, and I didn't have a gun and so I ducked.
"Can you take us back to that cavern now?" asked Tommy.
"Sure I can," was the reply.
"Oughtn't we to let Will know where we are?" asked Sandy.
Tommy looked at Thede questioningly.
"Can you tell us how to find the cavern?" he asked in a moment.
"What for?" demanded the boy. "I'm going to take you where it is."
"You're about all in," declared Sandy, "and you ought to go to camp
and rest up and tell Will where we've gone."
"You couldn't find this cave in a thousand years," declared Thede.
While the boys talked the wind died down, and the snow ceased
falling.
Presently a mist of daylight crept into the forest and then the
boys crept out on their journey toward into ridge of hills.
"Wasn't that a dream about your seeing the Little Brass God?" asked
Tommy as they walked along.
"Sure not," was the reply, "we both saw it, didn't we?"
"Well, whoever told you anything about the Little Brass God?"
demanded Sandy. "How did you know there was a Brass God?"
"Old Finklebaum told me. He said he'd give me a hundred dollars if
I found it, so I started in to earn that mazuma."
In as few words as possible the boy repeated the story he had told
George on the previous evening.
"I guess you boys came up here looking for the Little Brass God,
too, didn't you?" the boy asked, shrewdly, after a moment's
hesitation.
"We came up to hunt and fish!" laughed Tommy.
"To hunt for the Little Brass God and fish for the man who bought
it of the pawnbroker, I guess," laughed Thede. "You boys never
came clear up here just to chase through the snow after game when
there's plenty of shooting three hundred miles to the south."
"You say you think that Pierre is the man who bought the Little
Brass God of the pawnbroker?" asked Sandy, as the boys stopped for
a moment to rest. "Is that the reason you followed him here?"
"That's the reason!" was the reply.
"He seemed perfectly willing to have you come?"
"He welcomed me like a long lost brother!"
"Then it's a hundred to one shot Pierre never got his hands on the
Little Brass God! Don't you see how suspicious he would have been
if he had had the little brute in his possession?"
"I didn't think of that!" replied Thede. "Look here," the boy
continued, "I'd like to know what all this fuss is about, anyway.
Why should any one in his right mind give old Finklebaum a thousand
dollars or five thousand dollars, for that piece of brass? That's
what gets me!"
Tommy and Sandy looked at each other significantly but made no
immediate reply. In a moment Thede went on.
"'Spose this should be a Little Brass God stolen from some temple
away out in the wilds of India. Suppose a delegation of East
Indians should be sent here to get it. Wouldn't they murder a
score of men if they had to in order to get possession of it?"
"They probably would," was the reply.
After an hour's hard walking, the boys came to the foot of the
ridge of hills and looked upward. Thede pointed to the cavern
where the two bears had been discovered.
"There's where we went in," he explained, "but the cavern where the
fire and the Little Brass God were is right under that one."
"How're we going to get to it?"
"If you want to take your chance on meeting the bears, you can drop
down through the opening from the floor above."
"But isn't there an opening to this lower cavern?"
"Sure there is! That's the one I ran out of! Say," he continued,
"that's the one we saw the man by the fire run out of, too. You
can see the tracks of his moccasins in the snow. He must have left
after the storm ceased. My tracks were filled."
"In we go, then!" cried Tommy, advancing lip the slight slope to
the Up of the cavern.
"Watch out for bears!" cried Thede.