TREED!--TWO HUNDRED FEET UP.
Mingling with the alarming yells of the German came a strange spitting,
snarling sound.
Filled with apprehensions, the boys and Cal rushed for the foot of the
immense tree and gazed upward into the lofty gloom of its leafy summit.
They uttered a cry of alarm as they did so. In fact the spectacle their
eyes encountered was calculated to cause the heart of the most hardened
woodsman to beat faster.
Astride of a branch, with his shoe soles dangling two hundred feet
above the ground, was Herr Muller, while between him and the trunk of
the tree was crouched a snarling, spitting wild cat of unusual size. It
seemed about to spring at the human enemy who had unwittingly surprised
it in its aerial retreat.
The boys were stricken speechless with alarm as they gazed, but Cal
shouted encouragingly upward.
"Hold on there, Dutchy. We'll help you out."
"I know. Dot iss all right," came back the reply in a tremulous tone,
"but I dink me dis branch is rodden und ef der tom cat drives me much
furder out I down come."
"Don't dare think of such a thing," called up Cal, "just you grip tight
and don't move."
"All right, I try," quavered the photographer, about whose neck still
dangled the tool of his craft.
Cal's long legs covered the space between the tree and the auto in
about two leaps, or so it seemed to the boys. In a flash he was back
with his well worn rifle and was aiming it upward into the tree.
But as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and his finger pressed
the trigger the formidable creature crouching along the limb, sprang
full at the luckless Herr Muller. With a yell that stopped the breath
of every one of the alarmed party below, the German was seen to lose
his hold and drop, crashing through the foliage like a rock. As he
fell a shower of small branches and twigs were snapped off and floated
downward into space.
But Herr Muller was not doomed, as the boys feared was inevitable,
to be dashed to pieces on the ground. Instead, just as it appeared
impossible that he could save himself from a terrible death, the German
succeeded in seizing a projecting limb and hanging on. The branch bent
ominously, but it held, and there he hung suspended helplessly with
nothing under him but barren space. Truly his position now did not
appear to be materially bettered from its critical condition of a few
minutes before.
But the boys did not know, nor Cal either, that the Germans are great
fellows for athletics and gymnastics, and almost every German student
has at one time or another belonged to a Turn Verein. This was the case
with Herr Muller and his training stood him in good stead now. With a
desperate summoning of his strength, he slowly drew himself up upon the
bending limb, and began tortuously to make his way in toward the trunk.
As he did so, the wild cat perceiving that it was once more at close
quarters with its enemy, advanced down the trunk, but it was not
destined this time to reach the German. Cal took careful aim and fired.
Before the echo of the sharp report had died away a tawny body came
clawing and yowling downward, out of the tree, tumbling over and over
as it shot downward. The boys could not repress a shudder as they
thought how close Herr Muller had come to sharing the same fate.
The creature was, of course, instantly killed as it struck the ground,
and was found to be an unusually large specimen of its kind. Its fur
was a fine piece of peltry and Cal's skillful knife soon had it off
the brute's carcass. A preparation of arsenic which the boys carried
for such purposes, was then rubbed on it to preserve it till it could
be properly cured and mounted. This done, it was placed away with the
mountain lion skin in a big tin case in the tonneau.
While all this was going on, Herr Muller recovered the possession of
his faculties, which had almost deserted him in the terrible moment
when he hung between life and death. Presently he began to descend the
tree. Near the bottom of the trunk, however, his irons slipped and he
came down with a run and a rush that scraped all the skin off the palms
of his hands, and coated his clothes with the red stain of the bark.
He was much too glad to be back on earth, however, to mind any such
little inconveniences as that.
"Boys, I tole you ven I hung dere I dink by myselfs if ever I drop, I
drop like Lucifer----"
"L-l-lucy who?" inquired Ding-dong curiously.
"Lucifer--der devil you know, nefer to rise no more yet already."
"I see you have studied Milton," laughed Nat, "but I can tell you, all
joking aside, you gave us a terrible scare. I want you to promise to do
all your photographing from safe places hereafter."
"I vould suffer more dan dot for mein art," declared Herr Muller
proudly, "Ach, vot a terrible fright dot Robert cat give me."
"Yep, those bob cats,--as we call them for short,--are ugly customers
at close quarters," put in Cal, with a grin.
"Say," said Nat, suddenly pointing below them, "that little stream down
there looks as if it ought to have some trout in it. What do you say if
we try and get some for dinner?"
"All right," agreed Cal, "you fellers go fishin' and the perfusser here
and I will stand by the camp."
"Chess. I dinks me I dondt feel much like valking aroundt," remarked
Herr Muller, whose face was still pale from the alarming ordeal he had
undergone.
So the boys selected each a rod and set out at a rapid pace for the
little brook Nat had indicated. The watercourse boiled brownly along
over a rough bed of rocks, forming here and there little waterfalls and
cascades, and then racing on again under flowering shrubs and beneath
high, rocky ramparts. It was ideal trout water, and the boys, who were
enthusiastic fishermen, welcomed the prospect of "wetting a line" in it.
The brook was about a quarter of a mile from the camp under the big
trees, and the approach to it was across a park-like grassy slope.
Beyond it, however, another range shot up forbiddingly, rearing its
rough, rugged face to the sky like an impassable rampart. Gaunt pines
clothed its rocky slope, intermingled with clumps of chaparral and the
glossy-leaved madrone bushes. They grew almost down to the edge of the
stream in which the boys intended to fish.
The sport, as Nat had anticipated, was excellent. So absorbed in it did
he become in fact, that he wandered down the streamlet's course farther
than he had intended. Killing trout, however, is fascinating sport, and
the time passed without the boy really noticing at all how far he had
become separated from his companions.
At last, with a dozen fine speckled beauties, not one of which would
weigh less than three-quarters of a pound, the boy found time to look
about him. There was not a sign of Joe or Ding-dong Bell and he
concluded that they must be farther up the stream. With the intention
of locating them he started to retrace his footsteps.
"Odd how far a fellow can come without knowing it, when he's fishing,"
mused Nat. I wonder how many other boys have thought the same thing!
As he went along he looked about him. On his right hand towered the
rocky slopes of the range, with the dark shadows lying under the gaunt
pine trees. On his other hand, separated from him, however, by some
clumps of madrone and manzinita, was the grove of big trees under which
the auto was parked, and where Cal and Herr Muller were doubtlessly
impatiently awaiting his arrival and that of his companions.
"Got to hurry," thought Nat, mending his pace once more, but to his
dismay, as he stepped forward, his foot slipped on a sharp-edged rock,
and with a wrench of sharp pain he realized that he had twisted his
ankle. The sprain, judging by the pain it gave him, seemed to be a
severe one, too.
"Wow!" thought Nat, sinking back upon another rock and nursing his
foot, "that was a twister and no mistake. Wonder if I can get back on
foot. Guess I'll rest a minute and see if it gets any better."
The boy had sat thus for perhaps five minutes when there came a
sudden rustling in the brush before him. At first he did not pay much
attention to it, thinking that a rabbit, or even a deer might be going
through. Suddenly the noise ceased abruptly. Then it came again. This
time it was louder and it sounded as if some heavy body was approaching.
"Great Scott!" was the sudden thought that flashed across the boy's
mind, "what if it's a bear!"
He had good cause for alarm in such a case, for he had nothing more
formidable with which to face it but his fishing rod. But the next
moment the boy was destined to receive even a greater shock than the
sudden appearance of a grizzly would have given him.
The shrubs before him suddenly parted and the figure of a man in
sombrero, rough shirt and trousers, with big boots reaching to his
knees, stepped out.
"Ed. Dayton!" gasped Nat looking up at the apparition.
"Yep, Ed. Dayton," was the reply, "and this time, Master Nat, I've got
you where I want you. Boys!"
He raised his voice as he uttered the last word.
In response, from the brush-wood there stepped two others whom Nat had
no difficulty in recognizing as the redoubtable Al. Jeffries and the
man with whom he had struggled on the stable floor the memorable night
of the attempted raid on the auto.