A strong wind came out of the Western Sea at ten o'clock that night and
swept the lofty plateau as a woman might have swept it with a new broom.
Ned and Frank, pursuing their investigations in the cavern, knew nothing
of what was going on at the camp, but Jack and Pat were not long in
ignorance of the danger of the situation.
With the first strong rush of wind the boys were on their feet,
steadying the aeroplane, driving stakes wherever the nature of the
ground permitted, and running bracing cords. The shelter tents went down
instantly and were blown against the rocks of the east, where they waved
canvas arms in the tearing breeze like sheeted ghosts.
The black clouds which swarmed up from the valley brought no rain, but
fitful flashes of lightning and deep-toned thunder made a threatening
sky. The roaring of the swirling trees in the canyon and on the slopes
came up to the ears of the boys like the boom of a strong surf.
After persistent efforts the boys succeeded in bracing the aeroplane so
that there was little danger of its being swept away, though they still
remained with their backs to the wind, holding on. As time passed, they
crept close together in order that the situation might be discussed.
"Lucky thing we remained here," Pat said, tugging with all his might to
steady the monster machine against a particularly vicious dash of wind.
"It would have gone sure, if we hadn't," Jack screamed back. "I wish Ned
and Frank would come and help. My back is creaking like a shaft that
needs oiling with the strain on it."
"A little help wouldn't go amiss," Pat admitted, shouting at the top of
his lungs in order that he might be heard above the whistling of the
storm.
"I wonder if we'll ever be able to put the tents up again?" Jack
shouted. "They are flapping and snapping like musketry out there on the
rocks. I hope they won't blow away entirely."
Pat gazed anxiously in the direction indicated, but could only see
pieces of canvas bellying up in the wind, mounting upward like balloons
at times, then falling back to earth when a short lull came in the
storm.
"Why," he cried, in a moment, "where's Jimmie? I thought I saw him here
a moment ago. Have you seen him?"
"Not since the storm," panted Jack.
"He may have been smothered in his tent," Pat shouted. "You hold on here
while I go and look him up."
"Be sure that you keep close to the ground," warned Jack. "If you don't
you'll be blown away."
It was not at all difficult for the lad to reach the flapping tents, for
the wind generously assisted him in the journey. Only that he crept on
his hands and knees he would have been tossed against the wall where the
tents lay.
Struggling with the tearing canvas, bracing himself against the face of
the cliff, the boy looked over the ruined tents but found no indication
of the presence of the boy he sought, either dead or alive. Then he felt
along the angle of the foot of the rise with no better success.
"He's not there," he reported, crawling back to Jack, now braced
tenaciously with his toes and elbows digging into the soil above the
rock.
"Did you find his clothes?" asked Jack.
"Not a thing belonging to his outfit," was the reply.
"Well, he went to bed, didn't he?" asked Jack, a sudden suspicion
entering his mind.
"He went into his tent," was the reply, "but I did not see him undress."
Then Pat, much to his astonishment, heard Jack laughing as if mightily
pleased over something that had taken place.
"You've got your nerve!" he exclaimed. "Laughing at a time like this.
I'll bet the kid has been blown off the plateau."
There was now a little lull in the drive of the wind and Jack nudged his
companion with his elbow, turning an amused face as he did so.
"Blown off nothing!" he said. "You saw how he acted when Ned went off
without him--how sulky he was?"
"I noticed something of the sort."
"Well, Jimmie ducked after him!"
"Why, he was told to remain here."
"He has been told that before," Jack said, "and he's never obeyed
orders. He followed Ned from Manila to Yokohama, not long ago, and made
a hit in doing it, too. Oh, it is a sure thing that Jimmie is not far
from Ned at this minute."
"The little scamp!" grinned Pat.
"He seems to think that Ned can't get along without his constant
presence and his pranks," Jack continued. "He generally stirs something
up in his immediate vicinity, but he's a pretty good scout at that."
"I hope he is with Ned," Pat said.
The wind now died down a bit, so that it was no longer necessary to hold
the aeroplane, and the boys, after seeing that the rope still held,
began the work of repairing the tents.
The clouds drifted away and the moon looked down as bravely as if it had
not just hidden its face from sight at the threats of the wind! The
electric flashlights with which the boys were well provided seemed
inadequate and Pat started in to build a fire.
"I don't know about that," Jack said. "If there had been a fire here
when that wind came up it would have been roaring in the canyon now. The
storm would have swept it down on the trees there, and the whole gully
would soon have become a roaring furnace. Better cut out the fire."
"I guess you are right," Pat said, reluctantly laying his dry faggots
aside.
While the boys worked, trying to restore the shelter tents to something
like form, the wind came up once more and reached out for the aeroplane.
Pat and Jack renewed their holding efforts, and thanked their stars that
no fire had been built on the plateau, for the forest about was dry as
tinder.
Presently a voice which neither recognized came out of the shadows cast
by a mass of clouds just then occupying the sky where the moon should
have been.
"Hello!" the voice said.
The boys looked at each other in perplexity for a moment and then Jack
answered back.
"Hello!" he said.
"Are you all safe up here, safe and sound?" the voice asked, and then
the figure of a tall man, roughly dressed, but bearing the manner, as
faintly observed in the darkness, of a gentleman, advanced toward the
aeroplane, to which the lads were still devoting their whole attention.
"Safe and sound!" repeated Pat.
The stranger sat down by Jack's side and laid hold of the aeroplane.
"Pulls hard, doesn't it?" he asked, as the machine, forced by the wind,
drew stoutly on the ropes and the muscles of the boys.
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION No. 2]
"Pulls like a horse," Jack replied.
"I'm Greer, of the forest service," the stranger said, in a moment. "I
saw a fire up here this afternoon, and I was afraid harm might come from
it during the gale. One blazing brand down in that canyon, and millions
of feet of timber would be destroyed."
"As you see," Jack said, "we have no fire."
"This, I presume," Greer said, still pulling at the machine, "is the
aeroplane your friends came in this evening?"
"The same," replied Pat shortly.
The lad was annoyed to think that the forester, as he called himself,
had been watching them. If he had taken so much interest in their
movements, Pat thought, why hadn't he shown himself before?
Jack's thoughts seemed to be running in the same direction. In fact,
both boys were suspicious of this soft-spoken stranger who had come to
them out of the storm with questions on his lips.
"Where are your friends?" Greer asked, in a moment. "I hope they are not
out in the forest thinking of starting a fire?"
"They've gone to the lake after fish," Jack said, accounting for the
absence of the others with the first words that came to his lips.
Greer gave a quick start and leaned over to look into Jack's face.
"Down at the lake?" he repeated. "Not out in a boat in a storm like
this?"
"No," replied Jack, gruffly, so gruffly, in fact, that the stranger
caught the hostile note and turned away.
"I'm always afraid of fire on a night like this," Greer continued in a
moment, "and rarely sleep until morning. My cabin is back on the
mountain a short distance, some distance above this plateau. That's how
I happened to see what was going on here."
"Rather a lonely life," Pat said, resolved to keep the fellow talking if
he could. "Because," he reasoned, "you can tell what's in a man's head
if he keeps his mouth open and his tongue moving, but no one can tell
the secret locked up behind closed lips."
"Yes, it is rather lonely," Greer replied. "I'm glad you boys are here.
Going to remain long?"
"Only a few weeks--just to hunt and fish," was Jack's reply.
"If you don't mind," Greer went on, "I'll come down and visit you now
and then."
The statement almost took the form of a question, and Jack gave a
grudging answer that the visits would be a pleasure, though he believed
that the man was arranging a way of watching their movements.
"I wish this wind would go down," Greer said, presently. "As I said
before, I'm always afraid of fire on nights like this. See! The wind
blows straight off the distant ocean strong and steady, and a fire
started out there to the west would run over this plateau and over the
mountain like a wash of tide."
"There's nothing to burn on the plateau," Jack said, glad of an
opportunity to contradict the stranger.
"Nothing to burn!" Greer repeated. "I reckon you don't know much about
forest fires, young man! Why, it would burn the soil down to bed rock,
even evaporate the water in the rock itself and crumble it down to
ashes. A forest fire is no joking matter."
The boys remained silent, looking cautiously into each other's faces and
both wondering how a forester, a man marooned in a great wilderness
should be so exact in his speech, should wear such a shirt--actually a
dress shirt--as they saw under his rough coat when the wind blew it
aside.
"I rather think there's more company coming," Greer continued, seeing
that the boys were not inclined to comment on his warnings. "A moment
ago I saw a flash of light at the foot of the rise to the west."
The wind was still blowing fiercely, but both boys turned and looked
down the incline. There was a faint light there now, glimmering among
the trees.
"It looks like a lantern," Greer said. "And the fellow seems about to
climb the hill. Good luck to him, in this gale."
"It seems to me," Pat said, "that the light we see is running along on
the ground. If that should be a forest fire, there would be the dickens
to pay to-night--and nothing to pay with!"
"That is not the way forest fires start," Greer said, turning indolently
in the direction of the divide. "That is a man with a lantern."
The boys watched the glimmer below with interest. The man with the
lantern, if there was a man and a lantern, seemed to be moving with the
wind. Then, again, he seemed to divide himself, as the lower orders of
life at the bottom of the seas divide themselves, appearing on both
sides of a dark space at the same moment.
They were satisfied that something unusual was going on, but were for
the moment lulled into a half-sense of security by the positive
assertions of the alleged forester. Presently they turned away from the
scene below and fixed their eyes on the stranger.
He was standing straight up, his tall figure braced against the wind,
peering down into the canyon. Notwithstanding the steady wind, the sky
was now comparatively free of clouds, and they saw him lift a hand with
something bright shining in it.
It appeared to the lads that he was signaling to some one in the canyon.
They turned away instantly so that Greer did not note their observation
of him, and again fixed their gaze on the slope to the west.
The lantern, if there was a lantern, was growing larger! It was showing
itself in half a dozen places now, and was tracing lights far up in the
crotches of dead trees. Then the penetrating odor of burning wood and
grass came up the slope.
Filled with a fear which could hardly be expressed in words, the boys
faced Greer again. He still stood facing the canyon to the south, but his
hands were not lifted now. There was no need for that, the boys thought,
for the previous signal seemed to have sufficed.
Among the dry faggots on the ground at the bottom of the canyon there was
another man with a lantern. He, too, if there was such a man, was moving
about among the trees and dividing himself into sections, as the
rudimental creatures of the world multiply themselves. Pat sprang to
Greer's side and shook him roughly by the arm.
"There's a fire down there!" he cried.
In the uncertain moonlight the boy saw the stranger's face harden.
"You are mistaken," he said, turning away toward the lake.
"Smell the smoke!" Jack shouted. "I tell you the forest is on fire on
two sides of us."
"Then your friends have set the fires!" Greer shouted, against the wind.
"I have been suspicious of you all along--ever since you failed to
satisfactorily account for the absence of your friends. It is all very
well for you to come here in an aeroplane and start a conflagration! But
how do you think that we, who are not so well provided with means of
getting away, are to escape death?"
Pat drew back his hand, as if to strike the fellow, but Jack restrained
him.
"You set the fires!" Pat shouted, then. "You set it through your fellow
conspirators! I saw you signaling to the canon!"
"You're no more a forester than I am!" Jack added. "You're a scoundrel,
and ought to be sent to prison for life."
There was no more talk for a time. Greer stood defiantly against the
wall of rock to the east, as if fearful of an attack from behind, his
right hand in his bulging pocket. The boys knew that he had a weapon
there, and their own hands were not empty.
The aeroplane drew and shivered in the rising gale, but now little
attention was paid to it. Pat and Jack were listening for some
indication of the return of Ned and Frank. No farther fable of a man
with a lantern was necessary, for fire was racing up the western slope,
heading directly for the plateau and the priceless aeroplane. Down in
the canyon the flames were leaping from tree to tree. A stifling smoke
filled the air, always in swift motion, but stifling still.