Jimmie lay stretched at full length under one of the discolored shelter
tents in a little cup in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Frank and Pat
and Jack were moving restlessly about, looking up at the blue sky
expectantly. Ned had not returned from his trip to San Francisco, and
the boys were anxious as to his safety.
"He should have taken me with him," Jimmie drawled, presently, when
Frank threw himself down by the tent. "Then he'd have been all right."
"It is a wonder that he got along in the world at all before he fell
under your protecting care," Frank replied, with a grin.
"Oh, he managed in some way," Jimmie answered, "but he never got up in
the world until he took me into partnership," with a wink at his chum.
"He's been up in the world since then, all right," Frank said,
suggestively.
"Too high up," Jimmie grinned. "Too high up for me, anyway. I thought
I'd die up there, on the night of the fire."
"In all the history of air navigation," Frank observed, soberly, "there
was never a trip like that. When I think of the quick start, and the
wind and the rain, the whole thing seems like a dream. How did he ever
do it?"
"I don't know," Jimmie replied. "He boosted me into the seat, and the
next I knew we were off, an' the fire was dropping away from us, an' the
mountains were growing smaller, an' the peaks looked like warts on the
world. I felt like I was fallin' over the edge of somethin'."
"And the wind?" questioned Frank. "Didn't it take your breath away?"
"Wind, nothin'," the boy said, scornfully. "There wasn't any wind where
we were. We went along with it. It was like sailin' on a swift stream.
Ned tuned the engine up to keep steerway, an' shut his teeth. Then, in
half a minute, we were above the clouds, an' the moon an' stars were
askin' what we were doin' up there."
"You're saying it well," Pat said, joining the little group. "If you
were going so merrily before the wind, why did he want steerway?"
"You don't know much about the atmosphere," laughed Frank, answering for
Jimmie. "If you did, you'd know that the air blanket of the earth is a
good deal like a river. It has eddies, and currents, and ripples, and
holes, too."
"You're good, too!" exclaimed Pat. "Holes in the air is about the best I
ever heard!"
"Of course there are holes in the air," Frank replied, with the air of
one imparting valuable information, "especially when there are fires
beneath. And, let me tell you this, you old red-head," he added, with an
exasperating grin, "when the air, driven swiftly by the wind, or what we
call the wind, comes to mountain peaks, and tall trees, and
sky-scrapers, it just backs up, just the same as water does when it
comes to a dam, or any obstruction."
"Go it!" Pat cried. "Make it a good one! Where does this air go when it
backs up?"
"It just hunches up," Frank replied, gravely, "and checks the flow back
of it, and then eddies and swirls away, fit to twist an aeroplane into
kindling wood."
"Of course," broke in Jimmie. "I've often read of aeroplanes dropping a
thousand feet into holes in the air, and of their being swept against
tall trees and buildings by eddies. It takes a cool head to run an air
machine in a storm of wind, and that is where Ned won out."
"If he hadn't kept the aeroplane going with the wind at full speed,"
Frank added, "he would have been in a wreck the first half mile."
"The more I learn about the atmosphere," Pat said, "the less I like it.
When you get me up in an aeroplane, just send word to the folks that I'm
tired of life."
"Ned ought to have a Carnegie medal for what he did that night," Jack
remarked, "and I'm going to speak to father about it when I get home."
"There is no doubt that he ought to have one," Frank said, "but the men
who really deserve Carnegie medals never get them."
"You're an anarchist!" roared Pat.
"All right," was the sober reply, "but if I had the giving out of the
medals I'd present them to men who work twelve hours a day and provide
for families of eight on nine dollars a week--the men who never get
rested, and who never have enough to eat. They are the ones who ought to
have the medals."
"Most of them would sell the medals," Jack said, cynically.
"Well," Frank replied, "I shouldn't blame them if they did. I'd rather
have a porterhouse steak in the interior than a piece of bronze on the
outside."
"Don't talk about porterhouse steak!" pleaded Jimmie.
"Hungry, little man?" asked Pat.
"Hungry! I'm like one of the men Frank has been telling about. I never
get rested, never have enough to eat."
The boys fell upon Jimmie and rolled him out of the tent.
"You get busy with fuel," Pat said, after they had given him plenty of
"movements," "and I'll cook a steak a la brigand."
"We ain't got no steak," complained Jimmie.
"We've got potatoes, and bacon, and onions," Pat said, "and canned
beefsteak. You just watch me. I used to cook steak a la brigand in the
Philippines."
"Get busy, then," Jimmie said, "and Jack will help get the green wood."
"If you bring green wood here for me to cook with, I'll roast you over
it," Pat said. "You get a lot of good dry wood that will make coals, and
I'll show you how to broil a steak a la brigand."
"Why do you call it a brigand steak?" asked Jimmie.
"Because it takes a red-headed brigand to cook it," suggested Jack,
dodging out of Pat's reach.
"Never you mind the name," Pat replied. "Get the dry wood and I'll broil
a steak that will melt in the mouth."
"That old canned stuff?" asked Frank.
"Get the wood," ordered Pat, "and I'll show you."
There were a few dead trees--the sole reminders of a former forest fire
in that green valley--close at hand, and the wood was soon gathered and
placed in a great pile near two rocks which Pat had rolled to within a
yard of each other.
"Here!" Jack called out, as Pat transferred the whole supply to the
space between the stones, "there's enough fuel there for a week's
cooking. Quit it!"
"My son," Pat replied, with a provoking air of patronage, "what you
don't know about broiling a steak a la brigand would make a
congressional library."
While the wood was burning down to coals, Pat cut a green slip about an
inch in diameter at the bottom and peeled and smoothed it nicely.
"Is that to be used to enforce the eating of the steak?" asked Frank,
winking at the others.
"To keep you from gorging yourselves," Pat replied, going on with his
work.
In a short time he had the potatoes cut into half-inch slices. Jack had
peeled them and, following directions with many grins, had also cut a
round hole an inch in size in the middle of each slice.
"He's going to wear 'em around his neck, like beads," Jimmie suggested,
looking carefully over the heaped-up dish.
The bacon was now sliced thin, as were the onions, and in the center of
each slice a round hole was made. Then Pat opened a couple of tins of
beefsteak--so called by the packers--and cut a hole in the middle of
each slice. Then he strung a slice of potato on the spit, then a slice
of bacon, then a slice of onion, then a slice of beef, until there was
nearly a yard of provisions.
"I begin to feel hungrier than ever!"
Jimmie was dancing around the fire as Pat turned the spit. There were
only coals now, and Pat kept the toothsome collection turning slowly, so
as to broil without scorching. The smell of the cooking bacon and onions
set the boys to getting out the tin plates and making the coffee.
The sun, which had been shining fiercely all day, now seemed to be
working his way through a mist. The atmosphere appeared to be tinted
with the yellow haze one sees in the northern states in autumn.
As the boys were keeping watch for Ned and the aeroplane, they noticed
the change in atmospheric conditions, but attributed it to the rising
vapor brought out by the heat of the sun.
"Say," Jimmie said, presently, "I smell smoke. I wonder if there's goin'
to be another forest blaze here?"
"Of course you smell smoke," Jack said, watching the broiling supper.
"We're cooking a steak a la brigand, ain't we?"
"Smells like burnin' leaves," Jimmie insisted.
"More like onions," Pat observed.
The boys crouched about the fire for some moments longer and then Jimmie
arose and began to climb the wall of the cup to the west.
"I'm goin' to see about this," he said.
Frank laid a hand on his arm.
"You wait a minute," he said. "You can't climb that slope in less than
half an hour, and Ned will be here before that. Look! He's coming now,
like the wind!"
The aeroplane, high up in the hazy sky, was indeed making good progress
toward the little cup in the mountain side. While the boys looked they
saw it shift away to the west, whirl back to the east, dart off to the
north and back again.
"He's huntin' for us," Jimmie said.
"He's investigating!" Frank cut in.
"Investigating what?" Pat demanded. "He's smelling of this steak a la
brigand and is hunting for it. Let be. He'll find us."
The sky was growing more uncertain every minute, and puffs of smoke were
seen out in the west, over the rim of the cup.
"The world is on fire, I tell you!" Jimmie cried, presently. "That's
what Ned is shiftin' about for. If the blaze wasn't high up on the
mountains we couldn't see the columns of smoke over the rim of the
valley."
"Well," Pat observed, "the fire can't get in here. Nothing to burn."
"It can fill the cup with hot air and scorch us to death," Frank said,
uneasily. "I think we'd better be looking about for a place to crawl
into."
"Wait until Ned comes," Jimmie suggested. "He'll know what to do."
The aeroplane acted badly in the currents caused by the burning forest,
but Ned finally managed to bring it down in the valley. The boys
gathered about him, all excitement, and the steak a la brigand was for
the moment forgotten in the joy at the return of the patrol leader and
the anxiety to learn something of conditions out in the woods.
"It's going to be a great conflagration," Ned said, "but I think the
aeroplane will be safe here. The whole slope is on fire."
"I wouldn't take chances on leaving it here," Frank advised. "I'd jump
over the divide with it."
"I have been in the air three hours now," Ned replied, "and must have a
rest. Besides, we must remain where we can, if necessary, help head off
the flames. That is what we are here for, remember."
"Not to fight fires," corrected Frank, "but to find out who sets them."
"Anyhow," Ned replied, "we must fight the fire, if it gives us a chance,
now that we are here. Now, what do you think that is?" he added, as a
chorus of howls and cries came up from the slope on the west.
"Sounds like a country circus!" Jimmie laughed.
"That is just what it is!" Ned exclaimed. "Here! Help me roll the
aeroplane into that nook, where it won't be trampled into splinters. Now
you boys get behind it, and I'll get in front. Whatever you see or hear,
don't shoot unless you are actually attacked."
The boys obeyed the commands without a word of comment, well knowing
what was coming next. A breeze was sliding up the slope, bringing with
it flying masses of smoke. Presently birds began to stagger through the
heavy atmosphere, flying low, almost within reaching distance, as they
had fled long before the mounting flames and were exhausted.
"I wish this would let up a moment," Pat said, "long enough for us to
reach that steak a la brigand. It must be about done by this time."
"I'll go an' get it," volunteered Jimmie. "An' eat most of it on the way
back."
"Then bring the coffee," cried Jack.
"Why can't we all go out there and eat?" asked Frank.
The boys were about starting with a rush when Ned caught two of them by
the arm and stopped the others by a quick call. Through the smoke and
the hot air on the rim of the cup, a great head, a head neither white
nor black, but grizzly, was seen. Then a deer bounded over and crouched
down in the valley. Next two mountain lions raced over the lip of the
valley and halted growling, within a few yards of the boys.
"There goes our steak a la brigand!" Jimmie cried, as the rush of
frightened animals showed under the smoke. "I'll eat one of them deer to
pay for this," he added.
"You'll be lucky if one of these wild animals doesn't eat you," Jack
said. "How would you like to be back in little old Washington Square
just now?"
"Forget it!" was the boy's only reply.
"Will the fire get here?" Frank asked of Ned, as the wild creatures of
the forest poured into the valley, regardless of the presence of the
boys, unmindful of the proximity of each other.
"I don't think the flames will come into the cup," Ned replied, "but if
the smoke settles here we shall have a hot time of it."
"Huh!" Jimmie cried. "The whole valley is full of mountain lions, an'
bears, an' deer, an' snakes, an' rabbits. There ain't no room for any
smoke!"
Then the smoke rolled away for an instant, showing a sun as red as a
piece of molten iron; showing, too, a huddle of forest animals crowding
together in the center of the valley. In their terror of the fire they
had forgotten to be afraid of mankind--of each other!