CHAPTER X
ALONG THE TRAIL
"Voss iss dot aboudt mein horse?"
The group examining that noble animal turned abruptly, to find the quadruped's owner in their midst. Herr Muller still wore his famous abbreviated pajama suit, over which he had thrown a big khaki overcoat of military cut belonging to Nat. Below this his bare legs stuck out like the drum sticks of a newly plucked chicken. His yellow hair was rumpled and stood up as if it had been electrified. Not one of the boys could help laughing at the odd apparition.
"Well, pod'ner," rejoined Cal, taking up the horse's broken hitching rope and leading it back to its original resting place, "you're purty lucky ter hev a horse left at all. This yar Ding-dong Bell almost 'put him in the well' fer fair. He drilled about ten bullets more or less around the critter's noble carcass."
"But couldn't hit him with one of them," laughed Nat, to Ding-dong's intense disgust. The stuttering lad strode majestically off to the auto, and turned in, nor could they induce him to go on watch again that night.
The morning dawned as fair and bright and crisp as mornings in the Sierras generally do. The sky was cloudless and appeared to be borne aloft like a blue canopy, by the steep walls of the canyon enclosing the petrified forest. The boys, on awakening, found Cal already up and about, and the fragrance of his sage brush fire scenting the clear air.
"'Mornin' boys," sang out the ex-stage driver as the tousled heads projected from the auto and gazed sleepily about, "I tell yer this is ther kind of er day that makes life worth livin'."
"You bet," agreed Nat, heading a procession to the little spring at the foot of one of the giant petrified trees.
"It's c-c-c-c-cold," protested Ding-dong, but before he could utter further expostulations his legs were suddenly tripped from under him and he sprawled head first into the chilly, clear water. Joe Hartley was feeling good, and of course poor Ding-dong had to suffer. By the time the latter had recovered his feet and wiped some of the water out of his eyes, the others had washed and were off for the camp fire. With an inward resolve to avenge himself at some future time, Ding-dong soon joined them.
If the petrified forest had been a queer-looking place by night, viewed by daylight it was nothing short of astonishing.
"It's a vegetable cemetery," said Cal, looking about him. "Each of these stone trees is a monument, to my way of thinking."
"Ach, you are a fullosopher," applauded Herr Muller, who had just risen and was gingerly climbing out of the tonneau.
"And you're full o' prunes," grunted Cal to himself, vigorously slicing bacon, while Nat fixed the oatmeal, and Joe Hartley got some canned fruit ready.
Presently breakfast was announced, and a merry, laughing party gathered about the camp fire to despatch it.
"I'll bet we're the first boys that ever ate breakfast in a petrified forest," commented Joe.
"I reckin' you're right," agreed Cal, "it makes me feel like an ossified man."
"Dot's a feller whose headt is turned to bone?" asked Herr Muller.
"Must be Ding-dong," grinned Joe, which promptly brought on a renewal of hostilities.
"I've read that the petrification is caused by particles of iron pyrites, or lime, taking the place of the water in the wood," put in Nat.
"Maybe so," agreed Cal, "but I've seen a feller petrified by too much forty rod liquor."
"I wonder what shook so many of the stony stumps down," inquired Joe, gazing about him with interest.
"Airthquakes, I guess," suggested Cal, "they get 'em through here once in a while and when they come they're terrors."
"We have them in Santa Barbara, too," said Nat, "they're nasty things all right."
"Come f-f-f-f-from the e-e-e-earth getting a t-t-t-t-tummy ache," sagely announced Ding-dong Bell.
While the boys got the car ready and filled the circulating water tank with fresh water from the spring, Herr Muller and Cal washed the tin dishes, and presently all was ready for a start. Herr Muller decided that he would ride his horse this morning and so the move was made, with that noble steed loping along behind the auto at the best pace his bony frame was capable of producing. Luckily for him, the going was very hard among the fallen stumps of the petrified trees, and the tall, column-like, standing trunks, and the car could not do much more than crawl.
All were in jubilant spirits. The bracing air and the joyous sensation of taking the road in the early dawn invigorated them.
"I tell you," said Cal, "there's nothing like an early start in the open air. I've done it a thousand times or more I guess, but it always makes me feel good."
"Dot iss righd," put in Herr Muller, "vunce at Heidelberg I gets me oop by sunrise to fighd idt a doodle. I felt goot but bresently I gedt poked it py der nose mit mein friendt's sword. Den I nodt feel so goodt."
While the others were still laughing at the whimsical German's experience he suddenly broke into yodling:
"Hi lee! Hi lo!
Hi lee! Hi lay!
Riding along by der fine summer's day;
Hi lee! Hi lo!
Hi lee! Hi lay!
Riding along on my – "
"Ear!" burst out Joe, as the German's horse caught its foot in a gopher hole, and stumbled so violently that it almost pitched the caroler over its head.
"That's ther first song I ever heard about a Chink," commented Cal, when Herr Muller had recovered his equilibrium.
"Voss is dot Chink?" asked Herr Muller, showing his usual keen interest in any new word.
"Gee whiz, but you Germans are benighted folks. Why, a Chink's a Chinaman, of course."
"Budt," protested the German spurring his horse alongside the auto and speaking in a puzzled tone, "budt I voss not singing aboudt a Chinaman."
"Wall, I'll leave it to anyone if Hi Lee and Hi Lo ain't Chink names," exclaimed Cal.
Whatever reply Herr Muller might have found to this indisputable assertion is lost forever to the world. For at that moment Nat, who was at the wheel, looked up to see a strange figure coming toward them, making its way rapidly in and out among the column-like, petrified trunks. His exclamation called the attention of the others to it and they regarded the oncoming figure with as much astonishment as did he.
It was the form of a very tall and lanky man on a very short and fat donkey, that was approaching them. The rider's legs projected till they touched the ground on each side like long piston rods and moved almost as rapidly as he advanced. What with the burro's galloping and the man's rapid footwork, they raised quite a cloud of dust.
"Say, is that fellow moving the burro, or is the burro moving him?" inquired Joe, with perfectly natural curiosity.
Faster and faster moved the man's legs over the ground, as he came nearer to the auto.
"I should think he'd walk and let the burro ride," laughed Nat.
As he spoke the boy checked the auto and it came to a standstill. The tall rider could now be seen to be an aged man with a long, white beard, and a brown, sunburned face, framed oddly by his snowy whiskers. He glanced at the boys with a pair of keen eyes as he drew alongside, and stopped his long-eared steed with a loud:
"Whoa!"
"Howdy," said Cal.
"Howdy," rejoined the stranger, "whar you from?"
"South," said Cal.
"Whar yer goin'?"
"North," was the rejoinder.
"Say, stranger, you ain't much on the conversation, be yer?"
"Never am when I don't know who I be talking to," retorted Cal. The boys expected to see the other get angry, but instead he broke into a laugh.
"You're a Westerner all right," he said. "I thought everybody knew me. I'm Jeb Scantling, the sheep herder from Alamos. I'm looking fer some grass country."
"Bin havin' trouble with the cattlemen?" inquired Cal.
"Some," was the non-committal rejoinder.
"Wall, then you'd better not go through that way," enjoined Cal, "there's a bunch of cattle right through the forest thar."
"Thar is?" was the somewhat alarmed rejoinder, "then I reckon it's no place fer me."
"No, you'd better try back in the mountains some place," advised Cal.
"I will. So long."
The old man abruptly wheeled his burro, and working his legs in the same eccentric manner as before soon vanished the way he had come.
"That's a queer character," commented Nat, as the old man disappeared and the party, which had watched his curious actions in spellbound astonishment, started on once more.
"Yes," agreed Cal, "and he's had enough to make him queer, too. A sheepman has a tough time of it. The cattlemen don't want 'em around the hills 'cos they say the sheep eat off the feed so close thar ain't none left fer the cattle. And sometimes the sheepmen start fires to burn off the brush, and mebbe burn out a whole county. Then every once in a while a bunch of cattlemen will raid a sheep outfit and clean it out."
"Kill the sheep?" asked Joe.
"Yep, and the sheepmen, too, if they so much as open their mouths to holler. I tell you a sheepman has his troubles."
"Was this fellow just a herder, or did he own a flock?" inquired Nat.
"I've heard that he owns his bunch," rejoined Cal. "He's had lots of trouble with cattlemen. No wonder he scuttled off when I tole him thar was a bunch of punchers behind."
"I'm sorry he went so quickly," said Nat, "I wanted to ask him some questions about the petrified forest."
"Well, we're about out of it now," said Cal, looking around.
Only a few solitary specimens of the strange, gaunt stone trees now remained dotting the floor of the canyon like lonely monuments. Presently they left the last even of these behind them, and before long emerged on a rough road which climbed the mountain side at a steep elevation.
"No chance of your brake bustin' agin, is ther?" inquired Cal, rather apprehensively.
"No, it's as strong as it well can be now," Nat assured him.
"Glad of that. If it gave out on this grade we'd go backward to our funerals."
"Guess that's right," agreed Joe, gazing back out of the tonneau at the steep pitch behind them.
Despite the steepness of the grade and the rough character of the road, or rather trail, the powerful auto climbed steadily upward, the rattle of her exhausts sounding like a gatling gun in action.
Before long they reached the summit and the boys burst into a shout of admiration at the scene spread out below them. From the elevation they had attained they could see, rising and falling beneath them, like billows at sea, the slopes and summits of miles of Sierra country. Here and there were forests of dense greenery, alternated with bare, scarred mountain sides dotted with bare trunks, among which disastrous forest fires had swept. It was a grand scene, impressive in its magnitude and sense of solitary isolation. Far beyond the peaks below them could be seen snow-capped summits, marking the loftiest points of the range. Here and there deep dark wooded canyons cut among the hills reaching down to unknown depths.
"Looks like a good country for grizzlies or deer," commented Cal.
"Grizzlies!" exclaimed Joe, "are there many of them back here?"
"Looks like there might be," rejoined Cal, "this is the land of big bears, big deer, little matches, and big trees, and by the same token there's a clump of the last right ahead of us."
Sure enough not a hundred yards from where they had halted, there stood a little group of the biggest trees the lads had ever set eyes on. The loftiest towered fully two hundred feet above the ground, while a roadway could have been cut through its trunk – as is actually the case with another famous specimen of the Sequoia Gigantea.
The foliage was dark green and had a tufted appearance, while the trunks were a rich, reddish brown. The group of vegetable mammoths was as impressive a sight as the lads had ever gazed upon.
"Them is about the oldest livin' things in ther world," said Cal gazing upward, "when Noah was building his ark them trees was 'most as big as they are now."
"I tole you vot I do," suddenly announced Herr Muller, "I take it a photogrift from der top of one of dem trees aindt it?"
"How can you climb them?" asked Nat.
"Dot iss easiness," rejoined the German, "here, hold Bismark – dot iss vot I call der horse – und I gedt out mein climbing irons."
Diving into his blanket-roll he produced a pair of iron contrivances, shaped somewhat like the climbing appliances which linemen on telegraph systems use to scale the smooth poles. These were heavier, and with longer and sharper steel points on them, however. Rapidly Herr Muller, by means of stout straps, buckled them on, explaining that he had used them to take pictures from treetops within the Black Forest.
A few seconds later he selected the tallest of the trees and began rapidly to ascend it. The climbing irons and the facility they lent him in ascending the bare trunk delighted the boys, who determined to have some made for themselves at the first opportunity.
"He kin climb like a Dutch squirrel," exclaimed Cal admiringly, as with a wave of his hand the figure of the little German grew smaller, and finally vanished in the mass of dark, sombre green which clothed the summit of the great red-wood.
"He ought to get a dandy picture from way up there," said Joe.
"Yes," agreed Nat, "he – "
The boy stopped suddenly short. From the summit of the lofty tree there had come a sharp, piercing cry of terror.
"Help! help! Quvick or I fall down!"
CHAPTER XI
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.