CHAPTER II.—CAPTAIN JOE FOLLOWS A TRAIL.
Clay stood dejectedly for a moment, his hands in his pockets, his eyes following the streamer of smoke which marked the progress of the inhospitable train. Then the cabin door opened and a white bulldog with friendly eyes and a monster of a jaw walked forth in a dignified manner and sat down to look over the scenery.
“What do you think of that, Captain Joe?” Clay asked, patting the dog on the head. “Isn’t that just about the worst luck in the world? I wish you could grip that train by the cowcatcher and bring it back here. It ought to have helped us out.”
Captain Joe, looking in the direction of the column of smoke, fast disappearing, worked his lips into a snarl which showed a set of capable teeth. He evidently agreed with Clay as to the moral character of the person in charge of the train.
Case opened the cabin door and looked out, waving a pancake turner in one hand. He smiled when he noted Clay’s discouraged attitude.
“Fine, eh?” he cried. “If I had in a book all the things the Canadian Pacific people do not know about relieving a fellow in distress, I’d have the biggest volume ever printed!”
“Perhaps the people who left us here neglected to notify division headquarters,” suggested Clay, never willing to pass censure until all the facts were at hand. “Anyway, we’re probably here for the night, so we may as well make the best of it. Supper ready?”
“Hot on the table,” replied Case. “Where’s Alex?”
“He went down the grade, east, and will doubtless be back in a moment. Flag him with a pancake, and he’ll come running!”
“Go bring him, Captain Joe,” ordered Case. “Go tell Alex that the last call for supper is on in the dining car.”
Captain Joe wiggled his stumpy ears, agitated his excuse for a tail, and turned a wrinkled nose to the north. In a moment he started away in that direction.
“Here!” called Clay, “Alex didn’t go in that direction! Come here, you foolish dog, that’s not the right way to go! Come on back here!”
Captain Joe looked back condescendingly, as if he realized that he was doing business with a very young person who really did not know what he was talking about, and, crouching down, uttered a low threat of a growl.
“There’s something in there,” Case decided, “some man or some wild animal. Captain Joe doesn’t often make mistakes. I’ll get a searchlight and take a look. He may have discovered something good to eat!”
“Be careful,” advised Clay. “It isn’t more than a hundred feet back to the wall of rock, and whatever is in there, man or beast, is pretty close to us. Wait until I get my gun.”
The searchlight revealed nothing save bare rock and stunted, starved shrubs which grew protestingly in such shallow soil as had found its way into the crevices of the rocks.
“You’re a rattle-headed dog, Captain Joe,” Clay admonished, as the boys turned back toward the platform car and its cargo of motor boat.
But Captain Joe was not inclined to accept this reproof lightly. Instead of going back with the boys, he bounded to a sloping shelf of rock and uttered a succession of growls, menacing and deep-chested.
“There is something up there!” Case commented. “It may be a bear. There are bears in British Columbia, you know.”
“You are likely to know it, if you go up there,” Clay laughed. “I advise you to keep away.”
“Do the bears of British Columbia talk?” asked Case, who was closer to the dog and the shelf of rock than his companion.
“Yes; with their teeth,” answered Clay.
“Well, this bear, the one up on the rocks, is trying to coax the dog up to him,” answered Case. “I heard him tell Captain Joe that he was making a great mistake in looking upon him as an enemy, or words to that effect. Captain Joe doesn’t believe him, at that!”
“You heard a voice up there?” interrogated Clay, hardly crediting the statement. “I guess you are having a dream!”
Captain Joe passed out of sight in the dusk and his hoarse protests died away. Clay called to him to come back, but the dog did not make his appearance.
“I’m going after him,” Case declared. “He may get shot. There’s a man in there, all right!”
Clay held his chum back with both hands and called again and again to the dog. Directly Captain Joe returned, looking very much like a boy who had been invited to a delightful excursion and then detained at home by parental command. He crouched down at Clay’s feet, but kept his eyes on the rocks above.
“I guess the dog knows,” Case argued. “You can’t fool Captain Joe. There is some one hiding in the rocks.”
“Look here,” argued Clay, “we’ve been lying here since early this morning, haven’t we? Well, that is only a narrow place, between the spur and the almost perpendicular wall of rock, and we would have seen anybody sneaking about, wouldn’t we? Why, I’ve been up there where the dog went half a dozen times to-day, and there was no sign of a person there, no sort of a place for one to hide in. You heard a wild animal growling, that’s what you heard.”
“I guess I know what I heard!” Case contended. “Perhaps you’d better tell me I’m stone deaf! I tell you I heard a human voice, speaking to the dog!”
“If there was any one in hiding it was Alex playing some of his foolish pranks,” insisted Clay.
“Oh, yes!” laughed Case. “The dog wouldn’t have gone to Alex if asked to! Of course not! And Captain Joe would have made a bristle of his back and growled at Alex like he did that fellow up there! Of course he would! You can say what you like, but I’m going to see what it was Captain Joe growled at. I need a little exercise, anyway!”
“It is a wonder Alex wouldn’t come back,” Clay remarked, as Case, armed with a searchlight and an automatic, started away.
The boy turned back at mention of the absence of his chum.
“He may be in trouble,” he said. “He may have come across the man who is hiding up yonder. I’ll look him up, all right.”
Night had fallen, a dull, windy night, with now and then a star showing through driving masses of clouds. There would be a moon later, but now the spaces below, the canyons and the lifting peaks, were as thoroughly out of sight as if the sun had lugged them off with him across the wide stretches of the Pacific ocean!
“You stay here and watch the boat,” Clay urged, in a moment, “and I’ll take Captain Joe and go down the track. The dog will follow the trail Alex left, and we’ll soon know where the boy is.”
Case grumbled not a little at this arrangement, for it was his nature to be in the thick of any ruction within sound of his ears, but he finally consented to remain with the motor boat and entered the cabin.
“I’ll make a light lunch of a couple of dozen pancakes,” he called from the doorway, as Clay and Captain Joe passed out of sight in the darkness.
Alone in the little room, the boy trimmed the fire, put on more coal, removed a scorched pan of cakes from the electric stove, and then sat down to listen and wait. He was by far too anxious and excited to partake of the feast he had prepared for all three.
The wind lifted directly and howled more dismally around the boat, tearing at the window sash and rattling the door as if with human hands. Then Case turned off the electric light, switched out the cooking fire, drew a chair covered with a coat in front of the coal stove, so that the live coals and the flames might not show through the crevices about the openings, and sat silent and, if the exact truth must be told, not a little afraid.
The boy would have bravely faced almost any peril that came to him openly and in the light of day, but this sitting alone, in the darkness, with the wind storming like mad through the pass, more than five thousand feet above tidewater, was a little too much. He wanted action. He found himself unable to sit there alone and wait. Clay and Alex seemed to be away a long time.
Finally he armed himself again and went out, softly closing the door behind him in order that any lurking person might not know that he was abroad. He shivered a moment in the cold wind and then crouched down under one of the windows.
Once he thought he heard a call from the east, but the wind hissed in his ears so insistently that he could not be sure that it was a human voice he heard. He strained his eyes down the pass in the hope of seeing Clay’s electric torch, but the darkness was not broken.
“They might at least give me a signal!” he mused.
But no signal came, and the lonely boy huddled closer to the side of the motor boat and waited and listened. According to the schedule made out in Chicago, he should now be on the deck of a floating boat, instead of on the deck of a craft stuck up like a house on wheels on the planks of a platform car.
Instead of sitting there in the wind at the very summit of the Rocky mountains, he should have been viewing the never-failing panorama of the Columbia river, somewhere below Donald, fifty or more miles to the west. Besides being lonely, there was in the heart of the boy a feeling of apprehension which he could not shake off.
There surely must be something wrong down the pass, he believed. Captain Joe would follow the tracks left by Alex and Clay would follow the dog. This should have brought the searcher to some disclosure long before. He had decided to leave the boat and follow on down the trail when a sound at the side of the car attracted his attention.
It seemed to the listener that some one was climbing up on the platform, moving stealthily, still clumsily enough to be heard above the rush of the wind. The boy sat perfectly still, ready with his electric flashlight and his automatic revolver.
The intruder, whoever it was, came nearer, and Case knew that he had now reached the floor of the car and was moving toward the motor boat. Even if the lad’s position had enabled him to view the slow progress of the intruder, which it did not, he could not have followed his movements with his eyes because of the darkness.
There was nothing to do but wait until the skulker came under the prow lamp of the boat. Then, by the turning of a switch from the corner of the cabin structure, the boy could throw a glaring light over the whole car as well as the deck of the motor boat. Thus revealed, and dazed by the sudden illumination, the prowling man might easily be seen and brought to terms.
Mixed with a sense of danger in the heart of the boy was a feeling of anger at the impudence of the fellow, and with both emotions was merged a curiosity to know what the chap’s motive could be, how he came to be there, and what could be his object in hiding instead of approaching openly. The footsteps moved forward over the planks of the car and a trembling motion ran through the timbers of the boat as a weight tipped it a trifle to one side in mounting to the deck.
Off to the east Case thought he caught a glimmer of light——not a white strong light, such as would come from an electric torch, but a dull, reddish glow, such as would be likely to come from the hot coals of a campfire. As he looked, the glow grew, as if the coals, stirred by the wind had burst into a brisker flame.
Then the boy heard the intruder approaching the door of the cabin, his approach louder and more confident because of the darkness and silence inside, and, reaching out, turned on the great electric light at the prow.