“Only I do hope,” Jack was telling himself under his breath with a fond glance toward the object of his soliloquy, “if he’s bound to save us all again, his victim turns out to be a little more ferocious than a wretched half-starved prairie dog, creeping up to smell out a bone or two thrown away after a camp supper.”
Perk was a busy and willing worker for the next half hour, dodging in and out, bending over his cooking fire that had been coaxed to a point approaching perfection with several pots and pans resting on the large gridiron that the ex-hermit evidently used principally for roasting his potatoes in their skins, he being no great hand at achieving culinary triumphs. Some men are born to one profession and others excel in quite another line. Doc. Reeves’ specialty was surgery, that of Jack might be set down as general excellence along the duties of an air pilot and also fairly well equipped to play his part as one of Uncle Sam’s energetic Secret Service men while Perk had a notion he shone in no one particular line, but could get up about as savory a meal, under existing conditions, as the best woods guide.
He certainly surpassed himself on this particular occasion. The odors that soon began to permeate the atmosphere all around that lonesome spot caused Jack to show uneasiness, as though he could hardly wait for Perk to call them to partake of the glorious feast.
“Why, if this keeps on much longer,” he told himself as he walked up and down near by as a very hungry man is apt to do when waiting for supper to be put upon the table, especially if it is in camp, where appetite reigns above ordinary likes and dislikes, “he’ll have the whole neighborhood saturated with the smell of whatever he’s cooking. If there’s a hungry mountain lion or a half-starved grizzly within a mile of here, he’ll make a trail to this nook right away. What’s that Emerson wrote, that if a man invents the best mouse trap ever built the world will make the deepest kind of a trail flocking to his woods cabin to patronize him? And Perk’s sure some cook, I admit!”
The agony was finally brought to an end and they settled down on bits of logs and a couple of ricketty chairs the self-exiled surgeon had manufactured at some time or other. A small table, also home-made, fairly groaned under the most bountiful supply of “camp grub” imaginable and the grinning Perk eager to serve it out in generous portions.
Even the injured Buddy developed an astonishing appetite. Doc. Reeves, now radiant and full of good nature at the way he had been brought back to his one consuming passion, which he feared was gone forever, declared he had not sat before such a gorgeous feast for many a long year. Suzanne too, saw fit to add her praises while she ate and ate, as if trying to make up for the several meals she had missed while laboring under such a heavy load of suspense.
As for the cook himself, he showed no sign of his late labors having diminished his capacity for stowing away tremendous quantities of food, as those who prepare meals so often declare. But there was enough for all and a bit to be thrown out for the squirrels, rabbits, or any larger species of hungry mountain denizens that might care to investigate the appetizing odors.
They sat around in the faint light of the only lamp available, used only occasionally by the doctor on account of the difficulty of transporting kerosene such a distance on muleback, and talked on a variety of subjects. Buddy was of course eager to learn what was being said concerning the mystery of his disappearance and must have been duly thrilled when Jack and Perk recounted some of the many things they had read under flaming head-lines in the daily papers coming under their observation from time to time.
When questioned, he told in simple words just what had happened. It was nothing original, just such an accident as might happen to the most skillful of air pilots, though not all of them live through the experience. Chancing to see the little lake which was not by any means the first time he had glimpsed it, since on several occasions he had flown above it while carrying his mail pouches to and from airports, he had tried to make a halfway safe landing on the strip of sand at that end of the round pond but failing by a dozen or more feet, plunged into the water.
He lost all knowledge of what happened, coming to his senses a long time afterwards to find himself on a cot with the recluse just completing his wonderful job of attending to his broken arm and the many bruises about the rest of his person.