The question was greeted with applause, and half a dozen men immediately made a dash for the cavern. Before long two came out carrying cubs, probably from four to eight weeks of age.
“Where are the others?” asked Carl. “Why didn’t you all get one?”
“There were only two!” was the answer.
“Only two!” repeated Carl. “They made noise enough for two hundred! I thought all the forty bears who came out of the wilderness and devoured the two children were on deck!”
“I guess you’re mixed in your Sunday school lesson!” one of the men remarked.
“Perhaps,” Carl admitted. “It might have been two bears and forty children. I don’t know. What I intended to convey was the idea that there was noise enough in there to represent a thousand bear cubs.”
The aeroplane, sailing very low, now passed almost through the group of men, and Dick Sherman waved a hand in greeting at the boy.
“Do you know him?” asked one of the hunters turning to Carl.
“Sure I know him!” answered Carl. “I got him a supper down at our camp which put two inches of fat on his ribs.”
“Then if you know him well,” the hunter went on, “tell him, for the love of Mike, to quit nosing around our camp looking for some criminal who is probably in Washington, D. C.”