“Now, look here!” Jimmie declared. “We came in here for a vacation, and we’ve been mixed up with half-breeds, and Indians, and bears, and old Franciscan missions, built underground, and pots of gold at the rainbow’s end, and a thousand other things that haven’t given us much joy. Now I propose that we stay here and have our visit to the mountains out after all this mess is cleared up.”
“I’ve got a bum arm,” Harry exclaimed, “but I vote for staying in the hills a month. If I can’t climb trees and send Boy Scout signals floating over the mountain tops,” he added with a laugh, “I can sit here and broil bear steaks and have all the fun in the world seeing you boys eating them. That will be fun enough for me!”
“Besides,” he went on with an amusing grin, “I want to stay here long enough to make the personal acquaintance of that flag on the cliff—the flag of Spain, without any yellow in it, that stands for a billion of yellow metal not far away!”
“The flag on the cliff?” repeated Mr. Bosworth.
“Sure,” replied Jimmie. “There has been a stone flag waving on the cliff over the old mine for two or three hundred years. It isn’t much of a flag to look at, but it represents the kingdom of Spain, crown and all, and the old Indians loved it because they knew of the treasure it guarded.”
“Then our first visit,” Mr. Bosworth declared, “shall be to the flag on the cliff!”
CHAPTER XXII
A FIGHT IN THE AIR
“My idea of a pleasant afternoon,” Ned said, as they arose from a sumptuous camp dinner, “is to get off alone into the mountains. Mr. Bosworth seems inclined to go with you boys for a view of the flag on the cliff,” he went on, “and so I’ll leave you to your own amusement while I go and get acquainted with the mountains.”
“You would better come with us, and see what’s going on at the Devil’s Punch Bowl,” Jimmie advised.
“Somehow, ever since I’ve been here,” Ned went on with a smile, “I have lived in an atmosphere of excitement. We shall be leaving the mountains before long, and I have a notion that I’d like to get up to the snow line and look over the country.”