“Where are Ned and Harry?” he asked in a moment.
“They’ve gone out to get another bear for breakfast,” Jimmie replied. “You see,” he went on, “we’re getting up such appetites, here in the mountains, that it takes two hunters to keep the provision chest full.”
“After I eat,” Jack said with a grin, “I’m going out and bring in a deer. I’m getting tired of bear steak.”
“Go to it!” laughed Jimmie. “You needn’t have any of this bear steak for breakfast, if you’re getting sick of it.”
Jimmie and Frank each seized a huge slice of smoking steak and made for the cave, leaving Jack to broil his own breakfast in punishment for having found fault with the menu.
The cave in which the boys found themselves in a moment was not far from twenty feet in size each way, with the ceiling at least ten feet above the smooth floor. Perhaps thousands of years before that day erosion or volcanic action had honeycombed many of the granite ridges looking to the east. These openings in the ledge lay just at the timber line, as if nature halted her vegetation there, angry at the interference of contrary forces.
As the Boy Scouts had occupied the cave for several days, it was comparatively well furnished with crudely made tables, chairs, bunks, and also with cooking utensils brought up from San Francisco. Taken altogether it was an ideal place in which to camp, being dry and sightly.
Those who have read the previous volumes of this series will not need introduction to the five boys above mentioned. Ned Nestor and Jimmie McGraw, of the Wolf Patrol, New York, and Jack Bosworth, Frank Shaw and Harry Stevens, of the Black Bear Patrol, New York, had recently reached San Francisco after an exciting experience with train robbers farther to the north. The modern automobile which they had used on that trip had been shipped from Seattle to San Francisco by boat, the boys not caring to make their way by motor down to the Golden Gate.
A few days in San Francisco sufficed, for the boys were out on their annual summer vacation, and did not care to spend their time on city pavements or in city apartments. So, leaving their automobile in storage, they had departed for the mountains in the vicinity of Twin Peaks.
It is needless to say that they had enjoyed every minute of the time since leaving San Francisco. They had hunted deer, bear and smaller game, and had fished in the clear waters of the rapid streams which have their rise in the Sierra Nevadas and finally empty the offerings of the summits into San Francisco bay.