“Then keep a long ways behind,” Norman replied. “When I get to the top of that little elevation over there,” he went on, “I’ll make the Wolf call again and you come along. Only,” he continued, “don’t try to get into the camp alone. There’s a whole regiment of half-breeds sneaking around. Perhaps some of them have followed me here.”
Norman disappeared in the undergrowth, and Jimmie sat waiting for the signal agreed upon. He waited a long time but no signal came.
“Now I wonder,” he thought, “if that Boy Scout was acting on the level. I wonder if he won’t give me away to that man Toombs and his bunch of half-breeds. I believe he’s crooked after all! Think I’ll sneak.”
He arose from his position by the tree and turned toward the camp. He had proceeded but a short distance, however, when he tripped and fell over a running vine. Before he could regain his feet he was seized by two pair of muscular hands and laid flat on his back. A knife large enough to cut a hole in the side of a house was held to his throat.
“Oh, you, Norman,” he said under his breath, “if I just had that scrawny neck of yours in my hands now!”
The boy’s rage against the one who had apparently betrayed him was so overpowering that for a moment he paid little attention to the two half-breeds bent over him. Then he saw that the vine over which he had fallen had been purposely held in front of his feet.
His captors were dusky fellows, with straight black, greasy hair and narrow, treacherous black eyes. They seemed to the boy to be crosses between Mexican and California Indians. Directly Jimmie was hustled to his feet by a muscular hand at his collar and his automatic revolver, searchlight and even his pocket knife taken from him.
“Say,” Jimmie said, “if I had one of you fellows on the Bowery, somewhere down near Stanton street, I wouldn’t do a thing to him.”
“You bright boy!” grunted one of the half-breeds as the two started away with their prisoner. “You ver’ bright boy!”
They did not take the precaution to bind the boy in any way, but they gave no chance of escape, for every step of the way muscular hands clung to him. The way was rough, for it led directly up the slope, and this mode of surveillance was rather helpful than otherwise in the steep climb.