“There are altogether too many bears in this forest,” suggested Gilroy. “The lads may have encountered some of them.”
“That’s a fact!” laughed Jimmie. “Perhaps we’d better go out and see if we can find a group of pine trees bearing a mess of Boy Scouts.”
“This is a serious matter,” Ned interrupted. “Judging from our own experiences, the boys may be having a bad time of it.”
“The outlaws are none too good to commit murder!” Jimmie asserted.
CHAPTER XI
THE DEVIL’S PUNCH BOWL
“See here, boys,” Frank Shaw suggested, as the three boys moved on through the forest, almost entirely surrounded by repulsive half-breeds, “this will be a fine story for Dad’s newspaper. ‘Captured by Bold, Bad Men; or, Why Little Frankie Didn’t Get Home to His Beans’! That would be a fine title for the story, and I’ll ask Dad to print a picture of three boys wandering through a jungle surrounded by a bunch of cheap skates that no decent dog would bark at.”
“Keep still!” whispered Harry. “What’s the use of stirring these people up? We’re in no shape to scrap with them!”
“And then,” Frank went on, “Dad might take a notion to send an expedition out here to round up these dirty greasers. If he does, I’m coming out just on purpose to see them hanged.”
“Cut it out!” advised Jack.
“Of all the rotten, unwashed specimens of humanity I ever came across,” Frank continued, speaking in a still louder tone, “this escort of ours takes the bun. They’re imitation bad-men all right.”