But even at that swift pace downward, and at that exciting moment, Ned found himself puzzling over the strange sight he saw in a break in the wall of the cañon. It was a large opening he looked into, and strange figures were gathered about a cooking fire.
CHAPTER XI.—THE LUCK OF A BOWERY BOY.
Jimmie opened his eyes and looked about. It was a gloomy niche in a perpendicular wall that he looked out of. Rock to right and left and rear. In front a velvet summer sky, with stars winking over a vast stretch of broken country. There was a ledge a foot in width outside the entrance to the niche, but the boy could not see how long it was, or where it led to.
His head ached and there was a drawing sensation to the skin of his forehead and right cheek, as if some sticky substance had congealed there. When he reached a hand up to see what the trouble was he found that his head was tied up in a cloth. There was no one in sight to ask questions of, so he arose to a sitting position and leaned forward.
The action brought on a whirl of dizziness, and he dropped back against the wall for support. He knew then that he had received a hard blow on the head, and that he had lost considerable blood. Once before in his life he had felt that dizzy weakness, and that was after an artery had been cut in his leg and he had nearly bled to death before reaching a hospital.
When he lay back trying to get something like a balance in his brain, he saw that it was near midnight. He knew that by the stars, for he had watched them many a hot night, lying on his back on a dray backed up some alley down near the East river, in New York.
There were certain stars which always occupied just such a position at midnight in New York. He did not know their names, but he knew that at midnight in Montana they would not be so far advanced across the sky. Therefore he looked for the stars as they appeared at nine o’clock on the Atlantic. When he found them he knew from their location that it had been something over an hour since he had left Ned and the aeroplane.
The three hours difference in time between New York and Montana—three hours in round numbers—would make the midnight stars three hours late, of course. Anyway, the boy was pretty certain of the time.
Then his mind went back to Ned and the aeroplane, and the cañon in front of the landing place. He recalled the stop, and remembered leaving Ned to see what was doing in the way of forest fires. He remembered, too, getting up on a high rock to look over at the creeping flames.
But strange to say he did not remember getting down again. The next thing on the record of his mind was that niche in the wall and the stars shining down out of a summer sky, the same stars he had looked at in old New York. Of course he had been struck the blow he had received while mounting the rock, otherwise he would know something of the attack.