“These people won’t harm you,” he said to the boy, swinging his arm about to include the group. “Uncle Sam is trying them out in the forest service, I don’t think much of the idea myself, but I’m not the boss.”
Then Slocum went away and Jimmie lay down and watched the Chinamen. Listening, he heard one of them speaking in English, then in Chinese. He knew that he had heard that peculiar voice and dialect before and devoted his whole attention to the fellow.
“Well,” he muttered, in a moment, with a grin, “I’m havin’ the luck of a Bowery boy in this deal, an’ that is the greatest luck in the world.”
Then he fell to wondering what Chang Chee, the keeper of one of the worst Chinese restaurants on Doyers street was doing there, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, mixed up with alleged foresters.
“Just wait until I see Ned!” the boy mused. “I’ll put him next to somethin’. He’ll be glad he brought me with him!”
Then the boy’s thoughts went back to the camp in the Valley of the Wild Beasts, as he called it. Slocum might have told the truth about the attack on the boys, and they might be in trouble at that moment. He wondered, too, if, in case they were taken prisoners, they would be brought to the cavern.
“Anyhow,” the lad mused, “they never intend to let me get out of this. If they did, they wouldn’t have permitted me a sight of the Chinks. Unless I sneak away, there’ll be an accident some day, an’ then there’ll be no more Jimmie McGraw!”
The boy was tired and weak, so that even such serious thoughts as these could not keep him awake. Wondering what conditions Ned had found at the camp, after soaring out of the cañon, he dropped his head against the stone wall of the alcove and was soon in a deep sleep. The fumes of opium with which the cavern was filled might in a measure have contributed to this, but, anyway, nature was exhausted, and the boy’s slumber was heavy and dreamless.
CHAPTER XII.—A MEMBER OF THE OWL PATROL.
When Jimmie awoke the fire which had burned in the cavern had gone out, and those who remained in the chamber seemed to be fast asleep. He tumbled out of his alcove, still feeling weak and dizzy, and moved toward a hanging rug which closed the entrance to the place.