“Well, what is he laughing at?” demanded Westy crossly. Here was Westy, his clothes and skin peeled off in too many places for comfort and after risking life and limb and undergoing the nervous shock of hours of horror. He was now simply laughed at. Small wonder if Westy felt sore in spirit as well as in body. Billy explained as Mr. Wilde could do nothing but snicker.
“Why, he wanted to film the birds in the act of knocking some one off a cliff, and I don’t doubt he’d have used me for that part if he didn’t need me to crank the camera. Anyway, he spared me and rigged up a dummy. He didn’t want you kids getting into danger up there so he said nothing to you. You remember Ed didn’t wear his scout suit. Well, we took that along to stuff for a dummy. We had to bait the scarecrow with stuff to attract the old buzzards, and for that we’d brought along some meat anyway, and we just stuffed it inside the suit. I’m afraid Ed’s suit is ruined; we didn’t expect that. We’ll get him another. It was well worth the price, for it all worked out fine after we’d worked all day up there, scaring up those birds and trying to hide from them and focus on the dummy and all. Just as the sunlight began to go back on us the birds condescended to star for something elegant. They knocked the boy scout over the cliff and I filmed it for a thriller. Well, then something happened that we hadn’t bargained for and it was too good to miss. We saw you start down the cliff on the other side. Mr. Wilde was afraid you’d fall, but I said, no, you could make it all right, you weren’t a scout for nothing and when you didn’t hear him when he yelled to you to go back I said, ‘let him go ahead and I’ll snap him too and we can add it to the picture as the “Daredevil Rescue.”’ Well, it was too good to miss. We followed along down after you on the other side and I hope to say the movie fan’s hair will stick up on end when they see you shoot the shoots and hang over the Leap of Death by the seat of your pants. It was wonderful! Doug Fairbanks isn’t in it. I’m sorry to say it got too dark for me to get you when you discover the body and you’ll have to act that over for me in broad daylight. Of course the fact that I had to run along holding on by my eyelashes in steep spots just to film you, is a mere detail. Wilde just kept laughing and hollering at me, ‘Shoot! shoot! There’s a good one, shoot!’ and I said, ‘I’ll break my neck at this,’ and he said, ‘Well, don’t break the camera.’ Oh, a camera man has a sweet life. I twisted every joint out of socket on the way down, but, oh, boy, wait till you see yourself in that picture!”
This pleasing prospect cheered Westy enough to remove the sting of ridicule that pricked him when he saw he had been made the goat, and be it said to his credit that he joined Mr. Wilde in laughing at himself.
“Yes, but what about Ed?” he asked.
CHAPTER XL
WARDE MEETS A GRIZZLY
In the meanwhile, what had Warde been doing?
After he was left alone in camp, he dutifully tidied up the place, bathed his aching ankle and wrote home as he planned. The writing took a long time as he was slow and had so much to tell. Warde did not enjoy writing letters and when he had finished he felt as cramped and tired as if he had chopped a cord of firewood. The sharp mountain air helped make him sleepy and when he stretched out on the grass to rest for “just a minute,” sleep overcame him and he took a nap like a baby. When he waked he did not need the short shadows of the noon sun directly overhead to tell him it was lunch time. Disappointed that his pals had not returned he rummaged about for a snack of bread and bacon for himself. He began to long for companionship, but did not dare to wander off far from camp for fear the boys would return and he would miss them and any fun on foot. So Warde stayed in camp until he fidgeted alone and decided to use his time to good advantage by collecting firewood. This he did so industriously that soon he had a fine pile. On coming back to it with another armful of sticks Warde saw something moving by one tent. Mr. Wilde and Billy shared one tent, the boys another, while the camera and camp supplies were stored in a third. Something was moving near the tent where the provisions were kept.
Overjoyed, after his long solitude at seeing what he supposed of course was Ed or Westy, Warde shouted. At the sound of his voice the intruder started and reared up. It was an enormous grizzly bear!
You may imagine that Warde stopped stock-still, unable to move hand or foot. He seemed turned to stone and did not even drop his sticks.
The grizzly stood on his hind legs, solemnly regarding him and he did not move either. It would have been worth Billy’s while to have been behind a bush then with his camera, for the picture of boy and bear each standing staring at one another would have been another thriller to his credit.