Sandy climbed out of his bedroll. “I’d better go wake up the rest of the gang.”
“The rest of the gang is already awake,” Jerry’s voice sang out from the darkness, “lying here quivering with our blankets pulled over our heads.”
Quiz Taylor crawled out of the tent on his hands and knees, fumbling in his breast pocket for his eyeglass case. “This moron got it into his thick head that we were being attacked by Indians from the reservation.”
Dick Fellows laughed. “He’s partly right at that, I guess. My grandpaw was a pure-blood Dakota.”
Russell Steele struggled into his boots. “Well, suppose you escort us back to your tepee, chief.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Missing A-Bomb
They reached the ranger fire station shortly after three in the morning. It was a tower of tubular steel reaching over one hundred feet into the air. Jerry craned his neck at the small cabin perched on top of it, a boxlike silhouette against the brilliant starlit sky.
“You live up there?” he asked the ranger.
“Certainly,” Dick said. “It’s very comfortable.”
He led the way up the flight of steel stairs that ran around the outside of the tower. When they reached the platform at the top, Jerry looked down and grabbed frantically at the guard railing.