Twenty minutes later John, Pete and Kitoni gained the place where their friends were awaiting their coming.
"You never had any one so glad to see you in all your life," shouted Fred as he ran to John and tried to throw his arm around his neck. As Fred was the "pigmy" of the party his efforts were ridiculous, but they nevertheless served to remove a part of the tension under which all were laboring.
"Are you all right, Jack?" demanded Grant. "I am now," replied the tall Go Ahead Boy somewhat ruefully.
"What happened to you?" asked Fred.
"I got lost too. We waited for you to come back and when you didn't come after a long time, I started out to look for you. Pete told me not to do it, but of course I knew better than he did and nothing would do but I must try it. It's lucky I'm here, let me tell you."
"Did you find your way back to the place where Pete left you?"
"I did not. He found me. Now then, what happened to you? We didn't know but that you might have fallen over some rim or been bitten by a rattlesnake or swallowed by a mountain lion. The first thing we knew was when Kitoni came along and told us."
"Did you go back to the place where you were when I left you?"
"What do you think we'd do? Of course we went back. We didn't know but by some kind of fool-luck you might have gone back there and if we weren't on hand we knew you wouldn't know the place and most likely would go on past it and then be lost on the other side. You see we were in a tight box."
"I'm sorry," said Fred ruefully. "All I can say is that from this time on I'm going to stick so close to the crowd that nobody can lose me."