CHAPTER XI.
TREED!--TWO HUNDRED FEET UP.
Mingling with the alarming yells of the German came a strange spitting,snarling sound.
Filled with apprehensions, the boys and Cal rushed for the foot of theimmense tree and gazed upward into the lofty gloom of its leafy summit.They uttered a cry of alarm as they did so. In fact the spectacle theireyes encountered was calculated to cause the heart of the most hardenedwoodsman to beat faster.
Astride of a branch, with his shoe soles dangling two hundred feetabove the ground, was Herr Muller, while between him and the trunk ofthe tree was crouched a snarling, spitting wild cat of unusual size. Itseemed about to spring at the human enemy who had unwittingly surprisedit in its aerial retreat.
The boys were stricken speechless with alarm as they gazed, but Calshouted encouragingly upward.
"Hold on there, Dutchy. We'll help you out."
"I know. Dot iss all right," came back the reply in a tremulous tone,"but I dink me dis branch is rodden und ef der tom cat drives me muchfurder out I down come."
"Don't dare think of such a thing," called up Cal, "just you grip tightand don't move."
"All right, I try," quavered the photographer, about whose neck stilldangled the tool of his craft.
Cal's long legs covered the space between the tree and the auto inabout two leaps, or so it seemed to the boys. In a flash he was backwith his well worn rifle and was aiming it upward into the tree.
But as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and his finger pressedthe trigger the formidable creature crouching along the limb, sprangfull at the luckless Herr Muller. With a yell that stopped the breathof every one of the alarmed party below, the German was seen to losehis hold and drop, crashing through the foliage like a rock. As hefell a shower of small branches and twigs were snapped off and floateddownward into space.
But Herr Muller was not doomed, as the boys feared was inevitable,to be dashed to pieces on the ground. Instead, just as it appearedimpossible that he could save himself from a terrible death, the Germansucceeded in seizing a projecting limb and hanging on. The branch bentominously, but it held, and there he hung suspended helplessly withnothing under him but barren space. Truly his position now did notappear to be materially bettered from its critical condition of a fewminutes before.
But the boys did not know, nor Cal either, that the Germans are greatfellows for athletics and gymnastics, and almost every German studenthas at one time or another belonged to a Turn Verein. This was the casewith Herr Muller and his training stood him in good stead now. With adesperate summoning of his strength, he slowly drew himself up upon thebending limb, and began tortuously to make his way in toward the trunk.
As he did so, the wild cat perceiving that it was once more at closequarters with its enemy, advanced down the trunk, but it was notdestined this time to reach the German. Cal took careful aim and fired.
Before the echo of the sharp report had died away a tawny body cameclawing and yowling downward, out of the tree, tumbling over and overas it shot downward. The boys could not repress a shudder as theythought how close Herr Muller had come to sharing the same fate.
The creature was, of course, instantly killed as it struck the ground,and was found to be an unusually large specimen of its kind. Its furwas a fine piece of peltry and Cal's skillful knife soon had it offthe brute's carcass. A preparation of arsenic which the boys carriedfor such purposes, was then rubbed on it to preserve it till it couldbe properly cured and mounted. This done, it was placed away with themountain lion skin in a big tin case in the tonneau.
While all this was going on, Herr Muller recovered the possession ofhis faculties, which had almost deserted him in the terrible momentwhen he hung between life and death. Presently he began to descend thetree. Near the bottom of the trunk, however, his irons slipped and hecame down with a run and a rush that scraped all the skin off the palmsof his hands, and coated his clothes with the red stain of the bark.
He was much too glad to be back on earth, however, to mind any suchlittle inconveniences as that.
"Boys, I tole you ven I hung dere I dink by myselfs if ever I drop, Idrop like Lucifer----"
"L-l-lucy who?" inquired Ding-dong curiously.
"Lucifer--der devil you know, nefer to rise no more yet already."
"I see you have studied Milton," laughed Nat, "but I can tell you, alljoking aside, you gave us a terrible scare. I want you to promise to doall your photographing from safe places hereafter."
"I vould suffer more dan dot for mein art," declared Herr Mullerproudly, "Ach, vot a terrible fright dot Robert cat give me."
"Yep, those bob cats,--as we call them for short,--are ugly customersat close quarters," put in Cal, with a grin.
"Say," said Nat, suddenly pointing below them, "that little stream downthere looks as if it ought to have some trout in it. What do you say ifwe try and get some for dinner?"
"All right," agreed Cal, "you fellers go fishin' and the perfusser hereand I will stand by the camp."
"Chess. I dinks me I dondt feel much like valking aroundt," remarkedHerr Muller, whose face was still pale from the alarming ordeal he hadundergone.
So the boys selected each a rod and set out at a rapid pace for thelittle brook Nat had indicated. The watercourse boiled brownly alongover a rough bed of rocks, forming here and there little waterfalls andcascades, and then racing on again under flowering shrubs and beneathhigh, rocky ramparts. It was ideal trout water, and the boys, who wereenthusiastic fishermen, welcomed the prospect of "wetting a line" in it.
The brook was about a quarter of a mile from the camp under the bigtrees, and the approach to it was across a park-like grassy slope.Beyond it, however, another range shot up forbiddingly, rearing itsrough, rugged face to the sky like an impassable rampart. Gaunt pinesclothed its rocky slope, intermingled with clumps of chaparral and theglossy-leaved madrone bushes. They grew almost down to the edge of thestream in which the boys intended to fish.
The sport, as Nat had anticipated, was excellent. So absorbed in it didhe become in fact, that he wandered down the streamlet's course fartherthan he had intended. Killing trout, however, is fascinating sport, andthe time passed without the boy really noticing at all how far he hadbecome separated from his companions.
At last, with a dozen fine speckled beauties, not one of which wouldweigh less than three-quarters of a pound, the boy found time to lookabout him. There was not a sign of Joe or Ding-dong Bell and heconcluded that they must be farther up the stream. With the intentionof locating them he started to retrace his footsteps.
"Odd how far a fellow can come without knowing it, when he's fishing,"mused Nat. I wonder how many other boys have thought the same thing!
As he went along he looked about him. On his right hand towered therocky slopes of the range, with the dark shadows lying under the gauntpine trees. On his other hand, separated from him, however, by someclumps of madrone and manzinita, was the grove of big trees under whichthe auto was parked, and where Cal and Herr Muller were doubtlesslyimpatiently awaiting his arrival and that of his companions.
"Got to hurry," thought Nat, mending his pace once more, but to hisdismay, as he stepped forward, his foot slipped on a sharp-edged rock,and with a wrench of sharp pain he realized that he had twisted hisankle. The sprain, judging by the pain it gave him, seemed to be asevere one, too.
"Wow!" thought Nat, sinking back upon another rock and nursing hisfoot, "that was a twister and no mistake. Wonder if I can get back onfoot. Guess I'll rest a minute and see if it gets any better."
The boy had sat thus for perhaps five minutes when there came asudden rustling in the brush before him. At first he did not pay muchattention to it, thinking that a rabbit, or even a deer might be goingthrough. Suddenly the noise ceased abruptly. Then it came again. Thistime it was louder and it sounded as if some heavy body was approaching.
"Great Scott!" was the sudden thought that flashed across the boy'smind, "what if it's a bear!"
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p; He had good cause for alarm in such a case, for he had nothing moreformidable with which to face it but his fishing rod. But the nextmoment the boy was destined to receive even a greater shock than thesudden appearance of a grizzly would have given him.
The shrubs before him suddenly parted and the figure of a man insombrero, rough shirt and trousers, with big boots reaching to hisknees, stepped out.
"Ed. Dayton!" gasped Nat looking up at the apparition.
"Yep, Ed. Dayton," was the reply, "and this time, Master Nat, I've gotyou where I want you. Boys!"
He raised his voice as he uttered the last word.
In response, from the brush-wood there stepped two others whom Nat hadno difficulty in recognizing as the redoubtable Al. Jeffries and theman with whom he had struggled on the stable floor the memorable nightof the attempted raid on the auto.