Boy Scouts in the Northwest

CHAPTER I.—A MOUNTAIN MYSTERY.

On a sizzling hot afternoon near the middle of August, in the year nineteen eleven, three boys dressed in the khaki uniform of the Boy Scouts of America stood on a lofty plateau near the British frontier, watching with anxious eyes the broken country to the south and west.

“Nothing stirring yet!” Jack Bosworth said, turning to Pat Mack and Frank Shaw, his companions. “Ned and Jimmie may be in trouble somewhere. I wish we had waited and traveled with them.”

“Traveled with them!” repeated Frank Shaw. “We couldn’t travel with them. We were fired—given the grand bounce—twenty-three sign. Ned seemed to want the space in the atmosphere we occupied at Missoula. Serve them good and right if they do get distributed over the scenery.”

“Never you mind about Ned Nestor and Jimmie McGraw,” Pat Mack put in. “They can get along all right if someone isn’t leading them by the hand. Suppose we fix up the camp and get ready for our eats?”

The boys turned away from the lip of the cañon upon which they had been standing and busied themselves putting up shelter tents and unpacking provisions and camping tools, as they called their blankets and cooking vessels.

They had passed the previous night in a sheltered valley lower down, sleeping on the ground, under the stars, and had breakfasted from the scanty stock of eatables carried in their haversacks. Early that morning a train of burros had landed their outfit at the end of a rough trail some distance below, and the boys, with long labor and patience, had carried it up to the plateau.

The men in charge of the burros had of course volunteered to assist in the work of carrying the goods to the place selected for the camp, but their offers had been declined with thanks, for the Boy Scouts were determined that for the present no outsider should know the exact location of their temporary mountain home.

Those who have read the previous books of this series^[1] will not be at a loss to understand why the location of the camp in the Northwest was for a time to remain a secret, so far as possible. Ned Nestor, for whom those on the plateau were now waiting, had, some months before that hot August afternoon, enlisted in the Secret Service of the United States government.

Accompanied by Frank Shaw, Jack Bosworth, Jimmie McGraw and others, he had seen active diplomatic service during the Mexican revolution, had unearthed a plot against the government in the Panana Canal Zone, and had rendered signal service in the Philippines, where he had assisted in preventing an armed revolt against the supremacy of the United States government.

At the close of his service in the Philippines, he had been commissioned to investigate forest fire conditions in the Great Northwest. The boy had a wonderful native talent for detective work, and, besides, it was thought by the officials in charge of the matter that a party of Boy Scouts, camping and roving about in northern Idaho and Montana and in the southern sections of British Columbia, would be better able to size up the forest fire situation than a party of foresters or government secret service men.

So Ned and his four chums had sailed away from Manila, reached San Francisco in due season, and, after receiving further instructions and arranging for supplies, had headed for the frontier. At Missoula, Montana, he had sent Frank, Jack and Pat on ahead, after giving them the exact location of the future encampment and arranging for the transportation of supplies.

From the first there had been some mystery in the minds of the three concerning Ned’s strange halt at Missoula. They could not understand why he had sent them on ahead of him, for he usually directed every detail of their journeyings. When questioned concerning this innovation, Ned had only laughed and told the boys to keep out of the jaws of wild animals and not get lost.

“I’ll be in camp almost as soon as you are,” he had said, “and will take the first mountain meal with you.”

Yet the boys had reached the vicinity of the chosen location on the previous day, and Ned had not made his appearance. Naturally the boys were more than anxious about the safety of their leader.

“Did Ned say anything to you while at Missoula, about an aeroplane?” Jack asked of Frank as they unpacked bacon and corn meal. “You know, before we left the Philippines,” he went on, slicing the bacon for the coming repast, “the officials said we were to have a government aeroplane. I was just wondering if the thing would get here after we have no use for it.”

“He said nothing to me about the arrival of the aeroplane,” Frank replied, “but I presume he knows when the government air machine will be on hand. It may be packed up at Missoula, for all we know,” he added, “and Ned may have waited there for the purpose of getting it ready for flight.”

“What the dickens can we do with an aeroplane in this wilderness?” demanded Pat, wiping the sweat from his face. “We can’t run around among the trees with it, can we? Nor yet we can’t get gasoline up here to run it with. Anyway, I’m no friend to these airships.”

“When they travel with upholstered dining coaches in connection, and sleeping cars on behind,” laughed Jack, “you’ll think they’re all to the good. If we can’t chase around among the trees in an aeroplane,” he continued, “we can sail over the forests and high peaks, can’t we? Without something of the sort, it would take us about a thousand years to get a look-in at this wild country.”

“Well,” Pat grumbled, “I only hope we won’t get our necks broken falling out of the contraption. It may be all right to go up in one of the foolish things, but I think I’d rather take chances on going over Niagara Falls in a rain-water barrel.”

“I half believe he will come in the aeroplane,” Frank said, shading his eyes with his hand and looking out to the south. “He wants to surprise us, I take it, and that is why he acted so mysteriously about the matter.”

“What about Jimmie?” demanded Pat, who would take almost any risk on water, but who was filled with horror the moment his feet left the solid earth. “He can’t bring Jimmie along in his pocket, can he? And even if he managed to get the little scamp up on the thing, some trick would be turned that would land the ’plane on top of a high tree.”

“Two can ride an aeroplane, all right,” Frank insisted. “Anyway, quit your knocking. Ned knows what he is about, and we’ll wait here for him if we have to remain until the Rocky Mountains wash down into the Pacific Ocean.”

“Suppose we climb up on the shelf above,” Jack suggested, “and see if we can find anything in the sky that looks like an aeroplane. I really think Ned and Jimmie will travel here on the air line.”

Pat fished a field-glass out of his haversack and passed it over to Jack.

“You boys go on up,” he said, “and see what there is to be seen. I’ll stay here and cook this bacon. I could eat a hog on foot right this minute. Where did you put those canned beans?”

“Never you mind the canned beans,” laughed Jack. “It will be time enough