A MISSING BOY

“Bear nothing!” laughed Sandy. “There isn’t a bear within a hundred miles of us! You can’t fool your Uncle Isaac!”

“Look back and see!” advised Will.

Sandy paid no attention to the remark, but kept on fishing, following on down stream until he was some yards in advance of his chum.

So interested was he in the sport in which he was engaged that he thought no more of what had been said to him regarding the bear until a pistol shot reached his ears.

Then he glanced quickly in the rear, taking in the whole line of the hillside at one glance.

Just at that moment the whole landscape seemed to consist principally of bear! Will had wounded a great brown bear, and he was charging down toward the place where Sandy stood. The boy drew his automatic and faced about, hardly knowing what else to do, as the creek was too wide to leap across. The bear came on with a rush.

“Run!” shouted Will.

“I guess you’ll have to show me a place to run to!” Sandy shouted back. “This bear seems to have taken possession of about all the territory there is on this side of the creek.”

“Shoot, you dunce, shoot before he gets up to you!” shouted Will. “If he gets one swipe at you with that paw, you’ll land out in the Gulf of Alaska! Fill him full of lead!”

Sandy began firing, but the bear came steadily on.

“You’ll have to swim for it!” shouted Will in a moment. “You mustn’t let that big brute get near enough to hand you one with that educated left of his. Jump in and swim and I’ll help pull you out!”

Sandy looked at the creek and shivered. The water looked blue, as if shivering from the cold. He faced about and decided to take a few more shots at the bear before risking his life in the cold water.

“You’ll have to jump!” Will shouted from the other side.

“I wouldn’t have to jump,” Sandy cried back, “If you’d do more shooting and less talking! Go on and use up your lead!”

In the excitement of the time, Will had, indeed, forgotten to keep his automatic busy. He now began shooting as fast as the weapon would carry the lead away, and bruin seemed to take offense at the activity with which the bullets flew about him. He was bleeding in several places, and was in a perfect frenzy of rage.

“I guess that’s an armored bear!” Will shouted across the creek. “I don’t believe our bullets have any effect on him!”

By this time the bear was within a few paces of Sandy. The boy’s automatic was empty now, yet he obstinately refused to spring into the water. Bruin reached out one paw and Sandy ducked, coming up behind the clumsy animal and landed a blow with the butt of the automatic on his head.

The next few moments were something of a blank in the mind of the boy. He heard Will calling to him, he knew that he had been struck by the bear, knew that his chum’s bullets were still flying across the river, and knew that things were turning black around him.

Then he felt a dash of cold water in his face, and looked up to see Will standing over him, pouring water out of his hat.

“What did I do to the bear?” he asked faintly.

“Wait till you get to a mirror and see what the bear did to you!” replied Will. “What you got was a plenty!”

“Why didn’t I jump in and swim across?” asked Sandy feebly.

“Because you’re the most obstinate little customer that ever drew the breath of life,” answered Will. “You took a chance on being eaten alive by a bear rather than get your feet wet!”

“Did I get my feet wet?” asked Sandy.

“No, but I did!” answered Will. “I had to swim across. The bear handed you one between the eyes and then dropped dead. I was afraid you’d lie here all night if I didn’t do something, so I swam over.”

“So you’re the one that got wet?” grinned Sandy.

“Yes, I’m the one that got wet, but you’re the one that got beat up!” replied Will. “Do you think you can walk home now?”

“Sandy straightened out one arm at a time, then one leg at a time, then arose to a sitting position.

“I don’t know why not!” he replied.

“Get up and see if you can walk!” advised Will.

“’Course I can walk!” replied Sandy. “I just went down for the count!”

He scrambled slowly to his feet and turned about to gaze at his late antagonist. The bear was lying stone dead close to the stream.

“He’s a big one, isn’t he?” he asked.

“He certainly is,” was the reply. “If he’d got a good swipe at you before he became weak from loss of blood, you’d be in the ‘Good-night’ land all right now!” the boy added, with a grin.

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t, then!” answered Sandy.

“Do you think we can carry the rug home?” asked Will.

“Perhaps you can,” replied Sandy. “I don’t feel as if I could carry an extra ounce. I guess Bruin did pass me a stiff jolt!”

“You bet he did!” replied Will. “Anyway,” he added, “we’ll have to leave the rug until some other time, because we’ve got quite a lot of fish to carry. If any one steals the hide, we’ll have to stand it.”

“We might skin the bear and put the hide up in a tree,” suggested Sandy. “We’ll have to tan the pelt in the sunshine, anyway!”

“That’s a good idea, too!” exclaimed Will, getting busy at once with his knife. “And that reminds me that we can have bear steak for supper if we want it. We all like bear steak, you know!”

“I should say so!” replied Sandy.

It took the boys only a short time to remove the pelt from the bear and provide themselves with a few pounds of steak. Then leaving part of their fish, they started away up the creek toward the cabin.

Now and then Will stopped in the hurried walk to look toward Sandy and grin in the most provoking manner.

“If you see anything about me you don’t like,” Sandy said, half-angrily, on the third or fourth inspection, “you can just step over here and knock it out of me! What are you making fun of me for?”

“You look like you’d been through a battle with a cage of monkeys,” replied Will. “You’ve got a swipe on the side of the face, and your cheek is scratched and bloody, and you got a swipe on your shoulder, and there’s a tear on your shoulder, in the flesh as well as in your coat, and one eye will be black as soon as the blood settles under the contusion. Take it up one side and down the other, you’re a pretty disreputable looking object!”

“You wait until you get into a fight with a bear, and see how you come out! I’ll bet you won’t look as if you’d just dropped in from a pink tea! You’ll look about like thirty cents!”

“When I see a bear coming,” replied Will, “I hope I’ll have the sense to run! I won’t stay and get into a knock-down argument with him!”

It was nearly sundown when the boys came in sight of the cabin. They looked eagerly through the twilight for a light, expecting that George would have the great acetylene lamp in working order.

But no light showed from the cabin, and all was still as they approached the door. When Will looked in he saw the interior was in confusion.

“I should think George might straighten things out a little bit,” he grumbled. “I’ll bet he’s been asleep all the afternoon!”

“I presume he has,” agreed Sandy.

Will reached to the top of a shelf for an electric flashlight and swung the circle of flame about the room.

“Why, look here!” he said excitedly, “what do you know about that?”

“About what?” demanded Sandy, who was looking the other way.

“About Bert’s bed being empty!”

“That’s another joke!”

“Not on your life!” exclaimed Will.

Sandy turned around, gave one glance at the vacant bunk, and dropped weakly back into a chair.

“Do you think he got up and walked away?” he asked.

“No,” replied Will, “I don’t!”

“Then, who carried him away?” demanded Sandy.

Will turned the rays of the searchlight on the bunk where he had seen George cuddle down and then walked over toward it.

“George didn’t!” he answered, “because George is here sound asleep!”

“Sound asleep?” repeated Sandy. “Do you suppose he’d lie here and sleep and let some one come and carry away Bert?”

Will took hold of the boy’s leg and half drew him out of the bunk.

“Wake up, here!” he shouted.

George yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“First good sleep I’ve had in a week!” he said.

“Did you sleep all the afternoon?” asked Will.

“I guess I did!”

“Hear any one around the cabin?”

“How could I, when I was sound asleep?”

“Well,” Will went on, “while you were having that fine sleep, some one came to the cabin and carried off Bert Calkins!”

“What are you talking about?” demanded George.

“Look in his bunk and see!” advised Sandy.

“How was it ever done?” demanded George.

“I’m not asking how it was done,” Will returned. “What I want to know is: Why was it done? What object could any one have in carrying away that kid? I wouldn’t believe he was gone if I didn’t see the empty bunk.”

“It’s something connected with that code message!” Sandy suggested.

“I’ve got it!” replied Will. “The man took the message away before he knew whether he could read it or not. When he found he couldn’t read it, he came back to get Bert to read it for him.”

“But Bert is in no condition to be kept prisoner,” George insisted. “He won’t give the information the man seeks, and the man will probably mistreat him because he can’t! What we’ve got to do is to get a move on and find the boy before he is starved or beaten to death.”

“That’s just what we’ve got to do!” agreed Will. “We’ve got to drop everything until we find that boy!”