The Bungalow Boys in the Great Northwest

“Well, hardly,” he said. “It will take a dozen or more of us to handle that job when the time comes. But in the meantime I don’t want to give him any idea that he is being watched or that the Secret Service is after him. That’s the way we always do things – wait till we are ready and the plum’s right for picking, and then go and get it with neatness and dispatch.”

“That’s why you didn’t let Mr. Chillingworth know you were in the vicinity, then?” cried Tom.

“That’s it,” agreed Sam Hartley. “You see, I figured that they were likely to be watching his place, and so I gave it a wide berth. But I guess there’s no harm in showing myself to him now. It’s evident that Bully Banjo doesn’t fear anything, or he’d not be running the Chinks through so boldly.”

Sam walked off into the brush a little way and soon reappeared with a small burro. Helped by the boys, he loaded his cooking utensils and other camping apparatus on the little creature’s back and then they set off through the brush, headed for a trail of which Sam knew. It was characteristic of Sam Hartley that already he was more familiar with the country about than most of the ranchers.

“There’s one thing that puzzles me, though,” he said, “and that is how those fellows ever get into the canyon yonder from the sea.”

“Why they come in by a trail, don’t they?” asked Jack innocently.

“Oh, no they don’t, for I watched them pretty sharply. I’m willing to swear that they didn’t come in by any trail. No, sir,” grunted Sam, with an air of conviction. “Either those rascals have an airship or else they travel under ground.”

“Well, they haven’t got an airship, that’s certain,” laughed Tom.

“That’s right,” agreed the detective; “therefore, they come under the ridge of hills that separates the canyon from the sea. But how – well, I’ll tell you,” he went on, without waiting for the boys to speak. “My theory is that this river burrows its way under that ridge, and that the rascals have some sort of a tunnel there they get through.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Tom, rather frankly incredulous.

“I do. It sounds wild, I admit, but how else are you to account for it. After all, there’s nothing very uncommon in rivers running under a range of hills. Why’s there’s one does it right up at my old home in New York State, and in California, and all through the west there are any amount of such waterways. The only real novelty in it is the fact that these rascals have been able to use it as a short cut to this canyon. At any rate, I’m going to explore it some day when I get time.”

“And shut them off from it?” asked Jack.

“Well, it might come in handy to use as a trap,” mused Sam Hartley. “But it’s no use figuring so far ahead till we know if there is such a thing in existence.”

“That’s right,” agreed the boys, and for some time after that they were far too busy getting through the close-growing brush to do much talking. At last they emerged, as Sam had foretold they would, on a rough trail, not unlike the one by which they had traveled into so much unlooked-for trouble.

“Now, then,” said Sam, “the next thing is to locate the Chillingworth ranch. We can’t be so awfully far from it.”

“How are we ever going to get a line on it,” wondered Jack, “I’m all twisted about now.”

But Tom who had observed Sam Hartley’s way of doing things on more than one previous occasion, said nothing. He just watched Sam as the latter tied the burro to a tree, and then, diving into the pocket of his mackintosh coat, produced a map. From its grimy condition it seemed to have been well handled. Along the edges of the folds it was torn by much folding and unfolding.

Selecting a flat rock, Sam spread the map out and the boys saw that it was a rough “sketch,” one drawn with pen and ink. Several places on it were marked in red ink. Sam laid a finger on one of these and remarked briefly:

“Chillingworth’s.”

“I don’t see how that helps,” began Jack, but a look from Tom stopped him, and presently he was glad he had not said more, for Sam produced a compass and a pair of parallel rulers. Gazing carefully over the map, he picked out a spot which he said was approximately the one on which they then stood. He then laid the rulers from that spot to the red-inked portion of the map representing Mr. Chillingworth’s place.

“A straight course, almost due northeast from here, and we’ll hit it,” he decided, folding the rulers and putting them carefully away. Then he methodically replaced the map in its envelope.

A few minutes later they set out on the course Sam had outlined. He planned to travel across country, the sure-footed burro being as much at home on the rough mountainside as on a trail.

“Lay hold of the ropes at the side of the pack if you get tired,” he advised the boys. “You’ll find it helps a lot.”

After an hour’s traveling, of a sort to which they had never been accustomed, the boys were glad to accept this advice, and found themselves greatly aided.

Their way lay over bowlder-strewn ground, under towering columnar trunks of great trees of the pine tribe. The lofty conifers entwined their dark branches high in the air, making the forest floor beneath cool and dim.

It was noon when Sam Hartley, consulting map and compass once more, struck off to the east.

“We ought to be there in ten minutes,” he said, without a trace of hesitation in his tone. A sea captain could not have been more confident of bringing his vessel across the ocean into a designated port than Sam was of landing in the exact spot for which he had laid his calculations.

As a matter of fact, it was half an hour before they emerged from the pine woods into a clearing littered with stumps and blackened trunks. Before them was a half-grown corn field, and traces of cultivation were all about them. In a roughly fenced pasture lot – cleared like the rest from the virgin forest – were some cattle and horses.

Across the corn field could be seen a long, low house of logs, with a rough-shingled roof. A little distance from it were some barns painted a dull red and made of undressed lumber, and a big corral with a hay stack in the center of it.

As they struck out, skirting the edge of the corn field, toward the house, the death-like quiet that had reigned about it was ruefully broken. From behind one of the barns there suddenly emerged a blue-bloused figure from whose head a pigtail stuck out behind as it flew along. Hardly had the new arrivals taken in this, before, behind the Chinaman, came a second figure, that of a woman in a blue sun bonnet and a pink print dress. They could see that she had a rifle in her hands, and as they watched she raised it and fired after the retreating Chinaman.

But she did not hit him, apparently – even if such had been her intention – for he kept straight on and vanished in an instant in the dark woods at the edge of the clearing.

“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Sam Hartley, hastening forward. “What’s the meaning of this drama?”

The words had hardly left his lips, before the woman who had put the Chinaman to such precipitate flight espied the approach of the newcomers.

They were about to hail her when, to their amazement, she raised her rifle to her shoulder once more. This time it was most unmistakably trained upon them and the good-looking face behind the sights bore an expression that seemed to say as plain as print:

“Don’t come any nearer if you want to avoid trouble.”

CHAPTER XIII.

A NOTE OF WARNING

A comical expression came over Sam Hartley’s face. He saw at once that the woman mistook them for enemies – possibly allies of the Chinaman whom, for some good reason apparently, she had just chased off the place.

“Hold on there, madam,” he cried, “we’re not here on any harm. The lads have a message to you from your husband.”

“Yes, our names are Dacre – ”

“For gracious sakes, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” demanded the woman, putting down her rifle and smiling pleasantly.

“Well, you see,” spoke Sam, with a whimsical intonation, “you didn’t give us a chance.”

Whereat they all had to break into a laugh, the situation seemed so ridiculous.

“As I suppose you have guessed,” said the woman, “I am Mrs. Chillingworth. That Chinaman you just saw heading off the place I caught hanging round the barn a few moments ago. He was nailing a paper up there. Here it is. Look at it and tell me what you make of it.”

She drew from her apron pocket a bit of paper on which the following was scrawled in a straggly hand:

“Chillingworth: You se what thee byes got. That waz onli a sampil. A Word to the Wize is Enuff. Live and Let Live.”

Sam Hartley’s face grew grave as he read, with the boys peering over his elbow.

“I suspected something like this,” he said, “but I thought we would have reached here ahead of them. I reckon that Chinaman must have known the country hereabouts as well as I did, or better.”

“Well, I allow he ought to,” said Mrs. Chillingworth. “His name is Fu. He worked for my husband, and you can imagine how mystified I was when I came out a short while ago and found him sneaking round the house like a criminal. I asked him what he was doing and he only answered by snarling like a nasty wild cat, and going ahead nailing up his paper. It was then I got the rifle and ordered him off the place.”

The boys explained as rapidly as possible such parts of their adventures as they thought would not alarm Mrs. Chillingworth too much, although it appeared to them that she was a very self-reliant woman – the kind that a rancher in that wild country must have found invaluable. The narration was made in the house, into which Mrs. Chillingworth had invited them. She set out glasses of buttermilk, cool from the cellar, and also produced a dish of fresh fruit, all of which was very inviting to the dusty travelers. In the meantime, Sam had stabled his burro in the corral, and the long-eared little animal was already pitching into the hay stack to the great disgust of the ranch horses.