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 the immense 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 their eyes encountered was calculated to cause the heart of the most hardened woodsman to beat faster.

Astride of a branch, with his shoe soles dangling two hundred feet above the ground, was Herr Muller, while between him and the trunk of the tree was crouched a snarling, spitting wild cat of unusual size. It seemed about to spring at the human enemy who had unwittingly surprised it in its aerial retreat.

The boys were stricken speechless with alarm as they gazed, but Cal shouted 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 much furder out I down come."

"Don't dare think of such a thing," called up Cal, "just you grip tight and don't move."

"All right, I try," quavered the photographer, about whose neck still dangled the tool of his craft.

Cal's long legs covered the space between the tree and the auto in about two leaps, or so it seemed to the boys. In a flash he was back with his well worn rifle and was aiming it upward into the tree.

But as he brought the weapon to his shoulder and his finger pressed the trigger the formidable creature crouching along the limb, sprang full at the luckless Herr Muller. With a yell that stopped the breath of every one of the alarmed party below, the German was seen to lose his hold and drop, crashing through the foliage like a rock. As he fell a shower of small branches and twigs were snapped off and floated downward 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 appeared impossible that he could save himself from a terrible death, the German succeeded in seizing a projecting limb and hanging on. The branch bent ominously, but it held, and there he hung suspended helplessly with nothing under him but barren space. Truly his position now did not appear to be materially bettered from its critical condition of a few minutes before.

But the boys did not know, nor Cal either, that the Germans are great fellows for athletics and gymnastics, and almost every German student has at one time or another belonged to a Turn Verein. This was the case with Herr Muller and his training stood him in good stead now. With a desperate summoning of his strength, he slowly drew himself up upon the bending 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 close quarters with its enemy, advanced down the trunk, but it was not destined 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 came clawing and yowling downward, out of the tree, tumbling over and over as it shot downward. The boys could not repress a shudder as they thought 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 fur was a fine piece of peltry and Cal's skillful knife soon had it off the brute's carcass. A preparation of arsenic which the boys carried for such purposes, was then rubbed on it to preserve it till it could be properly cured and mounted. This done, it was placed away with the mountain lion skin in a big tin case in the tonneau.

While all this was going on, Herr Muller recovered the possession of his faculties, which had almost deserted him in the terrible moment when he hung between life and death. Presently he began to descend the tree. Near the bottom of the trunk, however, his irons slipped and he came down with a run and a rush that scraped all the skin off the palms of 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 such little inconveniences as that.

"Boys, I tole you ven I hung dere I dink by myselfs if ever I drop, I drop 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, all joking aside, you gave us a terrible scare. I want you to promise to do all your photographing from safe places hereafter."

"I vould suffer more dan dot for mein art," declared Herr Muller proudly, "Ach, vot a terrible fright dot Robert cat give me."

"Yep, those bob cats,--as we call them for short,--are ugly customers at close quarters," put in Cal, with a grin.

"Say," said Nat, suddenly pointing below them, "that little stream down there looks as if it ought to have some trout in it. What do you say if we try and get some for dinner?"

"All right," agreed Cal, "you fellers go fishin' and the perfusser here and I will stand by the camp."

"Chess. I dinks me I dondt feel much like valking aroundt," remarked Herr Muller, whose face was still pale from the alarming ordeal he had undergone.

So the boys selected each a rod and set out at a rapid pace for the little brook Nat had indicated. The watercourse boiled brownly along over a rough bed of rocks, forming here and there little waterfalls and cascades, and then racing on again under flowering shrubs and beneath high, rocky ramparts. It was ideal trout water, and the boys, who were enthusiastic fishermen, welcomed the prospect of "wetting a line" in it.

The brook was about a quarter of a mile from the camp under the big trees, and the approach to it was across a park-like grassy slope. Beyond it, however, another range shot up forbiddingly, rearing its rough, rugged face to the sky like an impassable rampart. Gaunt pines clothed its rocky slope, intermingled with clumps of chaparral and the glossy-leaved madrone bushes. They grew almost down to the edge of the stream in which the boys intended to fish.

The sport, as Nat had anticipated, was excellent. So absorbed in it did he become in fact, that he wandered down the streamlet's course farther than he had intended. Killing trout, however, is fascinating sport, and the time passed without the boy really noticing at all how far he had become separated from his companions.

At last, with a dozen fine speckled beauties, not one of which would weigh less than three-quarters of a pound, the boy found time to look about him. There was not a sign of Joe or Ding-dong Bell and he concluded that they must be farther up the stream. With the intention of 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 the rocky slopes of the range, with the dark shadows lying under the gaunt pine trees. On his other hand, separated from him, however, by some clumps of madrone and manzinita, was the grove of big trees under which the auto was parked, and where Cal and Herr Muller were doubtlessly impatiently awaiting his arrival and that of his companions.

"Got to hurry," thought Nat, mending his pace once more, but to his dismay, 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 his ankle. The sprain, judging by the pain it gave him, seemed to be a severe one, too.

"Wow!" thought Nat, sinking back upon another rock and nursing his foot, "that was a twister and no mistake. Wonder if I can get back on foot. 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 a sudden rustling in the brush before him. At first he did not pay much attention to it, thinking that a rabbit, or even a deer might be going through. Suddenly the noise ceased abruptly. Then it came again. This time it was louder and it sounded as if some heavy body was approaching.

"Great Scott!" was the sudden thought that flashed across the boy's mind, "what if it's a bear!"

He had good cause for alarm in such a case, for he had nothing more formidable with which to face it but his fishing rod. But the next moment the boy was destined to receive even a greater shock than the sudden appearance of a grizzly would have given him.

The shrubs before him suddenly parted and the figure of a man in sombrero, rough shirt and trousers, with big boots reaching to his knees, stepped out.

"Ed. Dayton!" gasped Nat looking up at the apparition.

"Yep, Ed. Dayton," was the reply, "and this time, Master Nat, I've got you 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 had no difficulty in recognizing as the redoubtable Al. Jeffries and the man with whom he had struggled on the stable floor the memorable night of the attempted raid on the auto.