“We’re glad to see you, I’m sure!” he said. “Still, I hardly think you will blame us for resenting apparently impertinent questions.”
“That’s all right, boy!” replied the other, trying his best to bring a conciliatory expression to his sullen face. “It’s part of our duty, you understand, to visit camps in the mountains and make inquiries as to the intentions of strangers.”
“We understand that, of course,” Ben answered. “We are willing to answer any questions you care to ask, now that we know who you are.”
“I hope you’ll answer my first question in a manner entirely satisfactory to myself!” laughed the other.
“I shall try,” answered Ben, “what is it?”
“Have you any coffee left?”
“You bet we have!” replied the boy. “And if you’ll sit down here by the fire, we’ll make you a quart inside of ten minutes.”
Jimmie turned away to the provision box of the Louise to bring out fresh coffee with apparent willingness, but both his companions saw an angry expression on his face.
Carl followed him back to the aeroplane and whispered as they bent over the coffee sack together:
“You don’t like ’em, eh?”
“They’re snakes!” was the reply.
“But they belong to the mounted police!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Anyway,” warned Carl, “you’ve got to keep a civil tongue in your head and not let them know that you think they’re lying.”
“You don’t believe that mounted police story yourself!” declared Jimmie. “They don’t look like mounted policemen, either!”
“I hardly know what to believe,” Carl replied, “but I’ve got sense enough not to let them know that I’m still guessing.”
Jimmie returned to the fire with the coffee and sat down on the grass not far from the visitors. While Ben prepared supper one of the men walked out to the carcass of the grizzly and began removing the hide.
Carl rushed up to his side and stood looking down at the clumsy manner in which the fellow was operating.
“Say,” the boy proposed in a moment, “why can’t we all have bear steak for supper? We boys had supper not long ago, but I think I could eat a bear steak right now!”
The man looked up with a puzzled expression.
“Bear steak for supper?” he repeated. “You don’t eat bear meat, do you?”
“Would a duck take to the water?” asked Carl. “Of course we eat bear meat! Sometimes it’s a little tough, unless you know exactly how to cook it, but I can broil a bear steak so it’ll melt in your mouth!”
“Then do so by all means!” the visitor answered.
Carl removed several tender steaks, took them back to the fire and then called Jimmie to one side.
“You’re all right, kiddo,” he said, as the two seated themselves in the shadows some distance from the blaze.
“Have you just found that out?” demanded Jimmie.
“I mean about those imitation mounted policemen,” Carl went on. “They’re no more mounted policemen than I am!”
“Then they’re a long ways from it!” Jimmie laughed. “But why this sudden conversion to my view of the case?”
“They don’t know about eating bear meat!” was the scornful reply. “One of them just told me that he didn’t know that they ever ate bear steak!”
“That does settle it!” cried Jimmie.
“Of course, it settles it!” agreed Carl. “And now the question,” he continued, “is this: What are they doing here, and why are they posing as mounted policemen? You don’t suppose they’ve got word from New York, do you?”
“Word from New York about what?”
“About our being out looking for the post-office inspector the mail-order brigands abducted not long ago.”
“Of course not!” was the reply. “These fellows are just plain mountain bums! They came here principally to get supper!”
“Or to steal the machines!” suggested Carl.
“We’ll see that they don’t steal the machines!” Jimmie declared.
“Well, I wish Mr. Havens would come,” Carl put in, with rather a longing expression in his voice. “We don’t know anything about the case we’re handling, and we don’t know whether we’re going to remain in this camp an hour or a month. For all we know the men we are trying to find may be in Mexico before this!”
“If they’re in Mexico,” Jimmie suggested, “the United States government can go chase itself for all of me. If you don’t remember what a beautiful time we had in Mexico, I do, and I don’t want any more of it!”
Those who have read the previous volumes of this series will doubtless remember the adventures of the Flying Machine Boys at the burning mountain. During that trip, it will be understood, they suffered the loss of some of their machines, and Jimmie came near meeting his death in a mountain lake known as the Devil’s Pool.
“I’m going wherever Mr. Havens sends me,” Carl answered, “and I’m going to get all the fun out of it there is to get. What’s puzzling me now is to know exactly what we ought to do with these bums.”
“Aw, we can’t do anything with them,” Jimmie grunted. “We’ve just got to feed them and see them hanging around here, trying to steal our machines, and sit peaceful, like a wooden Indian in front of a Bowery cigar store. It makes me sick!”
However, the boys were not called upon to take action of any kind at that time. Ben broiled bear steak enough for the whole party, made some excellent coffee, and brought out a couple of loaves of bread. At the conclusion of this second meal, at least on the part of the boys, the two intruders arose, threw their rifles over their shoulders, and turned away. However, one of them stepped back in a moment.
“We haven’t seen you do any shooting yet,” he said with a smile on his face which Ben regarded as most insincere, “but we don’t know when you will be hunting big game, so you may as well show us your licenses.”
“There!” Jimmie whispered to Carl as Ben produced the three licenses from an inside pocket. “They’ve saved their important question for the last moment!”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Carl.
“Why, those fellows are not mounted policemen!” the boy answered.
“We had made up our minds to that before!”
“Then why should they want to see our licenses?”
“I know!” exclaimed Carl. “I know just why they want to see our licenses! They want to get our names!”
“That’s it!” Jimmie answered. “They never asked to see the licenses in order to make good their bluff about being officers!”
After examining the papers the two visitors left the camp and proceeded down the valley to the west. Upon their departure the boys gathered closer about the fire and seriously discussed the situation.
At first Ben was inclined to argue that the men were actually Canadian officials, but Jimmie and Carl soon reasoned him out of this.
“Why,” Jimmie said, “a mounted policeman would know how to skin a bear without cutting the hide full of holes, and he’d also know that bear steak is considered quite a luxury in British Columbia. They’re frauds all right,” and this view of the case was finally accepted by all.
Throughout the evening the boys kept their eyes open for the return of the unwelcome guests, but nothing was seen of them.