satisfy their appetites. Any one who knows the
make-up of average boys, understands that.

"I wouldn't like to be caught in parts of this valley, in a
cloud-burst," Davy Jones remarked; "I've been alookin' around some,
and there's signs that tell of floods long ago. Guess a feller'd have
hike some, to get away if a wall of water came whirlin' down here."

"But the hunting ought to be fine, don't you think, Toby?" asked Step
Hen, who had begun to have aspirations to equal the record of several
of his comrades; and more than once declared that nothing less than a
big-horn Rocky Mountain sheep would satisfy his ambition. "I c'n just
think I see the jumpers playin' leap-frog up along some of the cliffs
that stand out against the sky yonder."

"We'll find sheep, sooner or later, all right," asserted the guide,
who was engaged in cutting wood for the fire; and more than that he
would not say, being a man of words rather than big promises.

"Look at Giraffe, would you?" remarked Step Hen. "He just can't quit
playin' with fire all the time."

"What's he doing now?" asked Thad, with a laugh, and not bothering to
look up; for it happened that just then he was making some notes in
his log book, fearing lest they slip his mind, if he waited until
after supper.

"Oh! he's got a firebrand, and standing out there in the dark he's doing
all sort of queer stunts! with it--whirling it around several times;
then movin' it up and down, quick like; after which he crosses it
horizontally a few times. Why, just to look at him you'd think he was
sending a message like we do with the wigwag flags in the day time."

"Well, that's just what Giraffe is pretending to do, right now," said
Thad, after he had taken one quick look. "Only instead of using flags,
he's taking a light to make the letters with. Giraffe is a pretty good
hand at heliograph work and all kinds of wigwagging, you know. I've
talked with him by means of a piece of looking glass, on a sunshiny
day, more than a mile away; and we managed to understand each other
first-rate. Leave Giraffe alone, Step Hen. He's a nervous scout, you
understand, and has to work off his steam some way. There couldn't be
any better than brushing up his Morse code, I think."

"Huh! p'raps you're right," grunted the other; "but it does beat all,
how Giraffe, always finds satisfaction in playing with fire."

"There's one good thing, about it these days," ventured Davy Jones.

"What might that be, s