Finally Elmer wheeled around and rolled over to my tree. He squared off and took a chopping bite at it with his metal jaws. Splinters flew and the tree shivered. I got a tighter grip and looked down the trunk. Elmer was no great shakes as a chopper, but if he kept at it long enough, he’d get that tree chewed off.
I climbed up a little higher, where there were more branches and where I could wedge myself a little tighter so I couldn’t be shaken out.
I got myself fixed fairly comfortable, then looked to see how Ben was getting on and I got quite a shock. He wasn’t in his tree. I looked around for him and then back at the tree again, and I saw that he was sneaking down it as quietly as he could, like a hunted squirrel, keeping the trunk of the tree between himself and Elmer.
I watched him breathlessly, ready to shout out a warning if Elmer should spot him, but Elmer was too busy chopping at my tree to notice anything.
Ben reached the ground and made a dash for the guns. He grabbed both of them and ducked behind another tree. He opened up on Elmer at short range. From where I crouched, I could hear the warheads slamming into Elmer. The explosions rocked everything so much that I had to grab the tree and hang on with all my might. A couple of pieces of flying metal ripped into the tree just underneath me, and other pieces went flying through the branches, and the air was full of spinning leaves and flying shredded wood, but I was untouched.
It must have been a horrible surprise for Elmer. At the first explosion, he took a jump of about fifteen feet and bolted up the hill like a cat with a stepped-on tail. I could see a lot of new dents in his shining hide. A big hunk of metal had been gouged out of one of his wheels and he rocked slightly as he went, and he was going so fast that he couldn’t dodge and ran head-on into a tree. The impact sent him skidding back a dozen feet or so.
As he slid back, Ben poured another salvo into him and he seemed to become considerably lop-sided, but he recovered himself and made it over the hilltop and out of sight.
Ben came out from behind his tree and shouted at me, «All right, you can come down now.»
But when I tried to get down, I found that I was trapped. My left foot had become wedged in a crotch between the tree trunk and a good-sized limb and I couldn’t pull it loose, no matter how I tried.
«What’s the matter?» asked Ben. «Do you like it up there?»
I told him what was wrong.
«All right,» he said, disgusted. «I’ll come up and cut you loose.»
He hunted for the ax and found it and, of course, it was no use. He’d smashed the handle when he threw it at Elmer.
He stood there, holding the ax in his hands, and delivered an oration on the lowdown meanness of fate.
Then he threw the ax down and climbed my tree. He squeezed past me out onto the limb.
«I’ll climb out on it and bend it down,» he explained. «Maybe then you can get loose.»
He crawled out on the branch a way, but it was a shaky trick. A couple of times, he almost fell.
«You’re sure you can’t get your foot out now?» he asked anxiously.
I tried and I said I couldn’t.
So he gave up the crawling idea and let his body down and hung on by his hands, shifting out along the branch hand over hand.
The branch bent toward the ground as he inched along it and it seemed to me my boot wasn’t gripped as tightly as it had been. I tried again and found I could move it some, but I still couldn’t pull it loose.
Just then there was a terrible crashing in the brush. Ben let out a yell and dropped to the ground and scurried for a gun.
The branch whipped back and caught my foot just as I had managed it move it a little and this time caught it at a slightly different angle, twisting it, and I let out a howl of pain.
Down on the ground, Ben lifted his gun and swung around to face the crashing in the brush and suddenly who should come busting out of all that racket but Jimmy, racing to the rescue.
«You guys in trouble?» he shouted. «I heard shooting.»
Ben’s face was three shades whiter than the purest chalk as he lowered his gun. «You fool! I almost let you have it!»
«There was all this shooting,» Jimmy panted. «I came as quickly as I could.»
«And left Lulu alone!»
«But I thought you guys—»
«Now we’re sunk for sure,» groaned Ben. «You know all that makes Lulu stick around is one of us being there.»
We didn’t know any such thing, of course. It was just the only reason we could think of why she didn’t up and leave. But Ben was somewhat overwrought. He’d had a trying day.
«You get back there!» he yelled at Jimmy. «Get back as fast as your legs will let you. Maybe you can catch her before she gets away.»
Which was foolishness, because if Lulu meant to leave, she’d have lifted out of there as soon as Jimmy had disappeared. But Jimmy didn’t say a word. He just turned around and went crashing back. For a long time after he had left, I could hear him blundering through the woods.
Ben climbed my tree again, muttering, «Just a pack of wooden-headed jerks. Can’t do anything right. Running off and leaving Lulu. Getting trapped up in a tree. You would think, by God, that they could learn to watch out for themselves…»
He said a good deal more than that.
I didn’t answer back. I didn’t want to get into any argument.
My foot was hurting something fierce and the only thing I wanted him to do was get me out of there.
He climbed out on the branch again and I got my foot loose. While Ben dropped to the ground, I climbed down the tree. My foot hurt pretty bad and seemed to be swelling some, but I could hobble on it.
He didn’t wait for me. He grabbed his gun and made off rapidly for camp.
I tried to hurry, but it was no use, so I took it easy.
When I got to the edge of the woods, I saw that Lulu still was there and all Ben’s hell-raising had been over absolutely nothing. There are some guys like that.
When I reached camp, Jimmy pulled off my boot while I clawed at the ground. Then he heated a pail of water for me to soak the foot in and rummaged around in the medicine chest and found some goo that he smeared on the foot. Personally, I don’t think he knew what he was doing.
But I’ll say this for the kid—he had some kindness in him.
All this time, Ben was fuming around about a funny thing that had attracted his attention. When we had left camp, the area around Lulu had been all tracked up with our tracks and Elmer’s tracks, but now it was swept clean. It looked exactly as if someone had taken a broom and had swept out all the tracks. It surely was a funny business, but Ben was making too much of it. The important thing was that Lulu still was there. As long as she stuck around, there was a chance we could work out some agreement with her.
Once she left, we were marooned for good.
Jimmy fixed something to eat, and after we had eaten, Ben said to us, «I think I’ll go out and see how Elmer’s getting on.»
I, for one, had seen enough of Elmer to last a lifetime and Jimmy wasn’t interested. Said he wanted to work on his saga.
So Ben took a rifle and set out alone, back into the hills.
My foot hurt me quite a bit and I got myself comfortable and tried to do some thinking, but I tried so hard that I put myself to sleep.
It was late in the afternoon when I awoke. Jimmy was getting nervous.
«Ben hasn’t shown up,» he said. «I wonder if something’s happened to him.»
I didn’t like it, either, but we decided to wait a while before going out to hunt Ben. After all, he wasn’t in the best of humor and he might have been considerably upset if we’d gone out to rescue him.
He finally showed up just before dusk, tuckered out and a little flabbergasted. He leaned his rifle against a box and sat down. He found a cup and reached for the coffee pot.