The Mystery of the Monster Mountain - M. V. Carey [21]
Pete jumped.
Jupiter Jones turned. “Oh, no!” he said.
Pete heard something scamper and he felt a sniffing at his ankle. He looked down.
A bear cub, only a few months old, stared up at him with bright, friendly eyes.
“Where … where’s the mother?” Pete quavered.
“Right behind the baby!” cried Bob. “Run for it!”
There was an angry bawling. The bear cub scooted in one direction and the boys dashed in another, toward the ski slope.
Pete reached the slope first. He jumped, then let himself roll and tumble until he was twenty yards down the incline. Bob and Jupe came slipping and sliding after him.
The three crouched on the dry, stony hillside and listened to the mother bear scolding the cub.
The cub yelped sharply.
“She’s probably giving it a cuff on the ear,” guessed Bob.
“We’ll be okay,” said Jupe. “So long as we don’t threaten the cub, she won’t bother us.”
“I wouldn’t dream of threatening her cub.” said Pete warmly. “Rule number one: Never get too near a bear cub when the mother’s around. I only wish someone had told the cub about it.”
“It knows now,” Bob assured him.
The three waited for a while. When no more growls or yelps were heard from the meadow above them, they climbed back up. They were in time to see the mother bear and her baby disappear into the woods on the west side of the meadow.
Jupiter Jones took off his knapsack. “They probably won’t come back,” he said.
“However, this is one place where Mr. Smathers would say we were the intruders, and he would be right. The bears were here first and they’re still here, so we’d better watch our steps.”
“I plan to,” said Pete. “In fact, I may just watch my steps taking me back down to the inn!”
“You don’t want to find out what Havemeyer’s hunting with his tranquilizer gun?”
asked Bob.
“Yes, I guess I do,” admitted Pete. “Only I don’t think I want to meet it face to face!”
From his knapsack, Jupe took three small devices.
“We can cover the ground faster if we separate,” he said. “But we had better not get out of touch with each other. We don’t really know what we’re looking for or what we might meet, so I brought along the directional signal and emergency alarm units. I packed them at home because I thought they’d come in handy on a hike, and indeed they will.”
Pete sighed. “They’re better than nothing,” he said. He took one of the devices from Jupiter and turned it over in his hands. “You sure it’s working okay?” he asked.
“I’d hate to get marooned up here and not be able to call for help.”
“I tested all three signals before we left Rocky Beach,” said Jupiter. “They’re in perfect order. You remember how they work?”
“Like most of your inventions, they work just fine,” said Bob.
It was true. Jupiter Jones had a way of putting together salvaged bits of machinery or electronic equipment and turning out devices which served The Three Investigators well while they worked on many of their cases. The directional signal and emergency alarm was smaller than the walkie-talkies which the boys sometimes used, but it was still effective.
Each unit broadcast a signal — a beep — which could be picked up by every other unit, and which got louder and faster the nearer one approached it. Each of the units also had a dial to indicate the direction a beep was coming from.
In addition to being a sending and receiving set for electronic beeps, each unit had a special alarm — a red light — which could be activated by voice alone. When one of The Three Investigators was in trouble or wanted the others to come to him, he had only to say the word “help” near his set, and the red lights flashed on the other units.
“Now, here’s what I suggest we do.” Jupiter paused and scanned the woods which rimmed the meadow. “I think it unlikely that we’ll find many footprints here in the open,” he said. “The grass is too thick. Besides, if there is some strange animal here, it must be sheltered back away from the meadow or we’d have seen it by now. Yet we know it has come out into the open, because Joe Havemeyer