“He’s firing in the air!” cried Tom.  “Come on, we have him now!”

Undaunted by the display of firearms, Mr. Damon and Mr. Parker kept on.  They could hear Tom and Mr. Jenks running up in back of the figure.  The latter also heard this, and suddenly turned.  Caught between the two forces of our friends, the “ghost” was at a loss what to do.

The next instant Tom, who had distanced Mr. Jenks, made a flying tackle for the figure in white, and caught it around the legs.  Very substantial legs they were, too, Tom felt—­the legs of a man.

“Wow!” yelled the “ghost,” as he went down in a heap, the revolver falling from his hand.

“Come on!” cried Tom.  “I have him!”

His friends rushed to his aid.  There was a confused mass of dark bodies, arms and legs mingled with something tall and thin, all in white.  Suddenly the moon came from behind a cloud and they could see what they had captured—­for captured the phantom was.

It proved to be a rather small man, who wore upon his shoulders a framework of wood, over which some white cloth was draped.  It had fallen off him when Tom made that tackle.

“Well,” remarked the young inventor, as he sat on the struggling man’s chest.  “I guess we’ve got you.”

“I rather guess you have, stranger,” was the cool reply.

CHAPTER XVIII—­BILL RENSHAW WILL HELP

They were all panting from the exertion of the run up the mountain and the contest with the phantom—­a phantom no longer—­though, truth to tell, the struggle was not nearly so fierce as Tom had expected.  He thought the “ghost” would put up a stiff fight.

“Got any ropes to tie him with?” asked Mr. Damon, who was helping Tom hold the man down.

“Ropes?  You aren’t going to tie me up are you, strangers?” asked the captive.

“That’s what we are!” exclaimed Mr. Jenks.  “We’ve had trouble enough in this matter, and if I’ve got one of the gang, perhaps I can get some of the others, and have my rights.  So tie him up, Tom, and we’ll take him to camp.

“Oh, you needn’t go to all that trouble, strangers,” went on the man, calmly.  “If one of you will get off my chest, and the other gentleman ease up on my stomach a bit, I’ll walk wherever you want me, and not make any trouble.  I haven’t got a gun.”

“Bless my gloves!  But you’re a cool one,” commented Mr. Damon, as he complied with the man’s request, and got up from his stomach.  “But look out for him, Tom.  He had a gun, for he fired it in the air.”

“He hasn’t it now,” answered the young inventor.  “I knocked it from his hand when I leaped for him.”

“That’s what you did,” assented the man, as he got up, while Tom kept a tight hold of him, as did Mr. Jenks.  “What kind of a grizzly bear hug do you call that, anyhow, that you gave me?”

“That was a football tackle,” explained Tom.