[Illustration:  “The strangest combat that he had ever seen.”]

“This beats the circus,” thought Pepper, after he had watched the fight for a little time, “but this isn’t getting the message to Highpoint.  I don’t believe I have time to wait for the finale.  I wonder how I am going to get out of this.  If I drop down there they will be making a show of me.  Looks as though I might get over into that next tree.  I’ll try it, anyhow.”

The trees here had grown so close together that many of the branches were in-lacing, and it seemed possible to Pepper that he could get from the one tree into the other.

“It looks kind of thin,” thought Pepper, when he had picked out a limb which extended into the adjoining tree, “but, perhaps, it will do.”

Crawling out upon the branch until it bent and swayed dangerously under his weight, he caught a branch of the other tree and swung himself over, narrowly missing a fall.

“So far, so good,” soliloquized Pepper, working his way toward the trunk.  “I rather like this way of going.  Now for the next one.”

The next tree was a little farther away, but by climbing out on a bough that extended into the other tree he crept on until he could just touch one of the opposite branches, but could not get a hold.

“Looks as if I would have to go back,” he decided, after he had tried and failed to get a hold on the other tree.  But this, he found, was more easily said than done, for when he attempted to turn around he slipped and only his quick clutch of the swaying branch saved him from a tumble.

“This is a nice scrape I have got into,” he thought, when he tried to climb back onto the limb from which he had slipped, but found it impossible.  “I can’t get back, and I don’t see how I am to go on.  I hope it will let me down easy.”

CHAPTER XVI

Where was Pepper?

“Two o’clock,” said Rand, closing his watch with a snap.  “An hour behind time.”

The boys had been waiting at the great oak since just after noon, but Pepper had not yet come.

“Perhaps he got off the road and got lost in the woods,” suggested Jack.

“Maybe he got back sooner than he expected by some other road and went home,” said Gerald.  “Shall I run over and see?”

“Go ahead,” replied Rand.  “We will wait for you here.”

Darting off, Gerald was gone but a few minutes, returning on the run to report that Pepper had not been back since morning.

“Perhaps he has got hurt somehow,” put in Dick.

“It is no way impossible,” assented Donald.  “It might no be a bad idea to walk along the road until we meet him.”

“Which way did he go?” asked Jack.

“The upper road,” replied Rand.

The boys acted upon the suggested and proceeded along the road, slowly at first, then more rapidly as their comrade did not appear.  They had covered more than half the distance to Highpoint.