JUDY and Kathleen scarcely could believe that they had heard the ranger’s radio message correctly.

For a stunned moment, they sat in dead silence, unable to comprehend what had transpired.

Diethelm wore the inconspicuous pine tree badge of the forest rangers, but he had never seemed friendly or helpful as had the other Forest Service men.

Judy had sensed the man’s antagonism almost from the first moment of their meeting. Until this night, however, she had never actually distrusted him.

Now, as the meaning of his message to headquarters penetrated her brain, she realized that he deliberately had given false information to his superior officers. Information which would aid the hi-jackers, who awaited the lifting of the road block to rush their stolen cargo across the state line!

As the car climbed the steep incline, Kathleen suddenly reached for the door handle.

“I wouldn’t do that!” Diethelm ordered sharply. “Stay in this car!” “You’re making us prisoners?” Kathleen gasped, shaken by the ranger’s treachery.

“You asked for this,” Diethelm retorted. “If you’d kept to your own affairs, no one would have bothered you. Now you’ve poked your pretty little noses in, you’ll have to take the consequences!”

“Which are—?” interposed Judy. She was no longer frightened, but smoldered with a deep, burning anger.

“I’ll drive you some distance from here and dump you in the woods,” Diethelm informed her. “By the time you find your way out, we’ll be over the state line. This is our last haul.”

“So you’re one of the hi-jackers!” Kathleen accused shrilly. “A disgrace to the ranger uniform!”

“I’ve not been in the service long,” Diethelm said. “It means nothing to me. I adopted the uniform only to serve my own purpose. For six months it’s been a cinch to run cargo through, but lately the state highway patrol has bottled up most of the roads. We’ll move on to another state.”

The car had reached the main highway. Judy could see Calico Cottage through the morning mist, but there was no sign of her aunt, or of any help.

Everything was painfully clear now! The trucker she and Kathleen had seen the previous night at the restaurant, had indeed been Joe Pompilli. Either he, or his runners now were at the cave, awaiting a chance to slip their cargo over the state line. And with the road block soon to be lifted, that chance might come very soon!

The coupe turned onto the main highway, and started up the winding mountain road. Judy saw Diethelm glance anxiously at the gasoline gauge.

Her pulse leaped with hope, for she saw that the pointer already stood on the empty mark, and was giving only an occasional convulsive jerk.

“We’re about out of gas,” Diethelm muttered.

“No filling stations on this road for three miles,” Judy said in satisfaction.

“We rangers have supply caches,” Diethelm dashed her hopes again. “My own private one is just ahead.”

A few hundred yards farther up the road, he pulled off onto the right-of-way. Back among the trees, Judy and Kathleen saw the gasoline supply tank, marked with the Forest Service name.

Diethelm reached for a can on the floor behind the seat. As he got out of the car, he tapped the revolver in his holster.

“Now don’t you move or try to get out of this car!” he ordered. “I’ll have my eye on you. I’m warning that if you try to escape, I’ll shoot.”

Diethelm then strode to the gasoline storage tank, hurriedly starting to fill his can.

“Lean forward—block off the window, so he can’t see me,” Judy instructed Kathleen tersely.

“He’s watching us. If we try to get out, I’m afraid he’ll carry out his threat to shoot.” “We can’t hope to get away,” Judy admitted. “But there’s one outside chance we can get through to ranger headquarters on the radio phone. I’m going to risk it.”

Now that she knew her friend’s scheme, Kathleen obediently shifted her position, so that her back temporarily shielded Judy from view.

In an instant, Judy had snapped the radio phone on.

“Car 23 to Headquarters!” she called excitedly into the transmitter. “Emergency call! Emergency call!”

“Headquarters to Car 23,” came the reply. “Who the deuce is this? Diethelm—”

“I’m a Girl Scout—held a prisoner in Diethelm’s car,” Judy broke in. Aware that Diethelm himself had dropped the gasoline can and was striding toward the coupe, her words tumbled over each other in her haste to get them out. “The hi-jackers are at the cave! Their truck—”

The car door was jerked open at that point, and the radio phone ripped from Judy’s hand. Diethelm clicked the switch off, pulling the girl bodily from the coupe.

“Now you’ve done it!” he snarled, shoving her so hard that she fell to the ground. “Little fool!”

Despite his previous threat, Diethelm did not touch his revolver. His face contorted by worry, he seemed uncertain what to do for a moment. Tersely then, he ordered Kathleen out of the car also.

“Turn your backs and start walking into the woods,” he ordered the two girls. “Keep walking. Don’t look back or I’ll shoot.”

Kathleen pulled Judy to her feet, and they slowly moved off into the woods.

“Walk faster!” Diethelm shouted.

The girls obediently increased their speed, stumbling as they climbed over fallen logs and other forest debris.

Moments passed, and Judy dared to look over her shoulder. No longer could she see the car or the roadway.

But as she paused, she heard the roar of the coupe’s engine.

“He’s filled the gas tank and he’s pulling out!” she declared. “Now to get help, if we can.”

Hurrying back the way they had come, the girls reached the roadside in time to see the coupe disappearing around a curve in the direction from which it had come.

“He’s going back to the cave to warn the hi-jackers!” Judy guessed shrewdly. “He must know I got through to the ranger headquarters!”

“Then that means that the hi-jackers probably will try to move their truck out now!” Kathleen exclaimed. “They may make it too, because it isn’t far to the state line and the road block probably has been lifted.” “We must stop them somehow! Let’s get back to Calico Cottage as fast as we can!”

They pounded down the road, hoping as they ran that a car would come along. None did. In Diethelm’s coupe, the distance they had traveled from the junction with the private road had seemed very short. Now, the reverse was true.

Though the distance could not be more than a third of a mile, it seemed endless to the two Scouts. Alternately running and dog-trotting, they finally reached Calico Cottage, winded and perspiring.

As they crossed the yard, Miss Meadows came to meet them.

“I’ve had such a time,” she began. “At first, I couldn’t get my call through. Why, what’s happened?”

Judy explained only briefly. She cut her story short by demanding: “Aunt Mattie, how soon do you think help will get here?”

“Ten minutes or longer. My call just went through. Before that the line was busy, and I couldn’t get the operator to understand that this was an emergency!”

“Ten minutes!” Judy groaned. “That will give Diethelm all the time he needs to warn those men!”

“I saw a ranger car turn down the private road quite awhile ago,” Miss Meadows contributed.

“That was Diethelm,” Judy said desperately. “We’ve notified the ranger headquarters, but I doubt they can get men here quickly enough either!” “If only we could block the private road somehow, so those hi-jackers can’t get their truck out!” Kathleen exclaimed. “What could we use?”

Frantically, the three looked about the premises, but not an object was available which would offer an impediment to a powerful truck.

“The clothesline,” Miss Meadows suggested doubtfully. “We could tie it to trees, across the road.”

“It would snap in an instant,” Judy said. “I doubt even a wire would delay them.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do,” Miss Meadows said desperately. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Nails?” proposed Kathleen. “We could throw them on the road and hope they’d spear the tires.”

“There’s a can of nails on the porch,” Miss Meadows supplied eagerly. “The carpenter who must have built this cottage, apparently left them.”

“It’s an idea,” Judy said slowly, “but it won’t work. Those big truck tires would roll right over the nails without a puncture. Not even glass would cut them.”

“I guess that’s right,” Miss Meadows admitted, crestfallen. “Oh, it’s hopeless.”

Judy, however, had a different idea. She was gazing speculatively at the “Welcome” mat on the doorstep.

“I think I know of a way to stop that truck if it tries to come through!” she cried. “My scheme is fantastic, but I’m sure it will work!”