Ouch — that’s gotta hurt, Lance. Getting saved from your first cliffhanger by a dame?

The Narrative: Before leaving the lab, Lance removes the power control unit from the radiotomic transmitter, an essential component without which the transmitter is an ungainly paperweight. Meanwhile, anticipating some sort of breakout attempt from the imprisoned scientists (!), Captain Mephisto had positioned men in the tunnels into which their breakout attempt led; by the time Brand gets back to report, Mephisto has the errant scientists in hand (!!).

Helpfully, Lance explains the situation to the four owners of Mystery Island; remember, we may know that one of the four is really Captain Mephisto in disguise, but he doesn’t. He even tells them about his possession of the control unit, which he plans to ship back to the States by boat as soon as possible for safekeeping. Until then, it’s just sitting prettily in Claire’s room…

Well, Lance isn’t as stupid as all that, at least when the plot requires it. Announcement of the imminent shipping of the control unit is a ruse; he expects that somehow word will get back to Captain Mephisto, and thus he intends to have a decoy package in Claire’s room, and Claire there with it. (Hey, she’s game if it means rescuing her father.) With her door locked, the only way in will be by the window, and Lance plans to guard that from outside to take an agent of Captain Mephisto prisoner.

And it’s a good plan, all except that “window” part. Mephisto and Brand instead enter Claire’s room by secret passage, and when they find that the box has nothing but rocks in it, they decide to take Claire and make her talk. Claire manages to get a signal to Lance (throwing something through the window will do that), and leaves a string in the secret door so Lance can find them.

Then — car chase! Up winding roads! Mephisto has Brand string a rope across the road to catch Lance on one of the hairpin turns, and it almost works, but NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE CLIFFHANGER. (In every serial I’ve seen up to now, a car going off a cliff is the cliffhanger ending. But not here. Well played!) Lance bails out just before his car hits the rope and goes over the edge.

But — a clue! The pulley at the end of the rope reads “Sponge Warehouse No. 2.” And wouldn’t you know it, Warehouse No. 2 is exactly where Mephisto and Brand are attempting to make Claire talk. They’ve got her trussed up in a net which they lower through a trapdoor to the waters below, with the intent being to lengthen the time she spends underwater with each dip until she breaks. (Go ahead, make a waterboarding joke. You know you want to.

The Cliffhanger: After they dip her once, Lance comes in with his gun, and a fight (yes!) ensues. Chairs are thrown! Cardboard boxes are destroyed! Assailants launch themselves through the air! And unfortunately, the brake on the pulley system that holds Claire out of the water gets knocked open. She quickly splashes into the water, and straight to the bottom, and there’s too much fighting for Lance to pull her back out! Can she hold her breath long enough?

Next Week: “The Murder Machine”

Here’s the background: Dr. Forrest (Forrest Taylor) has invented a wonderful device called a “radiotomic transmitter,” which can relay practically limitless power to planes, ships, etc. to replace fossil fuels. Yes, oil scarcity was a concern even in 1945. Forrest and his assistants were wandering the world because of the scarcity of radium, miracle mineral which was necessary to the transmitter. Forrest disappeared somewhere on his travels, but one of his associates, an engineer named Harvey, has stowed away from their secret location to (one assumes) Los Angeles, where Forrest’s daughter Claire (Linda Stirling) and criminologist Lance Reardon (Richard Bailey) wait for word. Unfortunately, Harvey is pursued by the mysterious agents of “Captain Mephisto,” and dies literally on Reardon’s doorstep, clutching what he smuggled out of Mephisto’s grasp: the blueprints to Forrest’s transmitter.

This calls for a rescue expedition! Reardon analyzes Harvey’s clothes and finds volcanic residue; the soles of his shoes show traces of a rare sap. That narrows it down to three islands in a Pacific group, one of which — “Mystery Island” — is a former penal colony, now owned privately. Let’s start searching there!

But first — fight! Brand (Kenne Duncan), the henchman who shot Harvey, bursts into Reardon’s lab and tries to make off with the blueprints. And the altercation which follows made me realize exactly what was missing from Scouts to the Rescue: mayhem, glorious mayhem. Chairs and stools are smashed! Lab equipment thrown! Tables overturned! Bookcases upended! Jaws pummeled! Brand almost succeeds, except that Claire enter with a gun, and bullets win any game of rock-paper-scissors. Brand runs off…

…and gets back to Mystery Island to report to Captain Mephisto, or as I like to call him, “Mr. Fancypants.” He’s assumed the identity and demeanor of a pirate who frequented these islands two centuries previous, and it is he who has Forrest and his remaining assistant captive, building a working model of the transmitter (next best thing to the blueprints). Forrest is stalling on the work, obviously, hoping for an occasion to escape.

Mephisto also has a secret, to wit, his identity. As he helpfully rehearses for Brand, he can control his physical appearance through changing his “blood corpuscles.” (Actually, he does it with a Jacob’s Ladder — yay! — attached to a chair.) In reality he’s one of the four owners of Mystery Island, who are all descendants of the historical Captain Mephisto, but neither Brand nor we are allowed to know which one he is (sort of like in The Masked Marvel, but with the bad guy instead of the good guy).

Mephisto reassumes his identity as one of the owners — Hargraves, Armstrong, Braley or Melton — to greet Reardon and Claire with warm hospitality. (Yes, that’s the entire expedition.) Forrest had, they admit, been on the island for some time doing his research, and in fact his room at their villa is supposedly undisturbed. Reardon and Claire examine it and find, hidden in Forrest’s typewriter case, a map to his “secret wokshop” (which Forrest obviously didn’t need, or else he wouldn’t have left it behind in his typewriter case). Even Captain Mephisto himself, coming through a secret passage in a wall to wrest it away from Claire, can’t keep them from coming to investigate the workshop, which is where Mephisto has Forrest locked away.

Forrest, meanwhile, has an escape plan: He’s modified the transmitter to spray a “radium vapor” which will melt a hole through the wall of the workshop. So as Reardon creeps up on the entrance and gets himself into YES! another big brawl with two henchmen, Forrest and his assistant vaporize a hole in the wall and get away.

The Cliffhanger: After one thug is dispatched, Reardon and the other thug take their fight into the workshop itself, where the thug uses the transmitter as an offensive weapon. Reardon takes cover in a big wooden crate, but the transmitter’s vapors or rays of whatever cause it to burst into flames. Can Reardon get away from the deadly vapors? And will either of them ever have children?

Next Week: “Satan’s Web”

Observe: We left Bruce as he hurtled earthward, falling off a cliff after a mountain lion spooked Rip into letting go of his rope. The first thing we see new this chapter is Marvin and Scanlon arriving on the scene; they scare away the mountain lion with a shot. To do this, they would have had to go around or somehow miss the gangsters who were out front of the cabin, having just shot up a row of bushes that they thought concealed G-Men — gangsters who, last chapter, had a clear view of the cliff face that Bruce, Rip and Mary were ascending.

And aside from that — what did Bruce land on or in? A haystack? A surprisingly soft pine tree? A previously-nonexistent body of water? I don’t know, and neither do you; we just see Bruce climbing back up to the ledge where Mary lies stunned. Marvin and Scanlon somehow instantly get above Bruce to where Rip is, and help Rip haul Bruce and Mary up by a rope that now has no business being there, Rip having dropped it completely last time.

“Eh, we’ve already got their money. Why make sense?”

The Narrative: Meanwhile, the two gangsters have heard the shot by which Marvin drove off the mountain lion, and come to investigate. (Note: Now there is NO cliff between the gangsters and the good guys.) Marvin immediately puts the drop on them — not just Marvin, but the two other G-Men. Where’d they come from? Shut up, that’s where. Then Bruce realizes that other gangsters will be coming back to the cabin hideout immediately (because, um, they also realize that this is the last chapter?), so Marvin, Bruce and G-Man #1 sneak back to the cabin (and by “sneak” I mean “walk boldly down the center of the dirt road”) while Scanlon, Rip and G-Man #2 take the two captured gangsters back to lock up in Ghost Town in the car the G-Men arrived in.

As luck script would have it, one of the gangsters has made it back to the cabin in the three minutes that it’s been unoccupied (his name is “Pug,” but it’s a little late to start remembering names). Marvin and G-Man #1 sensibly leave Bruce back while they “surround” the cabin, but Pug saw through their sneaky plan of walking boldly down the road, sighted them, and hightailed it out the back door before they got there. Then another car comes up, full of the last three gangsters, and together with Pug they surround the cabin themselves.

But these are the extra-stupid brand of gangsters, the kind that leaves the motor running even though they’re on top of a mountain with the nearest service station miles away. First Bruce uses the car horn to give a Morse code warning to Marvin before the gangsters attack, then he drives the car back to Ghost Town (I swear, it’s a block and a half) to pick up Scanlon, G-Man #2 and Rip to help besiege the besiegers.

After much shooting, the gangsters are all either caught or killed except for Turk, the ringleader. He jumps into the unattended car (jeez, does EVERYONE on this mountain leave the motor running), but Bruce jumps right after him — it’s a convertible — and they grapple while the car drives unattended down a winding mountain road, rolling out just before it goes over a cliff.

Marvin et al arrive before professional criminal Turk tears apart clean-living teen Bruce, Turk is arrested, and there are congratulations all around. After all, that’s what this was all about. Catching the counterfeiters, and most especially Turk, who is wanted for murder. Had you forgotten that rounding up the counterfeiters was the point of it all? Me, too.

As an epilogue, the tough kids back in town are shocked to see Rip is now a Boy Scout — so shocked that the last thing we see is Bruce administering the Scout Oath to the rest of the toughs, now in full Scout uniforms with Smokey Bear hats.

Um, notice what’s missing? That’s right: The Indians. After they were spooked from their cave by dynamite a couple of chapters back, they ran right out of the plotline and out of the memories of all who encountered them. There’s not even one of those contrived “Maybe we should let their secret stay a secret” justifications; there’s simply no mention of them. Sigh.

Final Thoughts: The twelve chapters that lasted almost two years! Why did it take me from January 2008 to get through 235 minutes of footage? Well, for one thing, I had a stroke and was out of commission for several months. I think that gives me a couple of Get Out Of Jail Free cards right there. And for another thing, my Saturdays have gotten busier little by little; sometimes, twenty minutes to watch a chapter and forty minutes to write it up simply weren’t available.

But there was also the fact that Scouts to the Rescue was incredibly lackluster. All of my children, who normally watching these serials with me, had deserted me by about the fifth chapter; I would have jumped ship and gone on to one of the couple dozen other serials I’ve got stacked up around here except for my deranged sense of duty.

That’s right, I did it for you. You’re welcome.

Next Week: Something completely different!

Okay, whatever…

The Narrative: When Mary sees Bruce fall off the building, she immediately faints (apparently, she didn’t think it likely he would fall into a vat of water either). So when the gangsters are scared off by Marvin and Scanlon’s fresh ammunition and the Boy Scouts’ arrows and Indian sounds, they spy Mary on the ground and grab her as a hostage.

When the Boy Scouts discover that Mary is gone, they split into tracking parties, because nothing can track like a Boy Scout! Naturally, it’s Bruce’s and Rip’s team that picks up the tracks of the car that the gangsters use for their escape until it ran out of gas. Bruce uses the two-way radio in the car to contact, Bugs, the Boy Scout ham radio operator who couldn’t come on the camping trip because he’s on crutches, waaaay back in Chapter One. Bruce tells Bugs to get ahold of the G-Men (who’ve been in town, wondering what happened to Marvin) and send them up to Ghost Town in a car.

Then he and Rip track the gangsters overland, breaking sticks and stacking rocks and suchlike to blaze their trail. The tracking team led by Skeets finds the markers and go back to Ghost Town to round up some other Scouts, along with Marvin, Scanlon, and the newly-arrived G-Men. (In other words, even town is only about five blocks away!)

Bruce and Rip follow the trail to the old cabin that the gangsters use as their second hideout, and where the gangster are making Mary (naturally) cook for them. Fortunately, they’ve taken some things from the trunk of the gangsters’ car that they can MacGyver together into a rescue plan: some more cartridges, some loose gunpowder, and a long rope. First, they use sticks to dig a trench behind a row of bushes opposite the cabin, then pore in a line of gunpowder and a couple of boxes’ worth of cartridges. Then Rip ties up Bruce and leads him to the cabin as “the darned Scout that he captured.” The gangsters don’t know he’s switched sides, so they accept a second hostage.

Then Rip volunteers to go outside for a bucket of water for Mary’s kitchen duties, lights off the gunpowder, and rushes back in with a story of seeing a half-dozen G-Men coming toward the cabin. The gangsters start rushing out to shoot at the bushes from which gunshot reports are coming fast and furious. Inside, Bruce has gotten out of his bonds (he’s a Boy Scout — of course he can easily get out of Rip’s knots!), and he, Rip and Mary sneak out the back way.

The Cliffhanger: Their plan is to scale a cliff behind the cabin (which, um, was never there in any previous shot). But Mary sees a mountain lion, falls, and ends up unconscious onto a ledge that can only be accessed from above. Rip starts to lower Bruce with the rope, but then the mountain lion leaps at Rip, he lets go of the rope, and Bruce falls! Wow, two weeks in a row we end with Bruce in mid-air!

Next Week: The Boy Scouts Triumph (the last chapter!)

I should note that, having gone to the trouble of dynamiting the cave to scare the Indians away from the radium, one of the thugs opines, “Hey, let’s stick to counterfeiting.” Wanna bet that the radium subplot won’t even be mentioned in the next two chapters? (Except that the government will want to take over the area, a fact that Bruce mentions along with the obvious “medicinal properties” which the radium surely has as he, Scanlon and Marvin skirt the edge of a bubbling, radium-fueled pool on their way out of a tunnel. Hope you weren’t planning on having a little Scout of your own, Bruce.)

The Narrative: It’s back then to Ghost Town, where Marvin and Scanlon (who Marvin has finally started trusting) want to put the press out of commission. Bruce finds his horse Scout, which has hasn’t seen since the stampede at the start of the last chapter, munching in the abandoned stable, and decides to take him back to the Boy Scout camp and fill the rest of the Scouts in on the goings-on. But juvenile delinquent Rip is still in town and sees then, and runs off to warn the other gangsters. He gets the word to a couple, and continues to tell Turk somewhere in the hills.

But, see, Rip’s been reading the Scout Manual he has, and he’s been wondering if maybe he’s on the wrong side. After all, the Scouts tie knots and stuff! As he runs out of town to tell the gangsters, he sees Bruce on his horse, and “fakes” that he’s simply been wandering in the woods since the horse stampede spooked him, and his leg is acting up (say, that’s right — wasn’t his leg supposedly “broken” one something? The medicinal properties of radium!), and he just wants to get back to Scout camp. Bruce obligingly gets down and helps him up onto his horse Scout for them both to ride back to camp, but Rip ties to take off on Scout are soon as he gets on. Scout’s a well-trained horse, though, and at a whistle from Bruce he rears and throws Rip off. Bruce runs over to Rip, helps him up, and gives him a drink from the canteen.

Well, that’s just too much for Rip. How can Bruce be good enough to help out a guy who just tried to steal his horse? (That’s still a hanging offense in some parts, you know.) Is it Scouting? Does Scouting instill that kind of nobility in the human soul? Could Rip ever change enough to be like that? Could he ever atone for what he’s done? I’m a sucker for themes of redemption, but it’s odd to see a conversation of that kind of sincerity which doesn’t involve a Bible.

Convinced that Rip has turned over a new leaf, Bruce sends Rip off to camp on his horse to get the rest of the Scouts to help against the gangsters who will soon overwhelm Marvin and Scanlon at Ghost Town. He even gives Rip his Scout ring to show the boys, and scrawls his “totem” on the back of Rip’s shirt so they’ll believe him.

Back at Ghost Town, Scanlon and Marvin have almost loaded up the press and equipment, but unknown to them, the building is being surrounded by gangsters, two at the front and two at the back, who plan to rush them. Bruce arrives and scrawls a note on a rock to throw through the window… in Morse code? Seriously? Isn’t it just quicker to write something in Roman characters and toss it? It’s not like anyone’s going to intercept the message. Relax, Bruce, you’ve proven your Boy Scout bona fides; you don’t have to show off for us like that.

Forewarned now, Scanlon and Marvin hole up in the upstairs of the hotel building, while the gangsters try to shoot them out. But Rip has gotten back to Scout camp, where the rest of the Scouts were practicing archery, and brought them all on a march over to Ghost Town. (Seriously, it’s got to be a couple hundred yards from Scout camp to Ghost Town, tops.) Bruce knows that Marvin and Scanlon are running low on ammo, so his plan is to have the Scouts whoop it up and shoot arrows so the gangsters will think the Indians have come back, while Bruce tries to get a couple of boxed of cartridges he lifted from an unattended gangster car to the upper floor of the hotel.

The Cliffhanger: Bruce shinnies up a tree to the top of the building next to the hotel, intending to toss the cartridge boxed in through the second-story window. (It’s a good thing the gangsters didn’t think of that, or they could have just shot the men through the window.) But just as he’s tossing the cartridges over, the cornice he’s standing on gives way!

Now. The chapter’s over, but I wanted to point out to you something I noticed a while back on the title card at the end of the chapter:

See it? Here:

That’s right, it’s Comic Sans — not only one of the most reviled typefaces in the world, but one which was only designed and released in 1994. In other words, the cards at the end of each episode for at least the last couple (what, you expect me to go back and check it out?) are reconstructions. Why? Who knows? Where the last few feet of footage shredded on each reel? Was there a sponsor’s advertisement in the original title card that can’t be released now? I dunno. I just thought it was interesting.

Next Week: “Hurtling Through Space”

By the way, according to the summary crawl for this chapter, it was the Indians who started the stampede to wipe out the boy scout camp, a fact which was not in evidence. This is why Mom always told you to pay attention to the preamble, kids!

The Narrative: While all of the scouts are distracted by the horse, juvenile delinquent Rip skips out of camp, his supposedly “broken” leg giving him as much trouble as a small pebble in his show. Scanlon sees him leaves, goes after him, and tries to persuade him to return to clear Scanlon’s name, but only gets an elbow in the gut for his trouble. And that isn’t all; as he’s trying to get back to camp, the Indians surround him and hustle him back to their caves as a prisoner! Rip, seeing the Indians and Scanlon, follows along until he knows exactly where Scanlon is.

Seeing that both Rip and Scanlon are missing, Bruce musters the scouts to search for them (assuming rightly that Scanlon went after Rip). They split up to track, and naturally it’s Bruce and Skeets who discover the trail of Scanlon and the Indians. Bruce sends Skeets back to get Marvin while he goes on alone.

Rip, meanwhile, gets to Ghost Town and tells the two thugs hanging out there that Scanlon has been taken to the Indian cave. Still hot to get Scanlon to engrave the counterfeit plates for them, the two follow Rip’s directions, creep into the cave, see Scanlon locked in a wooden cage, and also see something that piques their interest even more: the shaman of the tribe treating an injured Indian by chanting and waving his spear above him, a spear he dips in something that sparks and glows every time he touches it. It must be radium! That must explain why the Indians are all sterile and died out several generations back! Wait…

The two thugs get back to head thug Turk and tell him about the radium, which is worth more than Scanlon will ever produce for them. Turk decides to go up in the plane and drop some hand grenades to lure the Indians out of their cave; meanwhile, these two thugs can plant a charge from their inexhaustible supply of dynamite to blow up the cave, scaring the Indians away and leaving the radium for them. (I guess when the only tool you have is dynamite, every problem looks like… something that should be blown up, I guess.)

The Cliffhanger: Bruce makes it to the cave and tries to rescue Scanlon, but instead gets captured and put in the cage with him. Turk’s plan works, oddly enough; the grenades lure the Indians outside, and the other thugs sneak into the cave and plant the dynamite right beside the carved stone idol of the Indians (explaining, sort of, the title of the chapter). But Bruce and Scanlon are still inside when its explodes! How many explosions can one junior assistant scoutmaster escape in one day?

Next Week: “The Battle at Ghost Town”

The Narrative: Bruce wades out of the river on the original side and starts walking back toward camp or wherever. But remember, all of The Great Outdoors can be encompassed in two square acres. The bad guys who left the log bridge and drove away when the Indians attacked stopped when the Indians gave up the chase, and are now going to work their way up this bank on foot, thinking that Scanlon and Mary didn’t get across the bridge and therefore are hiding on this side. Naturally, Bruce is close enough to overhear their plans, so he swims back across the river — which at this point has no cliffs around it — to find Marvin, Skeets, Scanlon and Mary. In fact, he wades across it, and it’s more of a large creek than a real river. Makes you wonder why someone built a log bridge atop the higher cliffs a quarter mile upstream, doesn’t it?

The four who made it across the river run into some Indians, but shoot them off their horses, in the course of which altercation Scanlon gets an arrow to the arm. Bruce treks toward them and finds that the horses the Indians were riding were in fact stolen Boy Scout horses; one of them is Bruce’s own horse, Scout! (A Boy Scout names his horse “Scout”? What do Mounties name their horses?) He meets up with the other four — of course he does! — and tells them where the gangsters are and what their plans are. Scanlon has voluntarily given himself into Marvin’s custody, and together the five of them… See wild horses! Yes, tons of stock footage informs us that there are herds and herds of wild horses on the other side of the river. Aren’t they beautiful?

They all get back to Scout camp, without getting wet (that’s why I don’t think the waterfall at the end of the river will ever amount to anything, even in later chapters, because the whole river has apparently disappeared), where Scanlon shares the “hospital tent” with juvenile delinquent Rip, who last issue broke his leg and was taken in by the Boy Scouts despite his past misdeed and present snotty attitude.

The Cliffhanger: But just when everything seems peaceful — the horses stampede! That’s right, no longer hemmed in by the river (because it disappeared, the screenwriters having forgotten about it), they start stampeding by the hundreds right toward the Boy Scout camp! Bruce swings himself onto Scout in an attempt to turn them, and seems to be successful, but falls off of his mount right into the path of the charging horses! (By which I mean, someone from an old silent movie falls off HIS mount into the path of the charging horses!)

Next Week: “The Fire God Strikes”

The Narrative: I’m getting so tired of the “chasing between three locations” plotting that I didn’t take notes this time around. I figured that if a plot point fell out of my memory in the scant few hours between watching the chapter and writing up its synopsis, it really didn’t need to be immortalized.

While Marvin is gone to Bruce’s aid, Scanlon and his daugher Mary escape. Scanlon, you’ll recall, is innocent of any of the counterfeiters’ schemes, but Marvin won’t believe that, and Mary knows it, so she urges her dad to go on the lamb. It only takes a moment for them to pass a car full of counterfeiters (this deserted mountain road hasn’t seen so much traffic in forever!), who give chase. Marvin and Bruce also tail them on foot, taking the direct overland route while the cars have to tack back and forth on the switchback-filled road.

There’s only a bit of gas left in Scanlon’s car (or rather, in Marvin’s car that Scanlon and Mary appropriated, so I don’t know how he was planning on getting back off the mountain), so instead of simply pulling over and waiting to be caught, they send the car without them over the edge of a sheer drop, hoping that the counterfeiters will now leave them alone. And if only they can make it to the old log bridge across the river gorge, they can find some place to hide.

But Bruce and the rest of the Scouts (who’ve been tracking the whole thing — really, staying in camp working on merit badges is sooo boring when there are explosions going on!) determine that Scanlon and Mary escaped, and Marvin intuits that they’re heading for the log bridge. And who should overhear but delinquent Rick and the gangster he rescued last time. (As a side note: Jeez, these people can cover some distance on foot! They travel miles of mountainous terrain like they were crossing the street!) While the gangster goes to tell the rest of the gang that Scanlon’s alive, Rick tracks Marvin (and Skeets, who goes with him because of the family connection), then falls over a shallow cliff and sprains his ankle. And who’s close enough to hear his calls for help? Bruce and the rest of the troop, because the entire goings-on of this serial take place in a single acre, apparently. Rick lets it slip that the gang knows that Scanlon is alive, so Bruce takes after Marvin and Skeets to warn them.

In other words, everyone’s heading for the log bridge! First Scanlon and Mary get there and cross, then Marvin and Skeets get there, the the sets of track ahead of them, and wipe both their own and the preceding tracks as they cross so the gangsters won’t know to follow them. Then the gang arrives, concludes that they’re gotten there before anyone else, and decide to blow up the bridge (again with the dynamite!) to keep anyone from getting away from them. Then the Indians show up, largely because it’s been too long since they’ve popped up, and some of the gangsters exchange bullets for arrows as the others set the charge. Then Bruce arrives!

The Cliffhanger: Bruce stops to examine a dead or wounded Indian on the log bridge, and is (apparently) still on it when the dynamite destroys one of the bridge and sends it plummetting into the gorge…

Next Week: “Thundering Hooves:”

The Narrative: Good golly, I’m getting tired of this “back and forth between three or four locations” storyline. The three of them hike back down to Ghost Town to get Mary and Kent, who in the meantime have discovered the counterfeiter’s plates which they left behind while they took the first load of people up to the cabin. Bruce is supposed to take Kent, Skeets and Mary back to the Scout camp while Marvin snoops around a little bit, but it just so happens that the path to the camp runs right beside the mountain road the counterfeiters use to come back down the mountain (and get a flat tire, which gives them an occasion to get out and talk about things they already know just so Bruce can overhear it). Bruce uses Mary’s compact mirror to signal back down to Marvin in Ghost Town (via Morse code) to be ready for the counterfeiters. Marvin gets the drop on the two of them, ties one up, and forces the other to drive him (yup) back up the mountain to the cabin.

Meanwhile, Rick — remember him? the juvenile deliquent who’s fallen in with the criminals? — tries to lasso Bruce in the woods, but when the fight doesn’t go his way, he claims that he’s broken with the counterfeiters. Bruce stupidly believes him, and lets him know that Marvin’s waiting for the counterfeiters down in the town. Not that he can get there in time to stop anything. But he can get back down the mountain to help the tied-up one Marvin leaves behind.

Though the distances on this mountain are really fluid. Mary hikes with Kent and Skeets back to the Scout camp, then has time to get in her car and drive to the mountain cabin of the counterfeiters before Marvin can get there. She of course wants to free her father Scanlon, and of course gets herself captured. But then when Marvin gets there with his captured gangster and everyone starts shooting, Mary and Scanlon run out the back and escape in her car. Escape to where? Why, back toward Ghost Town, of course! Marvin hitches a ride, and so does Bruce; he was mostly hanging out on the road back down, hoping, I think, to be useful again, and knowing that EVERYONE on the mountain uses this road at least twice a day.

That includes the Indians. They’re on their way back down to Ghost Town, where Rick and the gangster he untied are planting dynamite around an old barn. Why? Well, they hope that the explosion will cow the Indians enough for the two of them to get away. I guess when the only tool you have is dynamite, every problem looks like it should be exploded.

The Cliffhanger: Although Marvin hitched a ride with the Scanlon father and daughter team, he still thinks that Scanlon is willfully colluding with the counterfeiters, and wants to restrain him. He sends Bruce into the barn (the one that’s about to blow up) to look for some rope, and — BOOM!

Next Week: “Destroyed By Dynamite”

The Resolution: A big ol’ waterfall — every river has one! — was just about to swallow the canoe containing Scout Leader Bruce, fellow Scout Ken, and Mary Scanlon, who were drifting downriver to see if Mary’s brother Skeets had drifted the same way. In a show of honesty, there’s no cheat to get out of the cliffhanger. The canoe goes over the falls with all three inside. It even breaks immediately on impact with the water! And how do the three escape? They simply swim to shore like nothing’s wrong. Now, I expect that kind of sturdy indestructibility from Boy Scouts, but Mary’s a girl, and that means she’s more tender and fragile and stuff, so I don’t know.

The Narrative: Boy, this one’s tough, mainly because everyone walks around in circles, and nothing much happens. To wit:

Bruce, Ken and Mary regroup on the shore, hoping that Skeets didn’t follow a similar path over the falls. (Though if he had, really, what harm could it have been?) Bruce, a Boy Scout through and through, says “Come on! Let’s make a fire and dry out!” but Mary puts the kibosh on a demo of his Mad Boy Scout Skillz to keep looking for Skeets… at random, really, over the mountainside.

Meanwhile, Hank Marvin and the other Scouts are out trying to track Skeets the dry way. Marvin pulls a Prince Humperdinck (”There was a mighty duel…”) and determines that, yes, Skeets was abducted by Indians. He sends the rest of the Scouts back and continues to track them on his own.

The counterfeiters in Ghost Town decide that, now that everybody and their Great Aunt Nellie has visited and escaped from their hideout, it’s time to relocate. They load up everything and everyone and drive off to a log cabin that one of their number has located.

Just after the counterfeiters pull out, Bruce and company discover that they’re near Ghost Town, too. (Because this mountain covers all of an acre and a half, and any point is a simple job from any other point.) They cautiously enter and look around, wary of straggling counterfeiters, which means that several minutes are eaten up with tiptoe tension that amounts to nothing. (Thrill as Bruce slowly investigates a noise which turns out to be a door banging in the wind, plus a stock-footage owl!)

Lets you think that everyone has forgotten what they meant to be doing, we do see Skeets dragged by the Indians into their tunnels, where plans are made for his ritual sacrifice. I guess that the original party of Indians that captured him must have split up or something (hey, it’s been three months — cut me some slack), because the Indians that Marvin is following march right into… Ghost Town! Boy, those counterfeiters were right about it being too well-known a hideout; I’ve seen Wal-Marts that didn’t get that kind of traffic. I have no idea what the Indians are looking for in the town, but their presence gives Bruce and company a chance to hide in closets and again engage in (cough) tension.

After the Indians leave and Marvin arrives in town, Bruce joins up with him and sends Mary and Ken back to the camp. Bruce is himself a first-rate Indian tracker, so it’s no problem for him to follow them right into their tunnels and to their main gathering cavern, where their leader is blabbering and gesticulating. (I should mention this here, though I don’t know it’s import, because it may become important later: we twice see the Indian party pass a bubbling pit right in their path, and once they even stop for a drink. Like I said, only time will tell what the significance is.)

The Indians are about to sacrifice Skeets in a flaming pit when Bruce knocks over a stone column and presto, the Indians all run out in a panic. (Flighty people, aren’t they?) Marvin throws a grenade, too, for good measure. The three of them try to escape in… an elevator. No, really, a wicker elevator cage which the Indians dangle conspicuously over the side of a cliff. It would be far too logical for them to try to escape the direction they came, naturally.

The Cliffhanger: You can’t get into a rope-hung elevator cage without someone trying to chop through the rope, can you? And that’s what happens here: as the three of them frantically (and comically) try to lower the elevator with the rope-and-pulley assembly, the Indians decide to hasten their descent by chopping through the rope. It’s a freefallapalooza!

(This is the last of three chapters which uses the word “Doom” in the title. The directors apologize for the redundancy in the titles. Those responsible have been sacked.)

Next Week: “Ghost Town Menace”