// fpn source for The Boy Aviators in Record Flight, by Wilbur Lawton
// last edit: 22-May-2014
.dt The Boy Aviators in Record Flight, by Wilbur Lawton
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.ca COURTESY OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
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.ca Several early airplanes in flight. Courtesty of Scientific American
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THE BOY AVIATORS
IN RECORD FLIGHT
OR
THE RIVAL AEROPLANE
BY
CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON
AUTHOR OF “THE BOY AVIATORS IN NICARAGUA,” “THE BOY
AVIATORS ON SECRET SERVICE,” “THE BOY AVIATORS IN AFRICA,”
“THE BOY AVIATORS’ TREASURE QUEST,” ETC.
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NEW YORK
HURST AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
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BOY AVIATORS’ SERIES
By Captain Wilbur Lawton
Six Titles. Cloth Bound. Price 50c
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
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1 The Boy Aviators in Nicaragua;
\ \ \ \ or, In League with the Insurgents.
2 The Boy Aviators on Secret Service;
\ \ \ \ or, Working with Wireless.
3 The Boy Aviators in Africa;
\ \ \ \ or, An Aerial Ivory Trail
4 The Boy Aviators’ Treasure Quest;
\ \ \ \ or, the Golden Galleon.
5 The Boy Aviators in Record Flight;
\ \ \ \ or, The Rival Aeroplane.
6 The Boy Aviators’ Polar Dash;
\ \ \ \ or, Facing Death in the Antarctic.
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Your orders solicited.
HURST & COMPANY
Publishers—New York
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Copyright, 1910, by HURST & CO.
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CONTENTS
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I|#The Big Prize:ch01#
II|#Billy as a Diplomat:ch02#
III|#Under a Cloud:ch03#
IV|#Thieves in the Night:ch04#
V|#The Boys Decide:ch05#
VI|#Off for San Francisco:ch06#
VII|#Above the Earth:ch07#
VIII|#Boy Aviators to the Rescue:ch08#
IX|#Luther Barr Forms an Alliance:ch09#
X|#A Night Voyage:ch10#
XI|#The First Leg:ch11#
XII|#Attacked by Cowboys:ch12#
XIII|#Indians:ch13#
XIV|#The Auto in Difficulties:ch14#
XV|#Thirst—and a Plot:ch15#
XVI|#The Auto Gone:ch16#
XVII|#The Wrong Man:ch17#
XVIII|#Wireless:ch18#
XIX|#Arrested by Aeroplane:ch19#
XX|#Caught in a Stampede:ch20#
XXI|#Bart and the B’ar:ch21#
XXII|#An Auto Leap for Life:ch22#
XXIII|#A Mystery:ch23#
XXIV|#The Golden Hermit:ch24#
XXV|#A Fight for Fortune:ch25#
XXVI|#The Sand Storm:ch26#
XXVII|#Winning the Prize—Conclusion:ch27#
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THE BOY AVIATORS IN RECORD FLIGHT
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Or,
THE RIVAL AEROPLANE.
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CHAPTER I.||THE BIG PRIZE.
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“Phew!” exclaimed Billy Barnes as he reported
for work on the New York Planet one broiling afternoon
in late August, “this is a scorcher and no mistake.”
“I should think after all your marvelous adventures
with the Boy Aviators that you would be so
used to heat and cold and hardship that you wouldn’t
kick at a little thing like a warm day.”
The remark came from a young fellow about
twenty-one years old who occupied a desk beside that
of the stout spectacled youth of eighteen whom our
readers have already met as Billy Barnes.
“Why, hullo, Fred Reade!” said Billy, looking up
with a good-natured grin from the operation of opening
his typewriter desk, “I thought you were off covering
aviation.”
“I was,” rejoined the other, with a near approach
to a sneer, “but since we printed your story about the
recovery of the treasure on the Spanish galleon I
guess they think I’m not good enough to cover the
subject.”
If the good-natured Billy Barnes noticed the close
approach to outspoken enmity with which these words
were spoken he gave no sign of it. Any reply he
might have made was in fact cut short at that minute
by an office boy who approached him.
“Mr. Stowe wants to see you, Mr. Barnes, at once,
please,” said the lad.
“There you go, the managing editor sending for
you as soon as you get back. I wish I was a pet,”
sneered Reade as Billy hastened after the boy and
the next minute entered a room screened off from
the editorial department by a glass door bearing the
words “Managing Editor.”
At a desk above which hung “This is my busy
day,” and other signs not calculated to urge visitors
to become conversational, sat a heavy-set, clean-shaven
man with a big pair of spectacles astride his nose.
He had a fat cigar in his mouth which he regarded
as he spoke with far more intensity than he did Billy.
“Afternoon, Barnes,” was his greeting.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Stowe,” returned the young
reporter, “you sent for me——”
“Sit down,” said the other brusquely, indicating
a chair.
Billy sat down and waited for the next words of
his managing editor.
“The Planet, as you know, has made a specialty
of featuring aviation,” continued Mr. Stowe, gazing
fixedly at his cigar.
Billy nodded, the remark did not seem to call for a
more definite reply.
“We have offered prizes for flights from time to
time, and in this way have obtained a reputation as
an authority on aviation and a patron of what is
bound to be the vehicle of the coming ages.”
Again Billy nodded at the managing editor’s rather
florid way of putting it.
“For instance, the $10,000 Albany-New York flight
and the $30,000 New York-St. Louis flight. The
$100,000 offer for a transatlantic flight as yet remains
unchallenged for, but I have no doubt that in
time some daring aviator will make the attempt.”
“It should be possible,” once more agreed Billy,
wondering what was coming next.
“In the meantime,” Mr. Stowe continued, “the
Despatch has declared itself our rival in this field by
also devoting great attention to the subject, and offering
prizes for flights in opposition to our original
idea. The owner of the Planet has therefore decided
to eclipse all previous offers and be the first in the
field with a prize of $50,000 for a flight from New
York to San Francisco, or as far in that direction as
possible. The air craft that travels furthest will get
the prize.”
“Across the continent?” gasped Billy.
“Exactly. We are going to publish the conditions
and date of starting in our to-morrow morning’s issue.
And the offer incidentally means a great chance
for you.”
Billy gave a questioning glance.
“I intend to have you follow the racers in an automobile
and send dispatches from the various points
along the route concerning the progress of the cross-country
aerial racers.”
The young reporter’s face beamed.
“That’s mighty good of you, sir,” he said earnestly.
“Not at all. It’s simply the selection of the best
man for the job; that’s all. You have far more knowledge
of aviation than Reade—or at least you ought
to have after your long association with the Boy
Aviators—and therefore we have selected you.”
“As to the conditions of the race, Mr. Stowe—how
about stops, gasolene and water stations, and so on?”
“Each contestant will be expected to arrange those
details for himself,” was the answer. “This newspaper
simply offers the prize to the first aeroplane to
arrive in San Francisco, or go furthest in that direction.
Also, of course, we claim the privilege of getting
exclusive accounts of the doings of the Planet
aeroplanes. That’s all. Simple, isn’t it?”
“Very,” agreed Billy as he took his leave. “By
the way, sir, does any one else know of your offer?”
“Nobody; not even Reade. I guess he’s pretty
sore that we took him off aviation on the eve of making
the prize offer, but it can’t be helped.”
“Why, I—you see, sir, I’d rather not take it, if it
is blocking Reade in any way. I don’t want to take
the assignment at all if it’s going to hurt Reade with
the paper.”
The managing editor gave an impatient wave of
his hand.
“Let me attend to Reade,” he remarked impatiently,
“you go and get out a story for to-morrow
about possible contestants. Of course your friends,
the Chester boys, will enter?”
Billy looked dubious.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I rather think they
were planning for a rest and to continue their studies,
and this cross-country flight won’t be any picnic. However,
I hope they do enter,” replied Billy.
“I had no idea that there would be any doubt
about it,” said Mr. Stowe impatiently, “well, do the
best you can. Anyhow, get interviews with Blewitt,
Sharkness and Auldwin. They will be sure to enter
their machines, and let’s have a good, live story for
to-morrow. By the way, not a word of this to anybody
but the aviators you may see till we publish the
offer. The Despatch would be quite capable of offering
a similar prize to-morrow morning if they learned
what was in the wind.”
Billy nodded as Mr. Stowe once more gave a sign
of dismissal, and hastened from the room. So hurried
was his exit, in fact, that he almost bumped into Reade
as he made his way out. The editorial room was deserted,
except for the dark-haired, slender young fellow
with whom Billy had almost collided. The other
reporters were all out on their assignments.
“Well?” were Fred Reade’s first words.
“Well,” rejoined Billy, adjusting his spectacles,
which had narrowly escaped being jarred off his nose
in the bump, “isn’t there room enough in the place
without your getting so near that door that you almost
upset my slender form?”
“Never mind that,” replied Frank Reade; “what
I want to know is, how do I stand in there?”
He motioned with his head toward the managing
editor’s room from which the boys were by this time
several paces removed.
“I don’t understand you exactly,” was Billy’s reply.
He noticed that Reade’s face bore an angry flush
and he seemed excited.
“What I mean is this: Am I going to continue to
do aviation for the Planet?”
“Say, Fred, old man, I’m awfully sorry——”
“Oh, cut that out. You don’t mean it, and you
know you don’t. You wanted to grab off the job for
yourself, and I can see by your face that you have.”
“If you mean that I am to do aviation for the
Planet in future, you are right,” replied Billy. “I
am; but it was only on Mr. Stowe’s orders. You’re
wrong, Fred, and you know you are, when you accuse
me of trying to take your job away from you.”
“Oh, rot,” exclaimed the other angrily. “If that
had been the case you’d have kept away. You don’t
have to work. You made plenty of money out of
your share of the Golden Galleon treasure. You have
just deliberately tried to oust me from my job.”
“You talk as if you’d been fired,” said Billy.
“You know that you are one of the most valued reporters
on the Planet.”
“Don’t try to jolly me,” rejoined the other angrily.
“And as for being fired, I don’t have to be,
for I’ve got my resignation ready written out. Here
copy boy!” he cried, “take this note in to Mr.
Stowe.”
As the boy hurried up Reade drew from his pocket
an envelope and handed it to the lad.
“Hold on there!” cried Billy, genuinely moved
at Reade’s evident chagrin, “have you gone crazy,
Fred? What’s the matter?”
“Take that note in,” thundered Reade to the hesitating
boy, who thereupon hurried off, “it’s your
fault I’ve had to quit, Billy Barnes, and I’ll not forget
it, I can promise you. I’ll get even with you for this
in a way you don’t suspect. No; I won’t shake hands
with you. I don’t want to speak to you.”
Reade flung angrily off and put on his coat and hat.
Without taking any more notice of Billy he strode out
of the Planet offices and into the street.
On the sidewalk he paused for a minute. His hat
shoved back off his brow and his forehead puckered in
perplexity.
“I’ll do it,” he exclaimed suddenly under his breath
as if he had made up his mind to something. “I’ll
do it. The Despatch will jump at it, and I’ll get even
on Billy Barnes and the Planet at the same time.”
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CHAPTER II.||BILLY AS A DIPLOMAT.
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A few minutes after Fred Reade had left the
Planet offices he was followed by Billy Barnes. The
young reporter boarded an open Madison Avenue car,
preferring it to the stuffy heat of the subway, and
in due time found himself at the home of Mr. Chester,
the wealthy banker, and father of Frank and Harry
Chester, the Boy Aviators. The lads need no further
introduction to our readers, who have doubtless
formed the acquaintance of both the young air pilots
in previous volumes of this series. To those who
have not it may be as well—while Billy Barnes is
ringing the doorbell—to say that Frank and Harry
Chester were graduates of the Agassiz High School
and the pioneers among schoolboy aviators. Beginning
with models of air craft they had finally evolved
a fine biplane which they named the Golden Eagle.
The first Golden Eagle was destroyed in a tropical
storm off the coast of Nicaragua, as related in The
Boy Aviators in Nicaragua; or, In League with the
Insurgents. To carry out an important commission
affecting a stolen formula the lads then constructed a
second Golden Eagle, in which they met many adventures
and perils in the Everglades of Florida. These
were set forth in The Boy Aviators on Secret Service;
or, Working with Wireless, the second volume of the
series. In the third and fourth volumes the boys had
aerial adventures in Africa, and in the Sargasso Sea.
What these were will be found in The Boy Aviators
in Africa; or, An Aerial Ivory Trail; and The Boy
Aviators’ Treasure Quest; or, The Golden Galleon.
Before the servant who answered Billy’s ring had
time to announce him there was a rush of feet down
the hallway and two tall lads, with crisp wavy hair
and blue eyes, were wringing Billy’s hand till he laughingly
shouted:
“Hey, let up! I’m not the India-rubber man with
the circus.”
At this moment a door opened and a gray-haired
man stepped out. It was Mr. Chester.
“Why, how do you do, Billy Barnes,” he
exclaimed heartily, “glad to see you; but I hope you
haven’t come to take my boys off again on some wonderful
trip or other. You know their mother and I
like to see them at home sometimes.”
“Well, sir,” began Billy somewhat abashed, “the
fact is I—you see—I mean—well, the long and short
of it is, sir, that I have an adventurous proposal to
make to them.”
“Hurray!” shouted Harry. “Good for you,
Billy!”
Mr. Chester, however, assumed his—what Frank
called—“official face.”
“Really, I——” he began.
“Now, father,” interjected Frank, “don’t you think
it would be a good idea if we heard what Billy’s proposal,
or whatever you like to call it, is before we say
anything more?”
“Perhaps you are right, my boy,” said his father,
“but I am busy now, and——”
“We’ll take Billy out to the workshop and make
him tell us all about it, and then we’ll submit it to
you,” suggested Harry.
“That’s a good idea,” assented his father.
Five minutes later the three boys were closeted in
the big room above the garage of the Chester home,
which served them as a workshop, study and designing
plant all rolled into one. The blue prints, aeroplane
parts, chemicals, and tools scattered about or
ranged in neat racks against the walls in conjunction
with a shelf of books on aviation and kindred subjects,
the table illumined by movable drop lights
shaded by green shades, gave the room a very business-like
appearance. It was clearly a place for work
and not for play—as a sort of framework newly
erected in one corner showed.
“What’s that?” asked Billy, indicating it.
“Oh, just an idea we were working on for a wireless
adapted for auto use,” rejoined Frank, “but
never mind that now. What’s this wonderful plan of
yours?”
“Simply this,” replied Billy briskly, “how’d you
fellows like to get $50,000?”
“Would we?” exclaimed Harry. “Lead us to
it.”
“You’ll have to lead yourselves,” laughed Billy.
“Oh, come on, Billy, put us out of our suspense.
What do you mean?” said Frank.
“Well, my paper, The Planet, you know,” began
Billy, “has decided to offer the amount I named for a
successful flight from here to San Francisco, or as
near to that city as can be attained. There are no
conditions—except get there first, or travel furthest.”
“Well?” said Frank.
“Well,” repeated Billy, “I’ve come here to interview
you. Are you ready to announce yourselves as
competitors for the Planet’s contest?”
Not so much to Billy’s surprise Frank shook his
head.
“I don’t know what to say,” he rejoined. “It
isn’t a thing you can make your mind up to in a minute.
I’d like to do it, but it would require a lot of
preparation. Then, too, there would be maps to get
up and a thousand and one details to arrange. It’s a
big task—bigger than you imagine, Billy.”
“Oh, I know it’s a big proposition,” said the young
reporter, “that’s one reason I thought it would appeal
to you,” he added subtly. “As for gasolene, why
not carry a supply of it in the automobile?”
“What automobile?” asked Harry.
“Why, didn’t I tell you,” exclaimed Billy, “the
auto I’m to follow you fellows in and send out accounts
of your progress. Oh, Frank, please say you’ll
do it—it would be bully.”
“It would be bully, no doubt of that,” rejoined
Frank; “but I have a lot of experimental work on
hand that I want to finish. I should have to leave
that, and Harry is preparing for college. No, Billy,
I’m afraid we shall have to call it off. There are
lots of other aviators you can get to take part. The
prize is big enough to call out the biggest of them.”
Bitter disappointment showed on Billy’s face.
“Then it’s all off?” he murmured dejectedly.
“I’m afraid so—yes,” replied Frank. “What do
you say, Harry?”
“I’d like to go,” decided Harry promptly; “but, as
you said, Frank, it would delay us both in our studies,
and then we would have a lot of work to do on the
framework of the Golden Eagle, wrecked as she was.”
“Hold on there!” cried Billy. “I was coming to
that. I was going to say that maybe the reason you
refused was that you couldn’t build a new ’plane in
time, but did I understand you to say you had recovered
the frame?”
“Of the old Golden Eagle II,” put in Frank. “You
recollect that following the fight with Luther Barr’s
dirigible in the Sargasso we had to abandon her.”
“After that rascal Sanborn tried to blow a hole
in the pontoons that made her float and sink her.”
“I shall never forget the look on his face as that
devil fish seized him and bore him to the depths of
the sea,” shuddered Harry.
“Nor I,” said Frank; “but here’s your story, Billy.
Having, as you know, left the Golden Eagle drifting
on her pontoons we never thought we should see
her again, but a few days ago a message reached us
from Florida saying that the government derelict destroyer
Grampus, while on the lookout for dangerous
wrecks in the Caribbean Sea, encountered a
strange-looking object scudding over—or rather
through—the waves. They set out in chase and soon
made it out as the framework of an aeroplane. You
remember that I advertised the loss of our air craft
pretty extensively in marine and naval journals, and
offered a reward, so that when the drifting aeroplane
was sighted every man on board the government vessel
was eager to capture it. As the wind dropped soon
after they sighted it they were enabled to get alongside
the derelict and found that it was indeed the
Golden Eagle. Her planes were riddled with bullets
and her pontoons covered with green seaweed, but the
framework was as solid and the braces as taut as the
day we put her together. Moreover, the engine, beyond
being badly coated with rust, was as good as the
day we set it on the bed plate.”
“Say, why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
demanded Billy.
“Too much of a hurry to get her back, I guess,”
rejoined Frank. “But, say,” he broke off, “the frame
was shipped from Florida and arrived here this morning.
Want to look at it?”
“Want to look at it? You bet I do!” gasped Billy.
“That’s the finest old air ship in the world.”
“So we think,” laughed Harry, as Frank led the
way down a flight of steps into the garage below the
room in which they had been discussing the Planet’s
offer.
Frank switched on the lights and there stood revealed
in the rear of the place a shadowy framework
that glistened in places where the light caught it. It
towered huge, and yet light and airy-looking, like the
skeleton of a strange bird.
“It wasn’t shipped that way?” asked Billy.
“Not much,” was Frank’s reply. “They took it
down in Florida and boxed it.”
“And a nice mess they made of it,” said Harry;
“but, thank goodness, they didn’t harm the engine.”
He pointed to the motor which was out of the machine
and lay in a corner.
“Doesn’t look very big for the work it’s done, does
it?” laughed Frank, gazing lovingly at the eight-cylindered,
hundred horse-power engine that had performed
such good service since the boys installed it.
“There’s certainly a lot of cleaning to be done about
the ’plane,” remarked Billy, as he handled the rusted
frames and tarnished bronze parts.
“Oh, that won’t take long,” replied Frank lightly;
“anyhow, we’ve got lots of time to do it.”
“Unless,” put in Billy.
“Well, unless what?” demanded Frank, though he
guessed the young reporter’s meaning.
“Unless you go in for that $50,000 prize,” cried
Billy skillfully evading the playful blow Frank aimed
at him. “In all seriousness, Frank, won’t you?” he
pleaded.
“In all seriousness, no,” was Frank’s rejoinder.
“I’d like to do it. Billy,” he went on. “I’d like to do
it for your sake, if it would do you any good—we
both would, wouldn’t we, Harry?”
“You bet,” replied the younger brother with effective
brevity.
“Well, of course, I know you fellows too well to
try to urge you,” said Billy; “but I would like to be
able to announce in the Planet to-morrow that the Boy
Aviators announce they will compete for the paper’s
big prize.”
“To tell you the truth, Billy,” laughed Frank,
“we’ve had about enough newspaper notoriety lately.
It’s mighty good of you to write accounts of our adventures,
but I guess the papers can get along for a
while without anything about us.”
“Not at all, you make good copy,” declared Billy,
with such comic emphasis that the boys went off into
shouts of laughter.
And so it came about that Billy said good-night
without having shaken the Boy Aviators in their determination
not to engage in any public flights, but all
the time, though they little knew it, events were so
shaping themselves that little as they dreamed it they
were to take part in the record flight.
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CHAPTER III.||UNDER A CLOUD.
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It was early the next morning. The paper had
been put to bed. Billy, with the satisfied feeling that
came to him with the knowledge that he had written
a good introduction and account of the Planet’s great
offer, was slipping into his coat preparatory to going
home, when Mr. Stowe, his face purple with anger,
called to him in a sharp voice from the door of the
editorial sanctum.
“Come here, Barnes, I want to see you,” he said
brusquely.
“Hullo, something’s up with the chief,” thought
Billy to himself; but he answered cheerily: “All
right, sir,” with an inward feeling that something was
all wrong.
“Look here, Barnes,” exclaimed Mr. Stowe, angrily
flourishing a first edition of the Planet’s rival, the
Despatch, “there has been treachery somewhere.
How about this?”
Billy, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart,
took the paper the other flourished so furiously. It
was still moist and warm as it had been run off the
press. The sickly, sweet odor of printer’s ink hung
about it. But these details did not attract Billy’s attention.
And for an excellent reason. Staring him in
the face in big black letters he read:
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THE “DESPATCH” OFFERS FIFTY THOUSAND
DOLLARS FOR A TRANSCONTINENTAL
FLIGHT.
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Below—and every letter of the article burned itself
into Billy’s brain, was a long story eulogizing the enterprise
of the Despatch in making the offer and giving
a list of the noted aviators who would be sure—so
the Despatch thought—to enter the contest.
It was a cold steal of the Planet’s idea.
Almost word for word the conditions were the same
as those Mr. Stowe had detailed to Billy that afternoon.
“Well,” remarked the managing editor in a harsh
tone, in which Billy recognized the steely ring that always
presaged a storm from that august quarter.
“Well,” floundered Billy helplessly, “I cannot account
for it.”
“You cannot,” echoed the other in a flinty tone.
“Why no,” rejoined the lad, lifting his eyes to
Stowe’s, “can you?”
“Yes I can.”
“You can, sir?”
“We have been sold out.”
“Sold out?”
“Precisely. And there are only three people in the
office who could have had any knowledge of the secret.
One is the owner of the paper, the other myself
and the third is you.”
Mr. Stowe joined his hands magisterially and looked
straight at Billy, in whose mind a horrid suspicion had
begun to dawn.
The managing editor was practically accusing him
of selling the story.
Preposterous as the idea was, Billy realized that to
a prejudiced mind, such as the managing editor’s,
there would be no way of explaining matters. His
thoughts were suddenly broken in on by Mr. Stowe’s
harsh voice.
“Is there any one else, Barnes?”
Like a flash the recollection of his encounter with
Reade at the very door of the managing editor’s room,
the latter’s strange and defiant manner, and the unaccountable
publishing by the Despatch of a rival offer,
came into Billy’s mind. He was about to mention
Reade’s name when he checked himself.
What proof had he?
Then, too, he saw that Stowe’s mind was made up.
He did not wish to appear in the position of trying
to throw the blame on a man whom he realized the
managing editor would not believe could by any possibility
have any knowledge of the Planet’s plans.
“I am waiting for your answer,” came the cold, incisive
voice again.
“I can think of none, sir,” rejoined the young reporter
with a feeling that he had put the rope about
his neck with a vengeance now.
“Hum! In that case, by a process of elimination,
we have only one person who could have done it, and
that——” He paused. “I hate to have to say it,
Barnes, but it looks bad for you.”
“Great Heavens, Mr. Stowe!” gasped Billy, who,
while he had seen what the managing editor was leading
up to, was struck by a rude shock of surprise at
the actual placing into words of the accusation, “do
you mean to say you think that I would do such a
thing?”
“I don’t know what to think, Barnes,” was the discouraging
answer. “I am more sorry than I can say
to have had to speak as I have. However, until you
can clear yourself of the cloud of a suspicion that must
rest on you because of this affair we shall have to part
company.”
Billy went white.
His superior then really believed him guilty of the
worst crime a newspaper man can commit—a breach
of faith to his paper.
“Do you really believe what you are saying, sir?”
he demanded.
“As I said before, I don’t know what to think,
Barnes. However, what I might say will make little
difference. In a short time the proprietor will hear of
this, and I should have to discharge you whether I
wished to or no. If you wish to act now, you may
resign.”
“Very well, then, Mr. Stowe, I will make out my
formal resignation,” exclaimed Billy, his cheeks burning
crimson with anger and shame.
“I’m sorry, Barnes,” said Mr. Stowe, as the lad,
scarcely knowing where he was going, left the room.
“I have no other course, you know.”
Fifteen minutes later Billy Barnes was no longer a
member of the Planet staff, and his resignation, neatly
typewritten, lay on the managing editor’s desk. To
do Mr. Stowe justice, he had acted against his own
beliefs, but he was only an inferior officer in the direction
of the paper. Its owner, he well knew, was a
man of violent temper and fixed convictions. When
he saw the Despatch Mr. Stowe knew that the vials of
his wrath would be emptied and that Billy would have
had to leave in any event. And so subsequent events
proved, for the next day, when Billy’s immediate discharge
was angrily demanded by the Planet’s owner,
he was informed by his managing editor that the boy
had left of his own free will.
“He resigned last night rather than have any suspicion
directed toward him,” said Mr. Stowe; “but,
you mark my words, the boy will right himself.”
“Nonsense, Stowe, he sold us out,” said the owner
bitterly; “sold us out cold and nothing will ever make
me alter my conviction.”
“Except Billy Barnes himself,” said Stowe softly,
and lit a cigar, which he puffed at with great energy.
When he had learned that Reade was doing aviation
for the Despatch the managing editor’s mind was
crossed for a brief minute with suspicion that here
might be the traitor. But he dismissed it—was compelled
to, in fact. To his mind it would have been an
impossibility for Reade to have heard the conversation
in which the offer was discussed.
In the meantime both papers continued to work up
their $50,000 offers, until there was actually developed
a keen and bitter rivalry between them. One morning
the Despatch would announce the entry of some prominent
aviator in its cross-country contest, and the next
the Planet would be out with its announcement of a
new contestant added to its ranks. The public appetite
was whetted to a keen pitch by the various moves.
Crawford, the man who had taken Billy Barnes’
place on the Planet, was a skilled writer, and an excellent
man to work up such a story as the cross-continental
challenge. It was he who first broached to
Stowe the idea of flinging down the gauntlet to the
Despatch and inviting that paper to start its contestants
on the same day as those of the Planet, the winner
to take the prizes of both papers. This would give the
struggle tremendous added interest, and attract worldwide
attention, he argued.
While events were thus shaping themselves with the
Planet and the Despatch, Billy Barnes had visited his
friends, the Boy Aviators, and told them, with a rueful
face, of his misfortune.
His manner of so doing was characteristic. A few
days after he had left the newspaper he called on them
at their work shop. To his surprise he found there
old Eben Joyce, the inventor whom Luther Barr had
treated so shabbily in the matter of the Buzzard aeroplane
of which Joyce was the creator—as told in The
Boy Aviators’ Treasure Quest; or, The Golden Galleon.
Joyce and the two boys were busied over the Golden
Eagle when Billy arrived, adjusting a strange-looking
mechanism to it, consisting of a boxed flywheel of glittering
brass encased in a framework of the same metal.
It seemed quite a heavy bit of apparatus, withal so
delicately balanced, that it adjusted itself to every
movement of its frame. A second glance showed
Billy that it was a gyroscope.
The boys and the aged inventor were so deeply interested
in examining the bit of machinery that they
did not hear Billy come in, and it was not till he hailed
them with a cheery:
“Come down from the clouds, you fellows!” that
they turned with a shout of recognition.
“Why, hullo, Billy Barnes!” they cried, “what are
you after now? If you want an aeroplane story here’s
a good one—a new adjustable gyroscopic appliance for
attachment to aeroplanes which renders them stable
in any shifting wind currents.”
“It’s a jim-dandy,” enthusiastically cried Harry.
“But it’s a story you can’t use,” added Frank, “because
the appliance, which is the invention of Mr.
Joyce—has not yet been fully patented. He has been
good enough to let us try it out.”
“It looks fine,” said Billy, who knew about as much
about gyroscopes as a cat knows of the solar system;
“but you needn’t worry about my printing anything
about it, Frank. You see, I’m fired,” he added simply.
“Fired?” cried Frank.
“Well, about the same thing—I resigned, as a matter
of fact,” explained Billy ruefully; “but it all
amounts to the same in the long run.”
“Sit down and tell us about it,” commanded Frank,
genuinely concerned at his friend’s evident dejection.
Seated on an upturned box, which had contained
batteries, Billy related his story, omitting nothing. On
his suspicions of Reade, however, he touched lightly.
“You see, I’ve got nothing on the fellow,” he explained,
“and although I’m convinced that he gave our
plan away to the Despatch, yet I’ve got nothing to base
it on.”
“That’s so,” Frank and Harry were compelled to
admit.
The three friends spent an hour or so chatting, and
then Mr. Joyce, who had been tinkering with his aeroplane
attachment quite oblivious to their talk, announced
that he would have to be going home. He
had some work to do on another invention that evening,
he explained.
“Well, say, as we’ve been stuffing in here almost all
day and it’s warm enough to be mighty uncomfortable,
what do you say if we take a little spin out in the auto.
We can give Mr. Joyce a ride home,” exclaimed
Frank.
“The very thing,” agreed Harry.
Old Mr. Joyce was nothing loath to be spared the
long ride in a train to his home in the outskirts of
Jersey City. As for Billy Barnes, he was delighted at
the idea.
Accordingly, half an hour later the Chester boys’
auto rolled on board one of the ferryboats which ply
across the North River to Jersey City. The boat had
hardly reached midstream before they were aware of
another car almost opposite to them in the space set
apart for autos in the centre of the boat. Before five
minutes had passed they also noticed that they were
the object of close scrutiny on the part of one of the
occupants of the machine. He was a tall youth with
dark hair and eyes, and as soon as he observed that he
was attracting their attention he at once withdrew his
gaze.
Billy Barnes, who had been “stretching his legs”
by a stroll on the stern deck of the ferryboat as she
made her way across the river, rejoined the others just
as the boat was pulling into her slip.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed as the autos rolled over the
apron and onto the wharf, “there’s Fred Reade.”
He indicated the occupant of the other car, who
seemed to have taken so much interest in the Chester
boys and Eben Joyce, their aged companion.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
CHAPTER IV.||THIEVES IN THE NIGHT.
.sp 2
The other occupants of the auto were a man with
a heavy red beard and a nervous, alert little man
whom Billy said was an aviator named Slade.
“That’s queer to see Reade over here. I wonder
what he can be doing,” said Billy, as the two autos
left the shed and emerged into the street.
Neither of the boys could, of course, hazard a guess,
but had they known it the mission of the reporter who
had betrayed the Planet was more nearly concerned
with them than they imagined. The car in which
Reade was seated seemed a more powerful machine
than the one the boys occupied and it soon left them
behind. They thought no more of the chance encounter
and soon arrived at the home of Eben Joyce,
a comfortable cottage on the heights overlooking the
“meadows” on one side and the North river on the
other.
They were greeted by the inventor’s daughter, who
seemed much disturbed.
“Oh, I am so glad you have come!” she exclaimed,
after she had invited the little party in.
“Why, what has happened?” asked Frank.
“I will tell you,” she said, while they all leaned
forward deeply interested. “This afternoon I was
called to the door by a man in ragged clothes who
begged me for something to eat. My father has told
me never to let anyone go away hungry, so I told the
servant to give the man some food. I thought no more
of the matter till, on looking out of the window, I
saw the man who had asked for charity going toward
the old barn out there that my father used as a workshop.”
Old Mr. Joyce became greatly excited. It was evident
he feared some harm had come to his collection
of scientific instruments and plans for inventions which
he housed there for lack of room in the house.
“Yes, yes, go on,” he exclaimed, quivering with
agitation.
“He was fumbling with the lock when I looked up
and saw him. I shouted to him to know what he was
doing. His reply was to instantly stop what he was
at and run toward the front of the house. I opened
the door just in time to see him leap into an automobile
in which were two other men, and they drove off.”
“A tramp in an automobile; that’s funny,” commented Frank.
“Indeed it is. In fact, I recollect thinking at the
time that he asked me for food that his manner was
too refined to be that of a genuine tramp.”
“What did he look like?” asked Harry.
“He was tall and had a big red beard. That is all
I am able to recollect of him.”
“Sounds like the man we saw in Reade’s auto,” exclaimed
Harry.
“Can Fred Reade have anything to do with this
mysterious happening?” asked Billy.
“Eh, say that name again, young man,” demanded
the inventor, who was, besides being often preoccupied,
somewhat deaf and so had not heard Billy mention
the other’s name when they were in the auto.
“I said Fred Reade,” rejoined Billy. “Why, do
you know him?”
“I do, and I know no good of him,” was the reply.
“It was he that first approached me in connection
with the sale of the Buzzard to Luther Barr and——”
“Luther Barr again. We seem to cross his trail all
the time,” exclaimed Frank.
“Eh?” questioned the old man, his hand at his
ear, trumpet-wise.
“I said we have heard of Luther Barr before, as you
know,” said Frank, “but you never mentioned the
fact that Reade had acted for him.”
“It must have slipped my mind in the excitement,”
explained the old man. “Yes, Fred Reade has acted
for Barr in many matters that I know of.”
“A sort of agent of his,” said Billy.
“More than that,” rejoined old Eben Joyce; “there
is some mysterious tie between them. I think Reade
knows something about Luther Barr that the other is
afraid will come out.”
“How is that?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know, but such is my impression. At the
time of the negotiation for the Buzzard Reade treated
Barr as an equal more than if he were employed by
him.”
It had grown dusk by this time and Eben Joyce’s
daughter lit the lamp and set it down on the cottage
table. As she did so there came a loud roar of an approaching
motor car down the quiet street and the
next moment through the gathering gloom a big auto
approached the cottage. As it neared it it slowed
down. They all went out on the porch to see who
could be driving a car down that little frequented
street. It was not very light, but as the car drew
nearer Frank recognized it.
“That’s Fred Reade’s auto,” he cried.
But if the boys imagined that they were to get any
solution of the car’s mysterious appearance they were
mistaken. As it neared the house, and the group on
the porch must have been plainly visible to its occupants,
the big car suddenly leaped forward and shot
away into the darkness.
“What did they do that for?” asked Billy.
“I guess they saw so many if us here that they
thought it would be more prudent to stay away,” suggested
Frank.
“What can they be after?” wondered Harry.
“The blue prints of my gyroscopic attachment and
possibly my experimental machine itself,” declared the
inventor, “though if they had the blue prints they
could easily manufacture them themselves. Reade
has been after me to sell them.”
“That is so,” mused Frank; “undoubtedly such
prints would be of great value to them.”
“Will you do something for me?” inquired old
Eben Joyce, suddenly.
“Of course,” rejoined Frank; “what is it?”
“Will you take charge of my blue prints for me.
It is lonely here and I am old and my daughter unprotected.
In case they attacked us in the night we
should have little opportunity to keep the prints from
them. I would feel quite secure if you had them in
your possession, however.”
Frank readily agreed to this, adding that he would
place them in a safe deposit vault.
“I shall rest much easier if you would,” said the old
inventor. “Bad as they are, I don’t think the men
would hurt us; all they are after is the plans and I
really dare not have them about here another night.”
It was an hour later when, with the plans safely
tucked away in an inside pocket of Frank’s coat, the
boys started back for town.
“If you feel at all nervous we will telephone home
and stay here with you,” Frank offered before they
left.
“Oh, not at all,” exclaimed old Joyce, who was already
busy figuring a new problem. “I have a revolver
and I will communicate with the police about
my fears. I shall be all right.”
With hearty good nights the boys’ car swung off,
its headlights glowing brightly. They sped along
through the outskirts of Jersey City and were about
to leave the lonely, badly-lighted section through which
they had been passing when suddenly a figure stepped
full into the path of light cast ahead of them.
The sudden apparition of the night was waving a
red lantern.
“Stop! there’s danger ahead!” it shouted.
“Danger, what sort of danger?” asked Frank,
nevertheless bringing the car to a stop.
“Why, there’s an excavation ahead. Ah! that’s
right, you’ve stopped. Now then, young gentlemen,
just step out of the petroleum phaeton and fork over
the contents of your pockets.”
“What, you rascal, are you holding us up?” cried
Billy indignantly, as the man pointed a revolver at
them.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” grinned the other.
“Come on now, shell out and hurry up.”
As he spoke three other figures glided from the
shadows of an untenanted house near by and silently
took up their positions a short distance beyond him.
They were out of the path of the auto’s lights and their
faces could not be seen. The light glinted on something
that each held in his hand, however, and which
were clearly enough revolvers. Things looked pretty
blue for the Boy Aviators.
The sudden turn events had taken almost bereft
Frank of his wits for a minute, but suddenly it flashed
across him that the man who had waved the lantern
did not talk like an ordinary robber and that it was
remarkable that the others took so much trouble to
keep out of the light. The next instant his suspicions
were confirmed by hearing the voice of the first comer
snap out:
“Which one of you has got them gyroscope plans?”
Frank’s reply was startling. Without uttering a
word he suddenly drove the machine full speed ahead.
It leaped forward like a frightened wild thing.
As it dashed ahead it bowled over the would-be robber,
but that he was not seriously hurt the boys judged
by the volley of bad language he sent after them. As
for the others, as the car made its leap they had stepped
nimbly aside.
“Look out for the excavation. Frank; we’ll be in
it!” shouted Billy in an alarmed voice as the car
rushed forward.
“Why, there’s no excavation, Billy,” rejoined Frank,
bending over the steering wheel. “That was just a
bluff on the part of those men, of whom, if I am not
much mistaken, Fred Reade was one.”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
CHAPTER V.||THE BOYS DECIDE.
.sp 2
Their strange experience of the preceding night
was naturally the topic of the day with the boys the
next morning. That Fred Reade was concerned in it
there seemed no reason to doubt, though just what part
he had played was more shadowy. A perusal of the
two newspapers, the Planet and the Despatch, the
next day, however, gave the boys an inkling of one of
his motives for his desperate attempt—if, indeed, it
had been engineered by him—to gain possession of
the Joyce gyroscope. This was the announcement
that the two papers had agreed to start their contestants
off in a spirit of rivalry by naming the same day
for the start and imposing exactly the same conditions,
the prizes to be lumped. Among other things
in the Despatch’s article the boys read that Slade, the
noted aviator, was an entrant.
“Mr. Reade,” the paper stated, “will accompany
Mr. Slade as the correspondent of this newspaper.
He will ride in an automobile which will carry supplies
and emergency tools and equipment. Every step
of the trip will be chronicled by him.”
There was more to the same effect, but the boys
had no eyes for it after their sight lighted on the
following paragraph:
“Those remarkable and precocious youths, the Boy
Aviators, are, of course, not equipped for such a contest
as this, requiring, as it does, an excess of skill
and knowledge of aviation. A noted aviator of this
city, in speaking of the fact that they have not entered
their names, remarked that boys are not calculated
to have either the energy or the pluck to carry
them through an enterprise like the present.”
“That’s Fred Reade, for a bet,” exclaimed Billy, as
he read the insulting paragraph. “He’s crazy sore
at you and everyone else beside his sweet self. I suppose
he wrote that just to make himself disagreeable.”
“Moreover, he knows in some mysterious way that
we have the first option on the Joyce gyroscope,” put
in Harry, “and maybe he wouldn’t give his eyes to
get it for the principal Planet contestant.”
“He’s certainly shown that,” said Frank. “I’ve
heard of the Slade machine, and it is reputed to be a
wonder. In whatever way Reade heard that we had
the gyroscope, there is little doubt that he realizes that
fitted with it the Slade plane might win the race.”
“And there’s another reason,” burst out Billy
Barnes. “You see now that the two papers have
agreed to run the race off together it eliminates the
two prizes, and according to the conditions both will
be massed and awarded to the winner.”
“Well?” questioned Frank.
“Well,” repeated Billy, continuing, “this means
that if Reade has been backing Slade to win the Despatch
contest, and there is little doubt he has—now
that the two contests are massed if Slade has a better
man on the Planet’s list pitted against him the Planet
man may win, and then Reade gets nothing.”
“You mean that Slade was almost certain to win
the Despatch’s race—that the $50,000 was as good as
won with the class of contestants he had against him
before the two offers were massed?” asked Frank.
Billy nodded. “And that now, for all they know,
the Planet may have some dark horse who will beat
Slade and get the combined prize?”
“Precisely, as Ben Stubbs would say,” laughed
Billy.
“It would serve them right for the mean trick they
tried to play on us by attempting to steal the gyroscope
plans if we were to enter in the race at the last moment
and be the Planet’s dark horses.” mused Frank.
“Oh, Frank, do you mean that?” shouted Billy.
“I haven’t said I mean anything, you wild man,”
laughed Frank, “but inasmuch as my father was talking
of going to Los Angeles—you know he has some
orange groves out there—I’ve been thinking that we
might combine business with pleasure and take a trip to
California by aeroplane.”
“Then you’ll do it,” eagerly demanded Billy. As
for Harry, he was so entranced at the idea that he was
capering about the room like an Indian.
“I think that it is almost certain that we will not,”
teased Frank.
“Not what?” groaned Billy.
“Not be able to resist the temptation of going.”
At this point a maid entered the room with a telegram.
“This is for you,” she said, holding it out to Frank.
Frank tore it open and his face flushed angrily as
he read its contents. He handed it to the others. The
message was not signed, but even so the boys all
guessed who it was from.
“You got away from us by a neat trick last night,”
it read, “but puppies like you cannot balk us. Men
are in this race, not boys, so keep your hands off it.”
“I suppose he means by that, as we are not contestants,
we have no right to interfere with their attempts
to steal the gyroscope attachment for themselves,” exclaimed
Frank. “That’s a fine line of reasoning.”
“That telegram ought to decide us,” burst out
Harry.
“It certainly ought to,” chimed in Billy.
At that minute the Chester boys’ father entered the
room.
“What are you boys all so excited about?” he
asked.
“What would you say if we joined you in Los Angeles?”
asked Frank.
“What do you mean? I don’t quite understand,”
said Mr. Chester, puzzled in spite of himself, though
he knew the boys’ sudden determination to have adventures
and suspected that something of the kind
was in the wind now.
“If we flew to California, for instance,” said Frank.
“Flew there,” repeated Mr. Chester. “My dear
boy, how could you do that?”
“In the Golden Eagle, of course,” exclaimed Harry.
“But—but what for?” questioned the amazed Mr.
Chester.
“For a hundred thousand dollars,” put in Billy.
“You mean for that newspaper prize?”
The boys nodded.
“I don’t like the idea of your entering a contest of
that character,” said Mr. Chester; “there is a great
deal of danger, too.”
“No more than we have been through,” remonstrated
Frank; “besides, think of the experience.
Why, we would fly over a dozen states.”
“A dozen—fifty, at least,” cried Billy, with a fine
disregard for geography.
“But how would you go? How long would it take
you?” demanded their father.
“I haven’t figured out just the time we would consume,”
said Frank, “but I have a rough idea of our
route. The object, of course, would be to avoid any
big mountain chains, although if we have our Joyce
automatic adjuster I think we could manage even those
cross currents with ease. But this is to be a race and
we want to get there first. The newspaper route is
from here to Pittsburg, from there to Nashville, crossing
the Ohio and Cumberland rivers, thence, due west
almost, across the northern part of Arkansas, Oklahoma,
the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, Arizona
and then across California to San Francisco.”
“Hurrah,” cried Billy, his eyes shining. “Indians,
cowboys, gold mines and oranges.”
When the laugh at the jumbled series of images the
mention of the different states Frank had enumerated
aroused in Billy’s mind had died down Mr. Chester
wanted to know how the boys were going to carry their
supplies.
“Well,” said Frank, “as you are going to California
and leaving the car behind we thought that perhaps
you wouldn’t mind letting us use it. We will be very
careful——”
“Oh, very,” repeated Harry.
“Most,” supplemented Billy.
Mr. Chester laughed.
“I never saw such boys,” he said, “but even supposing
you had the automobile—I say supposing you
had it, could you carry enough supplies in it for the
aeroplane?”
“I am sure we could,” Frank asserted. “You see,
automobiles are in such general use nowadays that it
would only be in the desolate parts of the western states
that we should have to carry a large supply of gasolene.
Almost every village nowadays has it in stock.”
“You seem to have the whole thing thought out,”
laughed Mr. Chester.
“It will be the trip of a lifetime,” shouted Harry.
“Well, I shall have to consult with your mother,”
was Mr. Chester’s dictum.
Mrs. Chester objected very much at first to her
sons’ plan.
“You are always going off on dangerous trips. I
do wish you’d spend a little time at home,” she said.
But the boys assured her they would be very careful
and would keep constantly in touch with their parents
by telegraph and not take any unwarranted risks.
“Well, I suppose I shall have to yield,” said Mrs.
Chester at length.
“Hurrah!” cried the boys.
And thus it came about that one week before the
big race across the continent was due to start the
names of the Chester Boys were enrolled on the
Planet’s lists as contestants.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
CHAPTER VI.||OFF FOR SAN FRANCISCO.
.sp 2
The final touches had been put on the Golden Eagle
and she had been transported to Governor’s Island off
the Battery four days later. The start for the great
transcontinental race was to be made from the flats
at the southern end of the reservation. The boys discovered
that as the day of the race drew nearer that
the list of entrants had narrowed down to three. There
was their own aeroplane, the Slade entry of the Despatch,
and a big dirigible which had also been entered
by the Despatch. This left them the sole representative
of the Planet. Of the large number of original entrants,
some of them had become discouraged. Others’
machines had been broken in practice and still others
were convinced, as the starting day drew near, that
it would be impracticable to make the long flight.
“Well, the contest is certainly narrowed down,”
commented Frank one day while they were all seated in
front of their shed watching the Despatch’s plane
alight from a flight it had taken above the Jersey
meadows.
“I’m glad of it,” said Harry; “the fewer there are
in the race the easier it will be to avoid collisions and
accidents.”
After his attempt to steal the plans of Mr. Joyce’s
gyroscopic balancer the boys heard no more of Fred
Reade in a hostile way. Of course, they did not speak,
and Reade cast black looks at them as he came and
went on his frequent visits to the aerodrome of Arthur
Slade. However, his active antagonism seemed to
have ceased. Probably he was too busy arranging
the final details of the start to be able to spare the
time to make himself unpleasant.
The big dirigible, a red painted affair with a crimson
gas bag, was also housed on the island. So great
was public interest that the little Government steamer
that brought visitors over from the mainland was
crowded down to her guards with the curious who
had obtained passes to see the racing machines.
For her dash overland the Golden Eagle had been
equipped with her wireless. An outfit of Frank’s
invention had also been installed in the automobile which
was to carry old Mr. Joyce, Lathrop Beasley and
Billy Barnes. Lathrop was an expert operator and
the boys hoped to be able to keep in constant touch
with each other by means of the apparatus. Mr. Joyce,
it had been agreed, was to accompany the expedition
as mechanic. His skilled knowledge of aeroplane
engines and construction was expected to prove invaluable
in case of the breakdowns which the boys
knew they must expect on such a voyage.
At last the night came when the red flag with a
white ball in the center, which meant the racing ships
would start the next day, was run up on the tall flagstaff
at the army post. The boys could hardly sleep for
excitement and lay awake till late talking over final
details. It was agreed that the auto was to “pick up”
the aeroplane as it flew over Jersey City. From that
time on they would keep in touch by wireless or telegraph
all the way across the country, the auto carrying
extra supplies, machinery parts and gasolene.
The Despatch’s aeroplane was also to be followed by
an auto in which Fred Reade was to be a passenger,
as was also the red-bearded man whose identity was
a mystery to the boys. The red dirigible drivers, not
being able to afford an auto, had had to depend on luck
for gasoline and other supplies en route, although they
could carry a good load.
The day of the start dawned fair and still. The
bay lay an unruffled sheet of gray water. The flag
drooped on its flagstaff. It was ideal flying weather.
All the aviators on the island were up early and working
over their machines. There were joints to be tightened,
stay wires to be carefully inspected, oiling devices
to adjust and engines to be turned. This
work was impeded a lot by the inquisitive crowds who
began to arrive on the first boat.
A detachment of soldiers was finally set to work
roping off a space in which, as the time for the start
drew near, the air ships were “parked.” This relieved
the situation and the boys could work unhampered.
Billy Barnes, Lathrop and Mr. Joyce started
for Jersey early.
“Good luck!” shouted the boys, as they rolled on
to the boat in their big auto.
“So long, see you after dinner,” cried Billy with a
merry wave of the hand.
The boys’ parents, relatives and groups of their
school friends had come over to see them off, and
when the hard and dirty work was finished the boys
had their hands full explaining to their young friends
all about the Golden Eagle.
At last the bugle that announced that it was half an
hour before starting time sounded. An electric wave
of enthusiasm ran through the crowd. Over in the
city windows of skyscrapers began to fill with men
and women anxious to watch the contestants shoot
into the air. On ferry boats and roofs all along the
water front thousands of eyes were watching.
“Are you all ready?”
It was General Stanton, commander of the Department
of the East, who had consented to start the race,
who spoke.
“Yes,” came in a shout from the aviators.
The dirigible men began to cast off ropes and the
aeroplanes were dropped into position. A squad of
men drove back the pressing crowds, and the boys,
after kissing their parents and bidding farewell to
their relatives and friends, took their seats in the
Golden Eagle’s chassis.
There was a mighty roar and blue flames and smoke
spouted from the engine exhausts as the motors were
started. Men, with their heels dug into the sandy
ground to avoid slipping, held back the struggling
planes. The dirigible swayed and tugged at her resting
ropes like an impatient horse.
“Bang!”
It was the starting gun at last.
“Hurrah!” roared the crowd.
“They’re off!” shouted everybody, as if there could
be any doubt of it.
.il id=i02 fn=illus-067.jpg w=525
.ca “They’re off!” shouted everybody.
Like mighty birds the two aeroplanes swept swiftly
forward a few yards over the level ground and then
headed out far above the river toward the Jersey
shore. The big dirigible, its engine droning like an
enormous scarab beetle, followed, keeping well up with
the speedy winged craft.
From thousands of windows, banked with white
faces, handkerchiefs and flags waved and from the
roofs of the office buildings housing the Planet and
Despatch plants bombs were exploded at regular intervals
to spread the news broadcast that the race had
begun. In the offices of the evening papers the great
presses were already rushing out “Extras” telling of
the start. Soon newsboys in the canyon-like streets
of lower New York would be crying their wares.
Every pilot of every boat on the river pulled his
whistle cord and tied it down as the air craft swept far
above. The uproar was literally ear-splitting. Owing
to the roar of their engines, however, the aviators
heard little of the turmoil which they caused.
In a few minutes Jersey City, which had gone just
as airship mad as New York, was reached. On swept
the high-flying craft above its crowded roofs and bellowing
factory whistles. Far beneath them they could
see the flat green expanse of the meadows beyond
with the silver paths marked on them by the Hackensack
and Passaic rivers. As they flew onward and
left the city far behind the boys could spy on the road
beneath them the two convoying autos.
All at once the wireless began to crackle.
“They are sending up a message,” exclaimed Harry.
“Great start—good work—we’ll beat them all to a
frazzle,” was the message the spark spelled out.
“Thank you, let’s hope so,” replied Harry.
The course had been marked on maps that both the
Boy Aviators and their companions had handy for
reference. From the autos, too, flew red and blue
flags, which made identification easy. At night the
Boy Aviators’ auto was to burn red lights. The signal
that a good landing place was at hand would be flashed
upward at night by a blue flare. Of course, if it was
necessary to alight in the daytime the occupants of
the Golden Eagle would be able to spy such spots far
below them more readily than anyone driving on the
surface.
The engine was working perfectly as the Golden
Eagle rushed onward. Its steady song delighted the
young voyagers. Harry, with watchful eyes, looked
after the lubrication, while Frank kept the craft steady
on her course. On and on they flew, the autos beneath
seeming specks in clouds of dust. The dirigible was
about two miles behind and the Despatch’s aeroplane
was a short distance in front of it. The boys, therefore,
had a good lead.
“That’s a good start. We’re beating them already,”
exclaimed Harry.
Frank smiled.
“Two miles isn’t much in a race of this length,” he
remarked. “We’ve only started, Harry. We’ll have
lots of ups and downs before we’ve finished.”
How prophetic his words were neither of the boys
realized at that time.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
CHAPTER VII.||ABOVE THE EARTH.
.sp 2
As it grew dusk the boys found themselves flying
high above a pleasant wooded country, dotted here
and there with small villages and prosperous looking
farms. From their lofty station they could see men
and women rush out below them waving their arms in
excited amazement as the contestants in the big race
swept along. Cattle and horses, too, tore about their
pastures mad with terror at what they doubtless
thought were terrible destroying birds of enormous
size.
Occasionally, too, they would fly above rivers and
railroads and by noting these carefully they managed
to keep their bearings clear. The Despatch aeroplane
was now far behind and the dirigible had taken up
second place. The auto had been lost sight of also.
“Send out a wireless. We must locate Billy and the
others,” said Frank.
The instrument clicked off the message, its blue
spark leaping and crackling across the gap like a tongue
of living fire.
In a few minutes a reply came back.
“We are now passing Cresston, Pennsylvania. Land
and wait for us at Remson. You can tell it by its red
brick church tower.”
“There it is off there to the north about five miles,”
cried Harry, pointing to where a tall red tower stood
out against the sky.
“I hope we can find a good landing place there,”
said Frank, setting his rudder over a bit. The airship
answered like an obedient steed. Round to the north
she swung, her gyroscopic balancing device keeping
her from heeling over, even at the sharp angle at
which Frank guided her round.
As they drew near Remson the greatest excitement
prevailed. People could be seen scurrying out in all
directions and pointing upward. Suddenly a deep-toned
“ding-dong” was borne upward to the young
sky navigators.
“They are ringing the church bell to announce our
arrival,” cried Frank.
“Well, I hope they’ve got supper ready for us,”
laughed Harry; “air-riding gives me an appetite like
a horse.”
A few hundred yards from the center of the town
was a flat green field which made an ideal landing
place. Frank swept downward toward it and as the
townsfolk saw that the aeroplane was going to drop
there was a mighty rush of townsfolk. The road
leading to the field was black with them. The younger
ones climbed fences and cut across lots to get there in
time.
Frank saw that unless they got out of the way there
was going to be trouble. He shouted to them to
clear a path, but either from stupidity or from ignorance
of aeroplanes they stood stolidly gazing upward,
open mouthed, as the aeroplane rushed down.
“Out of the way!” yelled Frank.
“Hurray!” cried the people, not budging an inch.
There was only one thing to do to avoid injuring
someone and that was to attempt to land at the further
end of the field where there were some trees. This
meant a risk of smashing the Golden Eagle or at
least damaging her, but if loss of life was to be avoided
it was the only course to pursue.
With a ripping, rending sound, as the twigs and
branches grazed her, the big plane dropped to earth.
There was a sharp, snapping sound, as her landing
wheels struck the ground. A branch had caught one
of the rudder-guide wires and torn it out, breaking a
pulley wire. Worse still, one of the wheels was badly
damaged. But the crowd minded none of this. They
rushed in and began handling the aeroplane, pulling
wires and twisting wheels and levers, till the boys began
to despair of ever getting their craft away from
Remson intact.
All at once, however, a big red-faced man appeared
and began angrily driving the people back. He
was the owner of the field, it seemed, and was dressed
like a farmer. When by dint of threatening them
with the constable he had succeeded in getting the
crowd to fall back to a respectful distance, he began
to ply the boys with questions.
They were too busy examining the damage done to
their craft to answer many of them, and the man
doubtless thought them a very surly pair of youths.
In a few minutes the auto drove up and there was
more excitement.
“What’s happened?” asked Billy, as soon as the
three occupants of the car reached the boys’ side.
“A bit of bad luck,” said Frank, straightening up
from his scrutiny of the damage.
“Let me look at it, boys,” said old Mr. Joyce, who
had spent the whole trip over his beloved calculations.
He crawled in under the plane, and soon emerged
again, shaking his head.
“We’ll have to get a new wheel,” he said. “If I
had wire, a tire and tools, I could invent one, but I
haven’t.”
“But where can we get one?” gasped Harry, for
spare wheels were one of the necessities the boys had
forgotten to put in the auto.
“A bicycle wheel would do,” said Mr. Joyce, who
was seated on the grass designing an improved mousetrap.
Inquiry developed the fact that nobody in Remson
was willing to sell a bicycle wheel, and the boys were
almost in despair until one of the villagers volunteered
the information that there was a bicycle factory at
Tottenville, twenty miles away.
“We’ll have to go over there in the auto. That’s
the only thing to do,” announced Frank.
“Looks like it,” agreed the others.
An arrangement was made with the red-faced man
whereby the boys leased a bit of his field for a camping-place
for the night, and the waterproof tent was
soon erected, the portable cots set up, and the blue-flame
stove started going under a liberal supply of
ham and eggs and coffee. Lathrop went into the village
and soon returned with pie and cakes. The boys’
meal was rather a public one, for the villagers seemed
hypnotized by the sight of the sky boys, and gazed
stolidly at them as they ate, as if there was something
as wonderful in that as in their flights.
While they were eating, a farmer, who had driven
into town from a small village some miles away, announced
that the dirigible and the Despatch aeroplane
had landed there.
“Well, we are holding our lead, anyway,” remarked
Harry cheerfully.
“I hope we can maintain it as far as Pittsburg,”
said Frank, for, of course, all the contestants had to
race over the prescribed course.
As soon as supper had been despatched the boys
got into the auto, leaving old Mr. Joyce to guard the
aeroplane, and, after making inquiries about the road,
started off for Tottenville. The road was a straight
one, and there was a bright, full moon, so they did not
anticipate any difficulty in arriving at their destination.
Before they started Frank ’phoned to the factory,
and an assortment of wheels was left for them
in charge of the watchman, as the factory would be
closed for the night long before they could reach
there.
Frank sent the auto bounding over the road at a
fast clip. Their lights shone brightly in front of them,
showing them the track for some distance ahead.
“Look there!” suddenly shouted Lathrop, as they
swept down a steep hill.
Directly in the road in front of them the headlights
revealed a big, lumbering hay-wagon, loaded high with
its sweet-smelling burden.
“Hey, get out of the road!” shouted Frank at the
top of his voice.
But the man on the wagon seemed to be asleep.
Anyway he paid no attention to the boys’ loud hail,
but kept serenely on in the middle of the road. His
big lumbering wagon quite prohibited all chance of
passing him.
“Stop the machine,” cried Harry.
Frank shoved on the emergency brake. But instead
of the auto coming to a stop there was a sharp snap
as if something had broken.
“It’s busted,” cried Frank. “I can’t stop the car.”
“Now we are in for it,” exclaimed Harry.
On rushed the auto, gathering speed as it tore down
the hill.
Suddenly the man on the hay-wagon awoke, and,
looking back to ascertain the cause of all the noise
behind him, saw the car bearing down on him.
“Stop it!” he shouted.
“I can’t!” yelled back Frank.
“Oh, we’ll all be killed,” cried Lathrop.
But the man was shouting something and pointing
ahead.
“What’s he saying?” asked Billy through his chattering
teeth.
“He says if we don’t stop we’ll all be killed. There’s
a bridge ahead and only room for one vehicle on it.”
As Frank spoke, the boys saw the bridge, a narrow,
wooden affair. The road widened a particle just before
it reached the bridge. The arch spanned a quite
wide creek, the water in which sparkled brightly in the
moonlight. Dumb with alarm the boys sat helplessly
in the onrushing auto. Frank gripped the wheel and
desperately cast about for some way to get out of the
difficulty.
Suddenly he almost gave a shout. To one side of
the bridge he saw that the banks of the stream were
low and sloped gently. It might be possible to run
the auto across the stream that way.
At any rate he decided to try.
As the auto reached the point at which the road
widened, the boy swung the speeding machine over
and whizzed by the wagon so closely that wisps of
hay clung to the auto’s side.
But the lead horses—there were four of them—blocked
access to the bridge.
The next minute there was a shout of alarm from
the boys, as they saw that Frank meant to dash across
the stream. The auto struck the bank, seemed to
bound into the air, and then crashed down into the
water with a force that threw a cloud of spray high
above it and thoroughly drenched its occupants.
But to Frank’s great joy the machine did not overturn,
nor did it seem damaged, as it kept right on
through the water, which, luckily, was not deep, and
dashed up the other bank. Here Frank managed to
get it under control—as the opposite side of the creek
was a steep grade—and the car came to a stop with
a grunt and a groan.
“Gee whilikens, I thought you was all killed for
sure,” exclaimed the badly frightened countryman, as
he drove up to the group of boys, who were out of
their car by this time and busily examining the extent
of the accident to the emergency brake.
“It wasn’t your fault we weren’t,” blurted out the
indignant Billy. “You are a fine driver to go to sleep
like that.”
“Don’t you sass me, young feller,” roared the countryman;
“what business have you got to be flying
around the roads in that choo-choo cart and scaring
folks out of their wits?”
“Just as much as you have to be occupying the
whole road and going to sleep like that,” retorted Billy.
“I’ve a good mind to give you a licking, young feller,”
said the man, starting to climb down from his
wagon. But he thought better of it, as he saw the
four determined looking boys standing there in the
moonlight.
“I’ll fix you later,” he muttered. “Git up, Sal; git
up, Ned,” and he cracked his whip and the wagon
rumbled on up the hill.
A short survey showed the boys that the damage
done to the brake could be repaired with a few turns
with the monkey-wrench, one of the bolts having
worked loose. The adjustment made, they climbed
back into the car, and were soon speeding once more
toward Tottenville.
At the factory they found the watchman waiting
for them, with several new wheels of the stoutest
make.
“You’re in luck,” he said, as the boys paid for the
one they selected and gave him something for his trouble
besides. “This wheel was made for one of them
air-ship bugs that lived in this town. He bruk his
neck before it could be delivered, and it’s lain here
ever since.”
The boys agreed that however unfortunate it had
been for the luckless Tottenville aviator, it was good
luck for them, and after thanking the man they started
back for Remson at a fast clip.
As they bowled along they passed a ruinous looking
hut, in which, late as was the hour, a light was burning.
“That’s funny,” said Frank.
“What’s funny?” inquired Billy.
“Why, to see a light burning in a tumble-down hut
like that at such an hour. Folk in the country go to
bed early as a rule; and see there, there’s an automobile
in front of the house.”
Sure enough, a big touring car, with its lights burning
brightly, was drawn up in front of the hut, which
lay back at some distance from the road.
“It is queer,” agreed Harry.
As the boy spoke they all started at an unexpected
happening.
From the hut there came a piercing cry of:
“Help!”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
CHAPTER VIII.||BOY AVIATORS TO THE RESCUE.
.sp 2
“They are murdering some one in there!” cried
Frank, bringing the car to a stop.
Indeed, the piercing cries indicated that some one
was being maltreated, if not actually murdered.
“Come on, we’ll save him,” cried Harry, drawing
his revolver, for all the boys had thought it best to
carry arms on such a trip as they were undertaking.
“Be careful. We had better peek through that window
first, and see with whom we have to deal before
we announce our presence,” breathed Frank, as the
boys tiptoed up the path.
“That’s a good idea,” agreed Billy. “There might
be a lot of them and then we should have to get help.”
Cautiously they crept up the path and peered in at
the window of the deserted hut. A strange scene met
their eyes.
In one corner of the bare room a rugged man with
a grizzled beard was tied hand and foot, while another
man with a red-hot poker seemed about to burn his
eyes out. His cries for help were pitiful.
His captors, however—for beside the man with the
poker there were two other men in the room—seemed
to have no pity for him. The man with the poker was
exclaiming in a fierce voice:
“Sign the title to the mine or we will kill you,” as
the boys peeked cautiously into the room, which was
lighted by a lamp detached from the auto. On the
tumble-down hearth the fire in which the poker had
been heated smouldered.
The man with the poker had his back to the boys,
but even about that there seemed something strangely
familiar. The appealing words next uttered by the
bound man soon apprised them with whom they had
to deal.
“I will never do so, Luther Barr,” declared the victim
in a trembling voice.
The boys all started with amazement at encountering
their old enemy in such a surprising manner in this
out-of-the-way hut at midnight.
“Your attempts to get the papers from me are of
no use. Kill me if you must, but don’t torture me.”
“So you won’t tell where they are,” cried Barr angrily.
“I will not,” said his victim firmly.
“Then take that,” cried Barr, in a cruel tone.
The horrified boys saw him lunge forward with the
red-hot iron. His victim gave a loud cry of pain as
he felt the red-hot metal approach his eyes to burn
them out; but even as Barr raised his arm Frank had
decided what to do.
“Stop that!” he cried in a loud, clear voice.
As Frank had expected, this sudden interruption so
startled the miscreants that they at once left their victim
and started for the door. As they rushed toward
the portal, Frank, with a cry of “Come on,” leaped
through the window frame, from which the glass sash
had long ago been broken, and followed by the others,
was in the room the next instant.
“Quick, Harry; cut him loose,” he ordered, handing
the other boy a big hunting knife.
It was only the work of a few seconds to free the
man. But before the ropes had fallen from him Luther
Barr and the two other men had rushed back
from the door and made a dash at the boys.
“Stay where you are, Mr. Barr,” said Frank, leveling
his revolver; “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“What, you interfering whelps, have you crossed
my path again?” shouted Barr, who had recognized
the boys instantly. “This time I’ll fix you for interfering
with my plans.”
He suddenly whipped out a revolver and fired point-blank
at Frank. The bullet whistled past the boy’s
ears and buried itself behind him.
The next instant the room was plunged into sudden
darkness. One of Luther Barr’s companions, in stepping
backward to get a rifle that leaned against the
wall, had knocked the light over.
“Quick, boys, run for the auto,” shouted Frank,
taking advantage of this sudden diversion.
Before the others could recover their wits, the boys,
half dragging the man they had rescued with them,
reached the door, and the next minute were in their
auto.
“Shoot at their tires,” they heard old Barr shout,
as they whizzed off down the road.
A shower of bullets followed, some of which struck
the tonneau. But none of the missiles, fortunately,
either wounded them or hit the tires, in which latter
case they would have had to come to a standstill.
Frank put on full speed, and with the start they
already had they soon outdistanced the auto which
held Barr and his two companions. It followed them
for a short distance, however, old Barr shouting maledictions
after them.
“Oh, how can I ever thank you boys?” exclaimed
the rescued man, as he gratefully clasped Frank’s arm.
“That terrible man, Luther Barr, would certainly
have blinded, and perhaps killed me, if you had not
arrived in time.”
“How did you come to get in his power?” asked
Frank.
“It is a long story, young man, and begins in Arizona,”
said the stranger; “but first, I must tell you
my name is Bart Witherbee, and I am well known in
the West as a prospector. I located a valuable mine,
which seems abandoned, some time ago in the northern
part of the state, and I have managed to keep the
location a secret till I can file a formal claim to it. In
some way the two men whom you saw with Barr to-night,
and who are Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes,
two bad men, and gamblers, heard of this. They formerly
worked for Barr, who has mining property in
Arizona. When they learned I was coming to New
York to see my daughter, they came along, too, and
informed Barr of what they knew about the valuable
mine I had found. At that time I did not know Barr,
and by these two men was tricked into meeting him on
the pretense that he had some real estate he was willing
to trade for mines in Arizona. I have other
claims beside the one I located recently, and I thought
I might trade one of them for some of Barr’s property
in the East.
“You can imagine my consternation when we arrived
out here to find myself in the hands of Hank
Higgins and Noggy Wilkes. I tried to run, but they
caught and tied me, and, as you saw, would have
either killed me or maimed me for life if you hadn’t
saved me.”
“What part of Arizona is your mine in?” asked
Harry, deeply interested, as they all were, in the man’s
narrative.
“It is near to a place called Calabazos, in the northern
part of the state near the Black Cañon,” replied
the man. “I want to let you boys have a share of it
for what you have done for me to-night. It would be
only a slight return.”
“Why, we are going near to Calabazos,” exclaimed
Billy. “I noticed it on the map. It’s near the Black
Cañon.”
“That’s right, young feller,” said the miner; “but
what are you tenderfoots going to do out there?”
Frank explained about the transcontinental flight.
“Wow,” cried the westerner, “that’s going some,
for fair. Well, boys, I’m going to get on the fastest
train I can and get back to Calabazos, and file my
claim, for you can call me a Chinese chop-stick if that
thar Luther Barr isn’t going to camp on my trail till
he finds where the mine is located.”
“I guess you are right,” remarked Frank. “Luther
Barr won’t stop at anything when he starts out to accomplish
a purpose.”
“Why, you talk as if you knew him,” exclaimed the
astonished miner.
“Know him?” echoed Billy with a laugh. “I
should say we do, eh, boys?”
The boys’ previous acquaintance with the unscrupulous
old man was soon explained to Bart Witherbee,
who interrupted the narrative at frequent intervals
with whistles of astonishment and loud exclamations
of, “Wall, I swan”; “Call me a jack-rabbit, now,”
“If that don’t beat hunting coyotes with a sling-shot,”
and other exclamations that seemed peculiar to himself.
“Wall, now, boys, you’ve got to have some part of
that mine, if only for the sake of getting even with
that old man.”
The boys tried to insist that they had no right to
any of Witherbee’s property, but he was so insistent
that finally they consented to visit the mine with him
when they reached Calabazos, that is, if they were far
enough ahead in the race to be able to spare a few
hours.
Witherbee told them some of his history. He was
the son of a stage-coach driver, who had been killed
by robbers. The miner, after the murder, had been
adopted by somebody whose name he could not recollect.
It seemed that some years after his adoption he
had been kidnapped by a traveling circus, and had sustained
a severe blow on the head by falling from a
high trapeze. This made him forget everything but
his very early youth. After a while he escaped from
the circus and joined a camp of miners. He had been
a miner ever since.
“I’ve often thought I’d like to meet the man who
cared for me when my father was killed,” he said,
“fer he was good ter me, I remember. Sometimes I
have a flash of memory and can almost recollect his
name, but it always slips me at last. If he ever met
me, though, he’d know me all right. See this?” He
rolled up his sleeve and showed them a livid scar. “I
was on the coach when it was attacked, and that’s a
souvenir I got. They didn’t mean to hit me, it was
just a stray bullet.”
“And your mother,” asked Frank, “is not she
alive?”
“She was killed, too, the night the robbers attacked
the stage,” said the miner softly. “She was sitting
by my father when the attack came.”
They reached their camp without further incident,
and found that Mr. Joyce had sat up for them and
had a hot supper ready. That they did justice to the
meal after their exciting adventures of the night, you
may be sure. The meal disposed of, the adventurers
turned in for a few hours of badly needed sleep.
“Our adventures seem to have begun with a vengeance,”
sleepily remarked Billy Barnes, as he was
dozing off.
“Do you think we shall see any more of Luther
Barr?” asked Harry.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” rejoined Frank. “He
is not the kind of man not to seek vengeance for the
rebuff we gave him to-night.”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
CHAPTER IX.||LUTHER BARR FORMS AN ALLIANCE.
.sp 2
At daybreak Frank was out of his cot and after
dashing cold water over himself—the liquid being
carried from a clear stream in a neighboring field in
a bucket he aroused his companions and breakfast was
soon sending an appetizing odor into the air. The
boys fell to with hearty appetites, and after leaving
several telegrams and post cards to be forwarded to
their friends and parents in New York, they started
actively in on preparations for the resumption of their
long journey. The new wheel was soon fitted, and
found to answer perfectly. The broken wire was also
soon adjusted.
The work had just been completed and the auto and
aeroplane fed with fresh gasolene, lubricants and water
when Witherbee, the miner, who had slept at a
hotel in the village, came hurrying up.
“Call me a horn-toad of the sagebrush desert if
here ain’t a go, boys!” he exclaimed.
The boys looked up at their new friend and saw
that his face was pale and he looked dismayed.
“Whatever is the matter?” they demanded.
“Matter?” echoed the miner; “call me a gila monster
if that there dod-gasted Barr and his companions
ain’t stolen my pocketbook.”
“Did it have much money in it?” asked Frank in
a sympathetic tone, for the poor miner’s distress was
very real.
“Why, it had two hundred dollars. All I have till
I can get back to Arizonee. Call me a doodelbug, if
that ain’t tough luck.”
“It certainly is,” sympathized Harry; “perhaps we
could lend you——”
“Not a cent,” broke in the miner. “Bart Witherbee
ain’t borrowing money from kids. But if you’d
give me a seat in that benzine buggy of yours I’ll be
grateful to you for the rest of my life. Maybe I can
help you, too, in the far west. You see, I know that
country, and if we run into any bad Indians or cowboys,
I can maybe be of some use to you.”
“That’s so,” agreed Frank; “do you think there
would be room in the auto, Billy?”
“Sure,” replied the young reporter. “If there isn’t,
we’ll make it. We can’t leave Bart Witherbee here
penniless.”
“Say, boys, it was the luckiest day of my life
when I struck you—call me a comical coyote, if it
warn’t!” exclaimed the miner gratefully. “But I’ll
make it all up to you when I locate my mine.”
The red-faced man from whom they had leased
their camping-place readily agreed to take charge of
their letters and telegrams. Indeed, any one in the
crowd that gathered to see the start of the boy aviators
on the second day of their long trip would have been
willing to do anything for them in their enthusiasm
over the daring young adventurers.
With a cheer from the crowd the auto bowled off
first, vanishing down the road to the west in a cloud
of dust. Hardly had it started when there was a
loud whirring noise, and down the road came two
other motor cars. In the first sat Fred Reade and
the red-bearded man, who acted as his assistant, it
seemed. In the other, to the boys’ amazement, rode
Luther Barr and his two companions of the night
before—the western gamblers. Apparently Barr and
Reade were on friendly terms, for, as the two machines
shot by, Reade turned back in the tonneau and
shouted something to Barr, who answered with a
wave of the hand.
“Hullo! That looks bad,” exclaimed Harry, as the
cars shot by.
“What does?” asked Frank, who had been busy
adjusting the engine, and had not seen the motor cars.
“Why, Reade and Barr seem to have joined forces.
Depend upon it they are up to some mischief.”
Had the boys known that the night before Luther
Barr and the two others had been guests at Reade’s
camp, they would have had even more reason to feel
apprehensive. In his chase after the Boy Aviators
and Bart Witherbee, old Barr had mistaken the road
and branched off down a side-track that soon brought
him to Reade’s camp, where he and his companions
were working over their aeroplane by kerosene flares.
The old millionaire recognized Reade at once, stopped
and hailed him.
Reade soon explained to him that he was in the
aeroplane race as the representative of the Despatch.
On Barr inquiring how he came to leave the Planet,
Reade explained that his leaving was due to Billy
Barnes.
“That interfering cub lost me my job,” he said angrily.
Old Barr was interested at once. Here was another
enemy of the Boy Aviators. Perhaps it would
be possible to join forces to harass them.
“I see you like the boys as little as I do,” he ventured
cautiously.
“Like them,” exclaimed Reade angrily, “I hate
them. I hope they lose this race. I mean to prevent
them winning by fair means or foul, if I can.”
“Good,” was Barr’s reply; “that’s just the way I
feel about it. Now I have a proposition to make to
you.”
There followed a long conversation in low tones,
the result of which was that old Barr agreed to accompany
the Despatch’s party as far as Arizona and
the mine, the location of which Witherbee was hiding.
He had instantly made up his mind that Reade was a
valuable ally.
“I am sure that Witherbee means to let those boys
know where the mine is, and give them part of it,”
he declared; “and if we can find it first, we can divide
it among ourselves.”
Luther Barr had no intention of giving away any
part of the mine if he found it. He wanted it all for
himself. But he thought that to hold out such a tempting
bait would make Reade an even more faithful ally.
As for the reporter, he was delighted to have found
an enemy of the Boy Aviators. He was a coward, and
had been afraid that his party was too small to openly
cause them much trouble. Now, however, he was
highly pleased at the idea of traveling in such powerful
company, and promised himself a “lot of fun
with those young cubs.”
And so it came about that Luther Barr and the
Despatch auto traveled in company when they broke
camp the next morning.
The two autos had hardly passed down the road
and out of sight when a shout from the crowd announced
that the aeroplane of Arthur Slade was in
sight.
“Come on, we’ve got no time to lose,” cried Frank,
as he saw the rival aeroplane coming rapidly into
view.
Both boys scrambled into their craft, and a
moment later, amid a roar from the crowd, they shot
upward. As they did so, Slade shot by. He was a
powerfully built man, with a mean expression of countenance,
and seemed to harbor a spite against the
boys, doubtless because he did not like to be pitted
against such youthful antagonists.
“I’ll win this race hands down,” he shouted, as he
swept by.
As the boys’ aeroplane gathered velocity, however,
they overhauled him, and all day the two air-craft
fought it out desperately. There seemed to be little
difference between them, and the boys resolved that
they were in for the tussle of their lives if they meant
to win the race. The dirigible hung doggedly on,
about three miles in the rear. Her crew did not seem
to be urging her. Doubtless they reasoned that in a
race of such length it was a good plan to husband
their resources and not urge their ship forward too
fast.
“The gasolene is running low,” announced Harry,
shortly after noon, “and we need some more oil.”
“All right; send out a wireless, and we’ll drop in
a convenient place,” replied Frank.
The auto was some distance behind, but a reply to
Harry’s message soon flashed back to the occupants
of the aeroplane, and a few minutes after they had
landed in a smooth, green meadow the auto came
chugging up. The tank was replenished, and a hasty
luncheon eaten. By this time both the rival aeroplane
and the dirigible were out of sight. As the boys had
seen nothing further of the autos occupied by Reade
and Luther Barr, they concluded they must be traveling
on another road—which was, in fact, the case.
“Aren’t you scared to let the other aeroplane get
such a long lead?” asked Billy, as the boys made ready
to resume their flight.
“They won’t get very far,” said Frank lightly.
“You see, they will have to come down for fresh
gasolene, just as we did. They have got an air-cooled
engine, too, and if they run it too long it will get
heated and stop, so that they will have to quit for a
while, too.”
“How about the dirigible?”
“The only chance it has to win this race is for
both the aeroplanes to break down,” said Harry. “We
can pass it even if it got a twenty-mile lead.”
The Golden Eagle flew on during the afternoon
without incident. It was getting toward sundown,
and Frank was thinking of descending and camping
for the night, when, as they were passing high above
a spot where four cross-roads intersected, they spied
below them the two autos of Barr and Reade drawn
up near to the rival aeroplane, which, as Frank had
said, had been compelled to come down to replenish
her tanks.
Through his glasses Harry scrutinized the group.
They were gathered about Slade’s aeroplane, and
seemed to be discussing excitedly.
“I thought so,” said Harry, as he put the glasses
back in their pocket at the side of the pilot house.
“Thought what?” asked Frank.
“Why, I guess there’s something the matter with
their cylinders. Over-heated, I guess. They were
pouring water on them when I looked through the
glass.”
Hardly had he spoken when there was a singing
sound in the air close by his ear. It was like the droning
of a big June bug.
“Pretty high for a bug to be flying,” commented
Harry.
“That wasn’t any bug, Harry,” contradicted Frank,
“it was a bullet.”
“What! they are firing at us again?”
“Evidently.”
There came another whistling in the air, as a second
projectile whizzed by.
“We ought to have them arrested,” exclaimed
Harry indignantly.
“How are we to prove who fired the shots?” rejoined
Frank.
He was right. At the time they whizzed by the
aeroplane was over a clump of woods which effectually
concealed from her occupants the identity of the wielder
of the rifle. Barr’s party had evidently speeded
their autos in under the trees and were firing from
them. No more bullets came, however. Probably the
shooters saw the futility of trying to get good aim
through the thick foliage.
Camp that night was made beside a small river,
in which Witherbee soon caught a fine mess of yellow
perch. These, cooked with the old plainsman’s skill,
made an agreeable variation from the usual camp fare,
and were despatched by the hungry boys in an incredibly
short time.
Of the other aeroplane they had seen nothing since
they passed her in the afternoon.
“This means we get a good long lead,” rejoiced
Frank.
But the boys were doomed to disappointment, for
shortly before midnight the whirring noise of an engine
was heard overhead, and, looking upward, the
adventurers, awakened by Billy, who was on watch,
saw a dark body pass overhead.
“It’s Slade’s machine!” cried Frank.
Shortly afterward the dirigible also went by, with
several lights displayed about her decks. The boys
shot up a ray of light from the searchlight on the
auto, and were greeted by a cheer from the men on
the dirigible.
“Well, if those fellows think they can steal a night
march on us, we’ll fool ’em,” exclaimed Frank. “Here,
Harry, let’s have a look at that map. I must lay out
a course, and then we’ll get after them. You fellows
break camp and be ready to follow us in the auto.”
There was a lot of bustle and excitement while
Frank, by the light of an auto-lamp, with compasses,
dividers and measured rule, worked out a course. A
route was soon devised.
“All ready?” he cried at last, when final directions
had been given.
“All ready,” said Billy, tightening the ropes that
held the tarpaulin covering the supplies in the auto.
“Then we’re off,” cried Frank, as he and Harry
jumped into the Golden Eagle, and with a rattling roar
of explosions glided into the air.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch10
CHAPTER X.||A NIGHT VOYAGE.
.sp 2
Sailing through the air at night is a vastly different
thing to the delightful exhilaration of a day voyage.
In the latter case, all is plain going—provided,
of course, the weather conditions are right—below the
aviator is spread out, like a many-colored carpet, a
glowing landscape dotted with peaceful hamlets, busy
smoky cities, and quiet farms and patches of woodland.
But at night all is changed. The darkness
hangs about the driving air-craft like a pall. The aviator
anxiously scans the earth below him for an occasional
light or the glare that a distant city casts on the
sky. It is by those means alone that he can get his
bearings, unless he is a skilled navigator and steers by
the compass. Even then he may get lost. All is uncertainty.
So intent on overtaking their rivals, however, were
the boys, that they reckoned little of the risks they
ran, and kept the Golden Eagle headed on an almost
due westerly course. The tiny shaded light above the
binnacle was the only speck of illumination about the
air-ship. Luckily the moon cast a bright, white illumination,
but the luminary was waning, and was already
low in the western sky. Soon all would be as black
as a well.
“Heard anything from the auto?” asked Frank,
with a backward glance, after they had been running
about an hour thus.
“Not a thing,” rejoined Harry; “that means they
must have a light in sight.”
“Still, I should like to know just where they are.
Send them a flash.”
Harry bent over the wireless key and sent a message
crackling into the night:
“Send up a flare.”
The answer soon came. From far below them a
blue illumination lit up the trees and along a stretch
of road in a lurid glare. The amused young aviators
could see horses and cattle out at pasture in the quiet
fields galloping for dear life at the alarming apparition.
“Can you see any sign of the others?” asked
Frank, some minutes later.
Both boys had in the interval been peering anxiously
ahead into the night.
“Not a sign, can you?”
“Not yet.”
“We ought to catch sight of them soon.”
“That’s so. We should have no difficulty in making
out the dirigible, illuminated as she is.”
The boys lapsed into silence, straining their eyes
ahead in vain.
Suddenly Harry gave a shout.
“There she is, about four points off our course to
the north.”
“That’s right. That’s the dirigible, sure enough.
Now, comparing her speed with that of Slade’s machine,
he cannot be far off.”
“Say, we’ve been making time, all right.”
“I should say we have. But look! Something’s
the matter with the dirigible.”
As Harry spoke they saw the row of lights by
which they had picked the gas-supported craft out of
the night suddenly waver and then begin to drop.
“They are going to descend,” cried Harry amazedly.
“Evidently. Look there!” he broke off with a
sharp exclamation.
A red glare suddenly enveloped the dirigible, showing
her every outline.
“It’s a distress signal!” was the elder lad’s excited
shout. “Something has happened.”
“I’ll tell the boys in the auto to answer it,” suggested
Harry.
He sent out a sputtering wireless, which was soon
answered by a blue glare from the auto. An answering
illumination from the dirigible went up.
“They’ve seen our signal,” cried Frank. “Now,
Harry, switch on the searchlight.”
“What for?”
“To pick out a landing-place by. I don’t want to
risk our necks by dropping in the dark.”
“You are going to land and help them?”
“Of course; they may be in serious trouble. It is
our duty to aid them.”
“But Slade’s machine?”
“Well, he’ll make a big gain on us to-night, I’m
afraid, but it can’t be helped. They have signaled for
assistance, and we’ve got to go to their help.”
The white finger of light of the searchlight began
to sweep the ground below them. So far as they could
see, they were traveling over a cleared country only
interspersed here and there by clumps of trees.
“This looks as good a place to drop as any,” said
Frank as he scrutinized the nature of the country over
which they were soaring in slow circles.
Harry assented.
“Tell me when to cut out the engine,” he said.
“I’ll do that myself,” replied Frank. “I’ll do it
with the emergency cut-outs. We might have to
shift up again in a hurry, and the engine acts more
quickly on the driving wheel controls.”
The aeroplane began to drop. About a quarter of
a mile from her the dirigible was settling, too. Her
crew kept burning flares so as to see that they didn’t
blunder into any growth that might have ripped their
gas bag.
The boys reached the earth without a mishap, and
found themselves in a rocky meadow, about a hundred
yards from the road. In a few minutes the auto came
chugging along with an excited party on board.
“What is it?”
“What has happened?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Call me a tenderfoot if I didn’t think it was Pain’s
fireworks.”
The exclamations and questions came in a perfect
volley.
“One at a time, one at a time,” laughed Frank;
“we’re not phonographs.”
“You scared the life out of us,” interjected Billy
Barnes.
“Well, you needn’t worry about the Golden Eagle;
with the exception of the time we are losing, she is
as sound as a bell, but the dirigible over yonder is in
some distress. We had better hop in the auto and
drive in that direction.”
Luckily the road went in the direction in which the
dirigible had last been seen, and a short distance down
the main track the boys found a field path leading off
into an enclosure in which they could see men scurrying
round the big dirigible with lanterns in their
hands. They seemed much perturbed, and the boys
could hear their loud expressions of disgust at their
sudden stoppage.
“Dirigible ahoy!” hailed Frank, as the auto rolled
up; “what’s the trouble?”
“Oh, hello—are you the Boy Aviators?” said a
pleasant-faced man, whom the boys recognized as
James McArthur, the driver and owner of the craft.
“It’s mighty good of you to come to our aid. Yes,
we’ve cracked a propeller blade, and are in a bad
fix. You see, we lost a lot of gas in dropping, and
that means we’ll have to lighten the ship.”
“I hope it doesn’t put you out of the race,” sympathized
Frank; “it’s too bad such an accident should
have occurred.”
“It is, indeed,” said Mr. McArthur. “We were
doing so well, too.”
“If you will let us I think we can help you out,”
volunteered Frank.
“If you only could,” exclaimed the other eagerly.
“We’ve got a spare propeller in the auto. If you
like, I can let you have it till you reach Pittsburg or
some town where you can get a new one fitted.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of depriving you.”
“Not at all. I don’t think there is a chance of our
having any accident to our propellers. You are welcome
to it.”
Mr. McArthur, with profuse expressions of thanks,
thereupon gratefully accepted the propeller which the
boys unpacked from its place in the big tonneau of
their car. It was not long before it was bolted in
place, and the dirigible ready to start. The new propeller
was a trifle smaller than the old one, but the
driver of the dirigible was confident he could get good
results with it. Before he started, however, he had
to drop three of his men, with instructions to them to
walk to the nearest town and then take the train for
Pittsburg, at which city he could get fresh supplies of
hydrogen gas. In the meantime McArthur and one
man were to handle the dirigible, and almost every
bit of ballast she carried was sacrificed.
Amid a perfect tornado of thanks, which they would
have been glad to dodge, the boys hurried back to the
Golden Eagle, and were soon once more in the air.
Daybreak found them flying about nine hundred feet
above a hilly, sparsely settled country.
As the light grew brighter, which it did slowly, with
a promise of rain, they gazed eagerly about them in
every direction. Far behind them they could see the
tiny speck of the dirigible, laboring along with her
small propeller, but of the Slade machine there was
not a sign.
“Well, he has got a start of us this time, for fair,”
exclaimed Harry, as the boys looked blankly at each
other, following the result of their scrutiny.
“There’s nothing to do but keep doggedly on,” rejoined
Frank, “but we ought to reach Pittsburg to-night.
It looks as if we are in for a rain-storm, too.”
“It certainly does,” rejoined Harry. “Well, there’s
one consolation, Slade can’t do any better in the rain
than we can.”
“No, that’s so,” rejoined Frank, but there was little
elation in his tone.
For a time the boys sat in silence. It was broken
by a sharp shout from Harry.
“Frank! Frank! look there!”
They were flying above a farm-house, from the
chimney of which a cheerful column of smoke was
ascending. Hungry and tired as the boys were, they
could in imagination smell the breakfast coffee, the
aroma of the frizzling bacon and the hiss of the frying
eggs. But what had caused Harry’s shout was
clear enough. Outside the farm-house stood two
automobiles, which they recognized as those of Barr
and Fred Reade, and a short distance from the two
cars stood the Despatch’s aeroplane.
“They’ve stopped for breakfast,” exultingly cried
Frank; “here’s where we get ahead of them.”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch11
CHAPTER XI.||THE FIRST LEG.
.sp 2
The country now began to be more thickly settled.
In fact, the boys passed a constant series of surprised
villages and frightened farms. While they were passing
above one hillside farm, in fact, they were received
with a demonstration of more than surprise.
A man in blue jeans came running out into his barnyard
with a shot-gun, and fired the contents of both
barrels upward at the young navigators. At the height
they were flying, however, a shot-gun could not harm
them.
A short time later Harry lay down for a nap, after
both boys had eaten some of the cold lunch they had
packed at Remson. He slept under protest, but Frank
insisted that after their harrying night trip they both
needed sleep. He agreed to take his turn later. In
the meantime, in the auto, Billy Barnes and Witherbee
dozed off and shared watches with Lathrop and old
Mr. Joyce. Neither the miner nor the inventor could
drive an auto, so it was necessary to divide up the
hours of sleep in this way.
While the lads are taking a rest, it may be as well
to turn back to the lone farm at which the Despatch
party had decided to stop for breakfast. So engrossed
had they been over the meal, and so busy had the farm
folks been serving them, that none of the party had
noticed the boys’ aeroplane fly over, and they made
very merry at the thought that they were miles ahead
of them. Fred Reade was sure they had broken down,
and his confidence that they had met with an accident
was shared by Luther Barr, Slade and the red-bearded
man, whose name was Ethan Aram, and who was
Slade’s substitute driver.
“I feel like lying down for a nap,” said Luther
Barr, after breakfast, but his desire was overruled by
the others. It was pointed out that he could take a
nap in his auto just as well.
“We want to beat those cubs good while we are at
it,” said Reade, and this stroke of diplomacy won over
old Barr. Taking turns at snoozing, therefore, the
party pressed on at a leisurely rate, little dreaming
that the Boy Aviators were far ahead and nearing
Pittsburg. There was another reason for their decreased
speed, also. They wished to take advantage
of what they considered a great stroke of good luck to
let their engine cool off thoroughly.
As the aeroplane flashed above Lockhaven, Pa., the
wires began to get red-hot with news of their close
approach to Pittsburg. In the Smoky City huge
crowds gathered and awaited patiently for hours the
coming of the air racers. Every park and open space
held its quota of excited people, and flags were run
up on every building.
Frank and Harry had both had a sleep before.
Pointing to the southwest of their course Harry indicated
a heavy dark pall that hung against the sky.
“That must be the Smoky City,” he exclaimed, and,
sure enough it was. Soon the junction of the Alleghany,
Monongahela and Ohio rivers in their Y-shaped
formation became visible. Then the dark factory
buildings, belching out their clouds of black smoke to
make perpetual the city’s inky pall. Then the occasional
gushes of flame from foundry chimneys, and the
long processions of funereal ore and coal barges on the
gloomy rivers.
The boys landed in Schenley Park, a fine expanse
of wooded and lawned landscape, one of the few
beauty spots in the city of gloom. Here it seemed as
if at least a quarter of Pittsburg’s population was out
to greet them. The police had formed hasty lines as
soon as it became evident that the boys meant to land
on an open stretch of grass, but they had a hard struggle
to keep back the crowds. They were speedily re-enforced
by reserves from all parts of the city, however,
and soon had the crowd in order.
It had been arranged by telegraph that in case of
the contestants landing in a public park that the city
would allow them to keep the machine there as long
as they wanted, so that after the boys had arranged
for a guard to be kept over the Golden Eagle and the
shelter tent carried in the auto—which came chug-chugging
up half an hour after the boys had landed—had been rigged, there was nothing to do but to go to
the hotel for a wash-up and what Billy Barnes called
“a real feed.”
Of course the first question the boys had asked
when they landed was:
“Anything been seen of the other racers?”
They were delighted to learn that there had not, although
they were pretty sure, anyhow, that they were
the first to arrive. At the hotel, as the party entered
it, having distanced the crowd by speeding through
side streets, the manager bustled up and asked for Mr.
William Barnes. Billy replied that he was the person
sought.
“Then, there’s been a wire here for you more than
a day,” said the manager. “It has been chasing you
around every hotel in the city, I guess.”
He produced a yellow envelope. Billy opened it
eagerly, and then gave a wide grin.
“Whoop-ee, look here,” he cried, extending the
message to the boys to read.
.sp 1
.in +4
.ll -4
.ti 0
“Will you accept position special correspondent
with aeroplanes for Planet? Owe you an apology for
unfortunate mistake. Reade’s treachery discovered.
.nf r
“Stowe,
“Managing Editor Planet.”
.nf-
.in -4
.ll +4
.sp 1
Of course Billy Barnes accepted the commission, although
for a time he had a struggle with his pride to
do so. However, as Frank demonstrated to him, Mr.
Stowe had acknowledged his mistake, and he would
only have presented himself in the light of a stubborn,
obstinate youth if he had refused to accept his offer.
The young reporter was in the Western Union office
that night filing a long account of the incidents
of the trip, not forgetting the accident to the dirigible
and its subsequent safe arrival at Pittsburg—though
several hours late—when Fred Reade entered. The
Slade aeroplane had descended in Highland Park
about three hours after the arrival of the boys, and
the chagrin of the Despatch people and of Luther Barr
and his crowd may be imagined when they learned
that they had been badly beaten on the first leg of
the trip.
There was a scowl on Reade’s face as he sat down
and began to write. His anger deepened as he saw that
Billy Barnes paid not the slightest attention to him.
Finally he said sneeringly:
“What are you writing for now, anyhow? I
thought you were out of a job.”
“So I was till a short time ago,” flashed back Billy,
“when the Planet seems to have found out something
about a young man named Reade.”
“What do you mean?” asked Reade in a voice he
tried to render blustering, but which shook in spite of
himself.
“I’m not going into details; you know well enough,”
said Billy in a quiet, meaning tone, looking Reade
straight in the eye.
The other pretended to get very busy with his writing,
but as Billy was leaving the office, he looked up
and exclaimed:
“You and your friends think you are mighty smart,
but we’ll trim you yet, you see if we don’t.”
“Well, you’ll have to wake up, then,” laughed Billy,
“you didn’t do much trimming to-day.”
Franke Reade cast a furious glance after the young
reporter as he left the telegraph office.
“I’ll make you pay for that when we get out in
the wild country,” he said furiously.
At the hotel Billy found the boys in conversation
with McArthur. He had made arrangements to have
his ship reinflated that night, he told them, and in future
meant to carry with him several cylinders of hydrogen
gas. He had telegraphed ahead to Nashville
and several other towns on the route to San Francisco
to have supplies ready for him, and anticipated no
further trouble on that score. He had also been lucky
enough to get a propeller from a man who had been
making dirigible ascensions at a Pittsburg park, but
who had been injured a few days before in an accident.
The boys and their party turned in early and slept
like tops. They were up betimes, and after a hasty
breakfast motored out to the park. They found the
aeroplane in perfect trim, and after replenishing the
gasolene and water tanks and thoroughly oiling every
part of the engine, they were once more ready to start.
A big crowd had gathered, early as was the hour, and
gave them a mighty cheer as they swept into the air.
The next minute the auto was off, and it was a light-hearted
party that occupied its tonneau.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch12
CHAPTER XII.||ATTACKED BY COWBOYS.
.sp 2
The Smoky City, with its inky smoke canopy, bluff-bordered
rivers and distant heights crowned with beautiful
residences, was soon left far behind. But for a
long time the boys flew high above veritable gridirons
of railroad yards crowded with busy freight trains and
puffing yard locomotives. Every one of the engines
gave them a screeching greeting as they soared steadily
along far above them.
But they were not alone in the air. The Slade machine
was close behind them, with his assistant at the
wheel. McArthur’s dirigible, too, was off a few minutes
after the boys took the air. The three racers
flew onward with no perceptible difference in the distances
between them. Each seemed to be grimly holding
its own. At Steubenville, Ohio, the boys struck
the Ohio river and flew above its course as far as
Ashland, where they crossed the border line of the
state into Kentucky.
In forty-eight hours more, having allowed ample
time for rests and engine adjustments, they arrived at
Nashville, Tenn., having passed the border line of the
state a few hours before. For several hours they had
not seen the other racers, but at Nashville they learned
that Slade’s aeroplane had arrived four hours ahead
of them, having therefore gained one hour in actual
time.
The gain had probably occurred while the boys were
delayed at a small town near the Kentucky border fitting
new spark plugs, those they used having become
badly carbonized by their hard service. They spent
little time in the beautiful capital of Tennessee on the
banks of the historic Cumberland river. The crowds
pestered them to such an extent that they were anxious
to hurry on as soon as possible. An examination of
the engine, however, showed that it was in need of
considerable adjustment, and old Mr. Joyce was compelled
to spend several hours over it. The gyroscopic
balancer likewise was in need of having its bearings
attended to. Slade seemed to have better luck, for
his party left Nashville two hours ahead of the Boy
Aviators. The start of the Despatch craft was closely
followed by that of McArthur’s dirigible, carrying a
large gas supply. The extra weight had been compensated
for by ripping out a large part of the cabin
and cutting down every ounce carried, so far as it was
possible to do so without imperiling the ship.
However, when they finally did take the air from
the meadow on the banks of the Cumberland in which
they had camped, the boys had the satisfaction of
knowing that their craft had had a thorough overhauling.
The auto, also, had had new tires fitted and
its engine overhauled.
The journey across the rolling plains of Arkansas,
skirting the Ozarks to the south, on across the vast
levels of Oklahoma, fertile with crops and dotted with
thrifty homesteads and small frontier towns, was made
without incident. One night the boys found themselves
camped on the banks of the Canadian river, not
very far from the town of Bravo, in the northwest of
the great Panhandle of Texas. For two days, now,
they had not seen either of their competitors, and had
no idea of where either of them were, though at
infrequent opportunities he had in the wild country
through which they were now traveling, Billy had
tried several times to ascertain by telegraph some word
of their whereabouts.
The heat was, as Billy said, enough to fry the horn-toads
that crawled about on the vast level that
stretched, quivering in the torrid sun rays, as far as
the eye could reach on every side of the boys’ camping-place.
Fortunately they had selected a site beneath
an old sycamore tree, which gave them some scanty
shade. High against the blazing sky a few turkey-buzzards
wheeled, doubtless watching the camps with
speculative eyes to ascertain if they were all alive.
But on this latter point there could have existed no
doubt in the minds of any human onlookers. The
clink-clink of hammers and drills, as the boys worked
over their engine with old Mr. Joyce superintending,
while Billy Barnes and Lathrop were actively employed
loading the auto with a camping kit, gave the
camp an appearance of great life and bustle. As for
Bart Witherbee, he was at his favorite occupation of
cooking. He had shot some young jack-rabbits a few
hours before, and was now composing a stew.
“I didn’t know jack-rabbits were good to eat,” exclaimed
Billy, when the miner had brought them into
camp.
“Young ones is,” explained the plainsman, “but
keep away from the elderly jack-rabbits.”
Suddenly Billy, who had looked from his task for
the fiftieth time to remark that it was hot, noticed
quite a cloud of dust swirling toward the adventurers
across the prairie.
“Gee, here comes a whirlwind!” he exclaimed,
pointing. The others looked, too.
“Maybe it’s a cyclone,” suggested Harry.
Old Witherbee placed his hand over his eyebrows
and peered long and earnestly at the rapidly approaching
cloud of yellow dust.
“Whatever is it?” asked Frank.
“Somethin’ that I’m afeard is goin’ ter make it
mighty uncomfortable for us,” exclaimed Witherbee,
with a tone of anxiety in his voice.
“Mighty uncomfortable, how? Will it blow the
auto away?” asked Billy.
“No, youngster, but it may blow us up; that cloud
yonder is a bunch of skylarking cowboys, and they’re
coming right for us.”
“Will they kill us?” asked Billy anxiously.
“No, I don’t think it’ll be as bad as that; though
they git mighty onery sometimes. Don’t you boys
give ’em no back talk, and maybe we’ll get out all
right.”
The rapid advance of the approaching cowboys
could now be heard. Their ponies’ hoofs could also
be seen as they flashed in and out under the cloud of
dust.
Suddenly there was a terrific volley of yells, and,
as the cavalcade drew rein, the cloud rolled away and
the boys found they were surrounded by forty or
fifty wild-looking fellows, all yelling and shouting.
Some of them had revolvers and were firing them in
the air. The din was terrific.
“Throw up yer hands, yer Scanderhovian bunch of
tenderfeet,” shouted the leader, a big man on a buckskin
pony, whose legs were incased, despite the intense
heat, in a huge, hairy pair of bearskin “chaps.”
The boys all elevated their hands, and old man
Joyce and Bart Witherbee hastened to follow their
example.
“Where’s this yar sky schooner yer goin’ a-sailin’
around in, scaring our cattle and driving the critters
plumb crazy?” he demanded angrily.
“If you mean our aeroplane, there it is,” said Frank,
indicating the machine.
“Wall, there was two of them went over here yisterday,
and all the beef critters on the Bar X range is
plum stampeded all over the per-arie. We’re goin’ ter
stop this, an’ we might as well begin right now. Come
on, boys, shoot the blame thing full o’ holes and put a
few in ther choo-choo wagin while yer at it.”
The situation was critical indeed.
The boys saw no way of saving their aeroplane,
and to add to their troubles they had been informed
that their two rivals were in front of them.
Frank alone retained his presence of mind. He
saw that only by a trick could they regain their safety
from the desperate men into whose power they had
fallen.
“Did you ever see an aeroplane before?” he asked
of the leader.
“No, I never did,” replied the other; “why?”
“Well, you seem to have a pretty dry part of the
country out here, and I guess a little rain would do it
no harm.”
“That’s right, stranger, you never spoke a truer
word; but what in thunder has that got to do
with yer blamed scaryplane, or whatever you call it,
scaring all our beef critters away?”
“I am very sorry for your misfortune, Mr.—Mr.——”
“Rattlesnake Ike is my name, with no blame ‘Mister’
on it, young tenderfoot,” growled the other.
“Well, Rattlesnake Ike, we can make rain.”
“What?” roared the whole assemblage.
“We can make rain,” calmly repeated the boy,
“with that aeroplane.”
“Wall, now, stranger, how kin yer do that—tell
us,” demanded the leader of the cowboys, leaning forward
on the bow of his saddle, deeply interested.
“Well, you’ve heard that explosions near the sky
will concentrate the moisture, thus causing it to condense
in a copious rainfall,” declaimed Frank pompously,
putting in all the long words he could think of.
“Hump—wall,” dubiously remarked the cowboy,
scratching his head, “I dunno as I hev, but you seem
ter have it all down pat.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing with our aeroplane,”
went on Frank, “making rain. Haven’t we?” he
turned to Witherbee questioningly. The miner at once
saw what he was driving at.
“Sure,” said the old miner. “Why, pardners,
down in Arkansaw they had forgotten what rain
looked like till we came along. We made it pour for
three days.”
“And that scaryplane does it?”
“Well, we go up in it and then fire bombs from this
rain-gun.”
Frank indicated the searchlight as he spoke.
“Wall, I’d sure like ter see that,” said the leader.
“How about it, boys?”
“Let’s see what they kin do; but if yer don’t make
it rain, strangers, we’ll string you all up ter that sycamore
tree,” decided one of the group.
They all chorused assent, and Frank and Harry at
once got into the machine.
“Hand me some rain bombs, Billy,” said Frank.
Billy Barnes reached into the tonneau and produced
some blue flares. These he handed to Frank.
“Take care they don’t go off, Frank,” he said solemnly.
“Yes; you recollect them twenty fellers as was
killed in St. Looey,” warned old Witherbee solemnly.
“Say, strangers, are them there things dangerous?”
asked the cowboy leader.
“Well, there’s enough dynamite in them to blow
that river there clean into the next county,” rejoined
Frank, “but don’t be scared, we won’t drop them.”
“Get into the auto when we are well up,” Frank
whispered rapidly to Billy, while the cowboys exchanged
awed glances.
“Now, gentlemen,” he went on aloud, “get your
umbrellas ready, for pretty soon there’s going to be
some big rain.”
The aeroplane started up while the cowboys yelled
and whooped. It had reached a height of about two
hundred feet, and was circling above their heads, when
Harry suddenly lighted one of the fizzing blue flares;
at the same instant Billy, followed by the others, leaped
into the auto.
“Hey, stop that!” yelled the cowboy leader, but at
the same moment he broke off with a yell of terror.
“Look out for the dynamite bomb!” yelled Harry,
as he dropped the flaming blue flare over the side of
the aeroplane, fairly on top of the gang of cowboys.
“Ride for your lives, boys!” shouted the leader of
the cowboys, as the flaming light dropped, “she’s goin’
ter bust.”
They didn’t need any urging, but fled with wild
cries.
By the time the cattlemen realized they had been
tricked, the auto was away on the prairie, speeding on
toward the west in a cloud of dust, while the aeroplane
was far out of range.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch13
CHAPTER XIII.||INDIANS!
.sp 2
“Ah, now we are beginning to get into my own
country again; this begins ter look like home,” exclaimed
Bart Witherbee, one day as the adventurers
made camp in a canyon in one of the southernmost
spurs of the Rockies in the state of New Mexico. The
boys had made the detour to the south to avoid crossing
the range itself, which would have been a difficult,
if not an impossible, task in an aeroplane.
Still they had not sighted the rival racing air-craft,
but they knew that the others could not be far ahead
now, as at a small settlement they stopped at the day
before they learned that the Slade party had called at
the blacksmith shop there to repair a truss brace that
had snapped. As the facilities of the smithy were
rather clumsy for the fine work that has to be done on
the aeroplane, the Slade machine was delayed several
hours. So far as their judgment went, the boys decided
that the other party could not be much more than
fifty miles ahead of them.
As for the dirigible, they had heard that the expansion
of its gas bag, caused by the sun, had compelled
it to remain all one day in a small town in the
Texas Panhandle, and that while it was journeying
across the arid country it could travel only short distances.
The boys, therefore, felt much cheered as at
sundown they alighted by the side of a brawling
mountain stream and made camp. Bart Witherbee at
once got out his improvised fishing tackle and started
up the stream in search of trout, which he declared
would abound in such waters.
“We’ll have a change from canned beef, canned
soup and canned vegetables to-night, boys,” he declared,
“if I haven’t lost the knack of it.”
They listened to his heavy footsteps plunging up the
steep hillside till they died out, and then took up the
ordinary occupations of the camp. The rocky defile
up which the old miner had disappeared on his quest
was well covered with pine timber almost down to
where it reached the arid ground on the edge of
which the lads were camped. Except for the occasional
scream of a hawk making for its night roost, or
the crash of some animal making its way through the
dense growth that grew higher up on the hillside, the
place was as quiet as a cemetery.
Billy Barnes was examining his camera, which had
been severely shaken up on the trip, Frank and Harry
were going over the Golden Eagle admiringly, remarking
on the way she had stood her hard ordeal, and
old Mr. Joyce was taking a lesson in wireless telegraphy
from Lathrop. It was beginning to grow dusk.
Somewhere far up on the hillside there came the hoot
of an owl. The hush of the evening in the foothills
lay over everything, when suddenly the silence was
broken by a sound that brought them all to their feet.
The report of a rifle had rung out on the hillside
above them.
“Must be Bart shooting at something,” remarked
Billy, gazing at the scared faces about him.
“That was a rifle shot,” said Frank slowly, “and
Bart Witherbee carried no rifle.”
“Then somebody else fired it?”
“That’s about it. Don’t make a sound now. Listen!”
They all held their breaths and waited anxiously in
the stillness that followed. For perhaps ten minutes
they stood so, and then there came a sharp crackle of
snapping twigs, that told them some one was descending
the hillside.
Who was it?
Several minutes of agonizing suspense followed before
they knew whether it was friend or enemy advancing
toward them. Then Bart Witherbee glided,
like a snake, out of the woods.
“What’s the mat——” began Frank. But he
checked himself instantly.
Bart Witherbee’s hand was held up.
Every one of the group read that mute signal
aright.
Silence!
The old plainsman waited till he got right up to
the group before he spoke, and then it was in a hushed
tense whisper.
“Injuns,” he said, “they’re up on the hillside.”
“How many?” whispered back Frank.
“I dunno exactly, after that there bullet I didn’t
wait ter see, and say, boys, I had ter leave as nice a
string of trout as you ever see up there fer them pesky
redskins ter git at.”
“Never mind the fish, Bart,” urged Frank, “tell us,
is there danger?”
“There’s allus danger when Injuns is aroun’, and
think they kin git somethin’ that’s vallerble without gitting
in trouble over it,” was the westerner’s reply.
“We’d better get away from here right away,” exclaimed
Harry.
“Not on your life, son,” was Bart’s reply; “not if
I know anything about Injuns an’ their ways. No,
sons, my advice is ter git riddy fer ’em. They was
startled when they see me, therefore they didn’t know
we wus here till they stumbled on me. That bein’ the
case, I reckin they don’t know about that thar flying
thing of you boys.”
“And you think we can scare them with it?” began
Frank eagerly.
“Not so fast, son, not so fast,” reprimanded the
old man. “Now, them Injuns won’t attack afore
dark, if they do at all. An’ when they do, they’ll come
frum up the mountain-side. Now, my idee is to git
that thar searchlight o’ yours rigged up, and hev it
handy, so as when we hear a twig crack we kin switch
it on and pick ’em out at our leisure.”
“That’s a fine idea, Bart, but what if they attack us
from behind?” suggested Frank.
“They won’t do that. Yer see, behind us it’s all
open country. Wall, Injuns like plenty of cover when
they fight.”
“Perhaps we could connect up some blue flares, and
plant them on rocks up the hillside, and scare them
that way,” suggested Billy.
“That’s a good idee, son, but who’s goin’ ter go up
there an’ light ’em? It would be certain death.”
“Nobody would have to go up and light them,”
eagerly put in Harry. “We can wire them up and
then just touch them off when we are ready. We can
get plenty of spark by connecting up all our batteries.”
“Wall, now, that’s fine and dandy,” exclaimed the
miner admiringly, “see what it is ter hev an eddercation.
Wall, boys, if we’re goin’ ter do that, now’s
the time. Them Injuns won’t attack afore dark, and
if we want ter git ready we’d better do it now.”
While Frank and Harry planted the blue flares on
rocks on the hillside within easy range of the camp,
and old Mr. Joyce utilized his electrical skill in wiring
them up and connecting them to a common switch,
Billy and Lathrop and Bart Witherbee struck camp and
packed the paraphernalia in the tonneau of the auto.
“Better be ready ter make a quick gitaway,” was
the miner’s recommendation.
These tasks completed, there was nothing to do but
to wait for a sign of the attack. This was nervous
work. Bart had informed the boys that in his opinion
the Indians were a band from a reservation not
many miles from there who had somehow got hold of
a lot of “firewater” and had “got bad.”
“I’ll bet yer there’s troops after ’em now, if we
did but know it,” he opined.
“Well, I wish the troops would get here quick,” bemoaned
Harry.
“They won’t git here in time ter be of much use
ter us,” remarked old Bart, grimly biting off a big
chew of tobacco, “and now, boys, keep quiet, and
mind, don’t fire till I tell yer, and don’t switch on them
lights till I give you the word.”
How long they waited neither Frank nor Harry nor
any of the others could ever tell, but it seemed to be
years before there came a sudden owl hoot far up on
the hillside.
“Here they come, that’s their signal,” whispered
old Bart in Frank’s ear; “steady now.”
“I’m all right,” replied Frank, as calmly as he
could, though his heart beat wildly.
The hoot was answered by another one, and then
all was silence.
Suddenly there came the crack of a twig somewhere
above. It was only a mite of a noise, but in the stillness
it sounded as startling as a pistol shot.
“We won’t have to wait long now,” commented
Bart in a tense undertone; “all ready, now.”
Each of the boys gripped his rifle determinedly.
Old Mr. Joyce had been armed with a pistol. At their
elbows lay their magazine revolvers fully loaded.
Following the first snapping of the twig there was
a long interval of silence. Then the staccato rattle of
a small dislodged rock bounding down the hillside set
all hearts to beating once more.
The attack was evidently not to be delayed many
moments now.
It came with the suddenness of the bursting of a
tropical storm.
Hardly had the boys drawn their breath following
the breathless suspense that ensued on the falling of
the rock before there was a wild yell, and half a dozen
dark forms burst out of the trees. They were received
with a fusillade, but none of them were hurt,
as they all vanished almost as quickly as they had
appeared.
“That was just to see if we was on the lookout,”
said old Bart in a whisper. “I reckon they found we
was. Look out for the next attack.”
They hadn’t long to wait. There was a rattle of
falling stones as the main body rushed down the hillside.
“Now!”
Old Bart fairly screamed the command in his excitement.
At the same instant Billy shoved over the switch
that connected the sparking wires of the blue-flare
battery with the electric supply for the wireless, and
the whole woodland was instantly illumined as if by
the most brilliant moonlight.
With cries and yells of amazement, a score of the
attacking redskins wheeled and vanished into the dark
shadows of the hillside. The lights glared up, brilliantly
illuminating everything in the vicinity, but the
Indians were far too scared to come out of their hiding-place
and renew the attack.
“Fire a volley up the hillside,” ordered Bart. “We
can’t hit any of ’em, but it will add to their scare and
keep ’em off till I can work out a plan.”
There was a rattling discharge of shots, which met
with no return, and then, as the lights began to burn
dimly Bart ordered Frank and Harry to get into the
aeroplane and sail into the air.
“Turn your searchlight on the wood from up above,
and they’ll run from here to San Franciskey,” he declared.
Though rather dubious of the success of the experiment,
the boys obeyed, and in a few seconds the roaring
drone of the engine was heard far above the wood,
while the great eye of the searchlight seemed to penetrate
into its darkest depths.
If the boys had had any doubt as to the feasibility
of Bart’s recipe for scaring Indians they regained
their faith then and there. With yells that echoed
into the night, the redskins ran for their lives, tumbling
over each other in their hurry to escape the
“Air Devil.”
What the blue lights had begun the aeroplane had
completed.
“It’s goin’ ter take a year ter round them fellers
up ag’in,” commented Bart.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch14
CHAPTER XIV.||THE AUTO IN DIFFICULTIES.
.sp 2
As Bart had expected, the boys were troubled no
more that night, although there was naturally little
enough sleep for any one. It was soon after daybreak
and they were at breakfast when, across the plain, at
the foot of the spur on which they were encamped,
the boys saw a detachment of horsemen riding rapidly
toward them. Through the glasses the boys speedily
made them out as United States cavalrymen. They
were advancing at a smart trot, and soon reached
the boys’ camp.
“Good-morning,” said the officer at their head,
“you seem to be breakfasting quietly enough, but you
might not be taking it so easy if I were to tell you
that several Indians have gone off the reservation and
have managed to secure enough bad whiskey to make
them very dangerous.”
“I guess, captain, that we had a bit of a run-in
with your Indians last night,” said Frank, with a quiet
smile.
“What? Why, God bless my soul, they are very
bad men; it’s a wonder any of you are alive. How
did it happen?”
Frank detailed the happenings of the night, being
frequently interrupted by the officer’s exclamations of
amazement. He regretted, though, that they had been
so badly scared, as he anticipated a long journey before
he crossed their trail again.
The attention of the captain and his troopers was
then attracted by the aeroplane. They had read in the
papers that found their way to the lone desert post
of the great flight, and were much interested in the
boys’ story of their adventure. The officer told them
that he, himself, was much interested in aerial navigation
and had constructed several experimental craft.
He expected, he said, to be detailed by the government
before very long to undertake an important expedition.
His ambition was to reach the South Pole,
just as his fellow officer, Commander Peary, attained
the northernmost pinnacle of the earth.
After a little more conversation, the officer, who
said his name was Captain Robert Hazzard, and the
boys parted with many warm expressions of friendship.
The whole company of troopers, however, waited
till the aeroplane had soared into the air, and the auto
chugged off beneath it, before they wheeled their wiry
little horses and started off on the long weary chase
after the Indians.
As the boys in the auto spun along over the level
expanse of prairie, which, except where the rough road
traversed it, was overgrown with sage-brush and cactus
plants, the car came to a sudden stop. Then, without
any warning, it plunged forward and seemed
to drop quite a few feet.
Billy, who was driving, instantly shut off power,
and gazed back in amazement. The auto was sunk
to its hubs in mud. There was no doubt about it.
The substance in which it was stuck was unmistakable
mud.
“It’s a mud hole,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee;
“now we are stuck with a vengeance.”
“But what on earth is mud doing out in the middle
of a dry desert?” demanded Lathrop.
“I dunno how it gits thar; no one does,” responded
Bart; “maybe its hidden springs or something, but
every year cattle git lost that way. They are walking
over what seemed solid ground when the crust breaks,
and bang! down they go, just like us.”
“But this is a trail,” objected Billy, “wagons must
go over it.”
“No wagons as heavy as this yer chuck cart, I
guess,” was Bart’s reply.
“We must signal the Golden Eagle of our plight,”
was Lathrop’s exclamation.
“But the wireless mast is down,” objected Billy;
“we can’t.”
“Consarn it, that’s so,” agreed Bart. “Well, we’ve
got to signal ’em somehow. Let’s fire our pistols.”
The Golden Eagle seemed quite a distance off, but
the lads got out their revolvers and fired a fusillade.
However, if they had but known it, there was no need
for them to have wasted ammunition, for Harry,
through his glasses, had already seen that something
was wrong with their convoy.
The aeroplane at once turned back, and was soon
on the plain alongside the boys. By this time they
had all got out and were busy dragging all the heavy
articles from the tonneau so as to lighten it as much
as possible. A long rope was then attached to the
front axle and they all heaved with all their might.
The auto did not budge an inch, however.
In fact, it seemed to be sinking more deeply in the
mud.
“We’ve got to do something and do it quick,” declared
Bart, “if we don’t, the mud hole may swallow
our gasolene gig, and then we’d die of thirst afore we
could reach a settlement.”
They desperately tugged and heaved once more, but
their efforts were of no avail.
“I’ve got an idea,” suddenly exclaimed Frank;
“maybe if we hitch the Golden Eagle to the rope it
will help.”
“It’s worth trying, and we’ve got to do something,”
agreed Bart. “Come on, then. Couple up.”
The rope was attached to the lower frame of the
Golden Eagle, and while they all hauled Frank started
up the engine of the aeroplane. For a second or so
the propellers of the Golden Eagle beat the air without
result, then suddenly the boys’ throats were rent with
a loud “Hurrah,” as the auto budged a tiny bit. Not
far from the trail were the ruins of an old hut. Several
stout beams were still standing upright amid the
debris.
“Hold on a bit,” shouted Bart suddenly.
He seized up an axe from the heap of camp kit that
had been hastily thrown on the ground and started
for the ruins. In a few minutes he was back with
four stout levers.
By using these, they managed to raise the auto
still more, and wedge the wheels under with other bits
of timber obtained from the demolished hut. Then
the aeroplane was started up once more, and this time
the auto, with a loud cheer, was dragged clear of the
treacherous hole.
“We’ll just stick up a bit of timber here to warn
any one else that comes along,” declared Bart, as he
fixed a tall timber in the ground where it would attract
the attention of any traveler coming along the
road.
Soon after this, a start was made, and the aeroplane
and the auto made good time across the blazing hot
plain. All the afternoon they traveled until Billy
Barnes fairly cried out for a stop.
“I’m so thirsty I could die,” he declared.
“Then get a drink,” recommended Bart Witherbee,
indicating the zinc water tank under the tonneau seat.
“It’s empty,” said Lathrop. “I tried it a little
while ago.”
“Empty,” echoed Witherbee, his face growing
grave. “Here, let’s have a look at that map, youngster,
and see where’s our next watering place.”
Billy Barnes, with a look of comical despair, handed
it over. “I’ll have to wait for a drink of water till
we get to a town, I suppose. What do you want the
map for, Bart?”
“Fer that very reason—ter see how soon we do get
to a town. I’d like a drink myself just about now.”
He perused the map for a minute in silence. Then
he looked up, his face graver even than before.
“Well, she can go sixty miles or better, but I’m
afraid of heating the engine too much if we travel at
that pace,” responded Billy, who was at the steering
wheel.
“Well, we’ve got to hustle; it’s most a hundred
miles to Gitalong, and that’s the nearest town to us.”
“Nonsense, Bart,” exclaimed Lathrop, pointing to
another name on the wide waste, which on the map
represents sparsely settled New Mexico, “here’s a
place called Cow Wells.”
“No, thar ain’t,” was Bart’s reply.
“There isn’t?”
“No.”
“But here it is on the map.”
“That’s all right; maps ain’t always ter be relied
on any more than preachers. Cow Wells has gone
dry. I reckon that’s why they called it Cow Wells.
Everybody has moved away. It used ter be a mining
camp.”
“Are you sure it’s abandoned?” asked Billy in a
trembling voice.
“Sartain sure,” responded Bart. “I heard about
it when I come through on my way east.”
“Then we can’t get a thing to drink till we reach
Gitalong?”
“That’s about the size of it,” was the dispiriting
reply of the old plainsman.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch15
CHAPTER XV.||THIRST—AND A PLOT.
.sp 2
While the lads in the auto were thus discussing the
doleful prospect ahead of them, Frank and Harry
were making good time through the upper air on the
run toward Cow Wells, which they had noted on
their maps as the spot by which they would stop for
refreshment. As they neared it in due time, from a
distance of a mile away they noted its desolate appearance.
“There doesn’t seem to be much of anything there,”
remarked Frank, as he looked ahead of him at the
collection of ramshackle buildings that they knew
from their observations must be Cow Wells.
“I don’t see a soul moving,” declared Harry.
“Neither do I,” was the other lad’s response. “Maybe
they are all away at a festival or something.”
“Well, we’ll get water there, anyhow,” remarked
Frank. “I’m so thirsty I could drink a river dry.”
“Same here.”
As the boys neared it, the lifeless appearance of
Cow Wells became even more marked. The timbers
of the houses had baked a dirty gray color in the hot
sun, and what few buildings had been painted had
all faded to the same neutral hue. The pigment had
peeled off them under the heat in huge patches.
Of all the towns the boys had so far encountered
on their transcontinental trip, this was the first one,
however small, in which there had not been a rush of
eager inhabitants to see the wonderful aeroplane.
“They must be all asleep,” laughed Harry; “here,
we’ll wake them up.”
He drew his revolver and fired a volley of shots.
For reply, instead of a rush of startled townsfolk,
a gray coyote silently slipped from a ruined barn
and slunk across the prairie.
The truth burst on both the boys at once.
“The place is deserted,” exclaimed Harry.
“We can get some water there though, I guess,
just the same,” replied the other. “There must be
some wells left.”
They swooped down onto the silent, deserted town,
in which the sand had drifted high in front of many
of the houses. Eagerly they climbed out of the chassis
of the aeroplane and investigated the place.
“Hurray,” suddenly shouted Harry, rushing up to
a large building with a long porch, that had evidently
once been the hotel, “here’s a pump.”
He pointed to an aged iron pump that stood in front
of the tumbled down building. But the boys were
doomed once more to disappointment. A few strokes
of its clanking handle showed them that it was a
long time since water had passed its spout. They investigated
other wells with the same result.
The boys exchanged blank looks as they realized
that they were to get no water there, but suddenly
the realization that the auto was back there in the
desert somewhere with a tank full of water cheered
them.
“They’ve lots of water in the tank,” suggested
Harry.
“I guess that’s right; we’d better wait till they
come and get a drink of it. I’d almost give my
chances in the race for a big glass of lemonade right
now.”
“Don’t talk of such things, you only make it
worse,” groaned Harry. “Just plain ice water would
do me fine. I could drink a whole cooler full of it.”
“Same here—but listen—here comes the auto.”
Sure enough the chug-chug of their escort was
drawing near down the rough desert road.
“Say, fellows,” shouted both boys, as the auto
rolled up, “how about a drink of water from the
tank?”
“Gee whiz,” groaned Billy, “that’s just the trouble.
There’s not a drop in it.”
“What, no water?” exclaimed Frank blankly.
“Not a drop, and Bart says we can’t get any here.”
“That’s right; we’ve investigated.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Keep on to Gitalong, that’s the thing to do. If
you don’t get there within half an hour of our arrival
we’ll start out after you with water.”
“I suppose that’s all we can do,” groaned poor
Billy.
“And the quicker we do it, the better,” briskly announced
Frank. “Come on, Harry; ho for Gitalong,
and to the dickens with Cow Wells, where there are no
cows and no wells.”
“That’s why they gave it the name, I guess,” commented
Lathrop, with a sorrowful grin.
It grew hotter and hotter as the afternoon wore on.
Billy finally, although he stuck to the wheel pluckily
as long as he was able, was compelled to give it up
to Lathrop. After that he lay on the floor of the tonneau,
suffering terrible torments from his raging
thirst.
Old Bart sat grimly by Lathrop’s side, encouraging
him as well as he knew how, and the boy bravely
smiled at the old miner’s jokes and stories, although
each smile made his parched lips crack.
“Why, what’s the matter?” remarked Lathrop suddenly,
as the auto seemed to slow down and come to
a stop of itself.
“I dunno; you’re an auto driver, you ought to
know,” said Bart.
“The engine’s overheated,” pronounced old man
Joyce. “Look at the steam coming from the cap of
the radiator.”
He pointed to a slender wisp of white vapor. It indicated
to Lathrop at once that Mr. Joyce was right.
The accident they had dreaded had happened. It
might be hours before they could proceed.
“What can we do?” demanded Bart Witherbee.
“Nothing,” responded Lathrop, “except to let her
cool off. The cylinders have jammed, and the metal
won’t cool sufficiently till the evening to allow us to
proceed.”
“We’re stuck here, then?”
“That’s it, Bart. We had better crawl under the
machine. We shall get some shade there, anyhow.”
“A good idee, youngster; come on, Mr. Joyce. Here,
Lathrop, bear a hand here, and help me get poor
Billy out.”
The fleshy young reporter was indeed in a sad state.
His stoutness made the heat harder for him to bear
than the others. They rolled him into the shade under
the auto and there they all lay till sundown, panting
painfully. As the sun dropped it grew cooler, and
gradually a slight breeze crept over the burning waste.
As it did so the adventurers crawled from their retreat,
even Billy partially reviving in the grateful drop in
the temperature. But there was still no sign of the
aeroplane.
After a brief examination of the engine Lathrop
announced that the party could proceed, and he
started up the engine cautiously. It seemed to work
all right, and once more the auto moved forward.
They had not proceeded more than two miles when
they heard a shout in the air over their heads, and
there was the Golden Eagle circling not far above
them.
Lathrop instantly stopped the machine, and the aeroplane
swept down. Frank and Harry had brought
with them a plentiful supply of water in canteens.
The boys drank as if they would never stop.
“I never tasted an ice-cream soda as good,” declared
Billy.
Refreshed and invigorated, the adventurers resumed
their journey toward Gitalong as soon as they had
fully quenched their thirst, and poured some of the
water over their sun-parched faces and hands. They
reached the town late in the evening and were warmly
welcomed by the citizens, mostly cowboys and Indians,
who had sat up to await their arrival. Several of
them, in fact, rode far out onto the prairie and, with
popping revolvers and loud yells, escorted the auto
party into town.
The aeroplane was stored in a livery stable that
night, while the boys registered at the Lucky Strike
hotel. The Lucky Strike’s menu was mostly beans,
but they made a good meal. They had hardly got into
their beds, which were all placed in a long room, right
under the rafters, when they heard to their amazement
the sound of an auto approaching the place. It
drew up in front of the hotel and the listeners heard
heavy steps as its occupants climbed out of it and entered
the bar.
They called for drinks in loud tones, and then demanded
to see a man they called Wild Bill Jenkins.
“Why, Wild Bill Jenkins is just sitting in a friendly
game o’ monte,” the boys could hear the bartender
reply, “but if it’s anything very partic’lar I’ll call him,
though he’ll rile up rough at bein’ disturbed.”
“Yes, it is very particular,” piped up another voice,
evidently that of one of the automobile arrivals; “we
must see him at once.”
The boys, with a start, recognized the voice of the
speaker as that of Luther Barr.
“Must hev come quite a way in that buzz wagon of
yours, stranger,” volunteered the bartender.
“Yes, we’ve driven over from Pintoville—it’s a
good twenty miles, I should say.”
“Wall, we don’t call that more than a step out
here,” rejoined the man who presided over the Lucky
Strike’s bar.
In the meantime a messenger had been despatched
to summon Wild Bill Jenkins. Pretty soon he came.
He was in a bad temper over being interrupted at his
game apparently.
“Who is the gasolene gig-riders as disturbed Wild
Bill Jenkins at his game?” he roared. “Show ’em to
me, an’ I’ll fill ’em so full of lead they’ll be worth
a nickel a pound.”
“That will do, Bill,” put in another voice, seemingly
Hank Higgins.
Wild Bill Jenkins’ manner instantly changed.
“Why, hello. Hank Higgins!” he exclaimed,
“hullo, Noggy Wilkes. Air you in company with
this old coyote?”
“Hush, Bill; that is Mr. Luther Barr, a very
wealthy gentleman, and he wants to put you in the
way of making a bit of money.”
“Oh, he does, does he? Wall, here’s my paw,
stranger. Money always looks good to Bill Jenkins,
and he’ll do most anything to get it.”
“This will be an easy task,” rejoined Luther Barr.
“All you have to do is to tell us the location of that
mine you know about. I will buy it from you. But
we must be quick, for others are in search of it—Bart
Witherbee and some boys that call themselves the Boy
Aviators.”
“Why, that’s the bunch that came in here to-night,”
exclaimed Wild Bill Jenkins.
“It is?”
“They are here now.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Sure.”
“Where?”
“Right here in this hotel. I guess they’re asleep
in their little cots now, right over your heads.”
“You don’t think it possible that they can have
heard any of our conversation?”
“Not on your natural, stranger. We’re as safe
talking here as in the Alloff Gastorium in New York.
Is that all you want me to do?”
“That’s all. I will pay you well for the information
when you deliver the map to me.”
“I’ll deliver it, never fear. It was a lucky day for
me I stumbled on that old mine. I’ve never been
able to claim it, though, for they’d lynch me for a little
shooting if I showed my face there.”
“Those cubs have made good time. We are only
twenty miles ahead of them,” struck in another voice—that
of Fred Reade; “if we could only disable their
machine it would come near putting them out of the
race.”
“What, bust their fool sky wagon. That’s easy
enough,” said Wild Bill Jenkins confidently. “Listen
here.”
But some other customers entered the bar at this
point, and the plotters sank their tones so low that
the boys could hear no more.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch16
CHAPTER XVI.||THE AUTO GONE.
.sp 2
“Harry!”
“What is it, Frank?”
“Get on your clothes. You, too, Bart Witherbee,
and be sure to conceal the map of your mine carefully.”
“What be yer goin’ ter do, Frank?”
“Fool those rascals. There is no doubt they are
going to the stable and try to disable our aeroplane.”
“I reckon we’ll fool ’em, Frank.”
“I hope so. We must make haste. Come on out
through this window here. It leads onto a back porch.
We can slip down a support without anyone seeing
us and get round to the stable before they get up
from their table. They’ll be in no hurry, for they
think we’re asleep.”
“What are we to do, Frank?” asked Billy Barnes
and Lathrop, who, with old Mr. Joyce, were evidently
to be left behind.
“Just snore as loud as ever you can. There is
no doubt that they will creep up here after a while
to see if we are asleep. If they hear you snoring
they will think everything is all right.”
Frank, Harry and their hard companion were soon
out of the window and on the ground. They found
themselves on a back street, or rather, a mere trail
on the prairie, for the town consisted of but a single
street. They rapidly made their way to the livery
stable. The man who owned it was there, and at
first was inclined to be angry at being awakened.
He appeared at his door with a gun.
“Git out of here, you no good drunken cattle rustlers,”
he bellowed, “or I’ll fill you full of lead. Don’t
come skylarking around me.”
“We are not cattle rustlers. We’re the boys who
own that aeroplane,” explained Frank. “We heard
to-night, or rather we overheard, a plot to damage
it so that it could not win the race.”
“What’s that?” demanded the other, “some no
good, ornery cusses undertook ter come roun’t here
and do up that thar contraption of yourn?”
“That’s it.”
“Wall, I don’t know as I’d blame anyone fer wantin’
ter bust up such things. Hosses air good enough fer
us out here in the west, but nobody ain’t goin’ to
hurt nothin’ of nobody’s while it’s under my care.
Come on in an’ tell me about it.”
The boys’ story was soon told. When it was concluded
the stable man was mad clear through.
“What, that hobo of a Wild Bill Jenkins, as he
calls his self, come aroun’ here and try monkey tricks
in my barn? Not much,” he kept repeating. “Hev
you boys got shootin’-irons?”
“We shore have,” replied old Bart Witherbee.
“Well, you at least look like a party as could use
one,” remarked the stable man, gazing at Bart’s rugged
face. “Now the only thing to do is to wait for
them to come.”
“That’s it, I guess,” agreed Frank. “They can’t
be so very long if they want to get away before daylight.”
But the boys little knew the ingenious plan that
the rogues had decided on to compass their ends and
destroy the Golden Eagle. Even while they sat there
waiting Luther Barr and the others were working out
their scheme.
Before long there was the distant chug-chug of
an auto heard and as the machine drove away, the
sound diminished till it died out.
“Well, I guess your friends decided that they’d put
their little expedition off,” grinned the stable keeper.
“There they go and good riddance to ’em, I say.”
They waited a while longer, but there was no demonstration
of their enemies’ presence. Suddenly Frank
sniffed curiously.
“Do you smell anything?” he asked presently. “It
seems to me there’s something burning somewhere.”
“I noticed it, too,” said Harry.
At the same instant there was a glare of red flame
from the rear of the stable.
“Fire!” shouted the stableman.
His cry rang through the night, and in a few seconds
the small prairie town was ringing with it. The
flames gained rapid headway. They ate through the
sun-dried timbers of the stable as if it had been made
of paper.
The stableman and his friends rushed madly about
getting out horses and rigs to places of safety. As
for the boys and Bart they seized hold of the aeroplane
and dragged it beyond reach of the flames.
They then ran out the auto. This done they returned
and helped the stableman. Soon all the stock and
valuable buggies were out of the place and it was a
roaring mass of savage flames. There was no fire department
in Gitalong, so the inhabitants, instead of
wasting their efforts on trying to extinguish the blaze
with buckets of water, devoted their attention to wetting
down adjoining roofs in order to prevent the
flames spreading. The boys were so busy attending
to this work that they didn’t stop to notice what had
become of their companions. They had had, however,
a moment to exchange a hasty word with Billy, Lathrop
and old man Joyce, who had hastened from the
hotel at the first cry of alarm.
The flames were about out and the barn was reduced
to a smouldering heap of ashes before they had
time to look about them.
“Why, where’s Mr. Joyce?” suddenly exclaimed
Bart.
“He was here a minute ago,” rejoined Frank.
“Have you seen him, Billy?”
“Not for the last ten minutes,” replied the other.
“What can have become of him?”
“I guess he got tired and went back to the hotel,”
suggested Harry.
“That must be it. Come on, let’s go and see if
he is all right.”
They started off, but on the way were halted by
the stableman.
“Thank you, boys, for helping me!” he exclaimed
warmly, extending his hand. “It was mighty white
of you.”
“I hope your loss was not very heavy,” said
Frank.
“Oh, no; I had that covered by insurance. A
good thing I had, too. If ever I get my hands on
that rascal, Wild Bill Jenkins, I’ll make it hot for
him.”
“Why; do you suspect him of setting it?”
“Not only him but your friends—or whatever you
like to call ’em. The scalliwags suspected we might
be on the lookout for ’em, and so we were, but at the
wrong door. While we were expecting ’em to come
sneaking up in front they walks up behind and sets
a fire. They’d fix your aeroplane forever and a day,
they thought, and as for my barn they didn’t bother
about that.”
“That must be it,” exclaimed Frank. “I’d like
to get my hands on the rascals.”
“Let’s drive after them and have them arrested
at Pintoville. We can easily do it,” suggested Billy.
“All right, you and Bart take the auto. I’ve got
to find Mr. Joyce.”
“Where is the auto?” suddenly exclaimed Harry,
looking about him. “It was here while we were working
at the fire and now it’s gone.”
“Gone!” gasped the others.
“Yes, gone. Look, there’s not a sign of it.”
“That’s right,” said the stableman; “looks like that
chu-chu cart had flown away. Wall, if it’s in this
town it won’t take long to find it.”
The stableman, who the boys now found out was
also mayor, at once ordered out several men with
instructions to search for the missing car, but they
all reported half an hour later, when the town had
been thoroughly searched, that not a trace of it could
be found.
In the meantime a search had been conducted for
old Mr. Joyce, but he also had vanished as mysteriously
as the auto.
“What can have become of them?” exclaimed
Frank, despairingly. “Without the auto and our
supplies we cannot go any further.”
At this juncture a man came rushing up with a
report that searchers had found the tracks of two
autos, both going out of the town over the Pintoville
road.
“Pintoville is where Luther Barr is staying,” cried
Frank.
“Then you can depend upon it,” rejoined their
friend, the mayor, “that that is where your auto and
the old man have gone.”
“But why should they want to kidnap old Mr.
Joyce?” demanded Frank.
“You’ll have to ask me an easy one,” answered the
mayor, picking up a straw and sucking it with deep
meditation.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch17
CHAPTER XVII.||THE WRONG MAN.
.sp 2
In the meantime, while the glare of the flames still
shone behind them, two autos were speeding over the
plains. The first, in which was seated Luther Barr,
Frank Reade and Hank Higgins, had been waiting
just outside the town ever since the boys had heard
it chug away before the fire started.
Barr and his companions had spent the interim in
ill-disguised impatience. Reade in particular seemed
gloomy and apprehensive.
“This is dangerous business, Barr,” he said. “If
anything falls through, we might as well make up
our minds to be lynched.”
“What is the use of talking like that,” snapped the
old man. “Wild Bill Jenkins is a reliable man,
Hank.”
“He sure is that, Barr,” rejoined the gambler. “If
he says he’ll do a thing that thing is as good as did,
and you may take your gospel on that.”
“And your partner, Noggy Wilkes?”
“Why, Barr,” declared the other earnestly, “that
feller would rather stick up a stage or rob a bank than
sit down to a chicken dinner.”
“Hum,” said old Barr, evidently highly pleased by
the very dubious recommendations, “he must be an enterprising
young man.”
“I don’t know what that ther word may mean,
Barr,” declared Higgins, gravely, “but if et means
he’s a good man for this job you can take your Davy
he is.”
“I wish they would hurry up and start in,” the old
man began again, after an interval of silence; “they
take a long time getting to work.”
“Well, you know this isn’t a job to be hurried,” declared
Hank.
“No, indeed,” stammered Frank Reade nervously,
“it’s better to do it safely and have no blunders. If
it was found out that we had attempted such a thing
it would be our ruin. What will we do with Witherbee
when we get him?”
“Drop him down a shaft some place; we want to be
sure he doesn’t follow us to the mine,” said Hank.
The occupants of the touring car were silent for a
time, and then suddenly old Barr held up a finger.
“Hark!” he exclaimed.
Very faintly the uproar that accompanied the outbreak
of the fire was borne to their ears.
Suddenly a brisk little puff of the night wind of the
prairie blew toward them. On its wings were borne
the cry for which they had been waiting:
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“They’ve done it,” grinned old Luther Barr.
“That’s what,” assented Hank Higgins, as a tongue
of flame shot upward above the black huddle of shadows
that marked the town.
“I only hope it destroys their aeroplane,” viciously
remarked Fred Reade, “we’ve got to win this race.”
“I suppose you’ve been betting on it,” sneered old
Barr.
“And if I have it’s none of your business, is it?”
demanded Reade fiercely.
“Oh, no; not at all. Don’t be so savage, my dear
young man, or I shall have to ask Hank here to subdue
you,” smirked old Barr.
“He’d better not, or I’d soon fix him with this.”
Reade drew out a huge revolver and brandished it,
at which the desperado grinned despisingly.
“Why, you’d be scared to handle it, even if you
knew how. You let shooting irons alone till you git
through with your nursing bottle,” he sneered.
“I’ve a good mind to show you,” shouted Reade
angrily.
Old Barr quieted him with a reassuring tap on the
shoulder.
“My dear young man, you are of undoubted courage.
I believe you would fight a regiment if you
thought it necessary.”
Like all cowards, Fred Reade was very susceptible
to flattery.
“You have the right estimation of my character,
Mr. Barr,” he blustered; “this wild and woolly westerner
here cannot appreciate a man of grit and brawn
unless he wears a pair of moustaches like a billygoat
and swaggers around drinking at frontier bars.”
“Is that so, Mister Reade?” sneered Hank Higgins,
despite Barr’s urging him to keep quiet. “You’re a
writing gent, ain’t yer?”
“I am a journalist—yes, sir.”
“Wall, while we are waitin’ here and watching that
ther pretty bonfire that Noggy Wilkes and our Wild
friend have lit up, I’ll just tell you a little story of one
of your trade who come out west looking for sensations.”
“All right, go ahead and amuse yourself,” said
Reade sullenly.
“Don’t get mad.”
“Oh, I’m not mad. But cut out all your talk and
tell your story.”
“Very well, Mr. Reade, it goes this way. One
night there was seated in the bar at El Paso a young
writing gent just like you are. He was a very bored
young writing gent, and he says to a fren’ who was
with him:
“‘I thought the west was full of sensations. It’s
deadly dull as I find it. Why don’t suthen happen?’
“Wall, partner, jus’ then two gents as had bin ridin’
cattle for a considerable period, an’ hed quite a hatful
of coin ter celebrate with, blew in.
“‘Ho! see that little feller!’ says one, indercating
the tenderfoot writing chap. ‘I’ll bet he’s a good
dancer.’
“‘I’ll bet he is, too,’ says the other. ‘Kin you
dance, stranger?’
“‘No,’ says the tenderfoot, ‘I can’t.’
“‘Oh, you cawnt, cawnt you,’ says one of the
range-ridin’ gents. ‘Then this is a blame good time to
larn.’
“With that Mister Reade he whips out a big gun—jes
like this one I’ve got here it was—and says:
“‘Dance!’
“‘I cawnt, I told yer,’ says the tenderfoot.
“Bang! goes the old shooting iron, and the bullet
plows up splinters right under his left foot. Wall, sir,
he lifted that foot mighty lively, I kin tell yer. Livelier
than a ground-owl kin dodge inter its hole.
“‘Now, dance!’ says the cattleman.
“‘I cawnt,’ says the tenderfoot, still unconvinced of
the powers that lay in him.
“Bang!
“This time it come under his right foot, and he lifts
that.
“‘Now, do it quick,’ says the range rider, and they
do say that the way that feller shuffled his feet while
them bullets spoiled a perfectly good floor under ’em
was as purty to watch as a stage show. Wall, later in
the evening them two cattle rustlers gits tired of that
an’ they gits in a game of poker. Now, there’s where
that tenderfoot should have quit, but he didn’t. He
goes and sits inter it with ’em. Wall, purty soon a dispute
arises. One of them cow-punchers calls on the
other to lay down his hand, and there, stranger, they
each have three aces.”
“Wall, you couldn’t see the room for smoke, they
shot so fast, and one of ’em died there and other on
the doorsill. Wall, there had ter be an inquest, yer
know, and among ther witnesses they rounded up was
this yar tenderfoot.”
“‘Whar was yer when ther first shot was fired?’
the coroner asks him.”
“‘At the poker table,’ says the tenderfoot.”
“‘And when the last was fired?’ goed on the coroner.”
“‘At the Southern Pacific depot,’ says the tenderfoot,
and I reckon that’s the kind of a gun fighter
you are, young Mister Reade,” he concluded.
By the time Hank Higgins concluded his narrative
the glare of the fire had spread over the whole sky,
and the sounds of excitement in the town could be
clearly heard. Perhaps this was what prevented the
men in the waiting auto hearing the approach of another
car till it was close upon them. At any rate,
the other auto, which did not have any lights, was
close up to them before Luther Barr exclaimed triumphantly:
“Good; they got it.”
“Is the aeroplane destroyed?” was the first question
Reade asked.
“Did you get the man?” was Luther Barr’s eager
query.
“One at a time, one at a time,” growled Wild Bill
Jenkins, “we’ve had enough trouble to-night without
answering a dozen questions at once, ain’t we,
Noggy?”
“That’s right,” grumbled Noggy Wilkes, who was
driving the auto, “and I’m none too skillful now at
driving a buzz wagon, although once I owned one.”
“Well, I reckon you see that we set the fire all
right,” remarked Wild Bill Jenkins, “and the joke of
it was we could hear the kids warning that old fool of
a mayor about the attempt we were going ter make
ter attack ’em all the time we was settin’ the fire and
putting kerosene on it.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Noggy Wilkes, as if an immense
joke had been related.
“Now, tell us, what about the aeroplane?” demanded
Reade.
Now Wild Bill Jenkins and Noggy Wilkes had
agreed to make all they could out of the deal they had
undertaken, so when Fred asked this in an eager voice
they responded:
“Oh, she’s all burned up. Nothing left of her.”
“Good,” exclaimed Reade, passing over a fat roll
of bills, “now, we can go ahead just as slowly as we
like when we get to the mine at Calabazos. If we can
file the claim to it it will be worth a lot more to us
than winning the race.”
“Speaking of the mine,” put in Luther Barr,
“where have you got Witherbee?”
“Right in the tonneau, guv’ner,” responded Wild
Bill; “he made a lot of trouble and I had to give him
a tap on the head to quiet him, but he’ll come to all
right.”
“It’s just as well,” approved Luther Barr, “it will
keep him quiet. Have you searched him yet?”
“No, not yet; we wanted to get out of town before
those kids found out we’d swiped the auto. They
can’t get after us in anything faster than an old buggy,
and we’ll be far away by the time they pick up the
trail.”
“Well, as you haven’t searched him, you might
just as well leave him where he is till we get to the
place. You know that we are not going to Pintoville.”
“Not going there, guv’ner!” echoed Wild Bill
amazedly.
“No, I said we were at Pintoville for a blind. You
never know who may be listening. Instead of going
there we will make for White Willow. We’ve got the
aeroplane there.”
“Say, guv’ner, you’re a smart one.”
“That’s how I made my money,” grinned old Luther
Barr.
“Then, you’ve not been in Pintoville at all?”
“No, not for a minute. We had to land at White
Willow; there’s something gone wrong with the engine
of Slade’s ship. They are working on it now.”
“That’s why we were so anxious to have the boys’
aeroplane disabled, so that we could take our own
time,” put in Reade. “You are quite sure it is burned
up?”
“Sure; why, I saw it with these here eyes,” declared
Noggy Wilkes. “Do you think we’d have
taken your money if it hadn’t bin all destroyed, Mr.
Reade?”
“What do you think we are—thieves?” demanded
Wild Bill Jenkins, with what sounded like real indignation.
“Come, come, let’s be getting on,” urged old Barr.
“They may pick up our trail, you know.”
As he spoke and the autos started, there was a low
growl of thunder. One of the rare thunderstorms
that occasionally sweep over the desert where it adjoins
the mountains was coming up.
“Not after the storm they won’t,” laughed Hank
Higgins confidently, “the rain that that will bring
will mighty soon wash out our trail.”
As they speeded along a few minutes later the rain
began to fall in torrents.
“Good-bye, boys, you’ll never catch us now,” exultingly
cried Luther Barr.
A short time later they rolled into White Willow,
where, on account of the size of the party, a whole
house—of which there were many vacant in the half-abandoned
settlement—had been engaged. As the
autos drew up the downpour ceased and the growls
of thunder went rolling away in the distance.
“Say, that feller’s bin mighty quiet; we’d better
have a look at him,” suggested Frank Higgins; “maybe
you tapped him too hard, Wild Bill.”
“Not me,” laughed the other. “I’ve stunned too
many of ’em for that, but he fit so hard I had to wrap
him up in a blanket.”
“He throwed it over him so sudden I didn’t even
see his face,” said Noggy admiringly; “he’s a quick
worker.”
“Well, that makes no difference; I knowed him the
minute I seed him,” confidently declared Wild Bill;
“you gave me a good description—gray whiskers,
tanned skin and a gray hat. Here he is as large as
life.”
He drew back the blanket that had covered a figure
lying in the tonneau of the big car. As he did so,
Luther Barr and the others who were crowding round
with a lantern gazed on the still features with a howl
of rage.
“You fool,” fairly shrieked Barr, springing at Wild
Bill in his anger, “that’s the wrong man!”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch18
CHAPTER XVIII.||WIRELESS.
.sp 2
“What is to be done?” It was Frank who spoke,
and there was a note of despair in his voice.
The boys had finished breakfast with what appetite
they could and were seated on the porch of the
hotel discussing plans. It seemed impossible that they
could get away from Gitalong, as, without the escort
of the auto to carry the necessary supplies for an emergency,
it would have been futile to think of navigating
above the desert in an aeroplane. The dirigible,
of course, could carry her own supplies.
“Wall, now, thar ain’t no use givin’ up hope,” consoled
Bart. “Why, once when I was up a tree with
a b’ar at ther foot of it, I thought I’d never git away,
an’ what do you think happened—why, ther b’ar jes’
turned up his toes and died.”
Even this anecdote of Bart’s pard did not cheer the
boys up, however, and in a disconsolate group they
walked down the street to look over the Golden Eagle,
which still stood where she had been left. Quite a
crowd was clustered about the machine, and as the
boys came up a hail of questions was poured in on
them.
One of the questioners, a wild-looking fellow, with
long, drooping black mustache and a wide-brimmed
hat, round the band of which were nailed silver dollars
in a row, was particularly curious. After asking
questions about every part of the machine, he
started in on the wireless. Indicating the aerials he
remarked:
“Say, that’s a right pert little conniption, ain’t it?
Kin you really send messages out sky doodling
through ther blessed atmosphere with it?”
“We can if we’ve got any one to send them to,”
rejoined Harry; “but I don’t suppose there’s any
one around here who has a wireless outfit.”
“Wall, now, that’s jes’ whar yer wrong,” was the
astonishing reply. “There’s an old feller, I reckon
he’s crazy or suthin’, anyhow he used ter be some sort
of electrical engineer. Wall, sir, on top of his shack
at White Willow I’m blamed if he ain’t got things like
them wires that’s strung on top of your air ship. Yes,
sir, an’ claims he can sind out messages, too, if thar
was any one but coyotes and rattlers to git ’em.”
“Whereabouts is White Willow?” asked Frank
interestedly.
“Why, it’s right near to Pintoville,” was the answer;
“a piece this side of it, I rickin.”
“Pintoville,” exclaimed Frank; “that’s where Luther
Barr said he was stopping. Say, boys, let’s send
out a wireless to White Willow and see if we can raise
the inventor there and ascertain if our auto passed
through.”
“But it was late at night. They would all have
been in bed,” objected Billy.
“Well, it’s worth trying, anyhow, so here goes.”
Frank sat down at the key of the Golden Eagle’s wireless,
and began tapping out “White Willow—White
Willow—Willow—White Willow,” till his hand
ached.
“No good, I guess,” he said, discouraged, as, after
quite a time, no response to his call came.
“I always thought that old feller at White Willow
was loco,” remarked one of the crowd.
Suddenly, however, Frank held up his hand.
“He’s answering,” he cried.
Sure enough, over the wires came the question:
“Here’s White Willow. Who wants White Willow?
For five years I’ve been trying to get a call
here, and no one ever came. Who are you?”
“We are the Boy Aviators,” tapped back Frank,
while the miners and cowboys gazed in awe at the
blue flame ripping and crackling across its gap. “Have
you seen two autos pass through White Willow?”
“They have not passed through. They are here
now,” was the astonishing response.
The boys saw Frank jump to his feet with an excited
yell of “Hurray! We’ll get them yet.”
“He’s gone daffy, too,” exclaimed the men in the
group about the aeroplane.
“Are you crazy, Frank?” seriously demanded Billy.
“The auto’s in White Willow!” shouted Frank,
slapping the boy on the back.
“What?”
“That’s right. The old wireless man—I mean the
wireless old man—no, I don’t—oh, what I do mean is
that we’ve got to get over there in jig time. Come
on, Harry, climb aboard. Bart, we’ll need you, too.”
“What, me git in that thar thing?” dubiously responded
the miner. “No, sir, I’ve walked like a
Christian all my days on the earth, and I ain’t goin’
to tempt Providence by flying at this time of life.”
“Hullo! hullo! what’s all this?” came a deep voice,
as a big man elbowed his way through the crowd.
“What’s all this about flying?”
“It’s the sheriff,” called some one.
In the meantime the big man had made his way to
Frank’s side as he leaned over testing the gasolene
tanks and the amount of water there was in the radiator
receptacle.
“Here, young feller,” he exclaimed, “I don’t know
if it’s legal to go flyin’ aroun’ in this county. Hav
yer got a permit or suthin’?”
“No,” replied Frank; “but if you are the sheriff
there are some of the worst men in your jurisdiction
right in White Willow now.”
“The blue heavens, you say. Who air they, young
feller?”
“Wild Bill Jenkins, Hank Higgins and Noggy
Wilkes.”
“Why, thar’s a reward for Wild Bill Jenkins!”
exclaimed the sheriff.
“Well, you can get it if you hurry over thar.”
“Hold on a minute, young feller. How do I know
you ain’t fooling me?”
“Because I was talking to a man in White Willow
a few minutes ago.”
“What’s that? Say, be careful how yer string me.”
“I certainly was, and he told me that the men we
are in search of came there in two autos last night.”
“Say, stranger, the heat’s gone to yer head, ain’t
it?”
“Not at all. You’ve heard of wireless?”
“Yes; but that’s all a fake, ain’t it?”
“If you’ll jump in and ride with us to White Willow
I’ll soon show you how much of a fake it is,” rejoined
the boy.
“What! jump in that thar wind wagon? Why,
boy, I’ve got a wife and family to look arter. If I
went skyhopping aroun’ in that thar loose-jointed benzine
broncho I might break my precious neck.”
“I’ll guarantee your neck,” spoke up Harry.
“Say, boys, ef thar sheriff don’t want ter go, I’ll
go along with yer. Thar’s $25,000 reward fer Wild
Bill Jenkins, an’ I’d jes’ as soon take a chance ter git
thar money. Giv me yer warrant, sheriff, an’ I’ll
serve it fer yer and split ther reward.”
The speaker was a wiry little cowboy, apparently
just in off the range, for he held by the reins a small
buckskin broncho.
“What’s that, Squainty Bill?” bellowed the sheriff.
“I allow Tom Meade ain’t going ter allow the perogatives
of sheriff tuk away frum him by no sawed-off
bit of a sagebrush chawing, jackrabbit of a cattle
rustler. Come on, boys, show me how you git aboard
this yer atmospheric ambler of yourn, and we’ll git
after Wild Bill Jenkins.”
The boys soon helped the redoubtable Tom Meade
into the chassis, and while the other lads held the machine
back Frank shouted for a clear road. He didn’t
get it till he opened up the exhaust on the engine, and
they were roaring like a battery of gatling guns going
into action. Then he got it in a minute. There were
four runaways and five cases of heat prostration right
there.
“Let go,” shouted Frank.
“Hey! hold on, young feller,” cried the sheriff,
starting to scramble out. Harry seized him just in
time, for the Golden Eagle shot upward like an arrow
under the full power of her hundred-horse engine.
“Say, young tenderfeet, Tom Meade ain’t no coward;
but no more of this fer me if I ever git out of
this alive,” gasped the sheriff.
“Oh, you’ll get used to it in a minute and enjoy
it,” laughed Harry. “Say, Frank, muffle those exhausts,
will you? They make so much racket you
can’t hear yourself think.”
Frank cut in on the muffler, and instantly the noise
sank to the soft droning purr of the perfectly working
engine.
“Wall, if this don’t beat lynching horse thieves,”
remarked the sheriff admiringly as the aeroplane
rushed through the air. He was much reassured by
the absence of noise that had ensued when the muffler
came into action.
“You’ll have to be our guide, sheriff,” said Frank
suddenly. “Where do I steer for White Willow?”
“Wait a minute, young feller! I’m all flabbergasted.
Ah, now I’ve got it—aim right for that thar
dip in the Saw-buck foothills. That’s it, and when you
open up old Baldy between it and Bar Mountain, then
you’re right on a line for it.”
In a few minutes Frank sighted the peaks named,
and following directions, they soon saw a huddle of
huts dumped down on the prairie a short distance from
them.
“That’s White Willow,” said the sheriff.
“But there isn’t a tree round it, white or any other
color,” objected Harry.
“I reckon that’s why they called it White Willow,”
was the rejoinder, “so as folks lookin’ fer shade could
take the mental treatment.”
As they neared the little settlement, beyond which
lay some rugged foothills honeycombed with old mine
shafts, the boys saw an automobile full of men dash
out of the place and speed off westward across the
plain.
“There they go!” shouted the sheriff. “Consarn
’em, they’ve given us the slip.”
“Not this time!” exclaimed Frank, as the auto
came to a sudden stop.
Something had evidently gone wrong with it.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch19
CHAPTER XIX.||ARRESTED BY AEROPLANE.
.sp 2
What had happened soon transpired as the men in
the auto hastily jumped out and started to rip off
the shoe of a rear tire.
“I guess a cactus thorn punctured them,” commented
Harry.
“That’s just about what happened,” rejoined Frank.
“I see Wild Bill Jenkins,” suddenly shouted the
sheriff. He bent over and picked up one of the rifles
with which the side of the chassis was furnished.
A hasty exclamation from Frank checked him.
“Don’t shoot!” cried the boy
“Wall, stranger, if you don’t beat all. The reward
holds good for him alive or dead.”
“Well, we can just as easily capture him alive,”
said Frank coolly, “and I don’t want to see human
life taken in that wanton manner.”
The sheriff regarded him amazedly, but nevertheless
put down the weapon.
“Wall, if we lose him it will be your fault,” he remarked
grimly.
But they were not to lose the desperado. As the
aeroplane swooped to earth the sheriff hailed the auto
party which comprised Luther Barr, the red-bearded
man, Wild Bill Jenkins, and Fred Reade. They
looked up from their frenzied efforts at adjusting the
tire and, surmising from the authoritative tones of
the sheriff who he must be, old Barr hailed him in
a piping voice:
“We have done nothing against the law, sheriff.
What do you want?”
By this time the aeroplane had come to a standstill,
and the boys and their companion were on the
ground.
“I ain’t so sure about that frum what these boys
told me of yer doings last night,” said the sheriff
dryly; “but as they ain’t got no proof on you, I suppose
we can’t arrest yer. But we want one of your
party—Wild Bill Jenkins yonder.”
As he spoke there was the vicious crack of a pistol,
and the sheriff’s hat flew off. The man they were in
search of had hidden himself behind the tonneau of the
machine, and it was he who fired the shot. There
would have been further shooting but for the fact
that at that moment old man Barr, much alarmed lest
he should be implicated in the proceedings, called out:
“You had better give yourself up, Bill Jenkins.
I won’t protect you.”
“That’s because I didn’t kidnap the right man for
you, you old scalliwag, I suppose, and you got my plan
of the mine, too,” angrily muttered Wild Bill. “Well,
I’ll get even with you yet. All right, sheriff, I’ll go
along with you.”
“Just stick up those hands of yours first, Bill, and
throw that gun on the ground,” ordered the sheriff.
The bad man, realizing that there would be no use
in putting up a fight, meekly surrendered, and a few
seconds later he was handcuffed.
“Now, then,” demanded Frank, stepping up to
Luther Barr, “where is our auto that you stole last
night and where is Mr. Joyce?”
“Your auto that we stole, my dear young man?”
meekly inquired Barr.
“Ha! ha! ha! that’s a good one,” laughed Reade.
“Yes, that you stole—you or the ruffians you have
chosen to make your associates.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” resumed old
Barr; “but I will tell you this: two bad men, named
Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes, did bring an auto
in White Willow this morning. I suspected they’d
stolen it somewhere.”
“Ha!” cried the sheriff, “I want those fellows,
too. Where are they?”
“How do I know, my good man?” asked Luther
Barr.
“Well, if you won’t tell, I’ve got no means of
making you,” rejoined the sheriff, “although I’m
pretty sure you do know. By the way the boys told
me your party had two autos. Where’s the other?”
“Why—why, it’s gone on ahead,” said old Barr,
who seemed somewhat taken aback.
“Gone on ahead? Then, that’s where Hank Higgins
and Noggy Wilkes are, for sure,” exclaimed the
sheriff. “Well, it’s no good chasing after them now,
besides, there’s no reward for them, anyhow.”
“At least, you will not be so hard-hearted as not
to tell us what has become of Mr. Joyce?” said Frank,
seeing that it was no use to threaten old Barr, who
seemed to have the upper hand just then.
“Joyce—Joyce,” repeated Barr, professing to be
very much puzzled. “Oh, yes, I do remember an old
man of that name—one of your friends, wasn’t he?
Why, my dear boys, if you don’t know where he is
how should I?”
“Base as you have shown yourself to be, I
didn’t think you would carry your wickedness to this
pitch,” exclaimed Frank, his fingers itching to strike
Reade, who sat by with a sneering smile on his face
while his aged companion mocked the boys.
“Come, Harry, there is no good waiting here,” he
went on. “We must get back to White Willow. Mr.
Joyce must be there. But, mind,” he exclaimed, “if
any harm has come to Mr. Joyce I shall hold you responsible
before the law for it.”
Still sneering, Barr and his companions drove off.
The sheriff accepted the boys’ offer to carry them
through the air back to White Willow, and in a few
minutes’ time they were there, Wild Bill Jenkins,
it is safe to say, being thus the first prisoner to be carried
to jail in an aeroplane. The first man they sought
out in the town was the old inventor to whom they
had sent the wireless message. They found him a
dreamy, white-haired man, more interested in his inventions
and their aeroplane than in the questions with
which they plied him. He insisted, in fact, on taking
them up the hillside, in which scores of abandoned
mine shafts still remained, to show them an invention
he had for washing gold. He was in the middle of
exhibiting the workings of his device when the boys
were startled to hear a low groan which seemed to
come from near at hand.
At first they had some difficulty in tracing it, but
they finally located the sound as proceeding from the
mouth of one of the empty shafts.
“Who is there?” they shouted, while the old inventor
stood in amazement.
“It must be the ghost of Bud Stone who fell down
that shaft and was killed,” he exclaimed and started
to run away.
“Who is there?” cried Frank again, leaning over
the deep pit which seemed to be of considerable depth.
“I am Eben Joyce—help me!” came a feeble cry
from the regions below.
“Hold on!” shouted Frank. “Be brave, and we’ll
soon have you out. Are you hurt?”
“No; but I am most dead from thirst,” came the
answer.
“Have you strength enough to attach a rope beneath
your shoulders if we lower one to you?”
“Yes—oh, yes. Oh, boys, please get me out of this
terrible place.”
It did not take long to get a rope and followed by
half the population of the little town, the boys made
their way back to the mouth of the shaft. But here a
fresh difficulty presented itself. It seemed that old
Mr. Joyce had swooned. At all events he did not
answer their shouts to him.
Frank began making a noose in the rope which he
slipped under his own armpits.
“What are you going to do?” asked Harry.
“Going down there to get the old man out,” was
the cool reply.
Despite Harry’s protestations Frank was finally
lowered over the lip of the black pit. It had been
agreed that after he reached the bottom that two tugs
was to be the signal that he wished to be hauled up.
Pretty soon the men lowering him felt the rope
slacken and knew that he had reached the bottom of
the pit. It seemed a long time before the reassuring
two tugs gave them word that all was well.
But when they started to haul the boy and his unconscious
burden up a fresh difficulty presented itself.
The rope which was already badly chafed would certainly
break under the uneven hauling of the men,
and also the rough edge of the pit mouth would undoubtedly
wear it through before the boy and the old
man had been hauled to the surface.
“Get another rope,” cried Harry.
“There ain’t another long enough in the camp,
stranger,” replied one of the army of rescuers.
“Here, I hev it,” suddenly exclaimed the sheriff,
who, by this time, had placed his prisoner in the town
lockup and had joined the onlookers, “let’s git a log
of wood and use it as a roller.”
“That’s a good idee,” was the consensus of opinion,
and soon two men were lying one at each end of a
round log, over which the rope had been run. Then
the crowd began to heave again, but although their
intentions were good their manner of hauling was so
jerky that every tug strained the rope almost to breaking
point.
“Ef only we had a windlass,” groaned the sheriff,
“we could git a good, even pull and soon hev ’em on
terrible firma.”
“I know what we can do!” suddenly exclaimed
Harry, “we can hitch the rope to the automobile and
get them out.”
In his excitement he had forgotten that they had
not yet located the auto.
“But where is yer buzz wagon?” objected the
sheriff.
“That’s so,” said Harry in a chagrined tone.
“Where can they have hidden it? It must be here
somewhere.”
“What’s that, young feller?” asked a tall man in
blue overalls.
“Why, our auto. Some men stole it last night and
drove it here. They stole the poor old man who is
down in the pit, and brought him here in it,” exclaimed
the excited lad. “So far as we know, it’s
here yet, but we don’t know whereabouts.”
“Maybe I kin help yer, thin. There’s a buzz wagon
down back of my house behind a haystack. Looks
like some one tried to hide it there.”
“That’s it,” cried Harry, racing off and in a few
minutes he was back with the auto which, to his great
joy, was found to be unharmed.
To attach the rope to it was the work of a second,
and then as Harry started up the engine the half-suffocated
man and boy were hauled out of the pit. It
took quite a little time for old man Joyce to recover,
but Frank was soon himself again. As soon as he
could talk Mr. Joyce told the boys that in their rage
and fury at finding that he was the wrong man and
not Bart Witherbee whom they had intended to kidnap,
Barr and his associates had lowered him into the
mine shaft, and then on the threat of shooting down
it and killing him, had made him undo the rope, which
they then hauled up.
“I wonder what became of Barr’s other auto?”
queried Frank as the boys and their friend, the sheriff,
surrounded by an admiring crowd, walked back toward
the town.
“Why, Barr said it had gone on ahead,” replied
Frank. “Maybe he wasn’t telling the truth, though,
and it’s still here.”
But the other auto had gone on ahead, as the boys
found out later, and in it had also gone the Slade
aeroplane, repairs on which had not been finished.
But White Willow, having suddenly come to be regarded
by Luther Barr, for obvious reasons, as unhealthy,
it had been decided to hustle the machine out
of town on the motor car.
“But,” exclaimed Harry, when the boys heard of
this from some men in the town who had seen the
aeroplane loaded onto the automobile, “that is an infraction
of the rules of the race. The contestants
must proceed under their own power.”
“Well, we’d have a hard time proving they did such
a thing,” rejoined Frank, “so the best thing for us to
do is to buckle down and make up for lost time. We’d
better get right over to Gitalong in the auto, pick up
the others, and start on our way. You can drive over
with Mr. Joyce, and I’ll fly the Golden Eagle over.”
The rejoicings in Gitalong on the part of the young
adventurers may be imagined when they saw the auto
coming, speeding over the level rolling plain with the
aeroplane flying high above it. The sheriff and his
prisoner followed on horseback. With warm handshakings
and amid a tornado of cheers and revolver
shots, the boys started off once more on their way
half an hour later, more determined than ever to win
the great prize.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch20
CHAPTER XX.||CAUGHT IN A STAMPEDE.
.sp 2
That night, as may be imagined, the adventurers
spent in hearty sleep. Although they had no means of
knowing how far behind they were in the race, at the
same time they were too exhausted by the exciting
events through which they had passed to consider
anything except refreshing their wornout frames. But
boy nature is a wonderful thing, and both Mr. Joyce
and Bart Witherbee were hard as nails, so when the
entire party awoke the next day—well over the border
line into Arizona—they were as refreshed as if they
had rested a week.
Breakfast was over, the auto packed and everything
ready for a start when suddenly in the distance a low
growling was heard, something like the voice of an
approaching thunderstorm.
“Thunder!” exclaimed Billy; “if that isn’t tough
luck.”
“Thunder!” echoed Bart incredulously; “not
much. Why, the sky’s as clear as a mirror.”
“Well, it’s queer, certainly,” agreed the others,
looking about, but as they saw no cause for the queer
noise the auto party got aboard and Frank and
Harry mounted in the aeroplane.
The desert in this part of Arizona is full of little
dips and rises, and from the dip on a river bank where
grew a sparse collection of trees, by which the boys
had camped, they had not been able to see far across
the plain. As soon as Frank and Harry rose in the
air, however, they perceived at once what had been
the cause of the rumbling sound they had heard.
Not more than a mile away, and coming toward
them like the wind, was one of the deadliest perils of
the plains.
They shouted warnings to the boys in the auto below.
“What’s the matter?” yelled back Lathrop, who
was at the wheel.
“Matter?” shouted back Frank. “There’s a herd
of stampeded cattle coming straight for you.”
The effect of these words on Bart Witherbee was
electrical.
“Great guns, boys!” he exclaimed; “that’s the
worst news we could have. If we can’t escape them
we are as good as dead. Put on all the speed you
can.”
Only half realizing the terrible nature of the peril
so rapidly approaching, Lathrop put on all the speed
the auto possessed, and the machine seemed to fairly
leap forward. Bart Witherbee stood up in the tonneau
the better to see what was approaching behind
them. Even he blanched under his tanned, weather-beaten
skin as he saw that the cattle, an immense herd,
were advancing in a crescent-shaped formation that
seemed to make escape impossible.
Billy Barnes, who stood at his elbow, also sighted
the maddened steers at the same moment as they
rushed over a rise not more than half a mile away
now.
“Whatever started them?” he gasped.
“Who can tell, lad, a coyote jumping up suddenly,
the hoot of a ground owl, anything will start cattle
stampeding when they are in the mood for it.”
The herd came swooping on, but so far the auto,
which seemed to be fairly flying over the ground,
maintained its lead. The steers were bellowing and
throwing their heads high in the air as they advanced,
and the noise of their hoofs seemed a perfect Niagara
of sound.
“Get your gun out and load. We may have to use
’em before long,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee. “Sometimes
the noise of shooting will turn a lot of stampeders.”
“Do you think it will stop them?” asked Billy.
“I dunno,” was the grim reply. “Maybe yes,
maybe no. We’ve got to try to save our lives as best
we can.”
On and on went the chase, the auto fleeing like a
scared live thing before the pursuing peril. Bart
Witherbee’s face grew grim.
“Won’t they get tired soon?” asked Billy, who
couldn’t see how the steers could keep up the terrible
pace much longer.
“Tired,” echoed the plainsman, “not much, lad.
It’ll take a whole lot to tire them. Why, I’ve seen
’em go clear over a cliff. They’re like mad things
when once they’re stampeded.”
Suddenly the auto came to a stop.
.il id=i03 fn=illus-207.jpg w=525
.ca Suddenly the auto came to a stop.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Witherbee, in a
sharp tone that showed his anxiety.
For reply Lathrop pointed ahead.
Right in front of them was a deep arroyo or water
course with steep banks fully thirty feet in height,
effectually blocking progress. The boys were trapped.
“What shall we do?” cried Lathrop with a white
face.
“Not much of anything as I can see,” replied Bart
with a shrug. “Looks like this is our finish.”
On swept the steers. The boys could now see the
angry little red eyes of the leaders gleaming savagely.
Their horns were as long and sharp pointed as spears.
“Everybody get out your guns and fire, it may
scare ’em,” commanded Witherbee.
Quickly the four revolvers of the party were emptied
in the face of the advancing onrush, but not a
steer wavered.
“It’s all over,” groaned Witherbee.
But suddenly a dark shadow swept down from the
skies so close to the boys in the auto that they could
almost feel the rush of wind as the great body swept
by.
It was the Golden Eagle.
Frank, who, with Harry, had watched in terrible
apprehension the advance of the steers, had suddenly
recollected what the cowboys had said about aeroplanes
scaring them. Instantly he had set his descending
levers and swept in a long, low circle full in the faces
of the amazed bovines.
With bellows of terror they turned, wavered and
a minute later were in full retreat. They thundered
past the auto in a long line, their warm breath almost
fanning the occupants’ faces, but none of them came
any closer. Wild terror of the mysterious thing of
the sky had seized them, and they were off in the opposite
direction as swiftly as they had thundered in
pursuit of the auto.
“Phew! that was as narrow an escape as ever I
want to have,” exclaimed Billy, his face still white as
the last of the herd scampered by.
“Same here,” echoed Lathrop.
As for Mr. Joyce and Bart Witherbee they did not
say much, perhaps because they realized even more
than the boys the terrible death from which Frank’s
bold swoop had saved them.
Looking up to where the Golden Eagle was soaring
far above them the party in the auto set up a
cheer to which Frank answered with a wave of the
hand. The next instant he pointed to the westward,
and—skirting the banks of the steep arroyo till they
found a place where a ford had been made—the boys
in the auto followed them.
Late that afternoon the character of the country
over which they had been traveling began to change.
The road grew rugged and in places great trees grew
right up to the edge of the track and overshadowed
it. The aeroplane soared far above the treetops, however,
and the boys had no difficulty in keeping track
of it. Suddenly, however, as they drove along the
rough track, Billy, who was driving, stopped the car
with a jerk.
“We can’t get any further,” he remarked.
“Why not?” demanded Bart Witherbee.
“Look there.”
The boy pointed ahead a few feet up the road.
A huge tree lay across it, effectually blocking all
progress.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch21
CHAPTER XXI.||BART AND THE B’AR.
.sp 2
“Well, boys, we sure do seem to be in for a run
of hard luck,” remarked Bart Witherbee as he climbed
out of the auto with the others, and they ruefully surveyed
the obstruction. It was a big sugar pine and
lay entirely across the road. To go round it was out
of the question, for the ground on each side was timber
grown and rocky.
“There’s only one thing to do—cut it away,” pronounced
Bart Witherbee, starting back for the tonneau
to get the axes.
“No; I’ve got a better scheme than that,” said
Billy suddenly, and then broke out with a loud: “Look
here, fellows!”
He pointed excitedly to the trunk of the tree where
it had been severed from the roots.
The fresh marks of an axe were upon it.
“It’s Luther Barr and his crowd,” cried the boy.
“They figured on blocking us, and they would have
succeeded but for a scheme I’ve just thought of.”
“What’s that?” demanded Bart Witherbee.
“Why, let’s get the rope out of the tonneau and
haul the tree out of the way with the auto.”
“Say, that’s a good plan,” assented Bart Witherbee,
starting back for the auto once more. In a few
minutes he had the rope and it was quickly looped
round the tree and then tied to the rear axle of the
auto, after the machine had been turned round.
Billy took his place at the wheel and started the
car up. There was a great sound of cracking and
straining, and for a second the auto’s wheels spun
uselessly around. Then suddenly as the boy applied
more power the great log started.
Amid a cheer from the boys it was pulled entirely
away, and a few seconds later the road was clear.
“Well, what do you think of men who would descend
to a mean trick like that,” demanded Bill angrily
as the adventurers resumed the road.
“As it happened it didn’t do them much good,”
remarked Bart.
“I should say not,” rejoined Billy. “I reckon they
didn’t think that we could hit upon a way of getting
it off our track.”
The auto chugged on through the sweet-smelling
pine woods till the declining sun began to tint their
dark branches with gold.
“Hadn’t we better send the boys a wireless?” asked
Billy, and as the others agreed that it was important
to know where they were the mast was set in position
and a call sent out. A reply was soon obtained from
the others, who were camped at a small plateau
further up the side of the foothill.
Half an hour later the boys were all in camp together,
and the events of the day were discussed with
much interest. It was a wild country in which they
found themselves. Great stretches of barrens mingled
with dense pine woods, and Frank and Harry had
serious thoughts of once more taking to the plains.
Bart Witherbee, however, assured them that if they
kept on to Calabazos they would find a good landing
and ascending place, and from there could easily
wing their way to level ground. He represented to
them that they would be taking a short cut also by
following this route. So the boys decided to keep
on to Calabazos with the old miner, a decision which
was not wholly disinterested, for they were anxious
to see the mine of which he had told them so much.
Naturally, the position of the other contestants in
the race was a topic that came up for a lot of discussion,
but the boys were still talking it over when it
was time to turn in without having arrived at any definite
conclusion. From what they had heard in White
Willow they were pretty certain that Slade’s aeroplane
was disabled. Concerning the condition of the
dirigible or her whereabouts, however, there was by
no means the same amount of assurance.
They were chatting thus and speculating on their
chance of winning the big prize when Bart Witherbee
suddenly held up a warning hand.
“Hark!” he exclaimed. They all listened.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked of Frank.
“Not a thing,” replied the boy.
“I thought I heard footsteps up the trail,” returned
the old miner, “but I guess I was mistaken.”
“Why, who could it be?” asked Billy.
“It might very easily be some of Luther Barr’s
gang prowling about. We are near the mine now,
and they are no doubt determined to get the papers
showing its location before I have a chance to file my
claim,” put in Bart Witherbee.
The boys kept a sharp lookout after this, but they
heard no more, if, indeed, there had been any sound,
which they began to doubt, and soon after they were
snug asleep in their blankets.
Suddenly Frank was awakened by shots and loud
shouts. Springing up from his blankets he was
amazed to see Bart Witherbee rolling over and over
on the ground with somebody who seemed of immense
size gripping him tightly.
The boy could hear Bart gasping for breath. He
seemed as if he were being crushed.
Frank’s shouts awakened the others.
“Robbers!” cried Billy.
“Indians!” yelled Harry.
“Murderers!” cried old Mr. Joyce, as their sleepy
eyes took in the struggle.
Harry raised his rifle to fire at Bart’s antagonist,
whoever he might be, and was about to pull the trigger,
even at the risk of hitting the miner, when Frank
interrupted him with a cry of:
“Don’t shoot, you might hit Bart.”
“But the robber will kill him.”
“It’s not a robber at all,” suddenly cried Frank,
as the two contestants rolled over nearer to the firelight.
“It’s a big bear!”
“Give me a knife—quick!” gasped Bart, as he and
the bear rolled about. Hastily Frank threw toward
him a big hunting weapon. One of the hunter’s arms
was free, and he reached out and grabbed the weapon.
With a rapid thrust he drove it into the bear’s eye.
With a howl of pain the animal raised its paws to
caress its injury. At the same instant Frank’s rifle
cracked and the animal rolled over, seemingly dead.
“Are you hurt?” asked the boys, rushing forward
to Bart.
“No, I don’t think so,” cautiously replied the miner,
feeling his ribs. “I feel as if that thar critter had
caved me in, though.”
An examination soon showed that Bart was uninjured
and the bear quite dead.
“That was a close call,” remarked the miner, wiping
his knife. “I guess that must have been what I
heard prowling around here early in the evening, although
that dead brute there was no more dangerous
than that old sharp, Luther Barr.”
“Did you think it was some of his gang attacking
you?” asked Billy.
“I sure did,” replied the miner. “I was lying nice
and quietly asleep when all of a sudden I felt something
nosing me, and could feel its warm breath on the
back of my neck. If I had not been so sleepy, I’d
have known it was a b’ar by the strong smell of its
fur, but as it was, I thought it was Hank Higgins or
Noggy Wilkes. I soon found out my mistake,
though.”
After this interruption the boys turned in and slept
quite soundly till daybreak, when they were up and the
journey to Calabazos resumed, after the bear had been
skinned and the steaks enjoyed. Before the start was
made Bart gave the boys full instructions for landing
the Golden Eagle in Calabazos, which lay across a
small canyon not very many miles ahead.
The road now began to dip down hill, and the auto
rattled along at a lively clip. Here and there the boys
noticed small huts, and tunnels drilled in the hillside,
which the miner told them were abandoned claims.
“Some of them is worked yet by Chinamen,” he
explained: “but when the poor yellow men do unexpectedly
make a strike there’s always some mean cuss
ready to come along and take it all away from them.
I think the gov’ment ought ter do something about
it.
“Half a mile ahead now is the bridge across the
canyon, and then we’ve only got a short distance to
go before we’re in Calabazos. My mine is about ten
miles from there,” he said a few minutes later. “I
wonder who is sheriff there now. You see, that makes
a whole lot of difference when yer are filing a claim
against a rival. You’ve got to have the sheriff on
your side, for he can make a lot of trouble for you
in getting to the gov’ment office, where first come,
first served is the rule.”
“But you have your claim staked, have you not?”
asked Billy.
“Sure; but that don’t bind it till you’ve registered
your claim,” rejoined the miner. “You see, mine’s
an abandoned claim, too. Old fellow name of Fogg
had it once. At least I found his name cut on a tree.”
And now they came to a sharp turn in the road.
“The bridge is right around the corner,” said the
miner, “you had better put on your brakes, Billy, or
we may have a runaway, for there’s a terrible steep
bit of hill runs right down to it.”
The boy obeyed, and it was well he did so, for
while they were speeding toward the bridge, a rude
affair of pine trunks laid across long stringers suspended
high in the air above a pine-clad canyon, there
was a sudden shout from Bart Witherbee, who was
acting as lookout.
“Hold up, boy! Stop the car!” he shouted.
“What’s up?” asked Billy, shutting down his emergency
brakes with a snap in obedience to the miner’s
urgent tone.
“Look there!” The miner pointed ahead.
At first the boys could see nothing the matter with
the bridge, but a second glance showed them that
something very serious indeed had occurred to it.
Somebody had removed two of the trunks that
formed a roadway, and right in the centre of the structure
was a gaping hole. Had the auto come upon it
unexpectedly it must have gone through into the depths
of the canyon beneath.
They all got out of the auto, all, that is, but Mr.
Joyce, who was busy figuring on an invention, and
hastened down to the bridge. The planks, there was
no doubt, had been deliberately removed by some one,
and that those persons were Luther Barr and his party
none in the party could for a moment doubt.
Suddenly the bell of the wireless on board the auto
began to ring.
“The boys are sending us a message,” exclaimed
Billy.
He and Lathrop raced back up the hill to the car,
where the latter placed the detector over his ears and
tapped out his “ready” signal.
The others watched him eagerly. It was not a
minute before they saw that something serious was
the matter. The boy’s face paled, and he seemed much
concerned.
“What is the matter?” anxiously asked Bart Witherbee.
“Air the boys in trouble?”
“The worst kind of trouble, I am afraid,” breathed
Lathrop in a tone of deep concern. “They are in the
hands of Luther Barr.”
“Where?”
“On the other side of the canyon.”
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch22
CHAPTER XXII.||AN AUTO LEAP FOR LIFE.
.sp 2
What was to be done?
The bridge across the canyon was impassable for an
auto—that seemed certain. While the open space
caused by the removal of the two planks or rough
trunks was not more than four feet, still it was a distance
sufficient to make anyone despair of ever getting
a vehicle across it.
“We can cut some trees and split off planks?” suggested
Mr. Joyce.
“That would take too long,” declared the boys.
“Frank and Harry need us in a hurry or they would
not have sent such an imperative message. We have
got to cross the canyon.”
Suddenly Lathrop, who had been studying the situation,
the steep-sided canyon, the roaring river on its
rocky bed Mow the structure of the bridge itself, uttered
an exclamation.
“I think I can see a way to get across that gap,” he
cried.
“Climb across on the stringpiece, I suppose?” replied
Bart sarcastically. “I thought of that some
time ago; we can easily do that, but we’ve got to have
the auto. It’s got all the supplies in it.”
“No, my plan is to go across, auto and all,” rejoined
Lathrop.
“What! Take the auto across that gap?”
“Yes.”
“Say, this is no time for fooling, Lathrop,” remonstrated
Billy Barnes.
“I’m not fooling. I mean it. Did you ever go to
the circus?”
“Well, of all the fool questions. Yes, I’ve been to
the circus, but what has that got to do with this situation?”
“A whole lot.”
“For instance?”
“Well, you’ve seen an act there called ‘leaping the
gap’ or some such name?”
“Yes, where a woman in an auto comes down a
steep incline and jumps a big gap at the bottom?”
“That’s it.”
“But, in the circus the auto is given an upward
impetus by the fact that the incline down which it
runs down is curved upward at the end,” objected
Billy.
“So it is in this case,” was the calm reply. “I’ve
been looking it over, and it seems to me that conditions
are about the same.”
“As how?”
“Well, here we have a steep incline—the hill yonder,”
Billy Barnes nodded, “and there yonder is the
gap where Luther Barr and his gang took out the
boards.”
“But you haven’t got the upward curve at the end
of your incline to throw the auto into the air and
carry it safely across the gap,” objected Billy.
“Oh, yes, that’s there, too,” was the calm reply;
“do you notice that the bridge sags in the centre?”
“Yes, it does, that’s true,” pronounced Billy, after
a prolonged scrutiny.
“Well, the boards have been taken out some feet
toward the opposite side of the sag, haven’t they?”
“Hum—yes, that’s so.”
“Well, then, there’s your upward curve before you
come to the gap.”
“Jiminy cricket, Lathrop, you are right. Now,
what’s your plan—to leap the gap?”
“Yes, but we must lighten the auto. We all have
cool heads, and we can stand on the edge of the gap
and throw most of the heavy things in the car across
the space. Then we can pick them up on the other
side. That is, if we get the auto over.”
Even Bart Witherbee had to agree that the plan
looked feasible. All of the party, with the exception
of old Mr. Joyce, had seen the same feat performed in
a circus. True, in the show everything was arranged
and mathematically adjusted, but the conditions here,
though in a rough way, were yet the same practically.
There was the descent, the steep drop, the short up-curve
and then the gap. The more they thought of it
the more they believed it could be done.
It did not take long to transfer most of the heavy
baggage to the other side of the gap, and then came
Lathrop’s next order—which was that the others
should shin themselves across the stringpieces to the
opposite side of the gap, so that the auto might not
be burdened with their weights. It took a lot of persuasion
to make them do it, but they finally obeyed,
and Lathrop alone walked back up the trail to where
the auto stood with its brakes hard set.
The boy himself would not have denied that his
heart beat fast as he approached the car. In a few
minutes he was to make an experiment that might result
in certain and terrible death if the slightest hitch
occurred.
But he thought of his chums marooned and in the
hands of their enemies on the other side of the canyon
and the reflection of their peril steeled him to endure
his own.
The boy took a quick glance all about him.
The spot where the auto stood was about a quarter
of a mile above where the bridge joined the canyon’s
bank. He had then, as he judged, plenty of room in
which to get up a speed sufficient to carry him safely
across the gap.
For a second the thought of failure flashed across
his mind, but he did not dwell on it.
What he was about to do didn’t bear thinking of.
It was a thing to be done in hot blood or not at all.
Slowly Lathrop climbed into the auto. He felt the
heavy body of the car sway on its springs as he did so,
and wondered at the same instant how it would feel
in case of failure to be hurtling down—down—down
to the depths of the canyon with the heavy car.
As he grasped the wheel and prepared to throw off
his brake, he looked ahead. From where he was
starting he could see the gap in the bridge yawning
blackly.
It looked much further across than he had at first
anticipated.
For a minute he felt like weakening and deciding
not to take what seemed a fatal chance.
The thought of Frank and Harry in the hands of
Luther Barr and his gang, however, steeled him. He
gritted his teeth, jammed his hat back on his head and
prepared for the start.
On the opposite side of the gap he could see the
white, strained faces of his friends. For one brief
second he looked at all this, wondering vaguely if it
was to be the last time he was to see them, and then,
with a deep intake of his breath, he released the brake
and threw in the engine clutch to top speed. At the
same moment he advanced his spark and felt the machine
leap forward on the steep incline like a creature
suddenly let loose from a leash.
Down the steep grade dashed the machine, sometimes
seeming to leap several feet in the air and come
down with a terrific crash as it struck the ground.
“Good thing she’s not more weight in her,” Lathrop
thought to himself as these convulsive leaps occurred.
So terrific was the speed, it was like traveling on
the back of a whirlwind, if such a thing can be imagined.
“There’s no stopping now,” thought Lathrop, as
with a brief prayer on his lips the huge machine hustled
onward like a shot from a cannon. On and on
it dashed.
Showers of rocks hurled upward from its wheels
were blurred discs at the pace they were making.
And now the bridge and the dark gap loomed right
in front of him.
Clenching his teeth tightly, the boy gripped the
steering wheel till the varnish came off on his hands.
He felt the machine bound forward onto the narrow
span—felt it sag beneath the unaccustomed weight.
Everything grew blurred. All he thought of now
was clinging to that steering wheel to the end.
His hat had flown off long ago—torn from his head
by the wind generated by the awful speed.
And now the gap itself was there. Seen momentarily,
dark, forbidding—a door to death.
Suddenly, just as it seemed he was about to be
plunged into the depths, the boy felt the huge machine
rise under him as lightly as if it had been a feather.
It shot upward like a stone impelled by a giant’s
fist, hesitated for a moment at the apex of its spring,
and then crashed down onto the bridge.
But the gap had been crossed.
It was several hundred feet before Lathrop could
control the auto, and when he did, and the others
rushed up, they found a white-faced boy at the wheel,
who was as nearly on the verge of a collapse as a
healthy lad can be.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch23
CHAPTER XXIII.||A MYSTERY.
.sp 2
The supplies that had been left on the bridge were
hastily loaded into the auto, and the party once more
took their seats. Lathrop had by this time quite recovered,
and, in reply to all the encomiums heaped on
him by the others, could only reply:
“That’s all right.”
With Billy Barnes at the wheel the auto chugged off
once more on its errand of rescue.
Suddenly, leading up a woodland track to their
right, Billy Barnes spied auto tracks.
“That must be Barr and his crowd,” shouted Billy,
turning the auto up the track that converged from the
main road at this point.
Rapidly and almost silently the auto made its way
over the beds of pine needles that covered the rough
roadway. With the reduced speed at which they were
proceeding the approach of the machine could have
been hardly audible to a strange group onto which the
auto party a second later emerged.
The persons composing it consisted of Luther Barr
and the men to whom Billy had referred as composing
“his gang,” namely, Hank Higgins, Noggy Wilkes,
Fred Reade, the red-bearded aviator, and Slade. As
the auto rolled up behind them so silently that none of
them apparently knew of its approach, Barr was grinning
triumphantly at Frank and Harry Chester, whose
aeroplane stood at one side of the clearing.
“I thought we’d lure you down here by displaying a
flag,” he sneered. “I suppose you thought it was
your own party. Well, now, you have found out your
mistake.”
“Our friends will soon be here in reply to our message,”
said Frank, “and they will not allow you to
harm us.”
“Oh, I suppose you think they could answer that
wireless message of yours,” sneered old Barr. “Well,
they couldn’t, because we’d fixed it so that they
couldn’t. Do you think I’d have let you send out a
message if I thought they could have got here? I just
fooled you for fun.”
“What have you done with them?” demanded
Frank.
“Oh, only taken a few planks out of the bridge
across the canyon so that they couldn’t get across. We
hold the cards now, so you might as well tell us where
Bart Witherbee intends to claim his mine. If you
won’t, we shall see that you are put somewhere where
you will get over your stubbornness.”
“Oh, you will, will you?” exclaimed Bart Witherbee,
suddenly stepping forward. “Not yet, Mr. Barr,
and now I think as we have the drop on you, you and
your friends had better vamoose—git out—run along—fade
away.”
“What are you doing here,” stammered Reade,
turning round and seeing the boys in their auto, “I
thought——”
“Yes,” cried Billy, “you thought you’d fixed the
bridge so as we couldn’t get across—well, you hadn’t;
so now get along and be on your way before we summon
law officers and have you placed under arrest.”
“Come on, let’s get out,” said Hank Higgins sullenly,
“the kids certainly seem to have it on us this
time.”
Casting glances full of malevolence at the boys, but
still not daring to say anything, Barr and his companions
climbed into their machines and silently made off.
To their satisfaction the boys saw in the tonneau of
the rear machine a lot of boxes which they knew must
contain sections of the dismantled Slade aeroplane.
The Despatch party therefore had not yet been able to
effect repairs, which accounted for their desperate
anxiety to detain the boys at any cost.
“However, did they come to lure you down here?”
asked Billy as soon as the two autos with their rascally
owners had departed.
“Why, we saw a signal waving from this opening
in the woods, and thought it was you showing us
where there was a good landing place. We soon
found out our mistake, however,” answered Frank.
“Say, boys,” observed Bart suddenly, after he had
earnestly scanned the sky for awhile, “we’d better be
getting on. I believe we are going to have one of
those storms that we get up in these hills every once
in a while.”
“Are they very bad?” asked Billy.
“Bad!” echoed the miner, “why, boy, ef you’re
wearing all your own hair arter one of ’em you’re
lucky.”
“Well, we can’t fly any further to-day,” announced
Frank.
“Why not?” demanded the others.
“One of our rudder wires got snapped as we came
down here. It was a narrow place to land in at best.”
“How are we going to get the aeroplane up the
trail?” demanded Bart.
“Tow it,” was the quiet response.
“Tow it. How in the name of sea-sick catamounts
air we goin’ ter do that?” demanded Bart.
“Easy,” laughed the boy; “just hitch a rope to it,
attach it to the auto and it will tow right along on its
wheels.”
“Yes, but the wings are too wide to pass along this
narrow trail,” objected Bart.
“We can unbolt them and pack them in the auto.
Some of us will have to walk, but that will be no great
hardship for a short distance.”
“Say, Frank, you’re a genius. Come on, boys, git
busy with them monkey wrenches and we’ll be in Calabazos
to-night. Then ho—for the lost mine.”
As Frank had anticipated, it was not a lengthy work
to detach the wings of the Golden Eagle, thanks to
their simple construction, and soon the cavalcade was
moving forward up the mountain side with the framework
of the aeroplane in tow. Stripped of her planes,
she looked not unlike a butterfly from which the wings
have been plucked, but the boys did not mind appearances
in the saving of time they effected.
“Say, Frank, though,” said Billy suddenly, as they
tramped along in the rear of the auto which Lathrop
was driving, “isn’t this breaking the rules of the
flight? Are you allowed to tow your air craft?”
Frank drew a little book from his pocket.
“In cases of absolute necessity owners and fliers of
contesting craft may accept a tow, provided they do
not actually load their machines on railroad trains or
other means of transportation,” he read. “This shall
be understood not to apply to circumstances other than
where an aviator finds it impossible to make an ascent
from his landing place.”
“I guess we are within the rules all right,” said
Harry.
“I think so. Of course we shall have to make out
a written explanation of the case,” rejoined Frank,
“but it would have been impossible for us to rise from
that wood clump into which Luther Barr lured us.”
“Say, boy, I’m afraid we’re in for it,” suddenly
exclaimed Bart Witherbee.
“What?” asked Frank.
“Why, the storm I said was coming up. She’s
going to be a rip-snorter, or my name’s not Bart Witherbee.”
As he spoke there came a low moaning sound in the
tree-tops, and the sky began to be overcast with dark
storm clouds. The dust on the road, too, began to
be puffed into little whirlwinds before the breath of the
oncoming storm.
Presently a few great drops of rain fell, coming
with heavy splashes on the dry road, and falling with
resounding splashes on the planes packed on top of
the auto.
“Here she comes, boys; we’ve got to seek shelter
some place,” warned the miner.
They looked about them in vain, when all at once,
up the hillside to the right of the road, they became
aware of a trail leading to a ruinous-looking hut that
had evidently at one time been occupied by a miner.
“We’ll take shelter there, boys,” exclaimed Bart,
pointing to it. “I’ll bet the roof leaks like a sieve,
but it’s better than the open at that.”
Hastily the boys pulled waterproof tarpaulins, provided
for such a purpose, over the framework of the
aeroplane and over the auto.
“There, not a drop of water will touch them, anyhow,”
announced Frank, as these preparations to fight
the storm were concluded. “Come on, now, for the
hut.”
They ran up the hillside as fast as they could, for by
this time the rain was coming down in a torrential
downpour, and the lightning flashes were ripping the
sky in every direction. The artillery of the storm rattled
awe-inspiringly. Some of the thunder claps
seemed to shake the very ground upon which they
stood.
As they ran Bart uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Why, boys,” he cried, “this yere trail ain’t so far
from my mine. It’s only under that next ridge there.
If a man dug a tunnel he could get there dry shod.”
At the time they paid no attention to Bart’s words,
in such haste were they to get into the hut. They
were to recollect them afterward, though, and comment
on their strange significance.
Billy was the first to reach the deserted hut. With
a whoop he pushed in the crazy door, but the next
minute he staggered back with a cry of surprise and a
scared look on his face.
“There’s someone in there,” he cried.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch24
CHAPTER XXIV.||THE GOLDEN HERMIT.
.sp 2
“Some’ne in there?” echoed the others in amazed
tones.
“Yes—hark!” said the lad, holding up a finger.
Sure enough, above the moaning of the storm and
the roar of the rain came a sound like a faint groaning.
“Well, come on,” cried Bart; “no use stopping out
here in the rain just for that. Let’s go in.”
Reassured by his confident manner, the others
crowded in. The interior of the hut, not overlight at
any time, was rendered doubly gloomy by the mantle
of blackness which the storm had flung over the
heavens. It was not till Frank had taken out a folding
lantern from his pocket and lit it with a lucifer
from his folding match box that they were able to
take in the details of the strange interior in which
they stood. Of course, their first task was to look for
the human being or animal that Billy had heard groaning.
This did not take long. The hut was not divided
into rooms, and was unceiled, the rafters being right
overhead. The lamp was flashed into every corner.
To the boys’ amazement, the place was absolutely
empty.
“I’m sure I heard somebody groaning or grumbling,”
said Billy. “I’m positive of it.”
“Well, maybe you are right, lad,” replied Bart
Witherbee, “and I rather think you are, for look
here!”
He pointed to a rough sort of bunk formed of a
framework of lumber in one corner of the room.
“It’s warm,” he said, touching it with his hand,
“somebody was lying asleep here when we came up
the trail—that’s as plain as print—and look here, too,”
he went on, pointing to other signs of human occupancy
the boys had not noticed when first they came
in.
In rapid succession, he showed them some ashes
glowing in a huge open fireplace, in front of which
was an ample hearthstone. There was also a rude
table in one corner, on which were the remains of
what had been a rude meal.
“But where has the man gone who was in here?”
demanded Frank.
“Maybe out by the back door,” suggested Harry.
“There isn’t one,” rejoined Billy, “the door in front
is the only way out.”
“How about the windows?”
“The two in front are the only ones.”
“Well, that’s queer.”
“It certainly is.”
“See if there are any trap doors in the floor,” suggested
Bart. “These old miners are queer old chaps
sometimes.”
But a close search of the floor did not reveal any
trace of a trap door. Much puzzled by the mystery,
the boys retired to bed that night prepared for any
sudden alarm. A lamp was left burning, and their
guns lay ready to hand. But nothing occurred to mar
the monotonous drumming of the rain on the roof,
and one by one they dropped off to sleep.
It was soon after midnight that Frank awakened
with a strange feeling of dread.
He looked about the room, but so far as he could
see at first everything was as it had been left when
they went to sleep. All at once, however, his attention
was attracted to the fireplace by a slight scratching
sound. He gazed over toward the hearth, and to
his unbounded astonishment and no small alarm he
saw the hearthstone suddenly begin to swing slowly
back, and, through the aperture thus created on the
side nearest the room, he saw human finger tips cautiously
poking about. Suddenly an entire hand was
thrust through the crack.
.il id=i04 fn=illus-243.jpg w=525
.ca Suddenly an entire hand was thrust through the crack.
What was coming next Frank had no idea, but with
a violently beating heart he lay watching the aperture
while a second hand joined the first and gave the stone
a feeble shove upward. It swung back on its invisible
hinges till a space of perhaps three feet yawned
between it and the floor, and then a face made its
appearance.
It was the face of a very old man with venerable
white beard and mild, timid, blue eyes. Frank almost
closed his eyes, and from under their lashes watched
the old man painfully lift himself out of the tunnel
into the room. Once in the room he tiptoed about
among the sleepers, gazing at them earnestly to make
sure they were all asleep, and then, returning to the
hole beneath the hearthstone, reached down and drew
out a bag that seemed to weigh considerably.
But the exertion seemed to exhaust his feeble
strength, for with a groan he fell back into a rough
chair, and the sack fell from his trembling hands with
a crash. The sudden sound woke all the adventurers,
and they sprang to their feet with their weapons in
their hands.
The sight of the feeble old man, however, gasping
in the chair, with his hand on his heart as if he was
in mortal pain, soon convinced them that it was no
dangerous enemy with whom they had to deal.
“Don’t, don’t hurt me,” cried the old man pitiably,
as the boys and their elders closed in about him. “I
will tell you all, only don’t hurt me. Spare a poor old
man who has not long to live; let him spend his last
hours in peace.”
“We do not wish to hurt you,” Frank assured him,
“we want to aid you. Are you ill?”
“I am sick unto death. The exertion of carrying
that load of ore from the mine was too much for me.
I do not think I have long to live.”
“Who are you?” asked Bart Witherbee gently.
“I am Jared Fogg,” replied the old man, closing his
eyes as though too weary to keep them open.
“Jared Fogg!” exclaimed the others in amazed
tones.
“Yes; why do you seem so surprised?”
“Why, I am the man who found your lost mine,”
exclaimed the miner.
“What! The man who staked out his claim there!”
cried the old man.
“Yes; I thought you were dead. We all did, and
I started out to find your mysterious mine. As you
never filed a claim to it, I thought I had a right to
stake it.”
“You are right; I never filed a claim to it. I did
not want other miners to come to the neighborhood
as soon as they found how rich it was. So I worked
it all alone. As I got the good gold out I hid it all
away.”
“Yes; go on,” said Bart Witherbee breathlessly.
“Well, I saw that some day sooner or later someone
was bound to discover it if I worked openly in it,
so I started constructing a tunnel. The mouth of it
is under that hearthstone, and the other end emerges
into the shaft of the lost mine. For many years I
have used it, and no one has ever suspected that old
Jared Fogg, the hermit who lived in this hut, had
thousands of dollars in gold. I am rich—ha—ha—I
am rich.”
The old man’s face became convulsed.
“But,” he went on, “now that I am dying—ah, I
know death when it is coming on—I have a great
wish to right a wrong I did years ago. My name was
not always Jared Fogg. It was once Jack Riggs. I
was once a bandit and a robber and did many, many
wicked things. But one weighs on my conscience
more heavily than any of the others. One night we
held up the Rio Bravo stage. There was fighting,
and I shot the stage driver and his wife, who, when
her husband fell from the box, seized the reins and
attempted to drive on. With them was their child, a
lad of three or four years. That disgusted me with
crime. I reformed from that night. I took the lad and
raised him till he was six or seven, when he was stolen
from me by a wandering circus. I have never seen
him since. If I could see him, now that he has grown
to man’s estate, and tell him that on my death bed I
beg his forgiveness for my wicked deed, I would die
happy. All these years I have thought of him. If
I only knew where he was now.”
“Would you know him again if you saw him?”
Bart Witherbee’s voice shook strangely, and several
times during the old man’s recital he had passed his
hand across his brow as if striving to recollect something.
Now his eye shone with a strange light, and
he bent forward eagerly:
“Yes, among a thousand!”
“How?”
“By a peculiar mark on his arm, where he was shot
accidentally by one of my gang in the fight following
the killing of his father.”
Bart rolled up his sleeve, and the old man gave a
terrible cry as his eyes fell on the dark-red scar the
boys had often noticed.
“Forgive——,” he cried, stumbling to his feet and
stretching out his hands as if to keep from falling.
The next moment he had fallen forward with a
crash.
He was dead.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch25
CHAPTER XXV.||A FIGHT FOR FORTUNE.
.sp 2
The sheriff of Calabazos was sitting on the stoop
outside the Government Assay Office early the next
day when he was startled by a loud clatter of hoofs
up the mountain side. He looked up from his absorbing
occupation of whittling a piece of wood, and
saw coming rattling down the trail at a breakneck
speed four horsemen. They were Noggy Wilkes,
Hank Higgins, Fred Reade and Luther Barr.
“Hullo, Chunky,” hailed the sheriff to the government
clerk, who was inside the office—a rough, clap-boarded
affair on which appeared a sign, which announced
in white letters that it was the “GOVERNMENT
ASSAY OFFICE.” “Come on out here,
Barton, here come them fellers that got here yesterday
with that thar skyscraper thing of theirn and purty
near bothered the life out of Skol Scovgen, the blacksmith,
trying to git him to make a conniption of some
kind for it.”
The young man who languidly consented to serve
Uncle Sam in the capacity of claim clerk joined him
on the porch. He also gazed interestedly at the group
of horsemen, who were now compelled to slow up by
the steepness of the trail.
“Seem ter be in quite a hurry,” he commented,
picking his teeth with a quill pick that he had acquired
on his last visit to what he was pleased to term civilization.
“Yep,” assented the sheriff, “I reckon they’ve bin
up stakin’ out a mine or suthin’. I hear they was
talking in ther hotel last night while it was rainin’ so
pesky hard about a lost mine and some chap named
Witherbee.”
“Oh, I remember that feller Witherbee,” struck in
the clerk. “Went east a while ago. I recollect that
the gossip was that he’d made quite a piece of money
on a mine or had some sort of mine hidden back in
the hills thar. I heard it was the one that belonged
to old Fogg, who disappeared.”
“Wall, ther fellers seem to have something of ther
same kind on their minds,” exclaimed the sheriff, as
the party, having now left the uneven trail, came clattering
down the road on their wiry horses.
It could now be seen that Luther Barr, who rode in
advance of the rest, carried some sort of a paper in
his hand. The arrival of the cortege had attracted
quite a crowd, who gathered about the Assay Office
as the riders came clattering up.
“Is this the Government Assay Office?” queried
Luther Barr as they drew rein and dismounted.
“Reckon so,” replied the dandified clerk with a
languid air.
“Oh, you reckon so, do you?” was the impatient
reply. “Well, kindly bestir yourself a little. I wish
to file a claim to a mine.”
“Yep—Got ther papers all made out regilar?”
“Yes, here they are. We’ve gotten them all right
and correct. I guess there’ll be no trouble about
that part of it, eh, Reade?”
“I guess not,” answered the individual addressed,
tying his horse to the hitching bar in front of the
assay office.
“All right, gentlemen,” at length remarked the
clerk, getting to his feet, “I guess if you come inside
we can fix you up.”
“Say, partner,” put in the sheriff, “yer don’t mind
my askin’ you a question, do yer?”
“Not at all,” beamed Luther Barr, who was in high
good humor, “ask a dozen.”
“Wall, is this yar mine yer goin’ ter locate the ‘Lost
Mine’ that old Jared Fogg, who disappeared, used ter
own?”
“I believe it is. Why do you ask?”
“Wall, if you’ll excuse my jay-bird curiosity, I’d
jes like to know how in thunder you ever located it.”
“That is our secret, my man,” replied the eastern
millionaire briskly. “All you need to know, and this
gentleman here, is that we have it legally located, isn’t
it?”
“Beg your pardon,” remarked the sheriff. “No
harm done?”
“Oh, none at all,” smiled Barr. “And now, I think
we’ll go in and make the deal final.”
They entered the office with the clerk, Hank Higgins
and Noggy Wilkes remaining outside.
As Barr and Reade passed into the office the former
whispered to Hank Higgins.
“Now you and Wilkes do your duty. I don’t anticipate
any interruption, but if there is any——”
The two western ruffians tapped the butts of their
Colts knowingly.
“We’ll attend to that, guv’ner,” they assured him.
Silence fell on the village street after Barr and
Reade had entered the office. The crowd outside stood
gaping in curiosity as to what could be the business
that had brought the strangers galloping in such evident
haste to the assay office. The sheriff, with a
side glance at Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes, resumed
his whittling.
Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sharp chug-chug
of an approaching automobile.
“Here comes a choo-choo cart,” remarked the sheriff,
springing to his feet and peering up the road.
“That’s what it is,” answered a man in the crowd,
“and coming like blue blazes, too.”
As he spoke, the boys’ auto swept round a wooded
curve and came tearing along toward the assay office.
In the tonneau stood Bart Witherbee, his face strained
and eager, and holding a crumpled paper in his hand.
Frank was at the wheel and the other boys were beside
their miner friend in the tonneau.
“Seem ter be in a hurry,” drawled the sheriff, as
the party swept up to the low porch, the crowd falling
back to make way for them with wondering glances.
Luther Barr’s lean face appeared at the dusty window
of the Government Office.
“A hundred dollars if you file that claim in time,”
he shouted to the astonished clerk, who thought the
old man had gone suddenly mad.
Bart Witherbee made a flying leap from the auto,
and almost before it stopped had raced up the steps.
But before he could gain the door of the assay office
he found himself looking into the muzzles of two
revolvers held by Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes.
.il id=i05 fn=illus-255.jpg w=525
.ca Bart Witherbee made a flying leap from the auto.
“Don’t come no further, pardner,” grinned Hank.
“It might be onhealthy for you.”
“Here, here; what’s all this?” growled the sheriff.
“I don’t allow no shooting in my bailiwick. Put up
them guns.”
“Let me get by, Hank Higgins,” exclaimed Bart
Witherbee angrily.
“Hey, there; what’s that name you mentioned,
partner?” asked the sheriff eagerly.
“Hank Higgins, and there’s his partner, Noggy
Wilkes,” exclaimed the miner. “The third one, Bill
Jenkins, is in jail.”
“Wall, if here ain’t a bit of Christmas luck,”
shouted the sheriff exultingly. “I want ’em both
for a dozen crimes. Here, you; you’re under arrest.
Don’t move or I’ll fire.”
But Noggy Wilkes, with a desperate leap, had
gained the side of his horse that stood, western fashion,
unhitched, with the reins lying on the horn of his
saddle. With one bound the desperado was mounted
and galloping off down the trail. The sheriff sent two
bullets after him, but both missed. Hank Higgins,
however, was not so fortunate. With a muttered:
“I guess you got me right, sheriff,” he submitted
to arrest.
In the meantime, Bart Witherbee had burst like a
whirlwind into the Government office, upsetting a
desk and spilling a bottle of ink over Luther Barr,
who had angrily intercepted him.
“Don’t file that claim to Fogg’s mine,” he shouted,
waving his papers above his head. “I’ve got a prior
one.”
“You have—where?” gasped the astonished clerk.
“File that claim,” ordered Luther Barr. “I’ll report
you to Washington if you don’t.”
“Hold your horses,” replied the clerk easily, “there
seems to be some sort of dispute here. Do you lay
claim to the mine?” he asked, turning to Witherbee.
“I sure do,” replied the miner, “and here’s my
claim—the last will and testament of Jared Fogg,
otherwise Jack Riggs. He leaves his mine and the
treasure he has secretly hoarded from it and buried
under the floor of his hut to me.”
“And who might you be?” asked the clerk eagerly.
“I am Bart Witherbee, and can easily prove it,”
replied the miner, drawing from his pocket a number
of papers.
The clerk quickly perused them and also the will.
“What time did you stake the mine?” he asked,
suddenly turning to Luther Barr.
“At daylight to-day,” replied the millionaire. “I
guess we win.”
“I guess not,” snapped back Witherbee. “Old man
Fogg died shortly after midnight, as I can easily
prove, and therefore the will became operative at that
time.”
“I see you know some law,” remarked the clerk.
“I guess, Mr. Barr, your claim is not valid.”
But Barr, raging furiously, had gone.
Outside the door he saw the boys. Beside himself
with rage, he shook his fist at them. His rage was too
intense to permit him to speak. The sheriff and
everybody in the crowd insisted on shaking hands
with Bart Witherbee and hearing again and again his
strange story and the details of how the will had been
found hidden in the hut. At last, however, accompanied
by the sheriff, whose duty it was in that rough
community to look after old Fogg’s, or Jack Riggs’
body, the boys and their miner friend managed to
tear themselves away and sped back to the hermit’s
hut in their auto. They found everything as they had
left it, and, on tearing up the floor, according to the
instructions left in the old man’s will, they found that
a huge pit had been dug there, which was filled to the
brim with ore which the old miser had painstakingly
carried through his tunnel from his mine. A rough
estimate valued it at $350,000.
“How do you suppose Luther Barr ever managed
to locate the mine?” asked Frank wonderingly.
“That puzzled me, too, at first,” said the sheriff,
“but now, since I have found that Hank Higgins and
Noggy Wilkes knew Wild Bill Jenkins, it is a mystery
no longer. Wild Bill boasted some time ago that he
knew where the mine was, but he was forced to become
a fugitive from justice before he had time to file
any claim to it.”
Suddenly the voice of Billy Barnes, who had wandered
out onto the trail with a rifle, was borne to their
ears:
“Boys! Boys! Come quick!” he cried. There was
urgent entreaty in his tone.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch26
CHAPTER XXVI.||THE SAND STORM.
.sp 2
Rushing out in the direction of the cries, the boys
found Billy struggling in the grasp of Fred Reade,
Luther Barr, and Slade, while the red-headed mechanic
was striking at the aeroplane with a big
wrench.
“There! If we can’t fly any more, no more can
you,” he exclaimed viciously, making a savage
smash at the engine. There was a sound of splintering
metal.
“Consarn ’em, they’re trying to bust up our aeroplane,”
yelled Bart Witherbee, making a dash at the
group.
As they saw the boys and their companions coming
the men took to their heels, Reade alone looking
back to shout out:
“Now you can’t fly, either. You’re out of the race.”
This the boys construed to mean that the Slade
aeroplane was too badly crippled to fly. And so they
afterwards learned. The engine had developed a serious
flaw, and one of the cylinders was cracked from
top to bottom. In the part of the country in which
they were it would, of course, have taken weeks to get
a new engine.
“Shall we chase them?” asked Harry.
“No, it would be useless. Hark! they’re in their
auto now, and would be away ahead of us by the time
we got after them,” rejoined Frank.
The sound of an auto’s exhaust rapidly growing
fainter reached their ears. It was the last they saw
of Luther Barr and his gang, for that night they left
Calabazos and making their way to the railroad took
a train east. The skeleton of Slade’s unlucky aeroplane
still remains in the little settlement, and greatly
puzzles visitors there, some of whom think it is the
framework of some extinct animal.
Billy Barnes soon told how, while shooting in the
woods, he had heard an auto coming up the trail, and
suspecting some mischief had hastened to the spot
where the aeroplane had been left. He found his
surmise correct when Barr and his companions suddenly
emerged from the woods and began their attempt
to wreck the craft. Before Billy, who indignantly
sprang forward, could seize the arm of the
vandal with the wrench, he had been seized. Luckily
he had time to cry out before they thought of stopping
him, and so the aeroplane was saved from serious
damage. It was found, in fact, that the blow aimed
at it had done no worse harm than to splinter a spark
plug, which was soon replaced.
That afternoon the boys, leaving Bart Witherbee
and the sheriff to make an inventory of the dead
miner’s effects and to explore the tunnel, which was
found to be a wonderful piece of work, the boys motored
down to the settlement and sent out telegrams
seeking information of the whereabouts of the dirigible.
It was not till late evening that they received
from Doolittle, a small town about forty miles from
Calabazos, information that the big gas-lifted craft
had laid up there for repairs, but was ready to start
early the next day.
To the boys who had feared that the rival must
have been almost in San Francisco by that time this
was cheering news, and the Golden Eagle’s planes
were hurriedly readjusted, as she was put in shape
for a continuation of her trip. Early the next day the
start was made. Bart Witherbee was left behind at
his mine, in which he had insisted on the boys, much
against their will, each taking a share. Old Mr. Joyce
also received a large enough portion of the general
good luck to secure him from want and give him ample
leisure to work out his queer inventions. The Witherbee
mine—he calls it the Aeroplane—is now one of
the most famous in the west.
The boys had determined to shape their course by
Doolittle, as it was on their direct path westward, and
they wished also to get out of the mountainous region
of the foothills. As Doolittle came in sight they
had an opportunity to view their rival for the first
time in many days. Her big red gas bag showed like
a bright crimson flower above the sober gray of the
prairie town. That their rivals had sighted them
was soon made evident by the fact that a flag was
run up on the single staff the town possessed and the
citizens wheeled out a rusty old cannon and began
firing it like mad. When the boys were within a mile
of the town they made ready to drop messages which,
as they sailed above, they cast down. They could see
the people scrambling furiously for them.
“I hope they leave enough of them to send back
home,” laughed Harry as they saw the wild struggle.
That day was to be a memorable one for the town
of Doolittle. As the aeroplane passed above it, the
faithful escorting auto not far behind, the big dirigible
also was shot into the air.
Mr. McArthur from his deck waved a greeting to
the boys and hailed them through a megaphone.
“Glad to see you,” he hailed. “Hurray, for
’Frisco!”
All that afternoon the two ships sailed along in
company, the boys’ aeroplane slightly in the lead.
As the sun sank lower a big bank of clouds arose toward
the north and the sun glowed with a peculiar
red light.
A light breeze also sprang up, but instead of being
cooling it was as hot as if it had blown from an oven
door.
“We’re in for a storm,” remarked Frank, “or I’m
very much mistaken.”
“What, a regular rain and wind storm?” asked
Harry. “I thought they only had those in the hills
in this part of the country.”
“They have a worse thing than that,” said Frank
apprehensively, “a sand storm, and that’s what may
be coming.”
“McArthur doesn’t seem to be worrying,” remarked
Harry, glancing up at the dirigible, which was
sailing slightly above them.
“No,” said Frank, “that’s a fact. Maybe I am
mistaken, after all. Anyhow, we’ll keep on as long
as he does.”
But half an hour later the boys wished they had
alighted. The wind came in sharp, hot puffs from
the north, and had it not been for the Joyce gyroscopic
balancer they carried, the ship would have been in
hard straits. As it was, when Frank wished to make
a landing he dared not risk it. The air, too, grew so
thick that he could not see the earth beneath them.
Stinging particles of sand drove into their eyes,
blinding them and gritting between their teeth. The
wind grew stronger, and as it did so the air grew
black as night with the sand with which it was impregnated.
So dark was it, in fact, that when night came and
found them still in the air, unable to make a landing,
there did not seem to be any perceptible difference.
The aeroplane drove rigidly before the howling
wind. Her speed was terrific. Neither boy spoke
after their first expressions of alarm, but devoted their
entire attentions to keeping the aeroplane from capsizing.
“Keep cool, Harry,” said Frank at length. “We
may come out of it all right.”
“Where are we being driven?” asked the other lad.
“To the south at a terrific pace, too. If the gasolene
holds out we may manage to live out the storm,
but I don’t know where we will be driven to.”
“What lies to the south of us?” asked Harry, after
another long pause, during which the storm-stressed
aeroplane made several sickening lurches, always recovering
herself in time, however, thanks to the gyroscope.
“Why, about as desolate a country as can be imagined.
Nothing but arid wastes and cactus.”
“It will be a bad lookout, then, if we have to land
there.”
“It certainly will,” was the laconic response.
On and on through the darkness drove the storm-tossed
aeroplane, carrying her two young navigators
into the unknown.
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch27
CHAPTER XXVII.||WINNING THE PRIZE.—Conclusion.
.sp 2
It was at four o’clock in the morning by the auto
clock affixed to the chassis that Frank noticed the
wind begin to drop. At the same time the stinging of
the sand decreased perceptibly. The storm was waning.
He awakened Harry, who had fallen into a troubled
doze, and gave him the cheering news. But even if
the storm had blown itself out with the coming of
daylight there was not much else to cheer the boys’
hearts, for as it grew lighter and the air cleared and
they found themselves able to make out what was
beneath them, Harry uttered an exclamation of dismay:
“Look there!” he shouted, pointing downward.
The aeroplane was traveling over a gray waste
which Frank at once realized was the sea. The question
was: Was it the open ocean or the Gulf of California?
It did not seem possible it could be the Pacific
as, even at the terrific pace they had been carried
along in the preceding twelve hours, it seemed hardly
possible that they could have been blown across the
long peninsula of Lower California.
On either hand, they could make out, as the light
grew stronger, a thin, faint line of coast, and therefore
Frank’s surmise was proven correct. The boys decided
to make for the land on their left, as Frank had
heard that the natives of the peninsula itself were little
better than savages, and not overpleased to see
strangers. The land to the left on the contrary must
be Mexico, where they could probably find a railroad
or at least the means of transportation to one.
It was afternoon when they drew near to the coast.
Not far inland they could see among the barren hills,
dotted here and there with cattle, a small village. It
was a mere huddle of roofs, but at least it meant food
and shelter, and the boys relied on being able to find
a telegraph station from which they could send out
a message to relieve the anxiety of the friends they
knew must be extremely concerned for their safety by
this time.
Suddenly as the outlines of the melancholy-looking
hills grew plainer and plainer the engine, which had
been working badly, gave symptoms of stopping altogether.
The boys exchanged worried looks. Beneath them
was an expanse of water without a boat on its surface,
and though both of them were strong swimmers, they
could not dream of reaching the shore should their
aeroplane plunge downward.
It was a serious situation.
Harry tinkered with the engine, and it began to
run a little better for a short time, but soon began to
gasp and cough, as if in mortal distress.
“What can be the matter with it?” puzzled Harry.
“Everything, ignition, lubrication and all seems to be
all right.”
“I have it,” suddenly cried Frank.
“What is it?”
“The gasolene is running out!”
Sure enough there was hardly more than a few
spoonfuls of the fuel left.
“There’s some alcohol in the locker. We had it
for the stove. Let’s try that,” suggested Harry.
The alcohol was dumped into the tank and gave
them a little more fuel, but the shore still looked far
away.
Lower and lower sagged the aeroplane under her
decreased speed, till as they reached the shore it
seemed that she was hardly skimming the waves, but
she bravely struggled on, and as the engine gave a
final gasp and came to an abrupt stop, the Golden
Eagle settled down on a sandy beach.
“Well, here we are,” said Frank, “and none too
soon.”
“Now, let’s go and see what sort of folks they are
in that village,” said Harry. “I’m famished, and my
mouth is as parched as a bit of dried orange peel.”
“Same here,” said Frank, as the boys set out for
the interior which was hidden from them by sand
dunes, topped with a sort of sharp bladed grass that
cut like a knife.
The village they found to be a mere collection of
shacks, with pigs roaming about its streets, and skinny
cattle poking their noses into the house doors. They
were received hospitably enough, however, and although
they could not talk Spanish, managed to make
their wants understood, more especially when they
showed some gold.
The wonder of the villagers knew no bounds when,
after they had refreshed themselves, the boys showed
them the aeroplane and pointed to the sky. The
Mexicans were too polite to say so, but it was clear
that they thought the boys were fabricators, though
how they imagined they had landed in their village
was a matter of speculation.
That night they managed to secure a cart and, having
packed the Golden Eagle, set out for the railroad,
which the Mexicans assured them was “far, far away,”
as a matter of fact, it was not more than sixty miles,
and the next day, late in the evening, two very dusty,
very ragged, very tired boys got out of the plodding
ox cart at Torres, a small town on the Sonora Railroad,
and almost frightened the native operator to
death by their vehement demands to file messages.
“To-morrow, to-morrow,” he kept saying, but the
talisman of a good, big tip kept him at work.
In the meantime the auto had gone as far adrift in
the sand storm as the boys, very nearly, and the state
of mind of its occupants can be imagined when they
found after the storm had cleared that they had traveled
miles in the wrong direction and were near to
Gila Bend on the Southern Pacific Railway, with no
more idea as to what had become of their young companions
than they had of the direction in which the
aeroplane had been blown.
Telegrams were sent out broadcast by Billy and
Lathrop, but no news was had of the Golden Eagle.
Lathrop suggested sending word east of the boys’
plight, but Billy overruled this.
“They may turn up all right,” he said, “and if they
do, we shall have alarmed their parents for nothing.”
The next day, however, while Frank and Harry
were plodding across Mexico in their ox cart, Billy
became so anxious that he sent word to the Planet,
asking them to notify him at once if word was heard
of the boys, as he knew that they would wire the
paper as soon as they landed anywhere. No word had
been received by the paper, however, and it was a
gloomy party that sat on the porch of the little hotel
at Gila Bend that afternoon and evening. After a
troubled sleep Billy emerged onto the street in the
early morning and was met by a ragged station agent.
“Be your name Barnes?” he asked.
“That’s me,” said Billy, wondering what the man
could want.
“Then I’ve got a message for yer. It come late
last night, but I didn’t want to wake yer.”
“And you’ve been holding it all this time?” indignantly
demanded Billy, guessing at once that it was
news.
“Wall, yer wanted yer sleep, didn’t ye?” demanded
the man.
Eagerly Billy tore the envelope open. It was from
Mr. Stowe.
.sp 1
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“Great news. Boys safe. Win the prize for longest
flight. Dirigible smashed in storm near Parkerville,
Arizona. McArthur and crew safe. Congratulations.
.rj
Stowe.“
.ll
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There is little more to tell. My readers can imagine
for themselves the scene when two days later
the boys met at Tucson. Over a merry meal they
“fought their battles o’er again,” and discussed every
strange adventure of their record flight a dozen times.
Their parents had been notified of their safety, and
were to meet them in Los Angeles.
“Well, this trip certainly has panned out,” said
Frank, as the subject of Bart Witherbee and his mine
came up.
“And here we are, all together, safe and sound.
At one time I thought we were goners sure,” remarked
Harry.
“One time!” exclaimed Billy with a laugh. “A
dozen at least.”
“I’d like to start out on another trip to-morrow,”
exclaimed Lathrop enthusiastically.
“I’d make some new inventions for it,” said Mr.
Joyce.
“Here, too,” cried Billy. “Do you think we will
have any more adventures?”
“Sure to,” said Frank.
The boys did, and sooner than they expected to.
As they were talking there came a rap at the door.
“Telegram from Captain Robert Hazzard for Mr.
Chester,” said a grinning bell boy.
“Captain Hazzard?” said Harry, puzzled.
“Oh, I remember now!” exclaimed Frank as he
glanced over the message. “It’s that army officer who
was chasing the Indians, and who spoke about the
South Pole. I suppose he got our address from the
papers.”
“What does he say?” demanded Billy.
“Look here,” cried Frank enthusiastically. “What
do you think of that?”
.pb
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BOY AVIATORS’ SERIES
By Captain Wilbur Lawton
Absolutely Modern Stories for Boys
Cloth Bound. Price, 50c per volume
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.nf c
The Boy Aviators on Secret Service
Or, Working With Wireless
.nf-
.ti +2
In this live-wire narrative of peril and adventure,
laid in the Everglades of Florida, the spunky Chester
Boys and their interesting chums, including Ben Stubbs,
the maroon, encounter exciting experiences on Uncle
Sam’s service in a novel field. One must read this
vivid, enthralling story of incident, hardship and pluck
to get an idea of the almost limitless possibilities of
the two greatest inventions of modern times—the aeroplane
and wireless telegraphy. While gripping and
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the same time instructive and uplifting. As those
readers who have already made friends with Frank and
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BOY AVIATORS’ SERIES
By Captain Wilbur Lawton
Absolutely Modern Stories for Boys
Cloth Bound. Price, 50c per volume
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The Boy Aviators’ Polar Dash
Or, Facing Death in the Antarctic
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If you were to hear that two boys, accompanying a South
Polar expedition in charge of the aeronautic department,
were to penetrate the Antarctic regions—hitherto only
attained by a few daring explorers—you would feel interested,
wouldn’t you? Well, in Captain Lawton’s latest
book, concerning his Boy Aviators, you can not only read
absorbing adventure in the regions south of the eightieth
parallel, but absorb much useful information as well.
Captain Lawton introduces—besides the original characters
of the heroes—a new creation in the person of Professor
Simeon Sandburr, a patient seeker for polar insects.
The professor’s adventures in his quest are the
cause of much merriment, and lead once or twice to
serious predicaments. In a volume so packed with incident
and peril from cover to cover—relieved with laughable
mishaps to the professor—it is difficult to single out any
one feature; still, a recent reader of it wrote the publishers
an enthusiastic letter the other day, saying: “The
episodes above the Great Barrier are thrilling, the attack
of the condors in Patagonia made me hold my breath,
the—but what’s the use? The Polar Dash, to my mind,
is an even more entrancing book than Captain Lawton’s
previous efforts, and that’s saying a good deal. The aviation
features and their technical correctness are by no
means the least attractive features of this up-to-date
creditable volume.”
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Sold by Booksellers Everywhere
HURST & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK
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Log Cabin To White House Series
A famous series of books, formerly sold at $2.00 per copy, are
now popularized by reducing the price less than half. The lives
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A new book by Edward S. Ellis—“From Ranch to White House”—is a
life of Theodore Roosevelt, while the author of the others,
William M. Thayer, is a celebrated biographer.
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FROM RANCH TO WHITE HOUSE; Life of Theodore Roosevelt.
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FROM TANNERY TO WHITE HOUSE; Life of Ulysses S. Grant.
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SUCCESS AND ITS ACHIEVERS.
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TACT, PUSH AND PRINCIPLE.
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FROM COTTAGE TO CASTLE; The Story of Gutenberg, Inventor of Printing. By Mrs. E. C. Pearson.
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CAPITAL FOR WORKING BOYS. By Mrs. Julia E. M’Conaughy.
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Price, postpaid, for any of the above ten books, 75c.
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HURST & CO., Publishers, NEW YORK
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BIOGRAPHICAL LIBRARY
Of the Lives of Great Men
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A limited line comprising subjects pertaining to the careers of
men who have helped to mould the world’s history. A library is
incomplete without the entire set.
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Benjamin Franklin, Life of—American Statesman and Discoverer of Electricity.
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Oliver Optic Books
Few boys are alive to-day who have not read some of the writings
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ALL ABOARD; or, Life on the Lake.
BOAT CLUB; or, The Bunkers of Rippleton.
BRAVE OLD SALT; or, Life on the Quarter Deck.
DO SOMETHINGS; a Story for Little Folks.
FIGHTING JOE; or, The Fortunes of a Staff Officer.
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