CHAPTER XVII
A MESSAGE FROM THE SKY
For a time it looked as if the Bertha must fall far short of the summit and drop to the jagged rocks below. There was nothing whatever the boys could do. The song of the motors had almost ceased, and they understood that through some mischance the gasoline tank had become empty. The situation was a critical one.
The angle at which the flying machine was descending, however, included the summit to which the boys were directing her. In a few moments she landed at the top, and almost rolled down the opposite slope before the momentum could be checked.
Ben instantly ran to the tanks and found them empty. He called to Carl, and the two made a close examination of other portions of the machine. There was nothing wrong anywhere except that the tanks were dry!
Ben pointed to the drain cock at the bottom and found that it had been turned about half-way. That explained the situation.
“What surprises me,” he said, “is that we never noticed the leak. Why, we should have been able to smell the wasting gasoline before we left the camp. I don’t understand why we didn’t.”
“That’s easy,” explained Carl. “We were cleaning up the machines this morning, oiling and shifting a little gasoline from one car to the other, and so we never noted the additional evaporation.”
“I’m sure I never turned that cock when I was working over the machine!” declared Ben. “And I think I’m the only one who worked around the tanks.”
“Look here,” exclaimed Carl, a sudden suspicion coming into his face, “you remember the Chinaman who came out from under the planes and consumed about a dollar’s worth of groceries!”
Ben stared at his chum for a moment and then dropped down on the ground. His face was hard and set.
“That’s it!” he cried angrily. “That’s just it! The Chink ran our perfectly good gasoline into the ground and then sat down at our hospitable board. I only wish I had him here right by the pigtail!”
“In that case,” suggested Carl, “I don’t think he’d want another square meal in about three months. His greatest need would be a hospital.”
“There’s no doubt of that!” replied Ben. “Why, it was actually murder to do what that fellow did! I had an idea while he was eating that he didn’t act exactly like a man accustomed to eating with chopsticks. I’ve seen men at Sherry’s who didn’t have any better table manners than he had. That fellow was a fraud!”
While the boys were exclaiming over the loss of their gasoline and wondering how they were ever going to get the Bertha out of the position in which she now lay, Carl threw a cushion from one of the seats and sat down upon it, with the remark that it made the rock some softer.
Ben stepped forward and drew a folded slip of paper from the under side of the cushion and held it up.
“Did you leave that there?” he asked.
Carl shook his head wonderingly.
“Of course not,” he replied. “I don’t drop any letters in the post-office when I can communicate verbally with the man I want to advise with. Perhaps Jimmie or Kit left it there.”
“Well, the way to find out about it is to open it,” suggested Ben, “so here goes! There certainly isn’t much of it.”
The boy opened the note and read aloud for the benefit of his chum, who stood by eager-eyed and excited.
“‘Don’t leave this place with the machine. The gasoline is out, or nearly so.’”
“Is it written in Chinese?” asked Carl with a frown.
“Chinese, nothing!” exclaimed Ben. “It’s good honest English, and written in a pretty good hand at that!”
“Then that Chink wasn’t a Chink at all!” cried Carl.
“There are Chinamen who can read and write English,” suggested Ben.
“But this fellow pretended that he couldn’t even understand English.”
“I’d give a heap to know something about this puzzle,” Ben declared. “We find this fellow tied up in a smugglers’ cave one night, and the next morning we find him snooping about our camp, consuming our provisions and wasting our gasoline. That was a treacherous trick for him to play on us! I hope we’ll come across him some other day.”
“The question before the house right now,” Carl explained, “is how we’re going to get off this bald-headed old peak. We might be able to tumble down into one of the valleys below, but we wouldn’t be any better off there than we are here. Besides,” he went on, “our making our way down wouldn’t help us any with the machine.”
“If Jimmie would only show up with the Louise, now, we might borrow enough gasoline to get us back to level ground again. And still,” Ben went on, “we wouldn’t have fuel enough to do much racing until the tanks were filled. It’s a rotten scrape we’re in, and that’s no fairy tale.”
“Here’s a problem for you to solve when you get through with all the others,” grinned Carl. “I want you to tell me why that Chink wasted our gasoline, and then warned us not to use the machine.”
“I give it up!” declared Ben. “There’s no use of trying to guess it out! It’s just another little old mystery!”
“And why did he pretend that he couldn’t understand English?” persisted Carl. “Was that in order that he might hear what we were talking about without our suspecting that he was listening with the intention of betraying us? It seems to me that that must be it.”
“I tell you I don’t know!” almost shouted Ben, “and I’m not going to puzzle over the matter any longer. Here we are up on a bald old peak without any show of ever getting our machine down to the ground again, and that’s enough for me to brood over for the time being.”
“This is a beautiful view from this mountain!” suggested Carl, with a grin. “Note the sunlight on the valleys below.”
“Aw, dry up!” cried Ben. “What’s the use of rubbing it in?”
“But,” urged Carl, “just think of the situation Noah was in when he landed his Ark on top of a mountain!”
Ben threw a pebble at his chum and turned moodily away.
“I wouldn’t have your disposition for a barrel of gasoline!” laughed Carl.
“I wish I could trade my disposition for a barrel of gasoline,” grinned Ben. “That might help some.”
“Well,” Carl said rather excitedly, in a moment, “you may keep your precious disposition, for here comes our barrel of gasoline!”
“You must have been reading a dream book!” exclaimed Ben.
“Honest!” shouted Carl. “If you’ll take a squint up there to the north, you’ll see the Ann come poking back! If you don’t believe that is the Ann with Havens on board, just observe the signals in sight.”
“I guess that’s the Ann all right,” Ben returned. “I hope she’s got full tanks of fuel. We need a lot right now.”
The great flying machine came winging south at a great rate of speed, and finally, after circling the peak several times, volplaned down to the Bertha. The boys sprang forward to greet Havens, but drew back in a moment for the aviator was a man they had never seen before.
The machine was the Ann, sure enough but she was in the hands of two men who were total strangers to the boys. They were slender, dark fellows, with oblong eyes and low foreheads.
“The Bertha?” asked one of the men in almost perfect English, stepping close to the machine. “You seem to have met with an accident.”
“It’s the Bertha all right,” Ben answered, “and we’re out of gasoline.”
“And where is the Louise?” asked the other.
“Off on a scout somewhere,” was the indefinite reply.
“That’s unfortunate,” the other began, “for we are instructed by Mr. Havens to notify you all to turn back to New York at once.”
“What’s the meaning of that?” demanded Carl.
“Mr. Havens didn’t take me into his confidence to any great extent,” was the reply, “but I understood from what he said that you were no longer needed in this section. Is there any way you can signal to the Louise?”
Now Ben did not believe the man to be speaking the truth. In the first place, Havens would never have sent an entire stranger in the Ann. In the second place, Phillips, one of the murderers, had been seen at liberty in that district that very morning, so the hunt was still on!
The natural result of this reasoning was the belief on the part of the boy that the Ann had been stolen.
“We have no means of reaching the Louise,” Ben replied after studying the matter over for a moment. “In fact Jimmie went away with her without our knowledge or consent. We don’t know where he is.”
While answering in this manner, a third reason for disbelieving the statement of the Japanese, for such the men appeared to be, was that Jimmie had been chased desperately by the machine which they had seen on the coast during the night. The boy drew away suspiciously.
“If you don’t mind,” the Japanese said then, “we’ll loan you gasoline enough to keep you in motion until the tanks can be filled.”
“That’s just what I was about to propose!” exclaimed Ben.
“Where are you going in the Ann?” asked Carl.
“After fitting you out,” was the reply, “we are going to find the other machine, deliver our message, and turn back east.”
“Supply us with fuel,” Ben suggested, “and we’ll go with you in search of Jimmie. Perhaps we can help you find him.”
The two men who had arrived in the Ann conferred together for a few moments, and then one of them began supplying the tanks of the Bertha with gasoline. The boys stood by in a brown study as to what they ought to do next. The Japanese eyed them keenly.
“We want to stay right by the machine, so they won’t hop up and run away!” Carl whispered to Ben.
“If they do, I’ll send a bullet after them!” Ben whispered back.
While the boys talked at one side of the Bertha and the two Japs engaged in conversation on the other side, an aeroplane shot into view, coming swiftly from the west.
“I guess that’s Jimmie now,” suggested Ben turning to the Japs. “In that case you can deliver your message, and we’ll all go east together.”
As the reader will understand it was by no means the intention of the boys to follow the instructions given by the Japs. They had been supplied with gasoline enough to last for several hours, and their purpose now was to get out of the company of the strangers as soon as possible.
There was an indefinite resolve at the back of Ben’s brain to get out of the company of the Japs by leaving them stranded on the summit! It was a daring thought, but the boy was actually considering the possibility of getting away in the Ann while Carl navigated the Bertha.
If the aeroplane now approaching proved to be the Louise, he thought, the trick might be turned with the assistance of Jimmie and Kit.
Presently Carl leaned forward and whispered in his chum’s ear:
“That isn’t the Louise by a long shot!”
“How do you know?” demanded Ben.
“Because of the way she carries herself,” returned Carl, speaking in a low whisper, thereby bringing two pair of suspicious eyes in his direction. “That’s what we call the third machine!” he added.
“You can run the Ann, can’t you?” asked Ben.
“You bet I can!” was the reply.
“Then get ready to make a jump for the seat!” whispered Ben. “We’ve just got to recover the stolen machine and get away from these Japs. And we’ve got to do it before that other machine gets here, too,” he went on, “because it’s pears to pumpkins that the man aboard of her is the blond brute who tried to blow up the Louise and the Bertha near St. Louis!”
“I’d like to know where Havens is!” whispered Carl.
“We haven’t got time to consider that,” suggested Ben. “When that aeroplane gets a little closer, these two fellows will be watching her and perhaps signaling. That will be the time for us to act. Jump on the Ann and press the button and I’ll do the same with the Bertha. We may get dumped down the mountainside, or we may catch a couple of bullets, but anything is better than being tricked by these Japs and losing our machine and Havens’, too! Watch for the chance.”
The moment for action came almost immediately. The Japs ran to the edge of the level space and flung their arms wildly into the air. At the same instant, the boys sprang to seats on the two machines and pushed the levers which controlled the starters.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RACE
Jimmie’s game of tag developed into such a flying machine race as has rarely been witnessed. The machines were in superb condition, and each aviator was determined to end the contest satisfactorily to himself. The driver of the third machine sought only the capture or destruction of the Louise.
On the other hand, Jimmie’s only motive was, as he had expressed himself to Kit before leaving, to keep his opponent amused so that he might not communicate to the outlaws any information concerning the net which had been set for their capture.
The fact that the third machine followed the Louise so savagely, so persistently, convinced the boys that the driver had not as yet communicated with Phillips or Mendosa. In fact, one question asked by Phillips of Kit that morning demonstrated that the outlaws had not yet been found.
Jimmie headed at first straight for the ocean. There was exhilaration in the swift passage over the white-capped waves below. He swung over the headland from which the first signal light had been seen on the previous evening.
Then he turned straight south and passed the second promontory. He saw that the schooner which had been seen the night before still lay at anchor, and that her deck was crowded with humanity.
“Chinks!” he thought. “Waiting to be taken to the land of promise!”
The same thought occurred to Kit, and the boy pointed downward as they cut the air above the deck.
“Smugglers!” the boy said.
Jimmie heard the word only faintly and nodded. Back from the ocean, they swung almost to the right of way of the Southern Pacific railroad. Below them opened great gorges in which a city might be hidden. There were immense forests which seemed of sufficient size to furnish a world in fuel for a thousand years. Here and there small rivulets trickled down the rugged mountainsides and joined larger streams, trailing off into the interior. It was like viewing a magic panorama.
The exciting race continued until long after noon. The Louise was by far the swifter machine of the two, and so the pursuer was obliged to resort to every trick known to aviators in order to keep her in view.
The strain on the rear aeroplane was much greater than that on the Louise. The result of this was that the latter machine lasted longer in the swift competition. About the middle of the afternoon, she began moving away from her pursuer and soon lost sight of her entirely.
Then Jimmie, after dropping down behind a summit, reduced speed in order to exchange ideas with his companion.
“Did you see where she went, Kit?” he asked.
“She just lagged behind!” was the reply.
“There may be some trick about it!” suggested Jimmie.
“If you leave it to me,” Kit went on, “there’s something the matter with her spark plug. I noticed her limping along half an hour before we lost sight of her.”
“In that case,” Jimmie explained, “he’ll have to make a landing in order to repair the damage, and, if he hasn’t got an extra plug with him, he can’t repair it at all.”
“What does the situation suggest to you?” asked Kit with a laugh.
“Dinner-time!” replied Jimmie.
“That’s the idea!” Kit responded.
“And we may as well go over into the valley we left this morning,” Jimmie went on, “because the boys will be wondering what has become of us.”
“It was a bad thing to do, running off like that!” exclaimed Kit.
“Well,” Jimmie retorted, “we had to keep that other fellow amused, didn’t we? That was one of the outlaws we’re after who was walking around in a forest ranger’s uniform, within a mile or two of where the fellow lay, and there was the possibility that he would blunder on the machine and spoil our game. We just had to get the aeroplane away.”
“Of course the outlaw saw the chase,” suggested Kit.
“I don’t doubt it,” answered Jimmie.
Flying low so as not to be seen unless the pursuer should rise at a great altitude, Jimmie made his way to the little green bowl of a valley which had been deserted by Ben and Carl only a short time before.
Scarcely believing his senses, the boy brought the Louise to the ground and anxiously looked for some message, for it seemed highly improbable to him that the boys would have gone away without indicating their destination. Of course he found nothing of the kind.
The only thing discovered about the little camp which in any way accounted for the absence of the Bertha was quite a large heap of table scraps. Jimmie pointed to the pile with a grin.
“They’ve had to go out after grub,” he explained. “I’ll just bet they had company for dinner and ate up everything we had. Then they went off to some little town on the Southern Pacific railroad to buy provisions. Wonder they wouldn’t leave some word!” he added impatiently.
“Leave some word just like you did!” taunted Kit.
“Well,” Jimmie said in an apologetic tone, “I expected to be back right off and I didn’t want to wake them up!”
“Perhaps they expected to be back right off, too!” laughed Kit.
“I’ll just tell you what I’m going to do right now!” Jimmie exclaimed. “I’m going up in the woods and get a bear steak. The meat will be all right yet, won’t it?”
“I should say not!” replied Kit. “I know enough about hunting to know that that bear meat will be smelling like a slaughter house right now!”
“Anyhow,” Jimmie insisted, “I’m going up and see about it!”
Leaving Kit sitting by the machine, the boy hastened up to the place where the bear had been shot and stopped beside a heap of fur which lay on the ground at the foot of the tree. He gave the bearskin a little kick with his foot and then turned his eyes in the direction of the thicket. There was no sign of the carcass. The skin had been deftly removed, and nothing but such parts as were uneatable remained.
Mournfully pressing his hands to the waistband of his trousers, the boy set his face toward the camp and sat down by Kit without a word.
“Where’s your bear meat?” asked Kit with a grin. “Why didn’t you bring back a lot of it? You didn’t eat it raw, did you?”
“It’s gone!” answered Jimmie.
“Gone stale?” asked Kit.
“Gone away!” grunted the other.
“Well, who took it away?”
“Search me,” was the answer. “There’s about a ton of perfectly good bear meat all gone to waste!” he continued.
While the boys discussed the chances of the meat having been taken care of by their chums, the thicket on the east wall of the bowl opened and the man Kit had seen in the morning appeared. He approached the camp openly and frankly, extending in one hand a great slice of bear meat. Before he reached the place where the boys sat gazing with surprised glances in his direction, the thicket parted again and a taller, slighter, darker man made his appearance.
The man in the uniform of a forest ranger stooped for a moment, spoke to the other in low tones, and then the two came on together. As Jimmie afterwards described the situation, you could have knocked his head off with a match at that moment. Kit was equally excited, and Jimmie declares to this day that the boy turned the color of milk.
The boys knew who their guests were. One was Phillips and one was Mendosa! These were the outlaws they had journeyed across the continent in the currents of the air to bring to punishment!
If speech had been required of the two lads at that moment it would have been impossible for them to respond. The faces of the outlaws, however, were friendly, and directly the nerve of the boys began to assert itself. Jimmie half arose and then dropped back again.
“Never mind getting up,” Phillips said. “I saw you up in the thicket a few moments ago, looking after the bear I killed this morning. You seemed to me to be hungry for steak, and so I brought you down a few pounds.”
“That’s mighty good of you!” Jimmie managed to say.
“Oh, we couldn’t eat a whole bear!” laughed Mendosa.
“I think I could, right this minute,” Jimmie responded, more courageously. “I’ve been out all day in the Louise, and I’m so empty that I’d collapse if it wasn’t for the wind I brought down with me.”
“I see no reason why you shouldn’t eat, then,” Phillips answered. “You can build a fire and have this steak broiling in a very short time.”
“Will you stay and help us eat it?” asked Jimmie.
Phillips glanced toward Mendoza, and the latter nodded.
“We shall be glad to,” answered the outlaw. “But where are the others?” he went on. “I thought there were four of you and two machines.”
“The others have gone out for exercise!” laughed Kit.
Jimmie’s one purpose now was to keep the outlaws in his company until the return of his chums. They were desperate men, and he had no notion of attempting their capture with only Kit to help.
It goes without saying, then, that he was remarkably slow in gathering fuel for the fire, remarkably slow in broiling the steak, and slower still in preparing the coffee. It seemed to him that the outlaws regarded his dilatory movements impatiently.
The boy rightly concluded that they were about half starved for a warm meal. Hiding for days as they had been in the mountains, it was more than probable that they had not risked their liberty by building a fire.
While the steak was broiling, an idea came to Jimmie which he was not slow to carry out. Glancing at the ranger uniform of Phillips, he asked quite innocently:
“Are you after the fake ranger, too?”
Phillips remained perfectly calm, but Mendosa gave a quick start.
“What do you mean by that?” the former asked, easily.
“Why,” Jimmie answered, drawing extensively on his imagination, “we met a flying machine man when we went out this morning and he chased us.”
“I saw something of the race,” Phillips smiled. “I was just going to ask you about that. Why did he chase you?”
“I guess he thought we were trespassing on government land,” the boy replied. “After he overtook us he asked all sorts of questions about the people we had met in the mountains. After a while, he said that he was the chief ranger from San Francisco, and that he was here in search of men who are making trouble for the government by pretending to be rangers. He said he had other machines coming, and that the district would be patrolled until the frauds were arrested.”
Phillips and Mendoza exchanged significant glances.
“Yes,” the former said, “I had advices three days ago that the man was coming. That’s why I asked the little fellow this morning if he had seen a third machine. I hoped to see the chief ranger before night.”
Jimmie was so full of amusement at the ease with which Phillips had fallen for the manufactured story that it was with difficulty that he restrained a chuckle. The success of the story surprised him not a little.
He believed now that the outlaws would shun any man who might approach them in an aeroplane, and that the chance for a meeting between the outlaws and their allies was now nothing at all.
“Yes,” Jimmie said shortly, keeping his face straight by a great effort, “the chief said he expected to meet every ranger in the forest within a day or two. If you go a few miles farther south you may run across him to-night. He said he had failed to find any one in this region, and would not return here for a couple of days.”
“Oh, my, oh, my!” thought Kit, walking away from the fire in order to conceal his amusement, “if Jimmie isn’t fixing it so the outlaws will hang right around here until we can get help.”
Phillips and Mendosa conversed together for a long time in low tones and then the former said:
“We are pretty tired, so we won’t tramp after the chief to-night. To-morrow, if you have no objections, we’d like to have you take to the air and locate him for us. We’ll camp here to-night.”
“That’ll be all right,” Jimmie answered, with apparent frankness, but his thought at the moment was that between that time and morning the outlaws would attempt to steal the Louise and get away.
Perhaps, also he might be forced to serve them as aviator!