The Flying Machine Boys on Duty

“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!

CHAPTER XIX

A SHORT TERM IN JAIL

If the truth must be told, both Ben and Carl experienced a sudden lifting of the hair as the Ann and the Bertha plunged toward the precipice hanging below the summit. It seemed for a time as if the wheels would never lift, but finally, at the last instant, they did so, and the level surface of rock was left below. The Japs who had been so neatly tricked seemed to the boys to be running around in circles and shooting useless bullets into the air up to the time the flying machine to which they had beckoned reached their side.

The third machine, however, did not remain long on the summit. The Japs, and the aviator conferred together for only a moment, and then, with the Japs watching, the planes were in the air again in swift pursuit of the Ann and the Bertha.

From the very first the boys saw that the pursuing machine was by no means fit for the race. In fact, she limped along at a pace not calculated to hold her own with a very ordinary aeroplane while both the Bertha and the Ann were very speedy machines.

Under these conditions the race could end in only one way. The Ann and Bertha passed swiftly toward Monterey, while the third machine returned to the summit where the two Japs had been left, to take them off, one at a time. The last the boys saw of her at that time she was settling limply down as if injured in a vital spot.

After the pursuit had ceased the boys dropped their machines to a government roadway which showed through the timber in a valley below. The gasoline supplied by the Japs to the Bertha was insufficient for a long run, and the idea in dropping down was to transfer fuel from the tanks of the Ann. Besides, the boys thought it best to consult together.

“The good old Ann!” shouted Carl, patting the great aeroplane as he would have petted a dog.

“I wish you could tell us exactly what has taken place in your vicinity since we last saw you in Westchester county,” said Ben, petting the Ann.

“I reckon she’d have some story to tell,” Carl suggested.

“You bet she would!” declared Ben. “The chances are that Mr. Havens started away from New York with her, and got sidetracked in some way,” he went on. “I hope he hasn’t been seriously injured.”

“I think we ought to go to Monterey,” Carl suggested, “and find out if there is any story going round of a lost aviator. If anything serious has taken place in this part of the country, we’ll certainly learn all about it there. Besides,” he went on, “we ought to buy more gasoline, and I want to eat. It seems to me something like a hundred years since I sat down to a square meal in a hotel or restaurant.”

“And we have to buy provisions for the other boys, too,” Ben agreed.

While the boys talked over the situation a man in the uniform of a forest ranger, mounted on a little brown pony, came galloping down the road. He drew up when he saw the machines blocking the highway and called out:

“Hello, strangers! It’s a wonder you wouldn’t take possession of the whole road! How long have you been in this part of the country?”

“Just lit!” answered Ben. “Come on in,” he added with a chuckle. “We’ll make way for you. We don’t own this road.”

Indeed it was necessary to shift the great planes of the Ann before the ranger could ride up to where the boys stood.

“You’ve got some fine machines there!” the ranger commented.

“You bet we have!” answered Ben.

“Are those the machines that have been racing about in the air all day?” asked the ranger.

“We haven’t been in the air all day,” replied Carl, “but I reckon the Bertha and the Ann have been doing considerable flying.”

“And there’s been something of a ruction over at Monterey about a machine, too,” said the ranger.

The boys were all attention in an instant.

“Whose machine was it?” asked Carl.

“That’s what they don’t know,” answered the ranger. “A man who claimed to come from New York dropped in a big machine early this morning and went to bed at a hotel. In an hour or two a couple of Japs claimed the machine and induced an officer to help them get it away.”

“Did you hear any of the names?” asked Ben.

“Havens, the man’s name was,” replied the ranger.

“Well,” Ben said, “that’s the name of the man who owns this big machine.”

“Where is Havens now?” asked Carl.

“My informant stated that he was in jail!” replied the ranger.

“Jail?” demanded Ben. “What for?”

“It seems that this man Havens and a friend of his beat up a deputy sheriff, and the hotel detective, and shook up a hotel clerk like a rat.”

“Then why didn’t they give him a chance to pay a fine and let him go?” demanded Carl.

“Perhaps he hasn’t got money enough with him to pay the fines which may be imposed.”

“Money enough with him!” shouted Carl scornfully. “Louis Havens could buy the whole town of Monterey, and then have money enough left to make your state debt look like thirty cents!”

“Is this Havens the noted millionaire aviator?” asked the ranger.

“That’s the man!” Carl declared. “And he’ll do something to those folks back there in Monterey before he gets done with them, too!”

“I hope he will!” replied the ranger heartily.