The Boy Aviators in Record Flight; Or, The Rival Aeroplane

CHAPTER XXII.
AN AUTO LEAP FOR LIFE

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 below 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.

CHAPTER XXIII.
A MYSTERY

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.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE GOLDEN HERMIT

“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.

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.