THE BOYS DECIDE.
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.