RESCUED BY AEROPLANE
"What's that down there?"
Roy pointed downward from the aeroplane to a small black object
crawling painfully over the glistening white billows of alkali far
below them.
The lad, his sister and Jess were on their way back from the arroyo
in which the battle with the coyotes had occurred. Mr. Bell and
Jimsy had been left behind, for the former was anxious to "prospect"
his mine as thoroughly as possible in order to ascertain if it gave
indications of living up to its first rich promise. A brief
inspection of the cave had thoroughly disgusted Peggy and Jess.
"Is this a rich gold mine!" Jess had cried, indignantly regarding
the dull walls on which the torches had glowed unflatteringly; "it
looks more like the interior of the cellar at home."
"All is not gold that glitters," Mr. Bell had responded with a
smile. At the same moment he had flaked off a chunk of dark colored
metal with his knife.
"There, Miss Jess," he exclaimed, handing it to the girl, "that is
almost pure gold, and I am in hopes that there is lots more where
that came from."
And they had been kind enough not to laugh too immoderately at
Jess's discomfiture.
A short time later, having located a water hole and partaken of a
good lunch, Roy and his companions had re-embarked and started back
to camp with the joyful tidings that the missing adventurers had
been found. They had been under way but a short time when Roy's
attention had been attracted by the moving dot which had caused him
to utter the exclamation recorded at the beginning of this chapter.
Against the flat, baking, quivering expanse of alkali the crawling
splotch of black showed up as plainly as a blot of ink on a sheet of
clean white blotting paper. Peering over the edge of the chassis they
all scrutinized it closely.
"It's--it's a man!" cried Jess at length.
"So it is!" declared Peggy, "and on foot. What can he be doing out
in this desert country without a horse?"
"He's in trouble anyhow," declared Roy, excitedly. "See, he's
staggering along so painfully that it looks as if he couldn't go a
step further. I'm going to drop and find out what the trouble is."
As he spoke the boy threw in the descending clutch, and the big
monoplane began to drop as swiftly as a buzzard that has espied some
prey far beneath him.
As they rushed downward the whirr of their descent seemed to arouse
the being so painfully crawling over the hot waste beneath them. He
looked up, and then, extending his hands upward in a gesture of
bewilderment, he staggered forward and the next instant stretched
his length on the alkali, falling face downward.
"Oh, he is dead!" shrilled Jess, clasping her hands.
"I don't think so," was Roy's grave reply, "but we must get to him
as quickly as we can."
There was no need to tell Peggy to get the water canteen ready. Her
busy little, fingers were fumbling with it. As they touched the
ground she leaped nimbly from the chassis and sped over the burning
desert floor to the side of the recumbent wayfarer. A second later
Roy and Jess joined her. Very tenderly they turned the insensible
man upon his back and dashed the water upon his face.
He was a short, rather stockily built man of middle age, and
obviously, from his mahogany colored skin and lank black hair, a
Mexican. He was dressed in a tattered shirt with a serape thrown
about the neck to keep off the blazing rays of the sun. His feet
were encased in a kind of moccasins over which spurs were strapped.
Evidently, then, he had been mounted at some time--presumably
recently, but where was his horse? How did he come to be wandering
under the maddening heat of the sun over the vast alkali waste. But
these were questions the answers to which had to be deferred for the
present, for it began to appear doubtful if they had arrived in time
to fan the wanderer's vital spark back into flame.
But at length their ministrations met with their reward. The man's
eyelids flickered and a deep sigh escaped his lips. Before long
they could press the water canteen to his mouth. He seized it with
avidity and would have drained it.
"Only a little," cried Peggy; "I read once how a man, dying of
thirst, was killed outright when he was given too much water to
drink."
So Roy wrenched the canteen from the prostrated man's feeble grasp
before he had drained more than a mouthful or two. But even that
had revived him, and he was able to sit up and gaze about
bewilderedly. All at once his eyes rested on Peggy, and he seemed
to regard her as the means of his salvation from a terrible death on
the alkali. Kneeling down he cried out in a pitifully cracked
voice:
"You missie angel from heaven. Me Alverado your servant always. No
go away ever!"
"By ginger, Peggy, you've made a conquest!" cried Roy, half
hysterically.
Now that the strain of the struggle between life and death was over
Peggy flushed and looked embarrassed. She was not used to the
exaggerated character of the Mexican. But if she feared another
outburst it did not come. Far too much exhausted to say more,
Alverado--as he called himself--sank back once more on the alkali.
"Quick! Carry him to the aeroplane and get him into camp," cried
Roy, raising the half-conscious Mexican's head. "You girls take his
feet and we'll put him in the bottom of the chassis on those
cushions."
Consequently, when the aeroplane once more took the air it was to
fly lower than usual under its additional burden, but in the hearts
of all three of its American occupants there rang the joy of having
saved a human life from the unsparing alkali.
"Aunt Sally! Aunt Sally! Everything's all right and we've got a
patient for you," was Peggy's rather uncomplimentary greeting as the
aeroplane alighted and came spinning across the dusty expanse toward
the willow clump.
Miss Prescott threw up her hands and old Mr. Peter Bell hastened
from amidst his beloved horses.
"Everything's all right but you've got a patient!" cried the New
England lady, who looked very prim and unwesternlike in a gingham
gown and sun bonnet to match.
"No time for explanations now," cried Roy. "Come on, Mr. Bell, and
help us get our sick man out and then we'll tell you all about how
we found Jimsy and Mr. Bell at the mine."
With Mr. Bell's assistance it did not take long to transfer Alverado
from the aeroplane to a cot, and Miss Prescott, who, as Roy said,
would "rather nurse than eat," ministered to him to such good effect
that by nightfall he was able to sit up and tell his story. In the
meantime the excited youngsters had related their narratives, which
Miss Prescott interrupted in a dozen places by: "Land's sakes!"
"Good gracious me!"
"Oh, what a dreadful country!" and much more to the same effect.
All the time he was relating his story Alverado kept his eyes fixed
on Peggy's face, with much the same expression as that worn by a
faithful spaniel. At first this fixed gaze annoyed the young girl
not a little, but soon she realized that it was entirely respectful
and meant as a tribute, for the Mexican evidently regarded her as
his rescuer in chief.
Alverado's story proved vague and sketchy, but he could not be
induced to enlarge upon it. In brief his tale was that some years
before, when crossing the desert on his way from a mine he owned, he
had been attacked by a band of highwaymen. They had wrecked his
wagon and murdered his family, who were traveling with him. They
had attacked him because of their impression that he was carrying
much gold with him, whereas, in reality, he had secured nothing but
a living from his desert mine. In their rage at being thwarted, the
miscreants had wiped out the Mexican's family and left him for dead
with a wound in his skull.
But a wandering band of Nevada Indians had happened along while the
Mexican still lay unconscious and, reviving him, carried him with
them over the border into California. He had parted from them soon
after and drifted down into Mexico. In time he accumulated a small
fortune, but the thought of the wrong he had suffered never left his
heart. At last his affairs reached a stage where he felt justified
in returning to Nevada to try to find some trace of his wrongers,
and demand justice. He had set out well equipped, but, a few days
before the young aviators encountered him, his water burro had
stumbled and fallen, and in the fall had broken the water kegs it
carried. From that time on his trip across the alkali had been a
nightmare. First his pony had died, and then his two remaining pack
burros. He had obtained a scanty supply of thirst quenching stuff
from the pulpy insides of cactus and maguey leaves, but when the
aviators had discovered him he had been in the last stages of death
from thirst and exhaustion--the death that so many men on the alkali
have met alone and bravely.
"Do you know the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so
cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the
conclusion of the Mexican's dramatic narrative.
A dark look crossed the man's swarthy features.
"One name onlee I know, mees," he said, with a snarl which somehow
reminded Peggy of the coyotes of the arroyo.
"And his name was?"
"Red Beel Soomers!"
"'Red Bill Summers!" they all echoed, except Miss Prescott and old
Mr. Peter Bell, the latter of whom had fallen into a reverie.
As if they had been emblazoned in electric lights, the words of
Professor Wandering William flashed across Peggy's brain.
"The most desperate ruffian on the Nevada desert."
And at the same time, with one of those quick, flashes of intuition
which growing girls share with grown women, Peggy sensed a vague
connection between that sinister conversation she had overheard on
her wakeful night at the National House and the dreaded Red Bill.