THE MYSTERY OF THE HAMMERING
“Don’t stop and make too many poems about the valleys, Poodle,”
commanded Hike Griffin, after breakfast.
“Star of the gridiron, I ain’t making po’ms. I’m beating the job and
getting in a loaf on you,” Poodle Darby assured him, as, with chin in
hand, he looked across the wonderful green hills stretched far below
the peak where they had camped all night. “Say, I’ve been listening
for that duffer that was pounding iron so late, and I thought I heard
him, over there to the sou’-sou’-east.”
“You’ve got a great little ole brain, Pood’. You hit it right. Us for
the mystery of the hammering. Probably a stray bunch of cattlemen,
riding the ranges. Probably shoeing their horses. Peaceful as pie.”
“Yuh,” grinned Poodle. “Think it’s counterfeiters?”
“Yes. ’S matter of fact, I do.” Hike was very quiet about it, but
Poodle looked up admiringly. The young captain of the Freshman
football team acted as though he meant very busy business.
Leaving their horses tethered, and their food cached, except for a
little bacon, tea, and rice, they scrambled down an arroyo, crawled
down a rock-face, with fingers and toes clinging to ledges, and
reached a long slope covered with thick chaparral, through which Hike
forced a way, with Poodle cheerfully trotting after him. They reached
the beginning of the mile-broad valley which they had noticed the
night before. A small hill separated it from them. As they started
to mount this hill, on the other side of it sounded a clatter and
banging, as though a giant blacksmith shop were in operation.
“Hssshhhh!” came from Hike, as Poodle started to exclaim. Up the
hill swung Hike, his shoulders low, making himself as small as he
could, but with his long slender legs going like propeller-blades on
a motor boat. At the top Hike crouched down; then held up his hands
and said—still peering across the crest—“Well, I’ll be everlastingly
hornswoggled.”
Poodle always had to talk about something. Though he was wild with
desire to see what there was on the other side, he stopped, shook his
chubby forefinger at Hike, and said in the tones of the headmaster at
Santa Benicia Academy, “Griffin, this is shocking. What words! What
wick-ed, lit-tle wor-dies!”
“Choke yourself to death and come here,” retorted Hike, and Poodle
crawled up beside him. He saw, in a grassy hollow opening on the
broad valley, a long, high, wide shed, like a cow stable ten times
enlarged. Beside it was a forge with a pile of metal—pistons and
bolts and motor-wheels; and spread out on the grass was something
like a big box-kite slightly twisted. Not a person was in sight.
“Well, I’ll be completely swigbottled!” stated Poodle. “Say, Hike,
what is it all? D’you know?”
“Torr_ing_tum, this is very sad. Such wick-ed words from the mouth
of—”
“Oh, _shut_ up. What is it? I’ll foam at the mouth in about—”
“It’s an aerodrome, I’d say—shed for an aeroplane. Too small for a
dirigible balloon. And that box-kite thing there by the forge looks
to me like part of some daffy sort of a plane. Poodski, I reckon
we’ve run into some crazy aviator’s shop.... Counterfeiter nothin’!”
“Well, if that gent thinks _that_ thing is an aeroplane wing, he’s
counterfeiting aeroplanes, anyway,” complained Poodle. “I never _saw_
such a ridiculousness.”
“Come on,” said Hike—a remark which he made very often, or so said
Poodle, who now complained, “Every time I get settled down and comfy,
looking at nice valleys, or an asylum for nutty aviators, you go and
drag me away. Well, lead on, gallant captain.”
As they descended the slope, out of the shed, keeping his back toward
them, came the strangest man they had ever seen. He was dressed in
one single garment of white—“a night-shirt that’s crazy as he is,”
sniffed Poodle—with leather sandals on his feet, and with his wild,
black hair falling to his shoulders. As he turned, they both cried
out with wonder. The man’s black beard reached his chest. Even twenty
feet away, they could see his eyes shining like a wild animal’s among
the knotted hair that was towsled over his forehead. In his hand was
a rod of metal. As he saw them he shrieked and started back, then
rushed at them, waving the iron rod, and shouting “Go away! For your
lives. G’ ’way!”
He came up to them, stopped, and bellowed, “You boys get out of this
or I’ll kill you. I’ll give you till I get my rifle, and if you ain’t
gone then— I’ll brain you—I’ll kill you—”
He came nearer, still waving the iron rod. There was quick team-play.
Hike and Poodle picked up sticks, without a word. They separated and
came at the man from opposite sides. He stopped. He dropped the iron
rod. He ran his fingers through his beard and shouted, “What do you
want? Whom are you spying for?”
“No one,” explained Hike. “We’ve just been on a riding trip—down
the coast from Monterey. Rode up Canyon Diablo, and came down this
side of the Big Peak. Didn’t know there was anybody here. I’m
awf’ly interested in aeroplanes, though. You see, my father—Major
Griffin—I’m Jerry Griffin, this is Torry Darby—he’s in command of
the Signal Corps at Monterey Presidio. Honest, I don’t want to butt
in, but that funny box-kite thing there made me awf’ly interested.
If we’re intruding, we’ll beat it, but I’d like to learn something
about that thing.... You see I’ve been reading a bunch about
aeroplanes, and Lieutenant Adeler—Jack Adeler, you know, invented
the Adeler hydroaeroplane, the one that beat the record rising from
the water—well, he’s at Monterey, and he’s showed me a lot about
aeroplanes....”
The man said nothing. He had seated himself upon a rock, twisting
away at his long beard, looking as though he were in despair. Poodle
and Hike stared at each other. Knowing nothing whatever about
aeroplanes, Poodle could only remark, “Jiminy, never would expect
to find a flyin’ machine shed back in the hills, _would_ you? Hope
we ain’t butting in. We’ll keep our mouths shut. I guess we’re both
gentlemen—or gentlekids, anyway!”
“Yes,” continued Hike, while the man still kept silent, seeming not
to hear. “I’m really sorry we found your place, if you feel—”
The man suddenly broke in, “Yes, that’s the way it goes—Signal Corps
and government money, and hydroaeroplane, and here I am, with the
greatest aeroplane in the world, and hardly a cent left to finish it.
If I had the army behind me— Once I thought I would—I’d finish my
machine—go flying across the hills—make the government back me.”
“I’d be glad to introduce you to my father and Lieutenant Adeler—and,
and Captain Welch, though you won’t—he isn’t so nice, quite—if you’d
come up to the Monterey Presidio, some time,” stammered Hike, feeling
very shy before this man, who looked as though he had lost his last
friend. “I’m sure they’d be glad to help you.”
The man threw back his head, shook his fist at the sky (“which didn’t
seem to mind being shook at,” Poodle noticed), and roared: “I’m sure
they wouldn’t. Pigs—scoundrels—thieves—impostors—all of them. If they
aren’t in a conspiracy against me, it’s because I’ve kept ’em from
knowing anything about me.”
Hike’s eyebrows lifted. Poodle was thinking that he had looked just
that way when the captain of the San Dinero Freshman team had made
fun of Santa Benicia, before the game.
“Sir,” said Hike, “you are speaking of my father and my friends.
They are gentlemen, and they love the army. The army needs good
aeroplanes. If yours is good, they would even forgive your talking
the way you have!”
The man glared and shook his beard. Then he saw Poodle’s happy face,
with a smile hiding in his eyes. Suddenly the man laughed:
“You’re both of you amusing little cusses, and hanged if I don’t
believe you’re right. I apologize. I’ve been living here alone—not
seeing anybody except a Portygee ranchero, that brings me my grub and
tools and aeronautical journals. I guess I’ve kind of lost my party
manners. Young sir, I apologize. I’ll be glad to come up to Monterey
and meet the officers—and I’ll be glad to show you my machine. Fact
is, if somebody with money doesn’t back me, I can’t go on. I’m broke.
But I have it done now—the aeroplane itself is all done. I’ve even
flown it a little. But all I’ve got for engine is an old 1909 fifty
horse-power Gnome, and I need two hundred and fifty horse-power.”
“Two hundred and fifty!” shrieked Hike. “Why, nobody uses over
seventy or so. They tried a hundred and fifty in the French army
contest, but it was too much.”
“The French didn’t have my aeroplane. It’s the first really practical
tetrahedral that—”
“Ouch!” cried Poodle, as the hard word hit his ears.
“Tet-ra-hé-dral—it’s made up of a number of little parts that look
like paper wings. Each of them is made up of two triangles, the
bottoms together. Like this.”
With an old nail, he scratched on a rock this plan of one of the tiny
“wings”:
[Illustration: wings]
“Yump,” he went on. “I’ve finally worked out the complete tetrahedral
aeroplane, following some plans of Alexander Graham Bell—the man who
invented the telephone. You see, boys, with all these little planes
put together, the air can get hold of lots more surface than it can
on the ordinary aeroplane. It doesn’t make any difference which way
the aeroplane is turned, there’s always planes for the air to get
under and hold the machine. An ordinary aeroplane is like the sides
of a wooden box that honey comes in, and mine is like the honey
itself, with all the hundreds of little walls of wax.
“But,” he insisted, “with all these wings, the weight of the whole
thing is much less than an ordinary aeroplane would have if it had as
much supporting surface as my machine has.
“So the tetrahedral can carry an engine that’s enough bigger than the
ordinary aeroplane to make her go much faster than the ordinary one.
She could stand an engine that would send her at two hundred miles an
hour, and I could guarantee your officers that she’d be able to carry
enough gasoline so that she could fly across the country without even
a single stop for fuel. And she could make that trip in thirty-five
hours, or less—scoot right along at a hundred miles an hour—two
hundred at a pinch.
“Another thing is: with all these planes, turned every which way,
she’d flutter down like a butterfly, instead of falling hard, if the
engine stopped on you, or anything happened to the aviator. That’s
the kind of a machine I’ve got! Martin Priest is my name. I’ve been
working away on aeroplanes for ten years, and _now I’ve got the best
in the world_!”
Martin Priest was standing up, waving his arms, and yelling. Poodle
whispered, “Gee, he’s sure got something, all right! Maybe fits!”
But Hike was used to seeing officer aviators grow enthusiastic, and
he replied, “Bite yourself dead” to Poodle, before he answered the
other, “That sounds great, Mr. Priest. I’d like awfully to see your
machine.”
Martin Priest led the way to the door of the aerodrome. Inside was a
structure like a huge blunt wedge, made up of hundreds of the small
wings. It was like a crowd of white butterflies, or the swarming of
big white bees.
While the boys stood gaping at this strange cluster, and the rudder
and elevating planes, Martin Priest ramped up and down, explaining,
throwing about long words that made Poodle jump. They didn’t get much
out of the explanation, but at the end of it Hike turned to Priest
and said:
“I’m not as old as Methusaleh, and I guess there’s still at least a
couple of things about aviating that I haven’t learned, but I can see
that this machine would be mighty safe, and I should think it could
carry all sorts of a load. Well, I’ll just grab the United States
Army—or Lieutenant Adeler, anyway, and make him help you. I’ll put
the Army behind you!”
Martin Priest laughed. “That’s a pretty large order for an old man
like you, isn’t it?” he asked Hike.
“Uh huh,” calmly remarked that worthy. “But I’m goin’ to do it. We’ll
be back here—couple of days—with Lieutenant Adeler.... Come on, you
young Poodle.”
“Uh huh,” said Poodle. “Sure, I’ll come.... But I was so comfortable
sitting here on this box!” Groaning, he bestirred his round cheerful
self to follow Hike’s easy lope up the hill, toward their camp.