A SHOT ACROSS THE BOWS.
The sensation of gliding through the air, entirely cut adrift from
solid ground, is as novel as it is pleasant. The body seems suddenly
to have acquired an indescribable lightness, and the spirits become
equally buoyant. Dizziness, or vertigo, is unheard of among aëronauts.
While on the ground a man may not be able to climb a ladder for a
distance of ten feet without losing his head and falling, the same man
can look downward for thousands of feet from a balloon with his nerves
unruffled.
Joe McGlory, now for the first time leaping into the air with a flying
machine, was holding his breath and hanging on desperately to keep
himself from being shaken off his seat, but, to his astonishment, his
fears were rapidly dying away within him.
The cowboy was a lad of pluck and daring; nevertheless, he had viewed
his projected flight in a mood akin to panic. Although passionately
fond of boats, yet the roll of a launch in a seaway always made him
sick; in the same manner, perhaps, he was in love with flying machines,
although it had taken a lot of strenuous work to get him to promise to
go aloft.
The necessity, on account of wet ground, of juggling for a start, had
thrown something of a wet blanket over McGlory's ardor. Once in the
air, however, his enthusiasm arose as his fears went down.
Matt sat on the left side of the broad seat, firmly planted with
his feet on the footrest and his body bent forward, one hand on the
mechanism that expanded or contracted the great wings, and the other
manipulating the rudder that gave the craft a vertical course.
On Matt's quickness of judgment and lightning-like celerity in shifting
the levers, the lives of all three of the boys depended. Every change
in the centre of air pressure--and this was shifting every second--had
to be met with an expansion or contraction of the wings in order to
make the centre of air pressure and the centre of gravity coincide at
all times.
Upon Matt, therefore, fell all the labor and responsibility. He had no
time to give to the scenery passing below, and what talking he indulged
in was mechanical and of secondary importance to his work. But this
is not to say that he missed all the pleasures of flying. A greater
delight than that offered by the zest of danger and responsibility in
the air would be hard to imagine. Every second his nerves were strung
to tightest tension.
Ping sat between Matt and McGlory, his yellow hands clutching the rim
of the seat between his knees. He was purring with happiness, like some
overgrown cat, while a grin of heavenly joy parted his face as his eyes
marked the muddy roads over which they were passing without hindrance.
Up and up Matt forced the machine until they reached a height of five
hundred feet. Here the air was crisp and cool, and much steadier than
the currents closer to the surface.
"Great!" shouted the cowboy. "I haven't the least fear that we're going
to drop, and I'd just as lieve go out on the end of one of the wings
and stand on my head."
"Don't do it," laughed Matt, keeping his eyes straight ahead, while his
hand trawled constantly back and forth with the lever controlling the
wing ends.
"Him plenty fine!" cooed Ping.
"Fine ain't the name for it," said McGlory. "I'm so plumb tickled I
can't sit still. And to think that I shied and side-stepped, when I
might have been having this fun right along! Well, we can't be so wise
all the time as we are just some of the time, and that's a fact. How
far do you make it, Matt, to where we're going?"
"A little over a hundred miles, as the crow flies."
"As the _Comet_ flies, you mean. How fast are we going?"
"Fifty miles an hour."
"That clip will drop us near Burnt Creek in two hours. Whoop-ya!"
The cowboy let out a yell from pure exhilaration. Not a thought
regarding possible accident ran through his head. The engine was
working as sweetly as any motor had ever worked, the propeller was
whirling at a speed that made it look like a solid disk, and the great
wings were plunging through the air with the steady, swooping motion of
a hawk in full flight.
A huddle of houses rushed toward the _Comet_, far below, and vanished
behind.
"What was that, pard?" cried the cowboy.
"Minnewaukon," answered Matt.
At that moment the young motorist shifted the rudder behind, which was
the one giving the craft her right and left course, and they made a
half turn. As the _Comet_ came around and pointed her nose toward the
southwest, she careened, throwing the right-hand wings sharply upward.
McGlory gave vent to a hair-raising yell. He was hurled against Ping,
and Ping, in turn, was thrown against Matt.
"Right yourselves, pards," called Matt. "That was nothing. When we
swing around a turn we're bound to roll a little. You can't expect more
of an air ship, you know, than you can of a boat in the water. You keep
track of the time, Ping. Joe, follow our course on the map. You can
hang on with one hand and hold the map open with the other. We can't
sail without a chart."
Matt had secured his open-face watch to a bracket directly above Ping's
head. The boy could see the time-piece without shifting his position.
The map McGlory had in his pocket. Removing the map from his coat with
one hand, the cowboy opened it upon his knee.
With a ruler, Matt had drawn a line from Minnewaukon straight to the
point where Burnt Creek emptied into the Missouri. This line ran
directly southwest, crossing four lines of railroad, and as many towns.
"How are we going to know we're keeping the course, pard?" inquired
McGlory. "We ought to have a compass."
"A compass wouldn't have been a bad thing to bring along," returned
Matt, "but we'll be able to keep the course, all right, by watching for
the towns we're due to pass. The first town is Flora, on the branch
road running northwest from Oberon. If I'm not mistaken, there it is to
the right of us. Hang on, both of you! I'm going to drop down close,
Joe, while you hail one of the citizens and ask him if I've got the
name of the place right."
There was plenty of excitement in the little prairie village. Men,
women, and children could be seen rushing out of their houses and
gazing upward at the strange monster in the sky. Everybody in that
section had heard of Motor Matt and his aëroplanes, so the curiosity
and surprise were tempered with a certain amount of knowledge.
"Hello, neighbor!" roared McGlory, as the air ship swept downward to
within fifty feet of the ground, "what town is this?"
"Flora," came the reply. "Light, strangers, an' roost in our front
yard. Ma and the children would like to get a good look at your
machine, and----"
The voice faded to rearward, and "ma and the children" had to be
disappointed.
Having assured himself that he was right, Matt headed the aëroplane
toward the skies, once more.
Settlers' shacks, and more pretentious farmhouses, raced along under
them, and in every place where there were any human beings, intense
excitement was manifested as the _Comet_ winged its way onward.
In less than fifteen minutes after passing Flora, they caught sight
of another railroad track and another huddle of buildings. It was the
"Soo" road, and the town was Manfred.
"How long have we been in the air, Ping?" asked Matt.
"Fitty-fi' minutes," replied the Chinaman.
"Manfred ain't many miles from Sykestown, pard," said Joe, "and we must
be within gunshot of that place where we had our troubles, a few days
back."
"I'm glad we're giving the spot a wide berth," returned Matt, with
a wry face. "We've got to make better time," he added, opening the
throttle; "we're not doing as well as I thought."
The _Comet_ hurled herself onward at faster speed. The air of their
flight whistled and sang in the boys' ears, and hills underneath leaped
at them and then vanished rearward with dizzying swiftness.
"I'd like to travel in an aëroplane all the time," remarked McGlory.
"Sufferin' skyrockets! What's the use of hoofin' it, or ridin' in
railroad cars, when you can pick up a pair of wings and a motor and go
gallywhooping through the air?"
The machine was well over the coteaus, now, and the rough country would
hold, with only now and then an occasional break, clear to the Missouri.
Another railroad, and a cluster of dwellings known as "Goodrich," were
passed, and the aëroplane slid along over the corner of McLean County
and into Burleigh.
They were drawing close to Burnt Creek, and everything was going
swimmingly. Matt, notwithstanding the severe strain upon him, was not
in the least tired. In a little less than two hours after leaving Fort
Totten they crossed their last railroad--a branch running northward
from Bismarck. The town, near where they winged over the steel rails,
was down on the map as "Arnold."
"Speak to me about this!" cried McGlory. "There's a creek under us,
Matt, and I'll bet it's the one we're looking for."
"We're finding something else we were not looking for," answered the
king of the motor boys grimly.
"What's that?" queried McGlory.
"Look straight ahead at the top of the next hill."
McGlory turned his eyes in the direction indicated. A number of
rough-looking horsemen, evidently cowboys, were scattered over the
hill. They were armed with rifles, and were spurring back and forth in
an apparent desire to get directly in front of the _Comet_.
"Why, pard," shouted McGlory, "they're punchers, same as me. Punchers
are a friendly lot, and that outfit wouldn't no more think of cutting
up rough with us than----"
The words were taken out of the cowboy's mouth by the sharp crack of a
rifle. One of the horsemen had fired, his bullet singing through the
air in front of the _Comet_.
"That's across our bows," said Matt, "and it's an invitation to come
down."
The "invitation" was seconded by a yell the import of which there was
no mistaking.
"Hit the airth, you, up thar, or we'll bring ye down wrong-side up!"
"Nice outfit _they_ are!" grunted McGlory. "Get into the sky a couple
of miles, Matt, and---- Sufferin' terrors! What are you about?"
Motor Matt had pointed the air ship earthward, and was gliding toward
the hilltop.
"No use, Joe," Matt answered. "They could hit us with their bullets and
wreck us before we got out of range. They want to talk with us, and we
might as well humor them."
"Mighty peculiar way for a lot of cowboys to act," muttered McGlory.
"No likee," said Ping.