THE RACE.
Jimmie’s game of tag developed into such a flying machine race as has
rarely been witnessed. The machines were in superb condition, and each
aviator was determined to end the contest satisfactorily to himself. The
driver of the third machine sought only the capture or destruction of
the _Louise_.
On the other hand, Jimmie’s only motive was, as he had expressed himself
to Kit before leaving, to keep his opponent amused so that he might not
communicate to the outlaws any information concerning the net which had
been set for their capture.
The fact that the third machine followed the _Louise_ so savagely, so
persistently, convinced the boys that the driver had not as yet
communicated with Phillips or Mendosa. In fact, one question asked by
Phillips of Kit that morning demonstrated that the outlaws had not yet
been found.
Jimmie headed at first straight for the ocean. There was exhilaration in
the swift passage over the white-capped waves below. He swung over the
headland from which the first signal light had been seen on the previous
evening.
Then he turned straight south and passed the second promontory. He saw
that the schooner which had been seen the night before still lay at
anchor, and that her deck was crowded with humanity.
“Chinks!” he thought. “Waiting to be taken to the land of promise!”
The same thought occurred to Kit, and the boy pointed downward as they
cut the air above the deck.
“Smugglers!” the boy said.
Jimmie heard the word only faintly and nodded. Back from the ocean, they
swung almost to the right of way of the Southern Pacific railroad. Below
them opened great gorges in which a city might be hidden. There were
immense forests which seemed of sufficient size to furnish a world in
fuel for a thousand years. Here and there small rivulets trickled down
the rugged mountainsides and joined larger streams, trailing off into
the interior. It was like viewing a magic panorama.
The exciting race continued until long after noon. The _Louise_ was by
far the swifter machine of the two, and so the pursuer was obliged to
resort to every trick known to aviators in order to keep her in view.
The strain on the rear aeroplane was much greater than that on the
_Louise_. The result of this was that the latter machine lasted longer
in the swift competition. About the middle of the afternoon, she began
moving away from her pursuer and soon lost sight of her entirely.
Then Jimmie, after dropping down behind a summit, reduced speed in order
to exchange ideas with his companion.
“Did you see where she went, Kit?” he asked.
“She just lagged behind!” was the reply.
“There may be some trick about it!” suggested Jimmie.
“If you leave it to me,” Kit went on, “there’s something the matter with
her spark plug. I noticed her limping along half an hour before we lost
sight of her.”
“In that case,” Jimmie explained, “he’ll have to make a landing in order
to repair the damage, and, if he hasn’t got an extra plug with him, he
can’t repair it at all.”
“What does the situation suggest to you?” asked Kit with a laugh.
“Dinner-time!” replied Jimmie.
“That’s the idea!” Kit responded.
“And we may as well go over into the valley we left this morning,”
Jimmie went on, “because the boys will be wondering what has become of
us.”
“It was a bad thing to do, running off like that!” exclaimed Kit.
“Well,” Jimmie retorted, “we had to keep that other fellow amused,
didn’t we? That was one of the outlaws we’re after who was walking
around in a forest ranger’s uniform, within a mile or two of where the
fellow lay, and there was the possibility that he would blunder on the
machine and spoil our game. We just had to get the aeroplane away.”
“Of course the outlaw saw the chase,” suggested Kit.
“I don’t doubt it,” answered Jimmie.
Flying low so as not to be seen unless the pursuer should rise at a
great altitude, Jimmie made his way to the little green bowl of a valley
which had been deserted by Ben and Carl only a short time before.
Scarcely believing his senses, the boy brought the _Louise_ to the
ground and anxiously looked for some message, for it seemed highly
improbable to him that the boys would have gone away without indicating
their destination. Of course he found nothing of the kind.
The only thing discovered about the little camp which in any way
accounted for the absence of the _Bertha_ was quite a large heap of
table scraps. Jimmie pointed to the pile with a grin.
“They’ve had to go out after grub,” he explained. “I’ll just bet they
had company for dinner and ate up everything we had. Then they went off
to some little town on the Southern Pacific railroad to buy provisions.
Wonder they wouldn’t leave some word!” he added impatiently.
“Leave some word just like you did!” taunted Kit.
“Well,” Jimmie said in an apologetic tone, “I expected to be back right
off and I didn’t want to wake them up!”
“Perhaps they expected to be back right off, too!” laughed Kit.
“I’ll just tell you what I’m going to do right now!” Jimmie exclaimed.
“I’m going up in the woods and get a bear steak. The meat will be all
right yet, won’t it?”
“I should say not!” replied Kit. “I know enough about hunting to know
that that bear meat will be smelling like a slaughter house right now!”
“Anyhow,” Jimmie insisted, “I’m going up and see about it!”
Leaving Kit sitting by the machine, the boy hastened up to the place
where the bear had been shot and stopped beside a heap of fur which lay
on the ground at the foot of the tree. He gave the bearskin a little
kick with his foot and then turned his eyes in the direction of the
thicket. There was no sign of the carcass. The skin had been deftly
removed, and nothing but such parts as were uneatable remained.
Mournfully pressing his hands to the waistband of his trousers, the boy
set his face toward the camp and sat down by Kit without a word.
“Where’s your bear meat?” asked Kit with a grin. “Why didn’t you bring
back a lot of it? You didn’t eat it raw, did you?”
“It’s gone!” answered Jimmie.
“Gone stale?” asked Kit.
“Gone away!” grunted the other.
“Well, who took it away?”
“Search me,” was the answer. “There’s about a ton of perfectly good bear
meat all gone to waste!” he continued.
While the boys discussed the chances of the meat having been taken care
of by their chums, the thicket on the east wall of the bowl opened and
the man Kit had seen in the morning appeared. He approached the camp
openly and frankly, extending in one hand a great slice of bear meat.
Before he reached the place where the boys sat gazing with surprised
glances in his direction, the thicket parted again and a taller,
slighter, darker man made his appearance.
The man in the uniform of a forest ranger stooped for a moment, spoke to
the other in low tones, and then the two came on together. As Jimmie
afterwards described the situation, you could have knocked his head off
with a match at that moment. Kit was equally excited, and Jimmie
declares to this day that the boy turned the color of milk.
The boys knew who their guests were. One was Phillips and one was
Mendosa! These were the outlaws they had journeyed across the continent
in the currents of the air to bring to punishment!
If speech had been required of the two lads at that moment it would have
been impossible for them to respond. The faces of the outlaws, however,
were friendly, and directly the nerve of the boys began to assert
itself. Jimmie half arose and then dropped back again.
“Never mind getting up,” Phillips said. “I saw you up in the thicket a
few moments ago, looking after the bear I killed this morning. You
seemed to me to be hungry for steak, and so I brought you down a few
pounds.”
“That’s mighty good of you!” Jimmie managed to say.
“Oh, we couldn’t eat a whole bear!” laughed Mendosa.
“I think I could, right this minute,” Jimmie responded, more
courageously. “I’ve been out all day in the _Louise_, and I’m so empty
that I’d collapse if it wasn’t for the wind I brought down with me.”
“I see no reason why you shouldn’t eat, then,” Phillips answered. “You
can build a fire and have this steak broiling in a very short time.”
“Will you stay and help us eat it?” asked Jimmie.
Phillips glanced toward Mendoza, and the latter nodded.
“We shall be glad to,” answered the outlaw. “But where are the others?”
he went on. “I thought there were four of you and two machines.”
“The others have gone out for exercise!” laughed Kit.
Jimmie’s one purpose now was to keep the outlaws in his company until
the return of his chums. They were desperate men, and he had no notion
of attempting their capture with only Kit to help.
It goes without saying, then, that he was remarkably slow in gathering
fuel for the fire, remarkably slow in broiling the steak, and slower
still in preparing the coffee. It seemed to him that the outlaws
regarded his dilatory movements impatiently.
The boy rightly concluded that they were about half starved for a warm
meal. Hiding for days as they had been in the mountains, it was more
than probable that they had not risked their liberty by building a fire.
While the steak was broiling, an idea came to Jimmie which he was not
slow to carry out. Glancing at the ranger uniform of Phillips, he asked
quite innocently:
“Are you after the fake ranger, too?”
Phillips remained perfectly calm, but Mendosa gave a quick start.
“What do you mean by that?” the former asked, easily.
“Why,” Jimmie answered, drawing extensively on his imagination, “we met
a flying machine man when we went out this morning and he chased us.”
“I saw something of the race,” Phillips smiled. “I was just going to ask
you about that. Why did he chase you?”
“I guess he thought we were trespassing on government land,” the boy
replied. “After he overtook us he asked all sorts of questions about the
people we had met in the mountains. After a while, he said that he was
the chief ranger from San Francisco, and that he was here in search of
men who are making trouble for the government by pretending to be
rangers. He said he had other machines coming, and that the district
would be patrolled until the frauds were arrested.”
Phillips and Mendoza exchanged significant glances.
“Yes,” the former said, “I had advices three days ago that the man was
coming. That’s why I asked the little fellow this morning if he had seen
a third machine. I hoped to see the chief ranger before night.”
Jimmie was so full of amusement at the ease with which Phillips had
fallen for the manufactured story that it was with difficulty that he
restrained a chuckle. The success of the story surprised him not a
little.
He believed now that the outlaws would shun any man who might approach
them in an aeroplane, and that the chance for a meeting between the
outlaws and their allies was now nothing at all.
“Yes,” Jimmie said shortly, keeping his face straight by a great effort,
“the chief said he expected to meet every ranger in the forest within a
day or two. If you go a few miles farther south you may run across him
to-night. He said he had failed to find any one in this region, and
would not return here for a couple of days.”
“Oh, my, oh, my!” thought Kit, walking away from the fire in order to
conceal his amusement, “if Jimmie isn’t fixing it so the outlaws will
hang right around here until we can get help.”
Phillips and Mendosa conversed together for a long time in low tones and
then the former said:
“We are pretty tired, so we won’t tramp after the chief to-night.
To-morrow, if you have no objections, we’d like to have you take to the
air and locate him for us. We’ll camp here to-night.”
“That’ll be all right,” Jimmie answered, with apparent frankness, but
his thought at the moment was that between that time and morning the
outlaws would attempt to steal the _Louise_ and get away.
Perhaps, also he might be forced to serve them as aviator!