THE BALLOONIST’S RESCUE
There was a sharp bang as the bicycle struck the tree stump. Frank
righted himself readily and ran to the machine where it had fallen.
“Pshaw!” he exclaimed, “tire punctured and the wheel a pretty bad wreck
generally.”
This was true. A jagged sliver had ripped a hole in both the outer and
inner tubes of the front wheel. The hard bang against the tree stump had
twisted several spokes out of place and set a rim wobbling.
Frank had started in such a hurry from Riverton that morning that he had
not thought of taking his mending kit along. He debated what he should
do without further loss of time.
“I might carry it,” he reflected. “If I try to run it, I will loosen it
up more and lose some of the parts. Guess I’ll leave it here, get my
message to Mr. Buckner, stop at the house for my tool kit, and fix the
machine up right here. This way, my staunch and trusty friend,” he
hailed to Christmas. “Watch it, old fellow, watch it,” said Frank to
the dog, placing his hand on the wheel.
Christmas looked longingly after his young master as Frank started on
foot for Greenville. However, the animal posed right alongside the
bicycle. Frank knew that it would take a loaded cannon to drive the
trusty canine from the vicinity of his charge until he himself
reappeared and gave the word.
It was just one o’clock when Frank, a trifle dusty and footsore, entered
the office of Mr. Buckner.
“Well, well, good for you, Frank,” commended the insurance man, as he
glanced at the clock and then at his visitor’s beaming face. “Of course
you succeeded?”
“I did,” admitted Frank, a little proudly, “but there was a tangle.”
“Ah, indeed?”
“Yes, sir. Dorsett was on the spot. There is the receipt. I had to climb
for it.”
“What do you mean?”
Frank told of the circumstances of his exploit at Mr. Pryor’s office at
Riverton. Mr. Buckner lay back in his chair chuckling and laughing. Then
he got up and clapped Frank approvingly on the shoulder with one hand,
and with the other extended a crisp new five-dollar bill.
“I am glad to get this,” said Frank, “but I have hardly earned so much,
I think.”
“What! when you saved the day by your nimbleness and square common
sense? See here, Frank, I’m mightily pleased with you, and if you will
drop in here to-morrow I think I can put you in the way of earning a few
more of those precious notes.”
Frank bowed his thanks and left the office with a light heart. He went
straight home, entered the house quietly, and actually startled his
mother by silently dropping the five-dollar bill on the book in her lap.
Mrs. Ismond shared her son’s pleasure when Frank recited his brisk
experiences of the morning. He ate a good lunch with appetizing vigor,
secured his bicycle repair kit, and was soon down the road, whistling
cheerily all the way to the big woods.
As Frank neared the spot where he had left Christmas and the bicycle, he
was greeted with loud and repeated barking.
“That’s strange,” he mused. “Christmas isn’t given to such demonstrations
when on duty. Some one must have come in sight or hearing. Hey, old
fellow, what’s all this rumpus?” questioned Frank, as, emerging from a
copse, he came in full view of the dog.
Christmas was running up and down in front of the bicycle. He would face
in a certain direction and pose and bark. He even ran up to his master
as Frank approached, and seizing his coat in his teeth gently but
resolutely pulled him in the direction he had pointed.
“He means something by all this,” declared Frank. “Go ahead,” he
ordered.
Christmas, thus advised, bounded forward among some big trees. Frank,
coming up with him after a jaunt of about three hundred feet, found him
squatted on his haunches under a giant oak tree, looking up among its
branches. Frank looked up, too. A moving object attracted his attention.
“Why,” said Frank, staring fixedly, “it’s a balloon.”
This he discerned beyond question. He could plainly make out its slack
rigging. An ungainly, half-distended gas bag was wobbling about in the
topmost branches of the tree. Lower down, turned sideways and partly
smashed in, was a big wicker basket.
“It must be the balloon that little ragged fellow told about, the same
one that I saw when I took that header from the bicycle,” decided
Frank. “There couldn’t have been any one in it. Oh, say--but there
was, Mercy!” and Frank gave a violent start and quick gasp. He stood
transfixed with a sudden thrilling emotion akin to terror.
His eye sweeping the tree expanse keenly, he now made out, lying across
two limbs about thirty feet from the ground, a human figure.
This form was motionless, and bent the branches considerably. As the
breeze stirred them, they rocked like a cradle.
Frank guessed out the situation instantly. The balloon had driven or
dropped into the tree top, shattering the cage and tipping out its
pilot.
The latter had sustained a twenty-foot fall, striking some big branches
with enough force to stun him. He had landed on his present frail perch.
Frank’s heart almost stood still as he realized that a single waking
moment, a treacherous shifting of the wind, might precipitate the
imperilled balloonist to the ground with a broken neck.
Frank’s nerves were on a hard strain, but he grew composed as he decided
what he would do. He motioned the dog to silence, and at once started to
climb the tree.
He kept his eye on the swaying figure overhead all the time. At length
Frank reached a big crotched branch shooting out from the main trunk not
four feet under that which sustained the unconscious balloonist.
Frank braced his feet across the crotch. He took a great, long breath of
relief and satisfaction, for he found himself now so situated that if
the man should stir or slip from his insecure resting place, he could
retard his fall.
Frank had, upon leaving home, placed a long coil of rope in his coat
pocket. This he intended to use to tie up the bicycle in case he found
it necessary to take it home to repair it. He now used this to form a
criss-cross sort of a hammock directly under the two branches supporting
the balloonist.
“There,” said Frank finally, feeling he had the man in right shape at
last. “If he drops, that contrivance will hold him like a net.”
The youth rested for a few minutes, for it had been no easy task to slip
the rope around the two branches and secure it stoutly. When he again
stood up, he moved along his footing so that his face was on a level
with the strange bed of the balloonist.
The latter lay sunk down among bending twigs like a person in a hammock.
His face was bloodless, and over one temple was a great lump. That was
probably where a heavy branch had struck and stunned him.
The stranger was fairly well-dressed, and he had intelligent features.
For all this, however, there was a careless, easy-going look about him.
He did not at all suggest to Frank the quick-witted, nerve-strained
typical aeronaut.
Frank made his footing very sure, braced firmly, and with one hand took
a stout grasp under the sleeper’s collar.
“Wake up--wake up,” he called directly in his ear.
The man stirred faintly, only. Frank continued to call out to him. He
also with his other hand slapped his chest, his cheeks, his outstretched
palms.
Finally with a deep groan the man opened his eyes wide suddenly. He
stared and mumbled and tried to start up, but Frank held him flat.
“Easy, mister, now,” warned Frank gently. “Take time to find out the fix
you are in. Then let me help you to the ground.”
“Help me--why, ginger! I understand,” exclaimed the balloonist.
He lay back weakly, staring at Frank, then all about him, and finally up
at the gas bag flopping about in the upper branches of the tree top.
“I remember now,” he went on in a drawling, reminiscent tone. “It was a
quick drop. Valve blew out. A regular smash when we landed. She’s a
wreck, isn’t she? And say,” and the man glancing sideways downward
shuddered, “if I had gone the full header it would have been all day
with me, eh?”
Frank nodded. Briefly he explained how he had come to discover the
refugee’s plight. He helped the man to sit up, guiding and assisting
him. The latter came slowly out of his maze of bewilderment, and looked
grateful.
“You’ve saved me, I guess,” he observed. “One move or slip, and I’d have
gone shooting down the rest of the way.”
“When you are ready, let me help you to the ground,” suggested Frank.
“Oh, I’m all right now. Just a little shaking up,” assured the man. “No,
no, don’t you worry. I’m at home among trapezes.”
The balloonist extricated himself successfully from the swaying branches
and poised in a crotch nearer to the main trunk of the tree.
“Just a minute,” he said, deftly going up the tree, clambering over the
shattered basket and reaching up.
There was a great hiss and a dense taint of escaping gas in the air as
he operated some valve in the mechanism of the balloon. The gas bag
dropped gracefully to a mass of silken and rubber folds.
Then the man started to descend, Frank preceding him. Both reached the
ground in safety. The balloonist took an approving look at Frank, patted
Christmas and began arranging his disordered attire.
“What are you going to do next?” asked Frank, after his companion had
walked around the tree two or three times, viewing its top speculatively
the while, and whistling softly to himself.
“Well, the bag is safe for a time. I guess I’d better get to the nearest
town and telegraph the boss. It will be a job getting the balloon out of
that fix without further damage.”
“If you will rest a bit till I fix up a broken bicycle I have over
yonder, I will pilot you to Greenville,” said Frank.
“Good for you,” commended the man, and he followed Frank to the spot
where the wheel lay.
Frank set at work on the damaged bicycle. He now had the necessary tools
and material at hand to fix it up. At the end of ten minutes he had the
wheel in safe shape to roll it home, where he could repair it more
permanently.
Meantime his companion rattled on volubly. He told Frank his name was
Park Gregson. He was a sort of a “knockaround.” He had been with a
circus, had fought Indians, had been major in the South African War, had
circumnavigated the globe twice, in fact, a Jack-of-all-trades and
master of none for over fifteen years.
“That balloon,” he explained, “belongs to a professional aeronaut. He
hired me to help him. She’s a new one, that yonder. I was making a trial
cruise. Professor Balmer, who owns her, is at Circleville. As I say, I
must wire him to come and get her on her feet again.”
“You mean her wings?” suggested Frank.
“Exactly. Ready? No, you needn’t help me, I’m only a trifle bruised and
stiff.”
Frank led the way townwards. He stopped at the house to put his bicycle
away. Then he accompanied his companion to the railroad depot. Here Park
Gregson wrote out a telegram and handed it to the operator.
“Expect an answer,” he observed. “I’ll call for it. No, send it to me. I
say, Newton,” he addressed Frank with friendly familiarity, “where’s the
best place to put up till the professor reports himself?”
“There’s a fairly good hotel here,” said Frank.
Gregson looked a trifle embarrassed for an instant. Then he laughed,
saying.
“They’ll have to take me in penniless till the professor arrives.”
“That will be all right,” declared Frank. “I’ll vouch for you. But say,
if you would be our guest at home, you will be very welcome.”
“And I will be very delighted to have your most entertaining company,”
instantly replied Gregson. “I’ll make it all right when the boss comes.”
Frank was glad to offer this hospitality to his new chance acquaintance.
The man interested him. Everything he talked about he covered in a vivid
way that made his descriptions instructive. Already he had suggested
some points to Frank that had set the latter thinking in new directions.
The wide experience of the man was suggestive and valuable to Frank.
Park Gregson asked the telegraph operator to send any reply to his
message to the Newton home, and accompanied Frank there.
As they neared the cottage a man in a gig came driving down the road. It
was Dorsett.
He glared fiercely at Frank, and then bestowed an inquisitive, suspicious
look upon the stranger.
Frank introduced Gregson to his mother, who prepared a lunch for him.
Gregson was more shaken up than he had expressed, and was glad to lie
down and rest in the neatly-furnished spare room of the cottage.
Frank had some odd chores to do about the village. When he came
home again about six o’clock he found Gregson refreshed-looking and
comfortably seated in the parlor reading a book.
They had a pleasant time at the supper table. Then they adjourned to the
cozy little sitting-room. Christmas was allowed to stay in the house,
and seemed to enjoy the animated ways of the balloonist as much as the
others.
Park Gregson fairly fascinated them with the story of his travels and
adventures in many countries.
“You see, I have been quite a rolling stone, Mrs. Ismond,” he said. “A
harmless one, though.”
“Have you never thought of settling down to some regular occupation,
sir?” suggested Frank’s mother.
“It’s not in me, madam, I fear,” declared the knockaround. “I did try it
once, for a fact. Yes, I actually went into business.”
“What was the line, Mr. Gregson?” asked Frank.
“Mail order business.”
Frank showed by the expression of his face that the balloonist had
struck a theme of great interest to him.
“I had a partner,” went on Gregson. “We advertised and sold sets of
rubber finger tips to protect the hands of housewives when working about
the house.”
“Was it a success?” inquired Frank.
“It was great--famous. The orders just rolled in. We made money hand
over fist and spent it like water. One day, though, there came a stop to
it all. A lawyer served an injunction on us. It seemed that the device
was a French invention patented in this country. My partner sloped with
most of the funds, leaving me stranded. All the same, it’s a great
business--the mail order line.”
For over an hour Frank kept their guest busy answering a hundred earnest
questions as to all the details of the mail order business.
When Gregson had retired for the night Frank sat silent and thoughtful
in the company of his mother. Finally he said.
“Mother, Mr. Gregson’s talk has done me a lot of good.”
“I saw you were very much interested,” remarked Mrs. Ismond.
“Interested!” repeated Frank with vim, unable to control his restless
spirit and getting up and pacing the room to and fro--“I am simply wild
to go deeper into this mail order business. Why, it looks plain as day
to me--the way to begin it--the way to exploit it--the way to make a
great big success of it. He says that little metal novelties of the
household kind take the best. I was just thinking: there’s a hardware
novelties factory right on the spot at Pleasantville, and--Down,
Christmas, down!”
The dog had interrupted Frank with a low growl. Then, before Frank could
deter him, the animal flew at the open window of the sitting-room.
Frank seized Christmas by the collar, just as the animal was aiming to
leap clear through it to the garden outside.
“Why, what is the matter, Christmas?” spoke Mrs. Ismond, arising to her
feet in some surprise.
Just then a frightful shriek rang out from under the open window,
accompanied by the frantic words:
“Help, murder, help--I’m nearly killed!”