The Boy Aviators in Record Flight; Or, The Rival Aeroplane

“We can’t get any further,” he remarked.

“Why not?” demanded Bart Witherbee.

“Look there.”

The boy pointed ahead a few feet up the road.

A huge tree lay across it, effectually blocking all progress.

CHAPTER XXI.

BART AND THE B’AR

“Well, boys, we sure do seem to be in for a run of hard luck,” remarked Bart Witherbee as he climbed out of the auto with the others, and they ruefully surveyed the obstruction. It was a big sugar pine and lay entirely across the road. To go round it was out of the question, for the ground on each side was timber grown and rocky.

“There’s only one thing to do – cut it away,” pronounced Bart Witherbee, starting back for the tonneau to get the axes.

“No; I’ve got a better scheme than that,” said Billy suddenly, and then broke out with a loud: “Look here, fellows!”

He pointed excitedly to the trunk of the tree where it had been severed from the roots.

The fresh marks of an axe were upon it.

“It’s Luther Barr and his crowd,” cried the boy. “They figured on blocking us, and they would have succeeded but for a scheme I’ve just thought of.”

“What’s that?” demanded Bart Witherbee.

“Why, let’s get the rope out of the tonneau and haul the tree out of the way with the auto.”

“Say, that’s a good plan,” assented Bart Witherbee, starting back for the auto once more. In a few minutes he had the rope and it was quickly looped round the tree and then tied to the rear axle of the auto, after the machine had been turned round.

Billy took his place at the wheel and started the car up. There was a great sound of cracking and straining, and for a second the auto’s wheels spun uselessly around. Then suddenly as the boy applied more power the great log started.

Amid a cheer from the boys it was pulled entirely away, and a few seconds later the road was clear.

“Well, what do you think of men who would descend to a mean trick like that,” demanded Bill angrily as the adventurers resumed the road.

“As it happened it didn’t do them much good,” remarked Bart.

“I should say not,” rejoined Billy. “I reckon they didn’t think that we could hit upon a way of getting it off our track.”

The auto chugged on through the sweet-smelling pine woods till the declining sun began to tint their dark branches with gold.

“Hadn’t we better send the boys a wireless?” asked Billy, and as the others agreed that it was important to know where they were the mast was set in position and a call sent out. A reply was soon obtained from the others, who were camped at a small plateau further up the side of the foothill.

Half an hour later the boys were all in camp together, and the events of the day were discussed with much interest. It was a wild country in which they found themselves. Great stretches of barrens mingled with dense pine woods, and Frank and Harry had serious thoughts of once more taking to the plains. Bart Witherbee, however, assured them that if they kept on to Calabazos they would find a good landing and ascending place, and from there could easily wing their way to level ground. He represented to them that they would be taking a short cut also by following this route. So the boys decided to keep on to Calabazos with the old miner, a decision which was not wholly disinterested, for they were anxious to see the mine of which he had told them so much.

Naturally, the position of the other contestants in the race was a topic that came up for a lot of discussion, but the boys were still talking it over when it was time to turn in without having arrived at any definite conclusion. From what they had heard in White Willow they were pretty certain that Slade’s aeroplane was disabled. Concerning the condition of the dirigible or her whereabouts, however, there was by no means the same amount of assurance.

They were chatting thus and speculating on their chance of winning the big prize when Bart Witherbee suddenly held up a warning hand.

“Hark!” he exclaimed. They all listened.

“Did you hear anything?” he asked of Frank.

“Not a thing,” replied the boy.

“I thought I heard footsteps up the trail,” returned the old miner, “but I guess I was mistaken.”

“Why, who could it be?” asked Billy.

“It might very easily be some of Luther Barr’s gang prowling about. We are near the mine now, and they are no doubt determined to get the papers showing its location before I have a chance to file my claim,” put in Bart Witherbee.

The boys kept a sharp lookout after this, but they heard no more, if, indeed, there had been any sound, which they began to doubt, and soon after they were snug asleep in their blankets.

Suddenly Frank was awakened by shots and loud shouts. Springing up from his blankets he was amazed to see Bart Witherbee rolling over and over on the ground with somebody who seemed of immense size gripping him tightly.

The boy could hear Bart gasping for breath. He seemed as if he were being crushed.

Frank’s shouts awakened the others.

“Robbers!” cried Billy.

“Indians!” yelled Harry.

“Murderers!” cried old Mr. Joyce, as their sleepy eyes took in the struggle.

Harry raised his rifle to fire at Bart’s antagonist, whoever he might be, and was about to pull the trigger, even at the risk of hitting the miner, when Frank interrupted him with a cry of:

“Don’t shoot, you might hit Bart.”

“But the robber will kill him.”

“It’s not a robber at all,” suddenly cried Frank, as the two contestants rolled over nearer to the firelight. “It’s a big bear!”

“Give me a knife – quick!” gasped Bart, as he and the bear rolled about. Hastily Frank threw toward him a big hunting weapon. One of the hunter’s arms was free, and he reached out and grabbed the weapon. With a rapid thrust he drove it into the bear’s eye. With a howl of pain the animal raised its paws to caress its injury. At the same instant Frank’s rifle cracked and the animal rolled over, seemingly dead.

“Are you hurt?” asked the boys, rushing forward to Bart.

“No, I don’t think so,” cautiously replied the miner, feeling his ribs. “I feel as if that thar critter had caved me in, though.”

An examination soon showed that Bart was uninjured and the bear quite dead.

“That was a close call,” remarked the miner, wiping his knife. “I guess that must have been what I heard prowling around here early in the evening, although that dead brute there was no more dangerous than that old sharp, Luther Barr.”

“Did you think it was some of his gang attacking you?” asked Billy.

“I sure did,” replied the miner. “I was lying nice and quietly asleep when all of a sudden I felt something nosing me, and could feel its warm breath on the back of my neck. If I had not been so sleepy, I’d have known it was a b’ar by the strong smell of its fur, but as it was, I thought it was Hank Higgins or Noggy Wilkes. I soon found out my mistake, though.”

After this interruption the boys turned in and slept quite soundly till daybreak, when they were up and the journey to Calabazos resumed, after the bear had been skinned and the steaks enjoyed. Before the start was made Bart gave the boys full instructions for landing the Golden Eagle in Calabazos, which lay across a small canyon not very many miles ahead.

The road now began to dip down hill, and the auto rattled along at a lively clip. Here and there the boys noticed small huts, and tunnels drilled in the hillside, which the miner told them were abandoned claims.

“Some of them is worked yet by Chinamen,” he explained: “but when the poor yellow men do unexpectedly make a strike there’s always some mean cuss ready to come along and take it all away from them. I think the gov’ment ought ter do something about it.

“Half a mile ahead now is the bridge across the canyon, and then we’ve only got a short distance to go before we’re in Calabazos. My mine is about ten miles from there,” he said a few minutes later. “I wonder who is sheriff there now. You see, that makes a whole lot of difference when yer are filing a claim against a rival. You’ve got to have the sheriff on your side, for he can make a lot of trouble for you in getting to the gov’ment office, where first come, first served is the rule.”

“But you have your claim staked, have you not?” asked Billy.

“Sure; but that don’t bind it till you’ve registered your claim,” rejoined the miner. “You see, mine’s an abandoned claim, too. Old fellow name of Fogg had it once. At least I found his name cut on a tree.”

And now they came to a sharp turn in the road.

“The bridge is right around the corner,” said the miner, “you had better put on your brakes, Billy, or we may have a runaway, for there’s a terrible steep bit of hill runs right down to it.”

The boy obeyed, and it was well he did so, for while they were speeding toward the bridge, a rude affair of pine trunks laid across long stringers suspended high in the air above a pine-clad canyon, there was a sudden shout from Bart Witherbee, who was acting as lookout.

“Hold up, boy! Stop the car!” he shouted.

“What’s up?” asked Billy, shutting down his emergency brakes with a snap in obedience to the miner’s urgent tone.

“Look there!” The miner pointed ahead.

At first the boys could see nothing the matter with the bridge, but a second glance showed them that something very serious indeed had occurred to it.

Somebody had removed two of the trunks that formed a roadway, and right in the centre of the structure was a gaping hole. Had the auto come upon it unexpectedly it must have gone through into the depths of the canyon beneath.

They all got out of the auto, all, that is, but Mr. Joyce, who was busy figuring on an invention, and hastened down to the bridge. The planks, there was no doubt, had been deliberately removed by some one, and that those persons were Luther Barr and his party none in the party could for a moment doubt.

Suddenly the bell of the wireless on board the auto began to ring.

“The boys are sending us a message,” exclaimed Billy.

He and Lathrop raced back up the hill to the car, where the latter placed the detector over his ears and tapped out his “ready” signal.

The others watched him eagerly. It was not a minute before they saw that something serious was the matter. The boy’s face paled, and he seemed much concerned.

“What is the matter?” anxiously asked Bart Witherbee. “Air the boys in trouble?”

“The worst kind of trouble, I am afraid,” breathed Lathrop in a tone of deep concern. “They are in the hands of Luther Barr.”

“Where?”

“On the other side of the canyon.”

CHAPTER XXII.

AN AUTO LEAP FOR LIFE

What was to be done?

The bridge across the canyon was impassable for an auto – that seemed certain. While the open space caused by the removal of the two planks or rough trunks was not more than four feet, still it was a distance sufficient to make anyone despair of ever getting a vehicle across it.

“We can cut some trees and split off planks?” suggested Mr. Joyce.

“That would take too long,” declared the boys. “Frank and Harry need us in a hurry or they would not have sent such an imperative message. We have got to cross the canyon.”

Suddenly Lathrop, who had been studying the situation, the steep-sided canyon, the roaring river on its rocky bed below the structure of the bridge itself, uttered an exclamation.

“I think I can see a way to get across that gap,” he cried.

“Climb across on the stringpiece, I suppose?” replied Bart sarcastically. “I thought of that some time ago; we can easily do that, but we’ve got to have the auto. It’s got all the supplies in it.”

“No, my plan is to go across, auto and all,” rejoined Lathrop.

“What! Take the auto across that gap?”

“Yes.”

“Say, this is no time for fooling, Lathrop,” remonstrated Billy Barnes.

“I’m not fooling. I mean it. Did you ever go to the circus?”

“Well, of all the fool questions. Yes, I’ve been to the circus, but what has that got to do with this situation?”

“A whole lot.”

“For instance?”

“Well, you’ve seen an act there called ‘leaping the gap’ or some such name?”

“Yes, where a woman in an auto comes down a steep incline and jumps a big gap at the bottom?”

“That’s it.”

“But, in the circus the auto is given an upward impetus by the fact that the incline down which it runs down is curved upward at the end,” objected Billy.

“So it is in this case,” was the calm reply. “I’ve been looking it over, and it seems to me that conditions are about the same.”

“As how?”

“Well, here we have a steep incline – the hill yonder,” Billy Barnes nodded, “and there yonder is the gap where Luther Barr and his gang took out the boards.”

“But you haven’t got the upward curve at the end of your incline to throw the auto into the air and carry it safely across the gap,” objected Billy.

“Oh, yes, that’s there, too,” was the calm reply; “do you notice that the bridge sags in the centre?”

“Yes, it does, that’s true,” pronounced Billy, after a prolonged scrutiny.

“Well, the boards have been taken out some feet toward the opposite side of the sag, haven’t they?”

“Hum – yes, that’s so.”

“Well, then, there’s your upward curve before you come to the gap.”

“Jiminy cricket, Lathrop, you are right. Now, what’s your plan – to leap the gap?”

“Yes, but we must lighten the auto. We all have cool heads, and we can stand on the edge of the gap and throw most of the heavy things in the car across the space. Then we can pick them up on the other side. That is, if we get the auto over.”

Even Bart Witherbee had to agree that the plan looked feasible. All of the party, with the exception of old Mr. Joyce, had seen the same feat performed in a circus. True, in the show everything was arranged and mathematically adjusted, but the conditions here, though in a rough way, were yet the same practically. There was the descent, the steep drop, the short up-curve and then the gap. The more they thought of it the more they believed it could be done.

It did not take long to transfer most of the heavy baggage to the other side of the gap, and then came Lathrop’s next order – which was that the others should shin themselves across the stringpieces to the opposite side of the gap, so that the auto might not be burdened with their weights. It took a lot of persuasion to make them do it, but they finally obeyed, and Lathrop alone walked back up the trail to where the auto stood with its brakes hard set.

The boy himself would not have denied that his heart beat fast as he approached the car. In a few minutes he was to make an experiment that might result in certain and terrible death if the slightest hitch occurred.

But he thought of his chums marooned and in the hands of their enemies on the other side of the canyon and the reflection of their peril steeled him to endure his own.

The boy took a quick glance all about him.

The spot where the auto stood was about a quarter of a mile above where the bridge joined the canyon’s bank. He had then, as he judged, plenty of room in which to get up a speed sufficient to carry him safely across the gap.

For a second the thought of failure flashed across his mind, but he did not dwell on it.

What he was about to do didn’t bear thinking of. It was a thing to be done in hot blood or not at all.

Slowly Lathrop climbed into the auto. He felt the heavy body of the car sway on its springs as he did so, and wondered at the same instant how it would feel in case of failure to be hurtling down – down – down to the depths of the canyon with the heavy car.

As he grasped the wheel and prepared to throw off his brake, he looked ahead. From where he was starting he could see the gap in the bridge yawning blackly.

It looked much further across than he had at first anticipated.

For a minute he felt like weakening and deciding not to take what seemed a fatal chance.

The thought of Frank and Harry in the hands of Luther Barr and his gang, however, steeled him. He gritted his teeth, jammed his hat back on his head and prepared for the start.

On the opposite side of the gap he could see the white, strained faces of his friends. For one brief second he looked at all this, wondering vaguely if it was to be the last time he was to see them, and then, with a deep intake of his breath, he released the brake and threw in the engine clutch to top speed. At the same moment he advanced his spark and felt the machine leap forward on the steep incline like a creature suddenly let loose from a leash.

Down the steep grade dashed the machine, sometimes seeming to leap several feet in the air and come down with a terrific crash as it struck the ground.

“Good thing she’s not more weight in her,” Lathrop thought to himself as these convulsive leaps occurred.

So terrific was the speed, it was like traveling on the back of a whirlwind, if such a thing can be imagined.

“There’s no stopping now,” thought Lathrop, as with a brief prayer on his lips the huge machine hustled onward like a shot from a cannon. On and on it dashed.

Showers of rocks hurled upward from its wheels were blurred discs at the pace they were making.

And now the bridge and the dark gap loomed right in front of him.

Clenching his teeth tightly, the boy gripped the steering wheel till the varnish came off on his hands. He felt the machine bound forward onto the narrow span – felt it sag beneath the unaccustomed weight.

Everything grew blurred. All he thought of now was clinging to that steering wheel to the end.

His hat had flown off long ago – torn from his head by the wind generated by the awful speed.

And now the gap itself was there. Seen momentarily, dark, forbidding – a door to death.

Suddenly, just as it seemed he was about to be plunged into the depths, the boy felt the huge machine rise under him as lightly as if it had been a feather.

It shot upward like a stone impelled by a giant’s fist, hesitated for a moment at the apex of its spring, and then crashed down onto the bridge.

But the gap had been crossed.

It was several hundred feet before Lathrop could control the auto, and when he did, and the others rushed up, they found a white-faced boy at the wheel, who was as nearly on the verge of a collapse as a healthy lad can be.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A MYSTERY

The supplies that had been left on the bridge were hastily loaded into the auto, and the party once more took their seats. Lathrop had by this time quite recovered, and, in reply to all the encomiums heaped on him by the others, could only reply:

“That’s all right.”

With Billy Barnes at the wheel the auto chugged off once more on its errand of rescue.

Suddenly, leading up a woodland track to their right, Billy Barnes spied auto tracks.

“That must be Barr and his crowd,” shouted Billy, turning the auto up the track that converged from the main road at this point.

Rapidly and almost silently the auto made its way over the beds of pine needles that covered the rough roadway. With the reduced speed at which they were proceeding the approach of the machine could have been hardly audible to a strange group onto which the auto party a second later emerged.

The persons composing it consisted of Luther Barr and the men to whom Billy had referred as composing “his gang,” namely, Hank Higgins, Noggy Wilkes, Fred Reade, the red-bearded aviator, and Slade. As the auto rolled up behind them so silently that none of them apparently knew of its approach, Barr was grinning triumphantly at Frank and Harry Chester, whose aeroplane stood at one side of the clearing.

“I thought we’d lure you down here by displaying a flag,” he sneered. “I suppose you thought it was your own party. Well, now, you have found out your mistake.”

“Our friends will soon be here in reply to our message,” said Frank, “and they will not allow you to harm us.”

“Oh, I suppose you think they could answer that wireless message of yours,” sneered old Barr. “Well, they couldn’t, because we’d fixed it so that they couldn’t. Do you think I’d have let you send out a message if I thought they could have got here? I just fooled you for fun.”

“What have you done with them?” demanded Frank.

“Oh, only taken a few planks out of the bridge across the canyon so that they couldn’t get across. We hold the cards now, so you might as well tell us where Bart Witherbee intends to claim his mine. If you won’t, we shall see that you are put somewhere where you will get over your stubbornness.”

“Oh, you will, will you?” exclaimed Bart Witherbee, suddenly stepping forward. “Not yet, Mr. Barr, and now I think as we have the drop on you, you and your friends had better vamoose – git out – run along – fade away.”

“What are you doing here,” stammered Reade, turning round and seeing the boys in their auto, “I thought – ”

“Yes,” cried Billy, “you thought you’d fixed the bridge so as we couldn’t get across – well, you hadn’t; so now get along and be on your way before we summon law officers and have you placed under arrest.”

“Come on, let’s get out,” said Hank Higgins sullenly, “the kids certainly seem to have it on us this time.”

Casting glances full of malevolence at the boys, but still not daring to say anything, Barr and his companions climbed into their machines and silently made off. To their satisfaction the boys saw in the tonneau of the rear machine a lot of boxes which they knew must contain sections of the dismantled Slade aeroplane. The Despatch party therefore had not yet been able to effect repairs, which accounted for their desperate anxiety to detain the boys at any cost.

“However, did they come to lure you down here?” asked Billy as soon as the two autos with their rascally owners had departed.

“Why, we saw a signal waving from this opening in the woods, and thought it was you showing us where there was a good landing place. We soon found out our mistake, however,” answered Frank.

“Say, boys,” observed Bart suddenly, after he had earnestly scanned the sky for awhile, “we’d better be getting on. I believe we are going to have one of those storms that we get up in these hills every once in a while.”

“Are they very bad?” asked Billy.

“Bad!” echoed the miner, “why, boy, ef you’re wearing all your own hair arter one of ’em you’re lucky.”

“Well, we can’t fly any further to-day,” announced Frank.

“Why not?” demanded the others.

“One of our rudder wires got snapped as we came down here. It was a narrow place to land in at best.”

“How are we going to get the aeroplane up the trail?” demanded Bart.

“Tow it,” was the quiet response.

“Tow it. How in the name of sea-sick catamounts air we goin’ ter do that?” demanded Bart.

“Easy,” laughed the boy; “just hitch a rope to it, attach it to the auto and it will tow right along on its wheels.”

“Yes, but the wings are too wide to pass along this narrow trail,” objected Bart.

“We can unbolt them and pack them in the auto. Some of us will have to walk, but that will be no great hardship for a short distance.”

“Say, Frank, you’re a genius. Come on, boys, git busy with them monkey wrenches and we’ll be in Calabazos to-night. Then ho – for the lost mine.”

As Frank had anticipated, it was not a lengthy work to detach the wings of the Golden Eagle, thanks to their simple construction, and soon the cavalcade was moving forward up the mountain side with the framework of the aeroplane in tow. Stripped of her planes, she looked not unlike a butterfly from which the wings have been plucked, but the boys did not mind appearances in the saving of time they effected.

“Say, Frank, though,” said Billy suddenly, as they tramped along in the rear of the auto which Lathrop was driving, “isn’t this breaking the rules of the flight? Are you allowed to tow your air craft?”

Frank drew a little book from his pocket.

“In cases of absolute necessity owners and fliers of contesting craft may accept a tow, provided they do not actually load their machines on railroad trains or other means of transportation,” he read. “This shall be understood not to apply to circumstances other than where an aviator finds it impossible to make an ascent from his landing place.”

“I guess we are within the rules all right,” said Harry.

“I think so. Of course we shall have to make out a written explanation of the case,” rejoined Frank, “but it would have been impossible for us to rise from that wood clump into which Luther Barr lured us.”