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

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE GOLDEN HERMIT

“Some’ne in there?” echoed the others in amazed tones.

“Yes – hark!” said the lad, holding up a finger.

Sure enough, above the moaning of the storm and the roar of the rain came a sound like a faint groaning.

“Well, come on,” cried Bart; “no use stopping out here in the rain just for that. Let’s go in.”

Reassured by his confident manner, the others crowded in. The interior of the hut, not overlight at any time, was rendered doubly gloomy by the mantle of blackness which the storm had flung over the heavens. It was not till Frank had taken out a folding lantern from his pocket and lit it with a lucifer from his folding match box that they were able to take in the details of the strange interior in which they stood. Of course, their first task was to look for the human being or animal that Billy had heard groaning.

This did not take long. The hut was not divided into rooms, and was unceiled, the rafters being right overhead. The lamp was flashed into every corner.

To the boys’ amazement, the place was absolutely empty.

“I’m sure I heard somebody groaning or grumbling,” said Billy. “I’m positive of it.”

“Well, maybe you are right, lad,” replied Bart Witherbee, “and I rather think you are, for look here!”

He pointed to a rough sort of bunk formed of a framework of lumber in one corner of the room.

“It’s warm,” he said, touching it with his hand, “somebody was lying asleep here when we came up the trail – that’s as plain as print – and look here, too,” he went on, pointing to other signs of human occupancy the boys had not noticed when first they came in.

In rapid succession, he showed them some ashes glowing in a huge open fireplace, in front of which was an ample hearthstone. There was also a rude table in one corner, on which were the remains of what had been a rude meal.

“But where has the man gone who was in here?” demanded Frank.

“Maybe out by the back door,” suggested Harry.

“There isn’t one,” rejoined Billy, “the door in front is the only way out.”

“How about the windows?”

“The two in front are the only ones.”

“Well, that’s queer.”

“It certainly is.”

“See if there are any trap doors in the floor,” suggested Bart. “These old miners are queer old chaps sometimes.”

But a close search of the floor did not reveal any trace of a trap door. Much puzzled by the mystery, the boys retired to bed that night prepared for any sudden alarm. A lamp was left burning, and their guns lay ready to hand. But nothing occurred to mar the monotonous drumming of the rain on the roof, and one by one they dropped off to sleep.

It was soon after midnight that Frank awakened with a strange feeling of dread.

He looked about the room, but so far as he could see at first everything was as it had been left when they went to sleep. All at once, however, his attention was attracted to the fireplace by a slight scratching sound. He gazed over toward the hearth, and to his unbounded astonishment and no small alarm he saw the hearthstone suddenly begin to swing slowly back, and, through the aperture thus created on the side nearest the room, he saw human finger tips cautiously poking about. Suddenly an entire hand was thrust through the crack.

What was coming next Frank had no idea, but with a violently beating heart he lay watching the aperture while a second hand joined the first and gave the stone a feeble shove upward. It swung back on its invisible hinges till a space of perhaps three feet yawned between it and the floor, and then a face made its appearance.

It was the face of a very old man with venerable white beard and mild, timid, blue eyes. Frank almost closed his eyes, and from under their lashes watched the old man painfully lift himself out of the tunnel into the room. Once in the room he tiptoed about among the sleepers, gazing at them earnestly to make sure they were all asleep, and then, returning to the hole beneath the hearthstone, reached down and drew out a bag that seemed to weigh considerably.

But the exertion seemed to exhaust his feeble strength, for with a groan he fell back into a rough chair, and the sack fell from his trembling hands with a crash. The sudden sound woke all the adventurers, and they sprang to their feet with their weapons in their hands.

The sight of the feeble old man, however, gasping in the chair, with his hand on his heart as if he was in mortal pain, soon convinced them that it was no dangerous enemy with whom they had to deal.

“Don’t, don’t hurt me,” cried the old man pitiably, as the boys and their elders closed in about him. “I will tell you all, only don’t hurt me. Spare a poor old man who has not long to live; let him spend his last hours in peace.”

“We do not wish to hurt you,” Frank assured him, “we want to aid you. Are you ill?”

“I am sick unto death. The exertion of carrying that load of ore from the mine was too much for me. I do not think I have long to live.”

“Who are you?” asked Bart Witherbee gently.

“I am Jared Fogg,” replied the old man, closing his eyes as though too weary to keep them open.

“Jared Fogg!” exclaimed the others in amazed tones.

“Yes; why do you seem so surprised?”

“Why, I am the man who found your lost mine,” exclaimed the miner.

“What! The man who staked out his claim there!” cried the old man.

“Yes; I thought you were dead. We all did, and I started out to find your mysterious mine. As you never filed a claim to it, I thought I had a right to stake it.”

“You are right; I never filed a claim to it. I did not want other miners to come to the neighborhood as soon as they found how rich it was. So I worked it all alone. As I got the good gold out I hid it all away.”

“Yes; go on,” said Bart Witherbee breathlessly.

“Well, I saw that some day sooner or later someone was bound to discover it if I worked openly in it, so I started constructing a tunnel. The mouth of it is under that hearthstone, and the other end emerges into the shaft of the lost mine. For many years I have used it, and no one has ever suspected that old Jared Fogg, the hermit who lived in this hut, had thousands of dollars in gold. I am rich – ha – ha – I am rich.”

The old man’s face became convulsed.

“But,” he went on, “now that I am dying – ah, I know death when it is coming on – I have a great wish to right a wrong I did years ago. My name was not always Jared Fogg. It was once Jack Riggs. I was once a bandit and a robber and did many, many wicked things. But one weighs on my conscience more heavily than any of the others. One night we held up the Rio Bravo stage. There was fighting, and I shot the stage driver and his wife, who, when her husband fell from the box, seized the reins and attempted to drive on. With them was their child, a lad of three or four years. That disgusted me with crime. I reformed from that night. I took the lad and raised him till he was six or seven, when he was stolen from me by a wandering circus. I have never seen him since. If I could see him, now that he has grown to man’s estate, and tell him that on my death bed I beg his forgiveness for my wicked deed, I would die happy. All these years I have thought of him. If I only knew where he was now.”

“Would you know him again if you saw him?” Bart Witherbee’s voice shook strangely, and several times during the old man’s recital he had passed his hand across his brow as if striving to recollect something. Now his eye shone with a strange light, and he bent forward eagerly:

“Yes, among a thousand!”

“How?”

“By a peculiar mark on his arm, where he was shot accidentally by one of my gang in the fight following the killing of his father.”

Bart rolled up his sleeve, and the old man gave a terrible cry as his eyes fell on the dark-red scar the boys had often noticed.

“Forgive – ,” he cried, stumbling to his feet and stretching out his hands as if to keep from falling.

The next moment he had fallen forward with a crash.

He was dead.

CHAPTER XXV.

A FIGHT FOR FORTUNE

The sheriff of Calabazos was sitting on the stoop outside the Government Assay Office early the next day when he was startled by a loud clatter of hoofs up the mountain side. He looked up from his absorbing occupation of whittling a piece of wood, and saw coming rattling down the trail at a breakneck speed four horsemen. They were Noggy Wilkes, Hank Higgins, Fred Reade and Luther Barr.

“Hullo, Chunky,” hailed the sheriff to the government clerk, who was inside the office – a rough, clap-boarded affair on which appeared a sign, which announced in white letters that it was the “GOVERNMENT ASSAY OFFICE.” “Come on out here, Barton, here come them fellers that got here yesterday with that thar skyscraper thing of theirn and purty near bothered the life out of Skol Scovgen, the blacksmith, trying to git him to make a conniption of some kind for it.”

The young man who languidly consented to serve Uncle Sam in the capacity of claim clerk joined him on the porch. He also gazed interestedly at the group of horsemen, who were now compelled to slow up by the steepness of the trail.

“Seem ter be in quite a hurry,” he commented, picking his teeth with a quill pick that he had acquired on his last visit to what he was pleased to term civilization.

“Yep,” assented the sheriff, “I reckon they’ve bin up stakin’ out a mine or suthin’. I hear they was talking in ther hotel last night while it was rainin’ so pesky hard about a lost mine and some chap named Witherbee.”

“Oh, I remember that feller Witherbee,” struck in the clerk. “Went east a while ago. I recollect that the gossip was that he’d made quite a piece of money on a mine or had some sort of mine hidden back in the hills thar. I heard it was the one that belonged to old Fogg, who disappeared.”

“Wall, ther fellers seem to have something of ther same kind on their minds,” exclaimed the sheriff, as the party, having now left the uneven trail, came clattering down the road on their wiry horses.

It could now be seen that Luther Barr, who rode in advance of the rest, carried some sort of a paper in his hand. The arrival of the cortege had attracted quite a crowd, who gathered about the Assay Office as the riders came clattering up.

“Is this the Government Assay Office?” queried Luther Barr as they drew rein and dismounted.

“Reckon so,” replied the dandified clerk with a languid air.

“Oh, you reckon so, do you?” was the impatient reply. “Well, kindly bestir yourself a little. I wish to file a claim to a mine.”

“Yep – Got ther papers all made out regilar?”

“Yes, here they are. We’ve gotten them all right and correct. I guess there’ll be no trouble about that part of it, eh, Reade?”

“I guess not,” answered the individual addressed, tying his horse to the hitching bar in front of the assay office.

“All right, gentlemen,” at length remarked the clerk, getting to his feet, “I guess if you come inside we can fix you up.”

“Say, partner,” put in the sheriff, “yer don’t mind my askin’ you a question, do yer?”

“Not at all,” beamed Luther Barr, who was in high good humor, “ask a dozen.”

“Wall, is this yar mine yer goin’ ter locate the ‘Lost Mine’ that old Jared Fogg, who disappeared, used ter own?”

“I believe it is. Why do you ask?”

“Wall, if you’ll excuse my jay-bird curiosity, I’d jes like to know how in thunder you ever located it.”

“That is our secret, my man,” replied the eastern millionaire briskly. “All you need to know, and this gentleman here, is that we have it legally located, isn’t it?”

“Beg your pardon,” remarked the sheriff. “No harm done?”

“Oh, none at all,” smiled Barr. “And now, I think we’ll go in and make the deal final.”

They entered the office with the clerk, Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes remaining outside.

As Barr and Reade passed into the office the former whispered to Hank Higgins.

“Now you and Wilkes do your duty. I don’t anticipate any interruption, but if there is any – ”

The two western ruffians tapped the butts of their Colts knowingly.

“We’ll attend to that, guv’ner,” they assured him.

Silence fell on the village street after Barr and Reade had entered the office. The crowd outside stood gaping in curiosity as to what could be the business that had brought the strangers galloping in such evident haste to the assay office. The sheriff, with a side glance at Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes, resumed his whittling.

Suddenly the quiet was broken by the sharp chug-chug of an approaching automobile.

“Here comes a choo-choo cart,” remarked the sheriff, springing to his feet and peering up the road.

“That’s what it is,” answered a man in the crowd, “and coming like blue blazes, too.”

As he spoke, the boys’ auto swept round a wooded curve and came tearing along toward the assay office. In the tonneau stood Bart Witherbee, his face strained and eager, and holding a crumpled paper in his hand. Frank was at the wheel and the other boys were beside their miner friend in the tonneau.

“Seem ter be in a hurry,” drawled the sheriff, as the party swept up to the low porch, the crowd falling back to make way for them with wondering glances.

Luther Barr’s lean face appeared at the dusty window of the Government Office.

“A hundred dollars if you file that claim in time,” he shouted to the astonished clerk, who thought the old man had gone suddenly mad.

Bart Witherbee made a flying leap from the auto, and almost before it stopped had raced up the steps. But before he could gain the door of the assay office he found himself looking into the muzzles of two revolvers held by Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes.

“Don’t come no further, pardner,” grinned Hank. “It might be onhealthy for you.”

“Here, here; what’s all this?” growled the sheriff. “I don’t allow no shooting in my bailiwick. Put up them guns.”

“Let me get by, Hank Higgins,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee angrily.

“Hey, there; what’s that name you mentioned, partner?” asked the sheriff eagerly.

“Hank Higgins, and there’s his partner, Noggy Wilkes,” exclaimed the miner. “The third one, Bill Jenkins, is in jail.”

“Wall, if here ain’t a bit of Christmas luck,” shouted the sheriff exultingly. “I want ’em both for a dozen crimes. Here, you; you’re under arrest. Don’t move or I’ll fire.”

But Noggy Wilkes, with a desperate leap, had gained the side of his horse that stood, western fashion, unhitched, with the reins lying on the horn of his saddle. With one bound the desperado was mounted and galloping off down the trail. The sheriff sent two bullets after him, but both missed. Hank Higgins, however, was not so fortunate. With a muttered:

“I guess you got me right, sheriff,” he submitted to arrest.

In the meantime, Bart Witherbee had burst like a whirlwind into the Government office, upsetting a desk and spilling a bottle of ink over Luther Barr, who had angrily intercepted him.

“Don’t file that claim to Fogg’s mine,” he shouted, waving his papers above his head. “I’ve got a prior one.”

“You have – where?” gasped the astonished clerk.

“File that claim,” ordered Luther Barr. “I’ll report you to Washington if you don’t.”

“Hold your horses,” replied the clerk easily, “there seems to be some sort of dispute here. Do you lay claim to the mine?” he asked, turning to Witherbee.

“I sure do,” replied the miner, “and here’s my claim – the last will and testament of Jared Fogg, otherwise Jack Riggs. He leaves his mine and the treasure he has secretly hoarded from it and buried under the floor of his hut to me.”

“And who might you be?” asked the clerk eagerly.

“I am Bart Witherbee, and can easily prove it,” replied the miner, drawing from his pocket a number of papers.

The clerk quickly perused them and also the will.

“What time did you stake the mine?” he asked, suddenly turning to Luther Barr.

“At daylight to-day,” replied the millionaire. “I guess we win.”

“I guess not,” snapped back Witherbee. “Old man Fogg died shortly after midnight, as I can easily prove, and therefore the will became operative at that time.”

“I see you know some law,” remarked the clerk. “I guess, Mr. Barr, your claim is not valid.”

But Barr, raging furiously, had gone.

Outside the door he saw the boys. Beside himself with rage, he shook his fist at them. His rage was too intense to permit him to speak. The sheriff and everybody in the crowd insisted on shaking hands with Bart Witherbee and hearing again and again his strange story and the details of how the will had been found hidden in the hut. At last, however, accompanied by the sheriff, whose duty it was in that rough community to look after old Fogg’s, or Jack Riggs’ body, the boys and their miner friend managed to tear themselves away and sped back to the hermit’s hut in their auto. They found everything as they had left it, and, on tearing up the floor, according to the instructions left in the old man’s will, they found that a huge pit had been dug there, which was filled to the brim with ore which the old miser had painstakingly carried through his tunnel from his mine. A rough estimate valued it at $350,000.

“How do you suppose Luther Barr ever managed to locate the mine?” asked Frank wonderingly.

“That puzzled me, too, at first,” said the sheriff, “but now, since I have found that Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes knew Wild Bill Jenkins, it is a mystery no longer. Wild Bill boasted some time ago that he knew where the mine was, but he was forced to become a fugitive from justice before he had time to file any claim to it.”

Suddenly the voice of Billy Barnes, who had wandered out onto the trail with a rifle, was borne to their ears:

“Boys! Boys! Come quick!” he cried. There was urgent entreaty in his tone.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SAND STORM

Rushing out in the direction of the cries, the boys found Billy struggling in the grasp of Fred Reade, Luther Barr, and Slade, while the red-headed mechanic was striking at the aeroplane with a big wrench.

“There! If we can’t fly any more, no more can you,” he exclaimed viciously, making a savage smash at the engine. There was a sound of splintering metal.

“Consarn ’em, they’re trying to bust up our aeroplane,” yelled Bart Witherbee, making a dash at the group.

As they saw the boys and their companions coming the men took to their heels, Reade alone looking back to shout out:

“Now you can’t fly, either. You’re out of the race.”

This the boys construed to mean that the Slade aeroplane was too badly crippled to fly. And so they afterwards learned. The engine had developed a serious flaw, and one of the cylinders was cracked from top to bottom. In the part of the country in which they were it would, of course, have taken weeks to get a new engine.

“Shall we chase them?” asked Harry.

“No, it would be useless. Hark! they’re in their auto now, and would be away ahead of us by the time we got after them,” rejoined Frank.

The sound of an auto’s exhaust rapidly growing fainter reached their ears. It was the last they saw of Luther Barr and his gang, for that night they left Calabazos and making their way to the railroad took a train east. The skeleton of Slade’s unlucky aeroplane still remains in the little settlement, and greatly puzzles visitors there, some of whom think it is the framework of some extinct animal.

Billy Barnes soon told how, while shooting in the woods, he had heard an auto coming up the trail, and suspecting some mischief had hastened to the spot where the aeroplane had been left. He found his surmise correct when Barr and his companions suddenly emerged from the woods and began their attempt to wreck the craft. Before Billy, who indignantly sprang forward, could seize the arm of the vandal with the wrench, he had been seized. Luckily he had time to cry out before they thought of stopping him, and so the aeroplane was saved from serious damage. It was found, in fact, that the blow aimed at it had done no worse harm than to splinter a spark plug, which was soon replaced.

That afternoon the boys, leaving Bart Witherbee and the sheriff to make an inventory of the dead miner’s effects and to explore the tunnel, which was found to be a wonderful piece of work, the boys motored down to the settlement and sent out telegrams seeking information of the whereabouts of the dirigible. It was not till late evening that they received from Doolittle, a small town about forty miles from Calabazos, information that the big gas-lifted craft had laid up there for repairs, but was ready to start early the next day.

To the boys who had feared that the rival must have been almost in San Francisco by that time this was cheering news, and the Golden Eagle’s planes were hurriedly readjusted, as she was put in shape for a continuation of her trip. Early the next day the start was made. Bart Witherbee was left behind at his mine, in which he had insisted on the boys, much against their will, each taking a share. Old Mr. Joyce also received a large enough portion of the general good luck to secure him from want and give him ample leisure to work out his queer inventions. The Witherbee mine – he calls it the Aeroplane – is now one of the most famous in the west.

The boys had determined to shape their course by Doolittle, as it was on their direct path westward, and they wished also to get out of the mountainous region of the foothills. As Doolittle came in sight they had an opportunity to view their rival for the first time in many days. Her big red gas bag showed like a bright crimson flower above the sober gray of the prairie town. That their rivals had sighted them was soon made evident by the fact that a flag was run up on the single staff the town possessed and the citizens wheeled out a rusty old cannon and began firing it like mad. When the boys were within a mile of the town they made ready to drop messages which, as they sailed above, they cast down. They could see the people scrambling furiously for them.

“I hope they leave enough of them to send back home,” laughed Harry as they saw the wild struggle.