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

“I am very sorry for your misfortune, Mr. – Mr. – ”

“Rattlesnake Ike is my name, with no blame ‘Mister’ on it, young tenderfoot,” growled the other.

“Well, Rattlesnake Ike, we can make rain.”

“What?” roared the whole assemblage.

“We can make rain,” calmly repeated the boy, “with that aeroplane.”

“Wall, now, stranger, how kin yer do that – tell us,” demanded the leader of the cowboys, leaning forward on the bow of his saddle, deeply interested.

“Well, you’ve heard that explosions near the sky will concentrate the moisture, thus causing it to condense in a copious rainfall,” declaimed Frank pompously, putting in all the long words he could think of.

“Hump – wall,” dubiously remarked the cowboy, scratching his head, “I dunno as I hev, but you seem ter have it all down pat.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing with our aeroplane,” went on Frank, “making rain. Haven’t we?” he turned to Witherbee questioningly. The miner at once saw what he was driving at.

“Sure,” said the old miner. “Why, pardners, down in Arkansaw they had forgotten what rain looked like till we came along. We made it pour for three days.”

“And that scaryplane does it?”

“Well, we go up in it and then fire bombs from this rain-gun.”

Frank indicated the searchlight as he spoke.

“Wall, I’d sure like ter see that,” said the leader. “How about it, boys?”

“Let’s see what they kin do; but if yer don’t make it rain, strangers, we’ll string you all up ter that sycamore tree,” decided one of the group.

They all chorused assent, and Frank and Harry at once got into the machine.

“Hand me some rain bombs, Billy,” said Frank.

Billy Barnes reached into the tonneau and produced some blue flares. These he handed to Frank.

“Take care they don’t go off, Frank,” he said solemnly.

“Yes; you recollect them twenty fellers as was killed in St. Looey,” warned old Witherbee solemnly.

“Say, strangers, are them there things dangerous?” asked the cowboy leader.

“Well, there’s enough dynamite in them to blow that river there clean into the next county,” rejoined Frank, “but don’t be scared, we won’t drop them.”

“Get into the auto when we are well up,” Frank whispered rapidly to Billy, while the cowboys exchanged awed glances.

“Now, gentlemen,” he went on aloud, “get your umbrellas ready, for pretty soon there’s going to be some big rain.”

The aeroplane started up while the cowboys yelled and whooped. It had reached a height of about two hundred feet, and was circling above their heads, when Harry suddenly lighted one of the fizzing blue flares; at the same instant Billy, followed by the others, leaped into the auto.

“Hey, stop that!” yelled the cowboy leader, but at the same moment he broke off with a yell of terror.

“Look out for the dynamite bomb!” yelled Harry, as he dropped the flaming blue flare over the side of the aeroplane, fairly on top of the gang of cowboys.

“Ride for your lives, boys!” shouted the leader of the cowboys, as the flaming light dropped, “she’s goin’ ter bust.”

They didn’t need any urging, but fled with wild cries.

By the time the cattlemen realized they had been tricked, the auto was away on the prairie, speeding on toward the west in a cloud of dust, while the aeroplane was far out of range.

CHAPTER XIII.

INDIANS!

“Ah, now we are beginning to get into my own country again; this begins ter look like home,” exclaimed Bart Witherbee, one day as the adventurers made camp in a canyon in one of the southernmost spurs of the Rockies in the state of New Mexico. The boys had made the detour to the south to avoid crossing the range itself, which would have been a difficult, if not an impossible, task in an aeroplane.

Still they had not sighted the rival racing air-craft, but they knew that the others could not be far ahead now, as at a small settlement they stopped at the day before they learned that the Slade party had called at the blacksmith shop there to repair a truss brace that had snapped. As the facilities of the smithy were rather clumsy for the fine work that has to be done on the aeroplane, the Slade machine was delayed several hours. So far as their judgment went, the boys decided that the other party could not be much more than fifty miles ahead of them.

As for the dirigible, they had heard that the expansion of its gas bag, caused by the sun, had compelled it to remain all one day in a small town in the Texas Panhandle, and that while it was journeying across the arid country it could travel only short distances. The boys, therefore, felt much cheered as at sundown they alighted by the side of a brawling mountain stream and made camp. Bart Witherbee at once got out his improvised fishing tackle and started up the stream in search of trout, which he declared would abound in such waters.

“We’ll have a change from canned beef, canned soup and canned vegetables to-night, boys,” he declared, “if I haven’t lost the knack of it.”

They listened to his heavy footsteps plunging up the steep hillside till they died out, and then took up the ordinary occupations of the camp. The rocky defile up which the old miner had disappeared on his quest was well covered with pine timber almost down to where it reached the arid ground on the edge of which the lads were camped. Except for the occasional scream of a hawk making for its night roost, or the crash of some animal making its way through the dense growth that grew higher up on the hillside, the place was as quiet as a cemetery.

Billy Barnes was examining his camera, which had been severely shaken up on the trip, Frank and Harry were going over the Golden Eagle admiringly, remarking on the way she had stood her hard ordeal, and old Mr. Joyce was taking a lesson in wireless telegraphy from Lathrop. It was beginning to grow dusk. Somewhere far up on the hillside there came the hoot of an owl. The hush of the evening in the foothills lay over everything, when suddenly the silence was broken by a sound that brought them all to their feet.

The report of a rifle had rung out on the hillside above them.

“Must be Bart shooting at something,” remarked Billy, gazing at the scared faces about him.

“That was a rifle shot,” said Frank slowly, “and Bart Witherbee carried no rifle.”

“Then somebody else fired it?”

“That’s about it. Don’t make a sound now. Listen!”

They all held their breaths and waited anxiously in the stillness that followed. For perhaps ten minutes they stood so, and then there came a sharp crackle of snapping twigs, that told them some one was descending the hillside.

Who was it?

Several minutes of agonizing suspense followed before they knew whether it was friend or enemy advancing toward them. Then Bart Witherbee glided, like a snake, out of the woods.

“What’s the mat – ” began Frank. But he checked himself instantly.

Bart Witherbee’s hand was held up.

Every one of the group read that mute signal aright.

Silence!