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

“I wish they would hurry up and start in,” the old man began again, after an interval of silence; “they take a long time getting to work.”

“Well, you know this isn’t a job to be hurried,” declared Hank.

“No, indeed,” stammered Frank Reade nervously, “it’s better to do it safely and have no blunders. If it was found out that we had attempted such a thing it would be our ruin. What will we do with Witherbee when we get him?”

“Drop him down a shaft some place; we want to be sure he doesn’t follow us to the mine,” said Hank.

The occupants of the touring car were silent for a time, and then suddenly old Barr held up a finger.

“Hark!” he exclaimed.

Very faintly the uproar that accompanied the outbreak of the fire was borne to their ears.

Suddenly a brisk little puff of the night wind of the prairie blew toward them. On its wings were borne the cry for which they had been waiting:

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

“They’ve done it,” grinned old Luther Barr.

“That’s what,” assented Hank Higgins, as a tongue of flame shot upward above the black huddle of shadows that marked the town.

“I only hope it destroys their aeroplane,” viciously remarked Fred Reade, “we’ve got to win this race.”

“I suppose you’ve been betting on it,” sneered old Barr.

“And if I have it’s none of your business, is it?” demanded Reade fiercely.

“Oh, no; not at all. Don’t be so savage, my dear young man, or I shall have to ask Hank here to subdue you,” smirked old Barr.

“He’d better not, or I’d soon fix him with this.”

Reade drew out a huge revolver and brandished it, at which the desperado grinned despisingly.

“Why, you’d be scared to handle it, even if you knew how. You let shooting irons alone till you git through with your nursing bottle,” he sneered.

“I’ve a good mind to show you,” shouted Reade angrily.

Old Barr quieted him with a reassuring tap on the shoulder.

“My dear young man, you are of undoubted courage. I believe you would fight a regiment if you thought it necessary.”

Like all cowards, Fred Reade was very susceptible to flattery.

“You have the right estimation of my character, Mr. Barr,” he blustered; “this wild and woolly westerner here cannot appreciate a man of grit and brawn unless he wears a pair of moustaches like a billygoat and swaggers around drinking at frontier bars.”

“Is that so, Mister Reade?” sneered Hank Higgins, despite Barr’s urging him to keep quiet. “You’re a writing gent, ain’t yer?”

“I am a journalist – yes, sir.”

“Wall, while we are waitin’ here and watching that ther pretty bonfire that Noggy Wilkes and our Wild friend have lit up, I’ll just tell you a little story of one of your trade who come out west looking for sensations.”

“All right, go ahead and amuse yourself,” said Reade sullenly.

“Don’t get mad.”

“Oh, I’m not mad. But cut out all your talk and tell your story.”

“Very well, Mr. Reade, it goes this way. One night there was seated in the bar at El Paso a young writing gent just like you are. He was a very bored young writing gent, and he says to a fren’ who was with him:

“‘I thought the west was full of sensations. It’s deadly dull as I find it. Why don’t suthen happen?’

“Wall, partner, jus’ then two gents as had bin ridin’ cattle for a considerable period, an’ hed quite a hatful of coin ter celebrate with, blew in.

“‘Ho! see that little feller!’ says one, indercating the tenderfoot writing chap. ‘I’ll bet he’s a good dancer.’

“‘I’ll bet he is, too,’ says the other. ‘Kin you dance, stranger?’

“‘No,’ says the tenderfoot, ‘I can’t.’

“‘Oh, you cawnt, cawnt you,’ says one of the range-ridin’ gents. ‘Then this is a blame good time to larn.’

“With that Mister Reade he whips out a big gun – jes like this one I’ve got here it was – and says:

“‘Dance!’

“‘I cawnt, I told yer,’ says the tenderfoot.

“Bang! goes the old shooting iron, and the bullet plows up splinters right under his left foot. Wall, sir, he lifted that foot mighty lively, I kin tell yer. Livelier than a ground-owl kin dodge inter its hole.

“‘Now, dance!’ says the cattleman.

“‘I cawnt,’ says the tenderfoot, still unconvinced of the powers that lay in him.

“Bang!

“This time it come under his right foot, and he lifts that.

“‘Now, do it quick,’ says the range rider, and they do say that the way that feller shuffled his feet while them bullets spoiled a perfectly good floor under ’em was as purty to watch as a stage show. Wall, later in the evening them two cattle rustlers gits tired of that an’ they gits in a game of poker. Now, there’s where that tenderfoot should have quit, but he didn’t. He goes and sits inter it with ’em. Wall, purty soon a dispute arises. One of them cow-punchers calls on the other to lay down his hand, and there, stranger, they each have three aces.”

“Wall, you couldn’t see the room for smoke, they shot so fast, and one of ’em died there and other on the doorsill. Wall, there had ter be an inquest, yer know, and among ther witnesses they rounded up was this yar tenderfoot.”

“‘Whar was yer when ther first shot was fired?’ the coroner asks him.”

“‘At the poker table,’ says the tenderfoot.”

“‘And when the last was fired?’ goed on the coroner.”

“‘At the Southern Pacific depot,’ says the tenderfoot, and I reckon that’s the kind of a gun fighter you are, young Mister Reade,” he concluded.