CHAPTER X.--CHASING THE MILKY WAY.
While the boys were exchanging experiences with Ernest Whipple, talkingover Boy Scout matters and arranging for a sleeping place for thestranger, Ned was busy with his aeroplane. It had not suffered in theleast from the heat and wind, and there was plenty of gasoline on handfor a journey which he was thinking of taking.
"Where are we goin' to-night?" Jimmie asked, finally, strolling over tothe spot where the great bird lay.
"As the wind is right," Ned laughed, "I thought I'd take a sail over thedivide and see what the alleged foresters are up to."
"All right," the boy said, "just wait until I get a big blanket to wrapup in and I'll go with you."
Ned smiled at the determination of the lad to keep close to his side. Heknew that Jimmie dreaded the very idea of leaving the solid earth thatnight, still he found him willing to make the ascent merely for the sakeof being in his company.
"All right, kid," he said. "You may go if you want to, but it may bemorning before we get back to camp."
"You can't remain in the air all that time," Jimmie said.
"I am fully aware of that," Ned replied, "but I can drop down over onthe other side and rest and tinker with the machine--if she doesn't workjust right."
"You haven't got gasoline enough," urged Jimmie, who would have arguedNed out of the notion of the night flight if possible, but who wasdetermined to go with him if he went.
"The first thing I do," Ned replied, "will be to fly over the GreatNorthern right of way and fill up with gasoline. Besides filling thetanks, I shall carry a lot away in an aluminum keg I have provided forthat purpose."
"Well," Jimmie said, with a tired sigh, "I should think you'd beenthrough enough to-day and to-night, without goin' off in the dark, butI'm goin' if you do."
After talking with the others regarding his intentions, and warning themto keep a sharp lookout during his absence, Ned assisted Jimmie to hisseat and the two were away. There was scant room for a rise between thespot where the machine lay and the foot of the range, but Ned had littledifficulty in getting into the sky and swinging along in the breeze.
It was now after ten o'clock, and the moon was high in the heavens. Tothe east the dark passes of the mountains showed green and misty in themoonlight. To the west the burned spaces looked dark and forbidding,with smoke half hiding the ruin that had been wrought. Jimmie clung tothe machine and insisted that Ned was chasing the Milky Way when helifted the aeroplane up the level of the divide.
Before crossing the divide, however, Ned flew to the Great Northernright of way and filled his tanks with gasoline, also filling the extrakeg. The machine, which was an improved Wright, was then turned to thenorth-east. So perfect have aeroplanes now become that eveninexperienced drivers may sometimes venture into the air with them withimpunity, still it is well known that it is more the man than themachine that decides whether there shall be a tumble or a successfulflight.
The aeroplane is a wonderful invention, yet the point which really makesit so serviceable is a very simple one. For years inventors studied waysof making a heavier-than-air machine sail through the sky like a bird.Then the gasoline engine came, and all the rest seemed easy.
But no one could keep control of the aeroplane. It moved about accordingto its own whims, and tipped drivers out at its own sweet will. Then theWrights thought of lifting and lowering the planes to represent thewings and feathers of a bird. The secret had been found and requiredonly experience and practice. Here was a machine light enough to fly,yet strong enough to carry with safety its powerful engine and two ormore passengers, if there is room provided for them.
It is so stout that a man may walk over it while it lies on the ground,and yet so delicate in control when in the air that a slight pull on alever will dip one wing, lift the other, and at the same time turn avertical tail-rudder about to give the necessary balancing pull withalmost the instinctive adaptability of a bird's wings and feathers.
And this wonderful machine, while speeding through the air with thevelocity of an express train, can be halted almost instantly and whirledabout on its tail. It will be seen that it is the man at the levers whomakes or breaks a journey in the air. One man may do almost anythingwith a machine, while another may send himself to eternity with the sameone. It was Ned's good fortune that he was naturally ingenious and quickto make his hands follow the impulses of his brain.
When a person is thundering through the air, a thousand feet above theearth, he must remain perfectly calm, even with the engine thunderingbehind his ears, tears running in streams down his face, and the windfluttering his clothes into rags and ravelings, as he wishes he was backon land.
Besides, there are no level plains in the air, as there are on earth.Every bird-man knows that he is liable to come up against a fiercecurrent or tumble into a hole in the atmosphere at any moment. Whiletraveling in water one can see what is ahead and on both sides, but thisis not so in the air. The currents, swirls, eddies, holes, do not showat all.
When Ned left the cache where the gasoline and provisions had beenhidden away, he put on half speed, swinging steadily skyward on a broadspiral. His purpose was to pass over the summit and have a look at theforests on the east side.
The passenger's seat in the Wright machine is in the middle. The engineis at his right and the driver at his left, so that the balance is thesame whether an extra person is carried or not. Jimmie was glad of this,for it placed him close to Ned. In that half light, with the earth farbelow, with the pounding of the engine and the whistling of the wind,the boy felt the need of close human companionship.
He sat in a wooden seat with his back against the rest, holding to oneof the uprights with both hands, and resting his tingling feet on across-bar. A guy-wire passed across in front, close to his chest, so hewas now fastened in.
He wanted to talk with Ned, to hear the sound of his voice, but theclamor of the engine prevented that, so he just sat still and lookeddown on the flying forest below. It seemed to him, at least, that theforest was moving, while he was standing still in the starlight.
Up the aeroplane went, and still higher up. Jimmie saw the great dividebelow, and saw little red specks in the forests of the eastern slopewhich denoted forest fires not yet grown to maturity. After passing thesummit Ned saw the campfire of the men Ernest had spoken of. He passedthem, swung around a circle lower down, selected a spot where he thoughthe could land with safety, and dropped down.
Jimmie declared afterwards that he felt as if he had been thrown out ofthe window of a twenty-story building--and the highest window at that.When the aeroplane came into the shadows of the high trees where thelanding was being made he knew that a wind was blowing at the surfaceand feared that the machine would be carried along on the ground anddumped over into a canyon.
The machine sank gracefully into a glade rather high up on the slope,and the boys alighted to stretch their legs. Ned's first move was to seeif there was plenty of room for him to get out. What he found was anincline to the east, an incline ending at a great canyon, into which hewould have been hurled had the aeroplane run fifty feet farther on theground.
"I think I can make it," he said, "but it is risky. It wouldn't be niceto take a header a thousand feet down."
After the inspection of the locality Ned extinguished all the lights andsat down to map out his plans for the remainder of the night. There werethe usual noises of the forest, as found at night, but no human soundsintruded.
Ned knew that the clamor of the engine must have been heard by the menin the camp he had flown over, and he had no doubt that the outlawswould make a quick excursion to his landing place, if they coulddetermine where it was. So he put out the lights and listened for someindication of the approach of the others.
"They won't find us in a thousand years," Jimmie volunteered, as the twosat close together under a great tree.
"I hope not," Ned replied, "for then we shall have a better chance tofind them."
"What do you want t
o find 'em for?" questioned the boy. "You can't pinch'em, 'cause you haven't got the proof, an' you couldn't if you had theproof, 'cause there ain't enough of us. They'd eat us up like spinach."
"You are right as far as you have gone," Ned replied, "but you have notgone far enough. What I want now is to find out what they are doinghere. And, also, I want to find out about that fellow from SanFrancisco. If the description is any good, he was in the city when Ileft it, and I don't see how he ever got here so soon. I came part wayon an aeroplane, but it seems that he traveled farther and beat me out."
"What's he got to do with it?" asked Jimmie. "What did you find out inthe city? You won't have no luck if you don't tell me all about it."
So, while they waited, Ned told him "all about it," while the boy sat inthe dusk with his eyes and mouth both opened wide at the mystery of thething.
"I don't believe Albert Lemon ever got out here so soon," the lad said,when the story was told. "He couldn't."
"Then who is the man from San Francisco?" asked Ned.
"It can't be the dead man?" questioned Jimmie.
"You saw him buried," Ned answered.
"Then I give it up!" Jimmie said.
The two sat there in silence a long time, then Jimmie gave Ned's arm apull and pointed to a flickering light in the forest just above theglade where the aeroplane rested.
"They think you've landed somewhere here," the boy said, "an' have setfire to the woods."
"I think you have guessed it," Ned said. "However, the blaze won't runvery fast up there, for the undergrowth is scanty, so we've got plentyof time to get out of the way."
Jimmie scrambled up the slope, clinging to rocks and roots with bothfingers and feet, and ran toward the blaze. Ned watched the littlefellow dashing along with no little anxiety, for the outlaws might bethere in the thickets, watching for some attempt to be made to lift theaeroplane.
He saw Jimmie recklessly climb to the top of a great rock which juttedout from the side of the mountain and saw his figure outlined againstthe growing blaze on the slope above. Then the fire died down, as if forwant of material, and the top of the rock could no longer be seen.
Ned listened, but Jimmie did not return. The effort to create a generalconflagration on the mountain side had evidently failed, for there waslittle to burn save the green boles of trees, that section having beenswept by fire a year before.
Not daring to leave the aeroplane for even an instant, Ned awaited thereturn of the boy with premonitions of trouble in his mind. Presently heheard a shot, then a cry, and after that a brutal laugh. The outlawswere nearer than he thought.
There was only one thing for Ned to do, and that was to get theaeroplane into the sky immediately, and so once more place it beyond thereach of the outlaws. There was nothing he could do to aid Jimmie, hereflected, sadly, by remaining there.
It was no task at all to start the rollers down the incline, but thecanyon threatened if he did not get it off the ground in quick time. Heknocked the stones out from under the wheels and sprang into his seat.The machine, gaining momentum, moved on sedately. It had acquired a fairrate of speed when he came within a few feet of the canyon.
Then, after letting it get all the headway possible in that confinedspace without coming too close to the canyon, Ned pulled the lever whichtilted the front rudder planes. Trifling as the deflection was theman-made bird felt its influence and rose from the slope as if endowedwith life.
It reached the edge of the descent some distance in the air, and the boywas congratulating himself on the success of his unaided rise when thebig machine began to sag as if dropping to the ground, five hundred feetbelow.
The west wall of the canyon ran straight down, and it seemed to Ned thathe was following it, like an iron spike thrown off the ledge. He knewvery well what had occurred. He had fallen into one of the down-tippingcurrents so frequent in mountain districts.
The air, he knew, was sliding down the precipice just as water tumblesover a dam. If it turned, as it might, when it struck the lower strataof air, he might secure control of his machine and manage to lift it outof the canyon. If it did not, he would doubtless fall to the rocky floorof the canyon, and lie there until some chance hunter or forester cameupon a heap of bleaching bones and the wreck of an aeroplane.
But even at that swift pace downward, and at that exciting moment, Nedfound himself puzzling over the strange sight he saw in a break in thewall of the canyon. It was a large opening he looked into, and strangefigures were gathered about a cooking fire.
Boy Scouts in the Northwest; Or, Fighting Forest Fires Page 11