The Aeroplane Express; or, The Boy Aeronaut's Grit

The Aeroplane Boys Series

The Aeroplane Express OR The Boy Aeronaut’s Grit

The Aeroplane Boys Series

By ASHTON LAMAR

I. IN THE CLOUDS FOR UNCLE SAM Or, Morey Marshall of the Signal Corps

II. THE STOLEN AEROPLANE Or, How Bud Wilson Made Good

III. THE AEROPLANE EXPRESS Or, The Boy Aeronaut’s Grit

IV. THE BOY AERONAUTS’ CLUB Or, Flying For Fun

Other Titles To Follow

These stories are the newest and most up-to-date. All aeroplane details are correct. Fully illustrated. Colored frontispiece.

Cloth, 12mos. Price, 60c each

The Airship Boys Series

By H. L. SAYLER

I. THE AIRSHIP BOYS Or, The Quest of the Aztec Treasure

II. THE AIRSHIP BOYS ADRIFT Or, Saved by an Aeroplane

III. THE AIRSHIP BOYS DUE NORTH Or, By Balloon to the Pole

IV. THE AIRSHIP BOYS IN THE BARREN LANDS Or, The Secret of the White Eskimos

These thrilling stories deal with the wonderful new science of aerial navigation. Every boy will be interested and instructed by reading them. Illustrated. Cloth binding. Price, $1.00 each.

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_Complete catalog sent, postpaid, on request_

[Illustration: TWO PISTOL SHOTS SOUNDED IN THE DESERT.]

The Aeroplane Express

Or

The Boy Aeronaut’s Grit

By Ashton Lamar

[Illustration: _The_ AEROPLANE BOYS SERIES]

Illustrated by S. H. Riesenberg

Chicago The Reilly & Britton Co. Publishers

COPYRIGHT, 1910 By THE REILLY & BRITTON CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Aeroplane Express

Contents

CHAP. PAGE I A CONDITIONAL BARGAIN 9 II AN EXPERIMENTAL FLIGHT 21 III LOOKING UP AN ANCESTOR 33 IV AN IDEAL OUTFIT 44 V THE CONTRACT AND THE CAR 57 VI OFF FOR THE WEST 69 VII ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT 80 VIII THE TRAIL AT LAST 92 IX IN THE CANYON OF THE SAN JUAN 105 X THE WHITE GOD OF THE SINK HOLE 118 XI THE REAL WEST 136 XII ASSEMBLING AN AEROPLANE IN THE DESERT 151 XIII WHY MIKE HASSELL HIT THE TRAIL 164 XIV THE END OF THE TRAIL 178 XV ROY MAKES MR. COOK A PRESENT 193 XVI THE AEROPLANE AS AN AMBULANCE 206 XVII THE SECRET DECIPHERED 217 XVIII THE LAST OF THE LOST INDIANS 230

List Of Illustrations

Two pistol shots sounded in the desert _Frontispiece_

“The boy has a steady hand” 27

With a clatter of hoofs Nigger bounded forward 97

The remarkable hieroglyphics 133

The Last of the Lost Indians 237

The Aeroplane Express OR The Boy Aeronaut’s Grit

Chapter I

A Conditional Bargain

“Far as we go!”

As the conductor of the trolley made this announcement, the car came to a stop in a suburb of Newark, New Jersey. About two blocks beyond the end of the line, and almost on the edge of the salt marshes, rose a new and wide two-story brick building. Even from that distance could be heard the hum of men and machines.

“Much obliged,” answered the man. “That the place?”

The conductor nodded.

“Thanks,” said the passenger, who, although apparently a middle-aged man, sprang lightly to the ground. “Have a cigar?”

“If you don’t mind,” answered the conductor, “I’ll save it until this evening. I don’t often get a smoke like this.”

The man laughed, shoved his hand into the side pocket of his loose coat and drew out two more high-priced cigars.

“Never put off a good thing too long,” he added, “you may lose it. Grab things while they’re in reach. Give one to your friend Bill up there.”

As the man, still smiling, turned to go, the conductor called out:

“Thanks, Colonel, I guess you’re a westerner. Folks ’round here haven’t got sense enough to wear a hat like that.”

“You’re a good guesser,” replied the man; “I’m from Utah. Good bye.”

A few minutes later, the man was standing before a door in the long building, labeled “Office.” Above the entrance was a small, new sign: AMERICAN AEROPLANE COMPANY. It was a hot morning, and, as the man stopped to wipe his perspiring face with a big, white silk handkerchief, he swung a picturesque gray plainsman’s hat before him like a fan. He was without a vest, and wore a narrow, dark belt. But, beyond these, a negligee shirt and a brown flowing neck tie, there was no sign of the westerner about him. His trousers, coat and shoes were all fashionable and apparently of eastern make.

As he stood before the door, he looked at his watch. Then he whistled softly to himself.

“Ten fifteen!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “An hour and a half from the Waldorf. The same goin’ back--that’s a quarter to twelve. An’ I’ve got to catch the limited at two.”

He opened the door and stepped into a large room where two or three girls and a couple of young men were busy at typewriters, file cases and telephones.

“The boss in?” asked the visitor of a young man who greeted him.

“Do you mean the manager, Mr. Atkinson?”

“Like as not! The man who sells airships.”

“Have you a card?”

“Some’eres, I guess. But just tell him there’s man out here wants to talk flyin’-machine if he’s got time.”

“Won’t you sit down?” persisted the clerk. “I’ll see if he’s busy.”

“Just tell him I’m kind o’ busy, too.”

While the clerk disappeared within a room opening out of the main office, the active westerner made a hasty examination of the place. On a table within the railed-off space in which he stood was a tray of business cards. He picked one up and read it:

AMERICAN AEROPLANE COMPANY Factory: Newark, New Jersey Offices: New York, London, Paris, Chicago Mr. Robert T. Atkinson, President Capital Stock $1,000,000 Tested Aeroplanes Ready for Delivery

“This Mr. Atkinson?” began the westerner when he had been ushered into that gentleman’s private office.

“I am,” responded the aeroplane company official. “Pretty hot?”

“Hot enough,” smiled back the visitor; “but I don’t mind the heat when I can find a little shade occasionally and a drink of water. Out my way we’re a little shy on shade and water. I’m from Utah. And that ain’t the worst--I’m from southern Utah.”

President Atkinson motioned to a chair next the open window.

“Never been there,” he replied in much the same tone he might have said he had never visited the north pole.

“Few people have,” added the westerner. “Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

Before he could find one of his own cigars, the aeroplane manager had thrust at him a box of perfectos. Mr. Atkinson at once saw in the stranger a man of affairs, who had not come all the way out to the aeroplane factory to gossip. He judged correctly.

“I’ve got a card somewhere,” began the westerner briskly, as he closed a pair of white, steel-trap-like teeth on the cigar, “but it don’t say nothin’ but that my name’s Cook--R. C. Cook. I’m from Bluff, Utah.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Cook,” politely remarked the easterner, wondering at the same time what possible business Mr. Cook, of Bluff, Utah, could have with the American Aeroplane Company.

“I’m in New York on a quick trip, but I saw one of your circulars last night. I cut this out. It’s yours, ain’t it?”

Mr. Atkinson glanced at the clipping, smiled and nodded.

The circular read:

“The aeroplane is no longer a novelty or a wonder. The American Aeroplane Company, organized with a paid-up capital stock of $1,000,000, is now ready to deliver reliable and tested aeroplanes, standardized in make-up and ready to fly. We offer F. O. B. Newark, New Jersey, a complete car for $5,000. It comprehends every development up to date. The frame is of Oregon spruce and bamboo--the planes of rubberized silk balloon cloth. The power plant is a four-cylinder, gasoline, water-cooled motorcycle engine, 25 H. P., cylinders 3¾ by 4. The control is extremely simple. The elevation is regulated by a steering lever, the balancing planes are specially designed devices controlled by the movement of the feet. The machine starts from the ground without track or outside help, and it can be taken apart in two hours.”

“That’s the price, is it?” added Mr. Cook, taking a long puff at his cigar.

“Just reduced,” explained Mr. Atkinson. “Our first machines sold for seven thousand dollars. But we mean to lead in this business. We have purchased every patent that we believe is needed in making a high-class aeroplane; and with our facilities we mean to popularize aeroplanes until they become as common as automobiles.”

“I want one of ’em,” said Mr. Cook.

The manager nodded his head as if the customer had ordered a bicycle or a buggy.

“That is,” added Mr. Cook, “providin’--”

He took another puff on his cigar, and then added:

“I want one if I can find some one to run the thing.”

Mr. Atkinson shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s the only trouble that confronts us, Mr. Cook. We have as yet developed no training-school for aviators, as we have schools for chauffeurs.”

“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Cook, laughing and shaking his head, “I think one of them flyin’-machines’ll fit in my business all right, but you’ll have to find me a man to work it. I’ve crossed Death’s desert, I’ve gone down the big Canyon, I’ve chased and been chased by the Utes, and I may do all of them things again. But there’s one thing I wouldn’t do--I wouldn’t risk my neck in the best aeroplane ever made.”

Mr. Atkinson smiled.

“I’d like to sell you one of our machines, my friend; but I can’t promise to find you a capable operator. Tell me,” he added, unable to longer restrain his curiosity, “what use do you figure on making of the machine?”

“I ought to told you,” hastened the would-be purchaser in explanation. “We got a company out in Utah--mostly New York people,” he added parenthetically--“the Utah Mining and Development Company. I’m the manager. Mr. F. E. Estebrook, of Hartford, is the president.”

Mr. Cook immediately rose in Mr. Atkinson’s estimation. Mr. Estebrook was one of the wealthy insurance men of Connecticut. No one stood higher in the New York financial world.

“I see,” observed Mr. Atkinson, now glad that he had extended to the westerner his best box of cigars.

“Well,” went on Mr. Cook, “we’ve got a big lot of work cut out down there in the desert--petroleum mainly,” he explained, “but metal, too. And just now it’s all prospecting. Maybe you don’t know southern Utah?”

The aeroplane company manager smiled in the negative.

“When they git done tellin’ you about the plains of Arizona, and New Mexico, just add one hundred per cent and call it Utah,” went on Mr. Cook. “It ain’t sand and bunch grass down there,” he added, with a grim smile. “It’s alkali deserts, borax holes, rotten volcano craters and river beds that ain’t seen water in a thousand years.”

“Don’t the Colorado and Green rivers run through it?” asked Mr. Atkinson, stepping to a large wall map.

Mr. Cook grunted.

“They do,” he explained, “right through it, and they might as well be buried in steel tubes. What you goin’ to do with a river shootin’ along at the bottom of a gash in the ground a half mile deep? Mr. Atkinson,” continued the westerner. “I’ve known many a man to die o’ thirst on the banks of them rivers with the sound o’ gurglin’ water in his ears. As for gettin’ to that water, well you might reach it with a shot gun--nothin’ else.”

Mr. Atkinson turned, ready to hear Mr. Cook’s explanation:

“I went to Utah five years ago--I’m a Pennsylvanian. My hair was black then. It’s gray now. I got that in one week down in the San Juan river canyon. Sailin’ an aeroplane down there ain’t a goin’ to be no county fair job.”

“I don’t quite understand,” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson.

“It’s this,” explained Mr. Cook. “We’ve got from four to eight prospectin’ parties out on them deserts all the time. For weeks and months we don’t hear from them. Now and then, with the use of a few hardened plainsmen, we get word to them and reports back. It would be a big help to us if we could keep in touch with them. And, more often, it would be a big help to them. They say an aeroplane can travel forty-five miles an hour. Why can’t I use it to keep track of our prospectors?”

Mr. Atkinson sat up, perplexed and surprised.

“It’s a novel idea,” he said, at last, “but I can’t see why it isn’t just the thing. Looks to me as if it is--” then he stopped. Mr. Atkinson’s business instinct had brought him a sudden idea. “Mr. Cook,” he added, a moment later, “we talk a good deal about the practicability of the aeroplane. This is the first real, business demand I have yet had for an aeroplane. The idea is great. There is no doubt the aeroplane can be utilized in just the way you outline. Within a radius of two hundred and fifty miles it could make daily visits to the remotest of your men, take orders to them, bring back reports, and--if necessary--carry them food and water.”

“Looked that way to me,” interrupted the westerner.

“No question about it. I’m going to make you a proposition. Our machines are selling at five thousand dollars. I’m so sure of the advertising possibilities of your project, that I’m going to make you a price of four thousand dollars. I can’t miss this chance to make a real demonstration of the practicability of the aeroplane.”

“The price ain’t botherin’ me,” commented the westerner. “How about some one to work it? Some one who can stand Utah and borax and alkali--maybe Indians. You can fix his wages.”

Mr. Atkinson’s face lengthened.

“That’s another matter,” he said after a pause.

“Haven’t any one on tap?”

The aeroplane company manager shook his head. Mr. Cook looked at his watch. Then he grunted his disappointment.

“Well,” he said, rising, “it was an idea. If you can’t help me, I guess no one can. I’ve got to go--got to catch the two o’clock limited. Just keep my card. My offer stands. I’ll make it five thousand dollars for a machine if you send a man to do the trick. You can take four thousand dollars if you like and give some one a bonus of the other thousand to take the chance. I’ll pay him what you say and keep him long as he wants to stay.”

Mr. Atkinson was thinking hard.

“I’m trying to think of some one with experience and grit,” he said.

“If you do,” said the westerner, shaking hands with Mr. Atkinson, “nail him, and send him to me. If he wants excitement, I’ll guarantee him the time of his life.”

Chapter II

An Experimental Flight

For some minutes, Mr. Atkinson sat in thought. At last he was interrupted by a man who hurried in from the factory portion of the building. The new arrival was in his shirt sleeves, a mechanic’s cap was far back on his half-bald head, and his hands and face were marked with the smear of machinery.

“Good morning, George,” exclaimed the manager.

“Morning,” responded the man tersely. “Thought you might like to come out. We got that new model ready--the double propeller. Goin’ to try the wheels on a new pitch.”

“Certainly,” responded Mr. Atkinson, placing Mr. Cook’s card in a pigeonhole. “Sold four machines this morning, Osborne,” he added. “Got three orders by mail--two from Paris, one from Chicago. Sold another machine to a man from Utah.”

Mr. Atkinson was full of enthusiasm, but, apparently, the man in his shirt sleeves cared little for this.

“I’m sure we’ve got a better pitch,” the mechanic interrupted. “Anyway, we’ll know in a few minutes.”

Mr. Atkinson only smiled. He made no further attempt to impart his gratification to his companion, and the two men passed out through the business office into the big workroom.

The man wearing the cap was George M. Osborne, skilled mechanic and inventor. In the advertisements of the company, he was known as the “engineer and mechanical director.” Mr. Osborne, the highest paid mechanic in Newark--one of the leading manufacturing cities in America--had only recently been secured by the newly organized aeroplane company. It was his ingenuity and practical methods that had already combined a dozen patents in an ideal flying-machine.

“A one-propeller car will always be popular,” Osborne insisted, “but two propellers are as essential for long distance work as two screws to a steamer. If one gives out, you have the other.”

As the two men made their way through the orderly but humming workroom, Mr. Osborne fell back by Mr. Atkinson’s side, and said:

“I’m trying a new operator, too, this morning.”

“We ought to start a school for them,” answered the manager, thinking of his talk with the western prospector.

“And I’d like to have you give him a job,” added the engineer.

“Certainly,” answered his companion. “Hire all of them you can find that’ll do. Your new man ever had any experience?”

“A little. But he isn’t a man. It’s my own boy, Royce.”

“Roy, your son,” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson, as if surprised. “How old is he?”

“Just over seventeen. But I think he’ll do. He’s spent all his Saturdays here since we started up, and now his school’s out, and he’s determined to go to work.”

“And you aren’t afraid to let him take a chance in the new machine?” asked the manager.

“I guess he understands it about as well as any of us.”

“I’ve seen him around here a good deal.”

“It has been his playground,” explained the boy’s father. “He’d rather be alongside my bench than idling away his time. He knows the car and engine all right.”

Passing out of the shop, the men came into the experimenting ground--an enclosed space of perhaps twenty acres. Beneath a shed at the far end of the factory building a half dozen men were standing idly about the delicate and graceful frame of an aeroplane--the “American Aeroplane Model No. 2.” In their midst, stood a light-haired, gray-eyed boy of compact, muscular build and a countenance a little too old, perhaps, for his years.

“Good morning, Roy,” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson. “Your father says you want to turn aviator.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the boy, doffing an absurd little school hat, “I’m looking for the job.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” asked the manager, smiling, however, as he asked it.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” answered the boy. “I’m only wondering if the new pitch is right.”

Mr. Atkinson seemed about to say something, but paused. Finally he remarked:

“All right. But don’t take chances. Make a low flight.”

The attendants at once shouldered the car and carried it out into the open. Roy pulled his little school cap well down on his head, and climbed aboard. Mr. Osborne, who had disappeared for a moment, now returned with a ball of twine. Quickly unrolling about fifty feet of it, he tied an end of the cord to the aeroplane frame. At the other end of the string, he tied his handkerchief.

“Now, young man,” he said with parental sternness to Roy, “no more excuses about not knowing how far above the ground you are. This is a mechanical test, not a circus exhibition. Keep that handkerchief dragging on the ground. D’ye hear?”

“Yes, father,” laughed the boy, “only I don’t want that handkerchief and the knot. It’s all right if I don’t happen to pass over a fence. A little catch in a crack wouldn’t do a thing but upset me.” He untied the handkerchief and handed it back. “I’ll watch the string--this time. But never again.” And he laughed.

“Don’t know but you’re right,” remarked Mr. Osborne.

“Sure he is,” added Mr. Atkinson with a broad smile. “All ready, boys?” he added, turning to the workmen.

“All ready here,” came from the boy.

“Go ahead,” exclaimed Mr. Osborne.

Roy’s eager hands turned on his gasoline. As the two propellers darted into action and the horizontal, spidery planes began to tremble as if semi-buoyant already, the attendants sprang forward.

“Keep away,” exclaimed the boy in the car. “Keep away. Give her a chance.”

The men stepped back again.

“That’s right,” added Mr. Atkinson. “Give it a chance.”

“She don’t need any help,” exclaimed Mr. Osborne, with professional pride. “No startin’ track with this car.”

Even while he spoke, the aeroplane gave a little preliminary bound and then suddenly shot forward, the twine snapping behind it. Mr. Osborne, in developing the flying-machine idea, had used two plane surfaces, but instead of being superimposed, one was behind the other. And, instead of being practically flat surfaces, his two planes were curved, the aft one so markedly so as to resemble a bird’s wing.

[Illustration: “THE BOY HAS A STEADY HAND”]

The anxious spectators saw the big, horizontal nine-foot rudder or guiding surface behind the rear plane straighten itself out and the aeroplane settle on its course. Mr. Osborne made an attempt to run forward as if to better observe the working of the propellers on their new pitch. But the car was too fast for him. It was already curving on its first turn and working perfectly. Three times the flying-machine cut around the experiment yard, skimming the ground so closely at times that the observers kept a sharp lookout to save their heads.

“Looks all right, eh?” remarked the engineer, with no little pride.

“The boy has a steady hand,” answered the manager, as if he had forgotten that the flight was a test of the engine and not of the amateur aviator.

“Oh, the boy’s all right,” exclaimed Mr. Osborne. “I don’t know as I like to have him do it, but, as far as ability is concerned, he knows as much as a good many who have been at it longer.”

He had already called out to Roy to come down, and the car, with power shut off, was fluttering to the ground, some yards away.

The two men advanced to the landed machine.

Roy, his sober face showing just a little flush of pride in his first real flight, was attempting to look unconcerned as Mr. Atkinson came up to him and patted him on the back.

“Very well done, my boy,” exclaimed the manager. “Didn’t frighten you, did it?”

“I was only worried about that string,” answered Roy. “It kept snappin’ like the tail of a kite.”

The workmen were already moving the car to the shed, and Mr. Osborne was following them, when the manager called him back.

“Osborne,” he said, laying a hand on Roy’s shoulder, “are you really willing for your boy to turn professional aviator?”

“Seems to have made a pretty good start already,” was the non-committal answer.

“That’ll be all right,” broke in Roy, with a smile. “He’ll be willing. At least, he says it isn’t any more dangerous than runnin’ an automobile. May I have a job, Mr. Atkinson?”

The manager’s answer was to invite the boy and his father into his private office. There, after a little more discussion of the matter of Roy’s engagement, Mr. Atkinson drew out the Utah prospector’s memorandum, and, with a good deal of formality, told the details of his interview with Mr. Cook, and of the latter’s provisional purchase of an aeroplane.

“And now,” he concluded, “of course, the making of that sale or the loss of it don’t mean a great deal. But I’d like to make it. You can guess why?” he added, turning to Mr. Osborne.

“Be a good ad, of course,” answered the engineer.

“Yes, all of that,” exclaimed Mr. Osborne. “But I’ve got just enough interest in Roy to want to have him take the job.”

“I could see that comin’,” exclaimed Mr. Osborne, with a somewhat rueful smile. “We’re much obliged--both of us--but--” and he shook his head slowly in the negative.

“He don’t mean it,” spoke up Roy with alacrity, as he arose and hastened to Mr. Atkinson’s side.

“We’ve only got to persuade mother; then he’ll consent. He’ll be proud to have me go,” he added with a sudden smile.

But Mr. Osborne was still shaking his head.

“I’ll go,” went on the boy, with enthusiasm, “and father’ll tell you so to-morrow. We’ll arrange it with mother this evening, won’t we, Father?” he continued as he good naturedly laid his arm on Mr. Osborne’s shoulders.

“We will not,” spoke up the engineer with apparent determination. “If you’ve got to break your neck, do it here, near home.”

Roy only laughed.

“Father’ll let you know how much obliged he is in the morning,” said the boy. “I accept the offer now. Father can have the bonus, and I’ll take the wages. Be sure and count on me, Mr. Atkinson. I’m jumpin’ at the chance. You can telegraph right now--‘Machine and operator leave tomorrow.’”

Chapter III

Looking Up An Ancestor

But Mr. Osborne was not as quick to give his consent as Roy predicted. As the boy and his father rode home that evening, Mr. Osborne found many reasons why he did not wish his son to go to Utah to “take a chance of dying of thirst on some desert, or of being scalped by Indians,” as he expressed it. He did not urge very strongly the risk to Roy in skimming over mountains, plains and canyons in an aeroplane. Mr. Osborne being the maker of the airship and having business faith in it, he had to confine his arguments to other reasons.

“The principal reason you’re afraid,” urged Roy, with a laugh, “is that you’ve never been west of Pittsburg. You don’t know any more about Utah than--than--”

“Than you do,” interrupted his father. “Just you wait until you tell your mother.”

The Osbornes lived on the far side of Newark in an attractive suburban house with a yard big enough to include a large flower garden. It was early evening when Mr. Osborne and Roy reached home, and Mrs. Osborne was busy cutting flowers. Roy, waving his straw hat, sprang across the lawn to open up the question at once.

“Mother,” he exclaimed impulsively, “I’ve got a chance to get a good job operating the new aeroplane.”

“So soon?” replied Mrs. Osborne, with a smile. “I supposed you’d have to have a lot of experience before you could do that.”

“Oh, I can do it--now--I know enough. I ain’t afraid of that. But the job’s a long way from here. I’ve got to go to Utah.”

“Utah!” exclaimed his mother, wrinkling her brows. “Why that’s away out west. It’s further than Chicago, isn’t it?”

“A thousand miles,” responded Roy on a guess, and with a smile.

“Yes, certainly,” added Mrs. Osborne. “I know. Just beyond the Rocky Mountains. Utah--Salt Lake City. It’s where the Mormons live.”

“Right,” exclaimed Roy, laughing. “Do you care if I go?--I want to very much.”

“That’s where my Uncle Willard Banks went.”

Roy, who had taken the basket of flowers from his mother’s arm, stopped short.

“I didn’t know that,” he began. “I didn’t know you had an uncle out there. Is he alive?”

His mother shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t even remember him. He was my father’s only brother, and when father came east from Illinois--before he married--my Uncle Willard went west. He was a Mormon,” Mrs. Osborne added. “Or, I think he was.”

“And he went out to Utah to live with the Mormons?” asked Roy, with increasing interest, forgetting for the moment, his real mission with his mother.

“I don’t remember just why he went,” explained his mother. “I don’t believe I’ve thought of him for years. He sent father his picture. He used to write to father, too. He must be dead now.”

“Perhaps I can find him,” suggested Roy, coming back to the subject.

Mrs. Osborne looked at him a few moments and then walked ahead to the front porch where Mr. Osborne, at ease in a large swinging seat, was apparently awaiting his wife and son. As Roy and his mother reached the porch, Mrs. Osborne exclaimed:

“What does your father say?”

“He says I’ll starve to death or die of thirst or be scalped by the Indians.”

“Mercy me,” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne, sinking into a porch chair. “Are there wild Indians out there yet? I thought the last of the Indians were in the Wild West shows?”

Roy and his father laughed.

“See?” exclaimed Mr. Osborne. “Your mother don’t want you to go either.”

Mrs. Osborne looked up in surprise.

“I hadn’t said so,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “I want to hear all about it, first.”

Roy told her everything. She sat and listened with all a mother’s interest. When he had finished, she turned to her husband.

“What do you think, George?”

Mr. Osborne shook his head negatively.

“Why?” asked his wife.

“It’s too risky--” began Mr. Osborne.

“You mean the aeroplane?” interrupted Mrs. Osborne.

“No,” replied her husband slowly. “Of course, there are safer things than manipulating a flying machine, but I guess the kid could manage that.”

“What other risk do you mean?” persisted Roy’s mother.

“Do you want him to go into the wildest country in America? Why, this man Cook told Mr. Atkinson that there are canyons a mile deep, alkali deserts that’d turn water into steam, only no water ever touches ’em, and Indians that haven’t even seen a white man. Do you think that’s the place to send a child?”

Roy drew himself up. His mother patted his brown muscular hand as it rested on the arm of her chair, and looked up at the boy and smiled.

“Are you afraid?” she asked with a laugh.

“It’s father,” answered Roy. “He’s the one that’s scared.”

Mrs. Osborne’s face turned sober.

“I suppose you’ll think it strange, George, but those things don’t alarm me--as much as some other risks.”

“They don’t?” exclaimed Mr. Osborne, slapping his knee. “Well, I can’t imagine anything worse.”

“I can,” said Mrs. Osborne in a low voice. Then she added:

“When Dick took his examination for Annapolis, it seemed to me as if he were going away never to come back. Now that he is a lieutenant in the navy and in the West Indies, I know that between bursting guns at target practice, exploding boilers, accidents in manoeuvres or the yellow fever, he runs more risk every day than Roy is likely to find in the west.”

“I hadn’t just thought of it that way,” answered Mr. Osborne, a little crestfallen.

“And then Phil completed his course in electricity and went into Mr. Edison’s shops. I’d rather have him lost in a desert than working among those chemicals and electric generators.”

Roy looked at his father with a half smile.

“Then you are willing for me to go?” he exclaimed, putting his arm affectionately around his mother’s shoulders.

“That’s for your father to say, finally,” Mrs. Osborne answered after a few moments’ silence. “But I shan’t interfere. This seems to be a time when results that are worth while only come with great efforts or great risks. If it is a good chance, my fears mustn’t keep you back.”

That settled it. Before supper was over, Mr. Osborne gave in. It was agreed that Roy was to accept the offer.

The boy was off at once for the city to secure some guide book or history relating to Utah. That night, despite the heat, long after his parents had retired, the jubilant youngster sat propped up in bed, drinking in facts and statistics relating to the land he was to visit.

Like all boys, Roy had had his dream of wild Indians, of cowboy life, of horses and the endless plains. But as he grew older, the intense practicality of life in the busy city had, in great part, driven these fancies from his mind. Now he discovered that the longing for the mysteries of the far west had not gone out of his heart.

From his father Roy had learned that he would probably go to the little town of Dolores in southwestern Colorado, the nearest railroad point to his destination in Utah. Dolores was in the mountains and, on a map he had secured, Roy traced his route into the valleys and out across the deserts toward Bluff, a hundred miles or more further west.

It was all desert, to be sure, but the very barrenness of the map thrilled the boy. The canyons, the isolated mountains, the desolate plains, fascinated the eager lad. He was not courting danger--he was too practical for that--but to be thrown into a region where he must depend upon his own ingenuity was joy supreme for Roy.

“I never even hoped for anything so great,” said the boy sleepily to himself, “but, now that I have the chance, I’ll make the most of it. I may have to come back to Newark in a few months and settle down to common things, but I’ll make all I can of my opportunity. I’m not aching to fight Indians, and I’m not anxious to get lost in the desert, but I would like to get close enough to the wilderness to know what it means. I’m tired of machinery and coal smoke and trolley gongs.”

It is doubtful if Roy would have been so enthusiastic if he had known the adventures he was to fall into so soon. He got close enough to both Indians and the waterless wastes to understand just what they meant.

“I wonder,” he mused as he dropped off to sleep, “if I’ll meet my mother’s uncle--what’s his name?”

And, hazily trying to think of his Utah relative, the Mormon Willard Banks, Roy fell asleep. Strangely enough, in that sleep, among dreams of bottomless canyons and white arid plains, whereon spectral Indians danced like thistledown, another figure appeared always to the sleeping lad--a featureless face with immense flowing whiskers and wearing an enormous black hat. The constant figure beckoned Roy on in his dreams like a ghost--the spirit of his great uncle, Willard Banks, long since lost to his family in the far away land of Brigham Young.

Roy’s brain was so full of all the wonders to come that, when he awoke in the morning, he was dazed for a few moments. His dreams had run together until he seemed almost feverish. While he was trying to straighten them out, his mother stole into his room.

“Mother,” exclaimed the boy, with a laugh, “do you reckon your Mormon uncle is alive now?”

“Banks is his name,” said his mother reprovingly, “Mr. Willard Banks. Why?”

“Well, I got him in my head. He’s got whiskers a yard long, and a hat big as a tub. I dreamt about him all night.”

“He was older than father by five or six years,” answered Mrs. Osborne, thinking. “And if father were alive, he would be eighty-two years old. No,” she added, shaking her head, “my Uncle Willard is probably dead.”

Roy sprang out of bed and made ready for his morning plunge. His mother was already ransacking his dresser for clothes needing repairs.

“What do you mean by having your great uncle in your head?” she asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” answered Roy catching up his bath robe. “Only, I’ve been dreamin’ of him all night. I guess I read too much about Utah last night. I had a regular nightmare. And all the time this big whiskered, big hatted man went in and out through every other dream. I’d like to know more about him.”

Roy suddenly laughed outright. The “Genealogy of the Banks Family!” Neither had thought of that. Even before Roy was dressed, Mrs. Osborne had hurried downstairs, secured the almost forgotten volume of family history, and together, sitting on the edge of the bed, mother and son turned to the page devoted to their Mormon relative. This is what they read:

“Willard R. Banks, farmer and cattle dealer, Parowan, Iron County, Utah. Born December 20, 1822, in Muskingum County, Ohio. Removed to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1848. Married Martha Brower October 5, 1849. Became a disciple of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, and, in 1852, made a missionary trip to Scotland and Wales. In 1853 was one of the regents of the University of Deseret in Salt Lake City. Member of a committee to prepare a separate language for Mormons in hope of creating an independent literature. Assisted in constructing the Deseret Alphabet of thirty-two characters. In 1862, an elder of the Mormon Church and later banished by Brigham Young with others on unknown charges. Lived for several years at Parowan, Utah. Thought to be dead.”

Chapter IV

An Ideal Outfit

“I never read that before,” Mrs. Osborne said apologetically. “Of course, Uncle Willard is dead now. But he may have left children. You must find where Parowan is, and, if you get the chance, go there.”

Roy had opened the history again, and was copying his great uncle’s name and address in a little red vest-pocket memorandum book, he always carried.

“I certainly will--if I find the time,” he repeated. “It’s a good thing to know your relatives. But it’s likely I’ll be too busy to go visiting. I’ll have the address anyway--‘Willard Banks, Parowan, Iron County, Utah.’”

Then Roy and his mother responded to Mr. Osborne’s impatient calls from below to come to breakfast.

“I supposed you’d gone,” exclaimed Roy, glancing at the clock and noticing that it was after his father’s usual time of leaving for the works.

“I’m waiting for you,” his father replied. “I want you to go with me and see Mr. Atkinson. You can close your own bargain with him. I imagine he’ll want you to start in a few days, and I thought there might be clothes to be bought,” he added, turning to his wife.

“I suppose he ought to have a new suit,” began Mrs. Osborne.

Roy laughed outright.

“A new suit?” he roared. “Say, father, you don’t imagine I’ll need Sunday clothes to go roughing it in?”

“What you have are not decent to go away from home in,” interrupted his mother.

Roy held up his hands in amused protest. Then he turned seriously to his father.

“What do you think they’ll pay me?”

Mr. Osborne thought a moment. Then he said:

“Considering everything, the risk and the distance from home, I’m going to suggest two hundred dollars a month.”

Roy’s eyes flared open in astonishment.

“Why I never made over a dollar a day in my life--when I worked,” the boy exclaimed.

“It isn’t because it’s you--it’s the job,” added his father. “It won’t last long, you know. But what has that to do with your outfit?”

“Well, if I work for six weeks, that’s three hundred dollars,” answered Roy, “and I suppose my expenses out there won’t be much.”

“The company will likely pay all your living expenses. But what are you getting at?” persisted his father.

“I’m getting at this,” replied Roy. “I’ll need a certain kind of outfit. If I can get enough wages advanced to me to make it possible I’ll buy the clothes and things I need in Chicago--not here. From my Baden-Powell to my automatic.”

“What are those?” interrupted his mother.

“Well,” explained Roy, smiling, “Baden-Powell is the name of a hat. I’ll get one with a leather band and a leather string to slip under the hair. Automatics are what they use to-day. Colts have gone out of style. You must have a ten-shot automatic revolver.”

“Roy,” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne, “you don’t mean to tell me you are actually going to carry a real revolver?”

“And a knife,” added the lad solemnly.

“Then you’ll stay right here at home.”

It was now Mr. Osborne’s turn to laugh.

“I thought you were so brave about the kid’s going away!”

“But I don’t see any sense in him going around like a desperado.”

“That’s part of the uniform out there,” broke in Roy. “But I’ll be careful,” he added, smiling again. “Another thing I’m bothering about now is, where will I get the money to buy my railroad ticket? And can I borrow enough from some one to get the outfit I need?”

“I suppose Mr. Cook’s company’ll pay your car fare. As for the other--I’ll advance it. What do you think you’ll need?” asked his father.

“I suppose,” said Roy slowly, “it’ll take one hundred dollars outside of my car fare.”

Mr. Osborne whistled and Mrs. Osborne’s face assumed a doubtful look.

“You know we aren’t rich, Roy,” his mother began.

“Pshaw, mother,” Roy exclaimed, springing to his feet, “don’t you worry about that. If you and father can spare the one hundred dollars, let me have it. I ain’t goin’ out west just to work for wages. That’s the greatest country in the world for a young man. Why, mother, I may discover something--a gold mine, perhaps.”

His father smiled.

“Do you know what you need?”

“I’ll have a list in an hour.”

“All right. Make it out. Find what your things will cost and come to the factory. We’ll have a talk with Mr. Atkinson.”

His father had hardly gone before Roy was curled up on the porch swinging seat with two or three books in his lap, his smiling mother by his side.

“The Camper’s Manual or How to Camp Out and What to Do,” had long been Roy’s companion. The little dog-eared, paper bound volume had been thumbed and read until Mrs. Osborne had more than once threatened to destroy the book.

“What’s the sense of it all, Roy?” she was accustomed to say. “Why are you so interested in camp outfits, camp rations, tents and guns and cooking and packing?”

“Why?” Roy would answer with the teasing smile he always used in arguing with his mother. “I don’t really know except that I am. Some boys I reckon like one thing and some another. I just happen to like to fuss around a camp and then move and set up a new one.”

“But,” his mother would answer, “you were never out camping in your life.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” Roy would answer. “I’ve had many a fine trip--up here.” And he would tap his head, with a laugh. “Some day I’ll use it all, never fear.”

This morning he had a chance to recall to his mother what he had said.

“Now, you see, mother. It has come when I least expected it. The time is right here when I’m going to take advantage of what I’ve been learning out of the books. I know right now everything I want to take out west with me. And, least of all, will I need Sunday clothes.”

His mother sidled up close to the boy as he began to set down the items of his outfit, and at the very first article, she entered a renewed and vigorous protest. If ever a boy, who knew nothing of the woods or the wilderness from actual experience, had longed for and dreamed of the day when he might own and carry a modern firearm, that boy was Roy Osborne.

Had he been starting out on a yawling cruise down the New Jersey bays, he would have been tempted to carry a revolver. Since he was going into a land where such a weapon was an actual necessity, it was with positive joy that he checked off first on his list one of the new self-loading combination pistol and carbine weapons.

The weapon Roy had selected, which fired ten shots and weighed two and one-half pounds, he knew was already taking the place of larger revolvers. He also knew that soldiers, cowboys, sheriffs and frontiersmen generally were discarding the old Colts for it and, although it cost twenty-seven dollars and fifty cents, and cartridges were three cents apiece, this was the first item of his outfit the lad set down.

“The beauty of this revolver, mother,” explained Roy, “is that it comes in a wooden holster. You can attach this holster to the stock of the weapon and, presto, you have a carbine or rifle.”

Mrs. Osborne shivered.

“You aren’t going to shoot Indians with that, are you?” asked his mother. “Or, maybe, drop it accidentally, and shoot yourself?”

“Mother,” answered Roy soberly, “what if I started out over the desert in the airship and something happened so that I’d have to come down, and I landed plump in a covey of rattlesnakes--?”

“Oh, my--” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne in alarm.

“And say there were just ten of ’em all coiled up ready for business. You see where my ten-shooter would come in, don’t you?”

His mother looked relieved for a moment. Then, the thought just occurring to her, she said:

“But could you shoot them? You never practised shooting.”

“Not actually,” answered the boy--again very soberly--“but you know I’ve thought a good deal about it. That’s something. Besides, what if I haven’t had anything to eat for two or three days, and suddenly I see a deer? Bang! There goes my carbine and I’m saved again.”

“Oh, I suppose you’ve got to have it,” answered his mother, in a sort of reconciled tone. “But wouldn’t a little one do as well?”

“That deer might be a quarter of a mile away!”

His mother laughed and patted his hand. Then she grew sober again.

“But promise me one thing, Roy. If you do have to shoot ten rattlesnakes and a poor harmless deer, promise me you won’t kill any Indians--they’re human beings. That would be murder. Promise me that!”

Roy was forced to laugh.

“I’ve got a notion, mother, that there is only one danger with that revolver if I ever fall in with Indians.”

“What’s that?”

“That the Indians may steal it.”

Before his mother could protest further, Roy hurried on with his list. As for clothing, he set down: A Baden-Powell hat, $6; two gray flannel army shirts, $11; one pair Khaki riding breeches, $3.25; three pairs hand-knit woolen socks, $2.25; one pair hand-made, light hunting boots, water proof with moccasin feet and flexible soles, $6; two suits light woolen underwear, $4; two blue silk handkerchiefs, $1.50.

Despite his mother’s protests at the inadequacy of this list, Roy stuck to it as being ample, and even more than he would probably carry at times. Then, of a miscellaneous nature, he added: A Rocky Mountain combined cartridge and money belt (“I won’t have any money to carry,” Roy explained with a laugh, “but the pocket will be handy for dispatches, reports or orders”) to cost $2.25; a “carryall” bag, water proof, with rawhide handles and a heavy lock, to carry all surplus clothing, ammunition and other articles, $10; a medical and surgical case, including a hypodermic syringe and injection for snake bite, $5.00--

“I thought you were going to shoot all the snakes?” interrupted his mother.

“But one might crawl up on me while I was asleep,” explained Roy--again very soberly.

“You don’t mean to tell me you are going to sleep right down on the ground where animals and reptiles can get at you?” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne.

“Oh, I might have to do that a few times,” explained Roy, trying hard not to smile.

“Well, I want you to go to a hotel whenever you can,” urged his mother. “Or, if that is too expensive, to a decent boarding house. And another thing, Roy, I want you to see that your sheets are aired every day.”

“I promise,” answered the lad, lowering his head to hide his grin. “And I’ll go even further--I’ll make up my own bed every day I’m out there.”

“That’s right. Hotels always do it badly.”

Roy diverted his mother’s attention to his next item--a South African water bag that was guaranteed to furnish cool water in the hottest weather. He had selected a two and one-half gallon vessel costing $1.85. She was also much interested in an acetylene gas headlight apparatus. This, on Roy’s list, really belonged in the things most eagerly desired by him, next to the automatic revolver. The apparatus consisted of a light with a lens attached to a band to be worn on the head, thus leaving the hands free. The gas generator was small enough to be carried in the pocket. The weight was only ten ounces, and the cost $6.50.

“And what’s that for?” asked his mother with interest.

“Night flights,” answered Roy.

“You don’t have to work at night, do you?” exclaimed his mother.

“There isn’t any aviators’ union yet, mother,” answered Roy, good naturedly. “It’s just possible I might find it necessary.”

“Well, I wouldn’t,” retorted Mrs. Osborne. “That’s just the trouble with your father. He never knows when to quit work. I--”

But Roy again interrupted his mother’s criticism by showing her a picture of a compact, aluminum mess kit, weighing only two pounds and five ounces. It contained a three-pint canteen, a frying pan with a folding handle, a felt-lined cover for keeping things hot, a knife, fork and a spoon, and cost $4.50.

Then followed small articles: A soft rubber drinking cup, 20 cents; a safety pocket ax with steel lined guard, $1.60; an electric search or flash light, with extra batteries, $3.00; a waterproof handy compass to be pinned to the shirt, $1.15; a hundred-mile pedometer adjustable to any step, $1.00; and a five-inch hunting knife, with bone chopper back, $2.00.

“What does it all come to?” asked his mother, when Roy signified that the list was complete.

He announced the total--$106.55.

“Gracious me, Roy, that’s a lot of money.”

“To you and me, mother,” said the boy, with a laugh. “But I’m going into business now. It takes money to do things right.”

“But your father has to furnish it. Then there’s your car fare; I’m afraid we can’t afford it.”

Roy sprang up and patted his mother on the cheek.

“Mother,” he exclaimed, with a reassuring laugh, “I’m going to be worth so much more than that to the Utah Mining and Development Company that this little hundred or so dollars’ll be only a drop in the bucket. I’ll get it all back for father with good interest. And if you’ll promise to quit worryin’ about what I’m goin’ to do or the expenses of it, I’ll--I’ll--”

“You’ll what?” added Mrs. Osborne, smiling.

“Why, I’ll--I’ll take you out to Chicago this winter to see Uncle Tom. And I’ll pay all your expenses.”

The next moment the enthusiastic boy was clattering down the steps on his way to the factory.

Chapter V

The Contract And The Car

On his way across the city to the aeroplane factory, Roy stopped at the railroad offices and found that the fare to Dolores in Colorado was fifty-seven dollars, with ten dollars additional for sleeping-car accommodations. Reaching the company shops, he made his way at once to the assembling room, where he found his father directing a squad of men who were setting up an airship. Roy, stepping to his father’s side, whispered:

“Outfit, one hundred and six dollars and fifty-five cents; carfare and Pullman, sixty-seven dollars; total, one hundred and seventy-three dollars and fifty-five cents. Better make it two hundred dollars.”

Mr. Osborne’s only reply was to jerk his thumb in the direction of the general offices.

“Mr. Atkinson wants to see you,” the skilled machinist remarked, and turned again to his work. But, as Roy disappeared in the direction of the president’s office, Mr. Osborne seemed to change his mind. With some instructions to the experts working under him, he also made his way toward the offices.

“Father says you want to see me,” began Roy, after his, “Good morning.”

“Didn’t _you_ want to see _me_?” retorted Mr. Atkinson.

“I certainly did, if father hadn’t told you,” replied Roy.

“I have,” said a voice behind the boy, and Mr. Osborne came forward, wiping his grimy face, which had a troubled look. “I told Mr. Atkinson just what you and your mother have decided.”

“Pshaw, George,” interrupted Mr. Atkinson, indicating a couple of chairs into which the engineer and Roy seated themselves. “I guess you are willing, aren’t you?” Then he turned to Roy. “Your father said it was all settled and I was glad of it. I think it’s a fine chance for you, Roy.”

“I’m going,” said Roy. “Father said so, didn’t he?”

“I did,” broke in Mr. Osborne. “But look here, Atkinson, where’s the ‘fine chance’ you’re talking about? I reckon these folks ain’t givin’ money away. It ain’t likely they’ll want to pay more than two hundred dollars a month. And what if Roy goes all the way out there and works five or six weeks? That might be three hundred dollars. He’s just told me it’s goin’ to cost him nearly two hundred dollars to get ready. Ain’t that a pretty small margin for a youngster to risk his life on?”

“Osborne,” Mr. Atkinson exclaimed at last, “you’re the best mechanical man I ever knew. But you were not cut out for high finance. Perhaps I oughtn’t say it, but you should be worth a hundred thousand dollars to-day. And you’re not, are you?”

Mr. Osborne laughed.

“You know I’m not,” he added, a little ruefully.

“Well,” added Mr. Atkinson, with a kind of earnestness, “if you ever expect to get beyond that cap and that oil and grease begin to take a chance.”

“I don’t understand,” answered the engineer.

“I’ll bet Roy does,” added the aeroplane company president, turning to the boy again. Then with a snap in his tone, he added: “What do you think about it, Roy?”

“What do I think?” replied Roy as he brought all his wits to work to understand the situation. “Well, I think this: the Utah company wants some one to come out there as a part of its business. It’s a big company, and it must have plenty of money. It certainly don’t want me to come for less than I’m worth to the company. I think I can go and be worth a good deal. If I am, I’ll expect to be paid handsomely.”

Mr. Atkinson turned to Mr. Osborne.

“Hear that?” he exclaimed. “That’s the way to talk. The boy can turn the trick. Do you still object?”

“Well, I still think it’s a big risk for little pay.”

“Who’s said anything about pay?” retorted the president. “You’re like a good many hard working men, George. You assume a fact, and then work backwards from it. Let’s see what the boy has to say. Roy, do you think it’s too much risk for too little pay?”

“No,” exclaimed the boy, “because I guess the company’ll do what’s right.”

“And what’s that?” continued Mr. Atkinson, looking at Mr. Osborne with a smile.

“Since you’ve asked,” answered Roy, “I should say it ought to buy my outfit, about one hundred dollars; advance my carfare and expenses--say two hundred dollars altogether--and pay me about one hundred dollars a week while I’m at work, with a guarantee of at least two months’ work.”

Mr. Atkinson slapped his hand on Roy’s knee.

“Reasonable enough,” he exclaimed. “Too reasonable. I had in mind not less than five hundred dollars a month. How about it, George?” he added, with a laugh.

Mr. Osborne was wiping his perspiring face.

“You high financiers are too much for me,” he said with an attempt at a smile. “I see Roy wasn’t cut out to be a mechanic. I haven’t anything more to say.”

“But I have,” said Mr. Atkinson, quickly. “Mr. Cook, of the Utah company, offered our regular list price of five thousand dollars for one of the No. 1 machines. I discounted it one thousand dollars. He’s so dead set on getting some one to come out there that he’s offered that one thousand dollars as a bonus to whomever will come. That means Roy. And, from what I see of him, I know he won’t take it. That means you.”

Mr. Osborne, visibly affected, shook his head.

“There you go,” broke in Mr. Atkinson. Then he whirled toward the boy. “Your father seems to think this is charity, Roy,” he added. “He don’t understand that corporations like this or the Utah company have no funds set aside for charity. Will you take it?”

Roy looked at him soberly a moment.

“Mr. Atkinson,” he said at last, “Mr. Cook offered that one thousand dollars because he was mighty anxious to get some one to do something that was well worth the money, in his judgment. You just put it aside till I come back. Then I’ll know whether his judgment was right. If I think I’ve earned it, I’ll take it.”

Mr. Atkinson’s eyes snapped.

“I don’t know but you’re right,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “What do you say, Osborne?”

“I guess there isn’t much chance but that he’ll earn it all right,” he said. “He can go. Keep the money for him.”

Without further comment he left the office.

For a few moments the president of the aeroplane company sat in silence. Then he turned to his desk and wrote out an order. As he sat with it in his hand, he said:

“My boy, I understand what it means to your father. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. But I had to take chances--so does any man who wants to go ahead of the crowd. You can take care of yourself. So go ahead.”

“When ought I to start?” asked Roy.

“The car will leave by express to-morrow. It will be sent to Dolores, Colorado. If you start about two days after the machine leaves, you’ll have time to stop a day in Chicago and then reach Dolores about the time the aeroplane does. After that, it’s up to you.”

“I’ll have charge of the car, then, from Dolores. I’m to deliver it?”

“Yes, and in doing that, you’ll act as our agent. You’ll have to hire teams to transport the equipment.”

Roy’s lips puckered. Mr. Atkinson smiled.

“I’ve thought of that,” he explained. “Here’s an order the cashier will honor. You’d better draw the money at once. I’ll charge your outfit and personal expenses to the Utah company. The cost of delivering the car is our expense. And,” said Mr. Atkinson, as he took the boy’s hand, “no man works well with poor tools. Get what you need--don’t stint yourself.”

“I’ve got a good deal to thank you for, Mr. Atkinson--” began Roy.

“Thank me?” exclaimed the president. “I’m going to do all the thanking. I’m trusting you with the first aeroplane ever sent out from this factory to be used for a commercial purpose. Just make good for us and the American Aeroplane Company will put the gratitude where it belongs.”

His young head awhirl with the quick developments of the short interview, Roy walked over to the cashier’s window and laid Mr. Atkinson’s order on the marble counter. Instantly the busy cashier shoved through the grating a package of bank notes. The figures on the band startled the lad, but they did not disconcert him. With a businesslike tone, Roy asked the cashier if he might see the order again. One glance was enough--there it was: “Advance on account to bearer, Mr. Roy Osborne, $500.”

He turned and entered the big assembling room again. Half way across the noisy shop he stopped. He had just realized what had happened. Twenty-four hours before, an idle schoolboy, he had been lounging about this same place wondering if he could secure employment for a few dollars a week. To-day he had five hundred dollars in advance expense money in his pocket, a two months’ job at four hundred dollars a month, and a possible bonus of one thousand dollars on deposit.

This he understood. The moment he had time to think over these things, he said to himself:

“I didn’t do this--it’s no ability or virtue of mine; and you can’t charge it to luck. What did it?”

As he asked himself this question, he looked down the shop and saw his father--the man who was doing things, who was working out hard problems with his head and hands. Then he knew. The reward hadn’t come to the father. Even now he was working as he had for years. The reward for all those years had come to the son.

“It’s father,” said the lad thoughtfully to himself. “It all comes from what he’s done.” Then he thought of Mr. Atkinson’s words to his parent: “You’re the best mechanical man I ever knew, but you were not cut out for high finance.”

A little lump rose in the boy’s throat. He struck a bench with his fist. “He’s right,” muttered Roy stoutly. “Mr. Atkinson told the truth. But father has brought up three boys who, maybe, will do things that money can’t. And it’s the man over there in overalls who’ll get the credit--if I have my way.”

Almost at the same time his father saw him and motioned him forward.

“Get off your coat,” he ordered. “This is the car that’s going. I want you to know every piece of it.”

Roy hesitated a moment.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he began. “I’ll have to put this somewhere--” He opened his coat and gave his father a secret look at the five-hundred-dollar package of bills.

Instead of astonishment, the busy mechanic only grunted.

“Hang your coat right there,” he remarked shortly. “We ain’t sneak thieves. Now, you’d better get down to a real job and make sure you’ve got the hang of everything. Turn in and help put your car together.”

When Roy and his father left the works that evening, an American Aeroplane Company Model No. 1 had been assembled, adjusted, tested and taken apart again. The next morning it would be crated and dispatched on its long journey to the west labeled: “R. C. Cook, Manager Utah Mining and Development Company, Bluff, Utah, via Dolores, Colorado.”

If there was anything in the construction of that aeroplane that could have been improved, it was not known to the airship skill of that day or to George W. Osborne. A fore and aft or lateral biplane, utilizing the highly successful flexible sustaining surfaces of the Montgomery glider, the whole width of the air craft was 32 feet. The front and rear planes were supported on the unique and distinguishing feature of the draft--a three-section frame extending fore and aft.

In the forward section, each section measuring 4 feet 7 inches in width and 7 feet in height--the single engine was located. On a cross shaft, fixed to the forward frame of the section, the two propellers revolved, operated by chain gears, one of which had the Wright reverse twist. In this section, but to the rear were the cooling coils and the gasoline tank. From the front of this section extended a vertical steering rudder patterned after the Wright machine.

To the rear section was attached a horizontal steering plane copied directly after the Montgomery rudder, a semi-circular plane 9 feet 10 inches high at its greatest diameter. In the middle section were seats for two passengers and the operator’s station. From the saddle of the latter, flexing wires connected both the planes with stirrups through the operation of which the equilibrium of the car was maintained. Levers and wires controlling the rear and forward rudders also ended here. From the section division timbers, uprights carried wires, bracing the big lateral planes in all directions. Short landing skids were modeled after the Wright air craft.

The motive power was a 25-horsepower watercooled Curtiss with four cylinders and weighed 180 pounds. The propellers measured 8 1/3 feet.

“What do you think about her?” asked Roy, as he and his father boarded the car homeward bound.

“It’s the best I can do,” was the answer. To Roy that was enough.

Chapter VI

Off For The West

The next morning Roy went to the factory with his father and saw every piece of the aeroplane crated. As the parts would have to be transported over nearly one hundred miles of desert, the machine was taken entirely apart. Even the rubberized silk plane surfaces were unlashed from the ribs. The section frames and plane strips and ribs were numbered and made into compact bundles. On a blue-print drawing of the Model No. 1 machine, Roy made careful notes relating to each dismounted piece.

“One thing is certain,” said his father, when the packing was completed, “you’ll save money on your freight bills but you’re piling up trouble at the other end.”

“That’s where I earn my pay,” answered his son, laughing. “I reckon there ain’t any great supply of spruce and bamboo out there in Bluff to duplicate smashed parts.”

In his red memorandum book Roy also set down the number and contents of each parcel and box in order that he might check up the shipment at the end of its journey. After luncheon in the shop, Mr. Osborne, with the approval of Mr. Atkinson, made an extra crate of various sized pieces of spruce timber, several yards of silk plane cloth with gum for pasting in making patches, wire, screws, bolts, reserve engine batteries and last and most important, a small box of such tools as would be most useful.

When the wagon of the company backed up to the shipping room to transfer the formidable looking boxes, crates and bundles to the express office, Roy was a lively assistant in the loading. The engine, covered with waterproof canvas and braced in a steel-hooped box, was the last package to be lifted into the van. Roy patted the box and exclaimed, as he wiped his perspiring face:

“Good bye, old boy, till I see you again. Meet you at Dolores.”

The wagon rolled away, and Roy crossed the assembling room to the corner where the painter did his work. Having been put on the market as a commercial product, no detail was omitted that would add to the salability of the company’s machines. In addition to the lacquering of bolts and metal work, each bit of timber was coated with an aluminum varnish.

This was done for a double purpose. It not only gave the machine an attractive and finished appearance, but the nature of the varnish provided a safeguard against accidents. After the aluminum varnish was dry and set, any split or new defect in the wood at once produced a break in the aluminum coat. Instead of concealing damage to the wood, the varnish at once called attention to it.

But Roy was not investigating varnish or lacquer. When he left, a little strip of plane-silk was drying in a corner of the paint shop. On this in brilliant crimson letters nearly a foot high, was the word “_Parowan_.”

“I don’t know that I can use it,” Roy chuckled to himself, “but if Mr. Cook and his company don’t object and haven’t any other name for the air-line express, it’s going to be the ‘Parowan.’”

Roy could not get away from the thought of his great uncle, Willard Banks, and the mountain town where his mother’s family history said the old Mormon had lived.

“Those long whiskers and that big black hat seem to belong to the desert where I’m goin’. They bob up whenever I think of Utah. That’s why my machine is the ‘Parowan,’” he said.

Roy was exceedingly anxious to learn more about Utah--more about the Indians and some additional details concerning the nature of the country. He told his father he meant to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the Newark Public Library. On his way to the street car, he passed the open window of President Atkinson’s office.

That gentleman chanced to look up at the moment and as Roy lifted his hat, Mr. Atkinson called to him to come in.

“I have something that may interest you,” the president explained. “May interest me, too, if it’s right,” he added. He had in his hand a newspaper clipping. “Looks as if the boys of America were getting on to a good thing right away,” he added. Mr. Atkinson handed Roy the clipping. It had been taken from a Pensacola, Florida, paper, and read:

The Boy Aeronauts’ Club

Six Pensacola Lads To Buy an Aeroplane

Result of Recent Salvage Case

It became known yesterday that the six juvenile members of the Anclote Boat Club, who were recently awarded ten thousand dollars salvage in the Honduras mahogany schooner wreck, have determined to put a part of their treasure trove into an up-to-date aeroplane. Thomas Allen and Robert Balfour, nineteen and eighteen years old, and president and secretary of the club, respectively, have been delegated to go to New York to select the airship.

It also became known at the same time that there is a decided objection to this on the part of the parents of more than one boy. But the youngsters seem determined, and there is a strong probability that parental objection will be defied.

Tom Allen, president of the club, said yesterday: ‘You bet we are going to do it. Every one of the six members of the club risked his life to earn that money and why shouldn’t we spend it as we like? We are going to use five thousand dollars to buy an aeroplane, one thousand dollars to fix up our club house over on Anclote Island, and divide the rest. The court awarded us the money, and we’re going to beat the men of Pensacola by bringing an aeroplane down here before they wake up.’

Then followed nearly a column story that set Roy’s nerves tingling. It reviewed the history and adventures of the Anclote Boat Club. This juvenile organization of boys, ranging in age from sixteen to nineteen years, had for a couple of winters maintained a sort of winter quarters on Anclote Island about five miles off the west Florida coast and north of Tampa.

In the previous February the club members had, in a bad sou’wester, been instrumental in saving a three-mast schooner loaded with mahogany and driven out of her course on a voyage from Honduras to Mobile. This had been done with the help of the “_Escambia_,” an old lifeboat rebuilt and converted into a power boat by the addition of a ten-horsepower motor.

The details of the salvage trial in the U. S. Court were also given briefly, and then followed various anecdotes about the club, which had, apparently, afforded a number of adventurous tales to the local newspapers. When Roy finished the long story his face was aglow with more than perspiration.

“Looks as if the American Aeroplane Company hadn’t got into business any too soon, don’t it?” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson, good-humoredly.

Roy handed the president the clipping with a sigh.

“Isn’t it great?” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Reads like a story out of a book. Camping on an island in the Gulf of Mexico; fishing, swimming, boating and oranges and things. I suppose the club’ll fly all over the Everglades now--when it gets its airship.”

“Well,” laughed Mr. Atkinson, “I don’t see that the club has much advantage over you.”

“Yes, I know,” replied Roy, a little ruefully. “I wouldn’t exactly trade with those boys, but then, you know, I’m goin’ to be all alone. I won’t have any other boy with me.”

“I suppose that does make a difference,” added the man of business.

“All the difference in the world,” exclaimed Roy, “if you’re lookin’ for fun.” Then his voice changed; he threw off his disappointed look and added cheerfully: “But business is business. I’m satisfied. Only--” and he smiled, “if I wasn’t just starting for Utah, I’ll bet I could go down there and sell those boys an aeroplane.”

“I haven’t any doubt of it,” answered Mr. Atkinson.

It was a curious coincidence that, hardly had this account of Roy Osborne’s remarkable adventures been written, than a story came on its heels that found in Roy an enthusiastic reader. This was the narrative of the adventures of the members of the Anclote Boat Club, entitled, “The Boy Aeronauts’ Club, or Flying for Fun.”

Roy hurried to the library. Singularly enough, in addition to U. S. Survey reports on the Grand Canyon of Colorado and the mighty Green River chasm and an ethnological report on the Navajo and Ute Indians, Roy--rather guiltily--asked the librarian for a map showing the west coast of Florida.

For a time he diligently applied himself to the volumes concerning the region he was about to visit. But, when it came time to close the library for the day, any one looking over Roy’s shoulder would have seen him tracing out Anclote Island, the waters of Pensacola Bay and the wild, swampy stretches of the mysterious Everglades of Florida.

“Anyway,” he said to himself, “even if this isn’t for me I’ve learned a little geography. Good luck to the southern kids. It’s me for Utah and the desert.”

Roy was determined to get his western outfit in Chicago. So there was little to do in the few days before his departure except to visit the library and read up on the history of the west.

Among other things, he learned that the great Navajo reservation, on the edge of which he would undoubtedly operate, was yet a mountain and mesa wilderness sealed against even the boldest white men. Many who had ventured to penetrate into the Indians’ jealously guarded domain had never returned.

He learned, too, with a little shock to him, to tell the truth, that the adjoining Ute land (along which he would have to travel in going to Bluff) was the home of the desperadoes of the last of the red men. “Renegade Utes” the books called them--outcasts, not even fit to mingle with other Indians. Among them, he read, were to be found specimens of all savage villains, Indians who made no pretense of work or self help, cattle and horse thieves and even murderers who were watched by the government as recognized criminals.

But, above all others in gripping interest, was the vague story of the hidden Indians, savages buried in the uncharted wastes of the southwestern Utah mountains, who had as yet evaded the white man. As Eskimos are known to dwell on the ice fields of the far northern British America who have never seen human beings other than of their own race, so, it was reported, a like remnant of Indians concealed themselves between the deep canyon of the Colorado and the terrible Death Desert to the west.

The next day was Saturday. When Mr. Osborne came home at noon, he was the bearer of a parting gift from Mr. Atkinson, who seemed to have taken a strong liking to Roy. The present was a thin, open-faced gold watch and a plain leather fob.

“I noticed you didn’t have a watch,” Mr. Atkinson said, in a note, “and since you are going to run an aeroplane express you must have a good timepiece.”

On Sunday, Mr. Osborne’s second son, Phil, came over from Orange, where he was employed in the Edison laboratories. A part of the day was given up to a good-natured argument between Roy and his mother as to whether the latter should take a trunk or a suit case. Mrs. Osborne had enough articles laid out to have carried Roy on a cruise around the world. But, after repeated explanations, she surrendered. The suit case won. And in that were only a few toilet necessities, for Roy realized that in the west he would need only what he meant to buy in Chicago.

A little after ten o’clock Monday morning, Roy was off. At half-past seven Tuesday morning the eager young traveler--never before so far from home--found himself in the dingy, smoky Union Station in Chicago. In the station dining-room he first ate a good breakfast. An hour later he called a cab and drove to the downtown offices of the railroad over which he planned to travel to Pueblo.

Having secured transportation and sleeping car accommodation, he re-entered his cab, and directed the driver to one place of which he had dreamed for days--a well-known sporting goods and “outfitting” shop on Wabash Avenue. Here he dismissed his cab. When Roy left this store at noon he was the happiest lad in all that great city.

With his shopping done, he did what sight-seeing he could until five o’clock, at which hour he was again at the store. His precious supplies had been compactly placed in a strong box and labeled, “Mr. Royce Osborne, Bluff, Utah, via Pueblo and Dolores.” Loading the box into another cab, Roy saw his baggage deposited at the Dearborn Street Station, got a check for it, tipped the baggageman a quarter and was at last ready for his real journey.

The only change he had made in his list of things needed was to substitute a shoulder water canteen for his ½-gallon affair.

Chapter VII

On The Edge Of The Desert

At one o’clock Saturday afternoon, when the straining locomotive at last pulled its weaving, narrow-gauge train into the far western mountain town of Dolores, Colorado, one passenger did not require the services of a porter to assist him to alight. Travel-worn but jubilant, Roy Osborne sprang to the station platform.

“Dolores at last!”

He meant to say it to himself, but the words burst from him.

“Air ye sorry ye come?” exclaimed a voice near by.

Perhaps a half hundred persons were grouped about the station. Leather belts and plainsmen’s hats distinguished nearly all. Leaning against the platform rail were three Indians. Roy looked for the speaker. He proved to be a man just past middle age, wearing tan shoes, a rusty blue suit much in need of cleaning and pressing, a dust-covered, soft black hat, a soiled white shirt with a celluloid collar showing a glassy looking shirt stud and a thin black string necktie. His face, widened with a smile, was gaunt, red and newly shaven.

Roy glanced at him and smiled.

“I’ve got to get acquainted in Dolores,” he said with boyish familiarity, “and if you don’t mind, I’ll begin with you. My name’s Osborne, Roy Osborne, of Newark, New Jersey.”

“Do-_lores_, not _Dol_-ores,” replied the stranger with a still wider smile. “But that’s neither hyar nor thar, as the feller says alludin’ to the muskeeter. Glad to meet ye, Mr. Osborne. My name is Weston, A. B. Weston--some o’ the time Colonel Weston. Permit me,” and before Roy could stop him, Mr. Weston had taken charge of the suit case.

“You don’t run a hotel, do you?” asked Roy, amused at his new friend’s assurance.

The man took no offense, but pointed across the open ground beyond the station to a block of frame buildings.

“My office is just over thar--real estate is my line. Don’t git skeered. As a member o’ the Dolores Commercial Club, ye air welcome to step over and git yer bearin’s.”

“I don’t know that I have time--” began Roy, thinking of all he wanted to do at once--“although it’s very good of you.”

But in the meantime they were advancing toward Mr. Weston’s office. Roy looked again, and was able to make out the sign: Real Estate--A. B. Weston. Dealer in Ranches, Mines and Farms.

“Ye ain’t a drummer?” exclaimed Mr. Weston.

Roy shook his head.

“I didn’t think ye was. Out fer yer health?”

Again the boy responded in the negative.

“Assumin’ ye didn’t drop off here fur fun, I give it up,” went on the genial agent. “I’ll bet a ten-spot ye need information. Don’t be skeered. I got apple land fur sale all right, but I ain’t agoin’ to chloroform ye. Come in and git started right.”

Unable longer to resist the breezy impulsiveness of the stranger, Roy climbed the stairs and found himself in a dusty little office scented with tobacco and littered with papers. Before he sat down and while Mr. Weston threw off his coat and filled a smoke begrimed cob pipe, Roy saw a large map of the county in which Dolores was situated hanging on the wall.

He walked to it at once and, for a few moments gazed at the road leading southwest down the mountain to Cortez. Then he saw the same road or trail continue south toward the Ute Indian reservation. At the northern edge of the reservation, a branch turned west and running off the map was apparently lost in the sands of Utah.

“Got some folks out hyar, mebbe?” volunteered the affable agent.

Before Roy could speak, his eye fell on an opened envelope lying on the disordered table. It wasn’t the address that met his gaze--on the upper left hand corner were the words: “Return in ten days to the Utah Mining and Development Company, Bluff, Utah.”

It was almost like a letter of introduction to the agent. Picking up the envelope, Roy exclaimed:

“Do you know Mr. Cook, the manager of this company?”

“Done business with him fur five years or more.”

“I’ve got business with the company. I’m going to Bluff.”

Colonel Weston let his tilted chair drop to the floor.

“Ye don’t say,” he exclaimed. “Mr. Cook was in hyar last week a pesterin’ me agin to go over thar.”

“You?” Roy asked. “Are you goin’?”

“I been a tryin’ to hold out agin it. I sorter reckoned I was through with Injuns an’ alkali, but--” looking around the room with a sorry grin, “I ain’t makin’ no fortune here.”

“I don’t understand. Does Mr. Cook want you to join him in business?”

“Hardly,” the stranger answered. “But nacherly, ye don’t know me. They call me ‘colonel’ here in town. I used to be ‘Sink Hole’ Weston--‘Sink’ Weston fur short.”

Roy dropped into a chair in open perplexity. The agent lit his pipe again.

“It’s only a job headin’ a gang o’ prospectors,” he volunteered immediately. “Don’t stand to reason I keer much fur it, but--well, mebbe I am worth more at that than selling somepin’ I don’t own.”

“You are an old timer out here, then?” suggested Roy, as he began to understand.

“Went ‘to Texas’ in ’ninety from Louisiany,” answered ‘Colonel’ Weston. “Rustled cattle till ’ninety-five. Guided railroad gangs in the mountains round hyar till nineteen hundred; United States Deputy Marshal fur a spell, and then I was sheriff o’ this county a term. Five years ago, I civilized--put on this white shirt,” he added, with a grin, “an’ been bluffin’ ever since at business.”

“Were you what they call a plainsman?” asked Roy.

“I see what you mean,” exclaimed the man. “Well, they never did feel comfortable. These togs air a part o’ ‘Colonel’ A. B. Weston. ‘Sink’ Weston’s outfit is over home--I git into it sometimes when I want to feel free and easy like.”

“Are you familiar with the Indians?” asked Roy, already much interested in his new found friend.

“Familiar?” repeated the agent. “If you mean hev I seen much uv ’em, I kin say I’ve seen enough uv ’em so’s I kin cut out their society without cryin’.”

“Well, I’m sure, Mr. Weston, that it was good of you to pick me out and bring me here. I haven’t any doubt but what you can give me good advice. I’ve got to go to Bluff, and I’ve got a wagon load of stuff to take with me. I don’t know anything about the country, or how to get there. I’m goin’ to ask you to tell me.”

“Say,” said the real estate agent suddenly. “If your business is none o’ mine, keep it to yourself; but I got a reason fur askin’ ye what it is.”

“No secret,” answered Roy. “You’ve heard of aeroplanes?”

“Flyin’ machines?”

Roy nodded his head.

“I’ve got an aeroplane over at the express office, or should have, and about two hundred gallons of gasoline. I’m under contract to deliver the aeroplane and gasoline to Mr. Cook, in Bluff. After that, I’m going to work for the company communicating with its prospectin’ parties. I want to know the best way to get there.”

“They ain’t no best way--fur a team.”

“But I must find a way.”

Colonel Weston had grown strangely sober, and seemed lost in thought.

“I see the route leads along the Ute reservation,” continued Roy. “Is it safe to go that way?”

“It’s as safe goin’ as comin’. Either way ’tain’t what ye might call no Lovers’ Lane fur peace and quiet.”

“Do you know a good guide?” continued Roy, a little surprised. He had rather imagined that Indian apprehension existed mainly in the east.

“Yes,” said Colonel Weston suddenly. He was about to say more when his sober face took on a smile. Stepping to a desk, he searched in the mess of odds and ends until he found a reasonably clean sheet of paper. On this he printed something and then stepped into the hall and attached the sheet to the outside of the door.

This done, he picked up Roy’s suit case and exclaimed:

“Ye ain’t had no dinner, hev ye?”

The lad remembered that he had not, and that he was suddenly ravenously hungry.

“I got a wife,” added Colonel Weston; “’tain’t fur. We’ll go home an’ git some chuck.”

As they stepped into the hall, Roy looked at the sign on the door. It read:

“Back when I git here. Address Sink Weston, Bluff, Utah.”

Roy whirled about in sudden amazement.

“I’m tired o’ town,” the agent exclaimed, “an’ sick o’ things I don’t know nothin’ about--an’ these,” he added with a laugh, pointing to his tan shoes and town clothes. “I’ll take ye to Bluff myself.”

This was Roy’s introduction to the new life he was just entering. Over his protest, Colonel Weston, now “Sink” Weston once more, at least temporarily, insisted that the boy should go to his home for dinner.

Mr. Weston’s explanation to his wife that business called him to Bluff was received with no great joy, Roy could see, but Mrs. Weston was probably used to her husband’s lapses into his old life.

“I don’t know how I’m goin’ to thank you folks for takin’ me in this way and helpin’ me,” said Roy, as he sat down to fresh biscuits, fried ham, potatoes, warmed-over baked beans, and a pot of fresh coffee.

“Don’t take on about that,” answered Mr. Weston. “All we ask is ye don’t offer to pay nuthin’.”

That night Roy wrote a letter to his mother. Ten days later, from Mrs. Osborne came to Mrs. Weston a fashionable shopping bag of tanned sealskin. For years to come it will be the pride of Mrs. Weston’s heart.

It had already been agreed that the start for Bluff was to be made at five o’clock the next morning. Mr. Weston, despite his long face in recounting his town experience, in reality owned a freight teaming business. He maintained a sort of livery stable and sent a freight wagon each day to Cortez, twelve miles down the mountain.

While Roy went to the express office at the railway station, his new friend and host began making arrangements for a wagon and horses. When the boy reached the depot and made modest inquiry for his freight, the agent looked at him open mouthed.

“Is all that plunder yourn?” he began.

“Do you want me to identify myself?” asked Roy with a laugh. “Colonel Weston knows me.”

“I reckon it’s all right who ye air, but why in the name uv all that’s good and holy, didn’t ye send it by freight?”

“It’s all here, is it?” Roy asked anxiously.

“All here? I should say not.”

The boy’s heart sank.

“It’s nigh all over town. That gasoline is over thar by the water tank--an’ by _express, too_,” the agent repeated, looking at Roy as if he were a Rockefeller. “An’ the big boxes is over in the freight house. Some o’ the bundles is in the baggage room.”

“Well,” said Roy laughing and greatly relieved, “I had this left out of the express money,” and he handed the agent a two-dollar bill.

“Say, kid,” the agent said, a little embarrassed, “where do you want that stuff took?”

When the boy explained that, at present, he only meant to check it up, the mollified official offered his assistance with alacrity. Within an hour Roy was joined by Colonel Weston, who had a look at the freight he was to transport.

“Fine,” he exclaimed, “all but the gasoline. But we’ll make it on one wagon. Old Dan Doolin is goin’ to drive fur us.”

About five o’clock the big, canvas-covered freight wagon was drawn over to the depot that the crates, boxes and gasoline cans might be loaded that night. The teamster, Colonel Weston, Roy and the depot agent were not long in doing this.

Roy looked at the big, crowded wagon and wrinkled his brows:

“Goin’ to be a kind of close fit for us, isn’t it?” he remarked to Mr. Weston.

“How’s that?” asked the ex-sheriff.

“All three of us on that wobbly seat for nearly a hundred miles.”

Colonel Weston exploded with laughter.

“You don’t reckon I’m goin’ to ride on the wagon?”

Roy looked at him, mystified. Then suddenly he understood.

“Of course,” he answered, “you’ll ride horseback.”

“Naturally,” remarked his companion. “And I’m goin’ to give you a cow pony thet’s about as slick a piece o’ horse flesh as they is in these parts.”

Roy stopped. That was a dream of his life.

“Colonel Weston,” he almost shouted, “you’re a brick.”

Chapter VIII

The Trail At Last

“E yawp!”

Roy awoke, rose on his elbow to get his bearings, and then remembering that he was in Mrs. Weston’s “spare” bed, turned out and rushed to the window. “Sink Hole” Weston was entering the house.

It was nearly five o’clock and time to be off. The newly awakened boy lost no time. All his preparations had been made the night before. After writing letters he had laid out his new togs and packed his “shore” clothes, as he called them, in the suit-case. As he donned his gray flannel, his khaki, his new hat, and his boots, his heart fluttered like that of the youngster with his first long trousers.

Then he paused, in doubt. Hearing Mr. Weston in the adjoining room, he peeked cautiously through a narrow crack in the door. His heart leaped again. The one-time real estate agent and now plainsman once more had made no half way change. Dangling at his right leg was a holster and revolver. Roy, almost catching his breath for joy, made the finishing touch to his own get-up. Buckling on his belt, already carefully stuffed with ammunition, the boy felt the caress of the new automatic against his hip and leg and his happiness was nearly complete.

But not quite. At a post in front of the little white house stood two cow ponies, saddled, with ropes at the pommels and blankets cinched behind. One of these, Roy knew, from its size, must be his mount. He started for the door and then hesitated. Everything on him felt so new that he almost had stage fright.

“Waugh!” rang out from the next room. “Chuck’s ready.”

“Waugh!” yelled Roy with assumed boldness and throwing open the door, he dashed into the room, whirled about in imitation of a ballet dancer and then, clumsily drawing his new revolver, struck an attitude of aiming through the window.

“Well, by the great horn spoon,” shouted Weston.

“Land o’ mercy,” added Mrs. Weston, who had just entered with a venison steak--hot and covered with fried potatoes.

“You shore air the Wild West picter,” laughed the man.

“He’s jist right,” broke in Mrs. Weston. “That’s all right, Mr. Osborne. Don’t you stand fur no jokin’.”

“Why?” exclaimed Roy, in an alarmed voice. “Aren’t these things all right?”

“All right?” answered Mr. Weston, “shore they’s all right; but did you’ ever see a city man go into a country town but what the yaps had to make fun o’ his clothes?”

“Don’t you all wear these?” asked Roy, anxiously.

“They would if they could,” answered Mrs. Weston, depositing the meat platter and turning to survey the boy. “An’ yo’ ain’t got a thing on yo’ that ‘Sink’ wouldn’t be tickled to own. Look at him--it’s reediclus.”

Roy looked. Mr. Weston still wore the same soiled white shirt, or one like it. A black silk handkerchief encircled his neck. It was knotted in front, while Roy’s was fastened behind as he had seen in the pictures. Mr. Weston wore no coat, and his white shirt-sleeves were held up by blue elastic bands. Never had Roy seen such things in cowboy pictures. But the man’s blue clothes had been exchanged for a dark vest and a pair of close fitting black trousers. The vest was unbuttoned, and one side of it sagged with the weight of a silver watch chain. The trousers disappeared into a pair of worn, unpolished boots. But here the shattering of the young tenderfoot’s ideals paused. Those boots! They were wrinkled and crinkled in true cattleman style; the heels tapered like a woman’s French slipper and jangling about the insteps were two as ornate spurs as any artist ever drew.

And, best of all, there was the “gun.” The belt was not as new as Roy’s and the revolver was not an automatic-carbine, but it was there.

“That sartin must a cost ye quite a bit,” was Mr. Weston’s comment. “An’ don’t yo’ mind ef some one tries to guy yo’. Yer all O. K. Ye don’t need nuthin’ but to git the new off. An’ I’ll guarantee to do that afore we git to Bluff.”

“Where can I get a pair of spurs?” asked the boy.

“Oh, ye kin git ’em anywhar--best place over to the drug store. But Nigger don’t need no spurs--leastways on a little jant like this.”

By twenty minutes after five o’clock breakfast was over, and Roy had started for the barn, a few blocks away, with his suit case, Mr. Weston offering to bring Nigger. At five thirty old Dan’s wagon drew out of the barn. Incidentally, Mrs. Weston found a five-dollar bill under Roy’s place after her husband left.

Roy was glad enough to find few men on the street when it came time to mount Nigger.

“Don’t be afeerd,” exclaimed Mr. Weston. “Nigger ain’t no trained bucker fur no Wild West show. She’s a cow pony. All ye got to do is not to argey with her. She knows more about sartin things ’an you do, an’ when yo’ an’ she don’t agree, yo’ let her hev her way. Whatever she does, they’s a reason fur. Don’t be afeerd.”

Roy had ridden horseback a few times in the country, but as he dropped into Nigger’s saddle he felt as if he were sinking into an arm chair. Mr. Weston sat astride his pony watching the boy. Seeing him at last mounted and stirruped, there was a quick yell. “E yawp!” shouted the elder man, and with a flip of the reins, his pony whirled as if on a pivot and was off down the main street of Dolores. With a clatter of hoofs, Nigger bounded forward.

Roy gasped, caught his saddle pommel with one hand and his hat with the other. Then, remembering instructions, he grasped his reins, straightened out his legs and threw back his shoulders. Ahead rose a cloud of dust. It was Doolin’s four horses just crossing the railroad tracks to take the valley road. They were off at last.

[Illustration: WITH A CLATTER OF HOOFS NIGGER BOUNDED FORWARD]

As the two ponies scampered by the freight wagon and reached the southern limits of the town, Weston flipped his reins once more and the two animals slackened into a trot. Beyond the railroad switch yards and a fringe of adobe houses, the street passed over the brow of a rise and dropped at once into a road winding down the mountain side.

With a motion of his hand the ex-sheriff called Roy’s attention to the view. Westward the sloping ground fell gradually into a valley. Beyond a fringe of pinon timber on the lower slopes, the country ’marked with farms and ranches like a checkerboard, spread out to make Montezuma Valley--the last bit of fertility in the southwest. Far beyond these spots of green rose what seemed to be a yellow barrier.

“What’s the wall?” asked Roy, trying to copy Mr. Weston’s easy loll in the saddle.

“Wall,” laughed the old plainsman, “we’ll climb that wall to-morrer. That’s Utah and sand and alkali.”

“The desert?” exclaimed Roy.

“The same,” answered his companion, “an’ a good deal o’ that.”

“What’s the blue wall, then?” added the boy, pointing toward the south.

“Wal, sir, ef it want fur that, ye’d see yaller thar, too. That’s the Mesa Grande, twenty-five miles from hyar. Mesa is Spanish fur a tableland o’ rock. That’s whar the ole Aztecs built thar homes. Take the Mesa away an’ ye’ll see New Mexico from hear.”

“And that?” continued Roy, pointing to the southwest where a gray, pink-tipped spire rose cloudward.

“Ute Mountain,” answered the westerner, as he urged his pony forward again. “And frum it ye’ll likely see thieving Utes and murderin’ Navajos a-plenty.”

While old Doolin’s brakes were creaking against the wheels of the big wagon, Mr. Weston and Roy gave their animals rein, and were off for the village on the plain below, twelve miles away.

“Kid,” exclaimed his companion, after a time, “we might as well agree on this. Ain’t no one we’re goin’ to meet ’at’ll call me ‘Mister’ nur ‘Colonel.’ And ain’t no reason why yo’ should. Over thar,” and he pointed to the Utah alkali--“it’ll be ‘Sink’ Weston. Make her ‘Sink’ an’ let it go at that. Don’t be skeered I’m goin’ to think less o’ you fur it.”

“All right, I will, if you’ll tell me why they call you ‘Sink.’”

Weston turned sideways in his saddle.

“That’s a considerable yarn, son.”

“Tell it,” exclaimed Roy, enthusiastically. “I’ve been waitin’ for years to hear a real story that ain’t been in a book.”

“Ye kin be sure this ain’t been in no book. As fur bein’ real--see that?”

He loosened the shirt-sleeve of the left arm and revealed a long white furrow on the back of his arm just below the elbow.

“Thar’s whare the boss o’ the Sink Hole, the white High Mucky-Muck o’ the Lost Injuns plugged me. It’s real all right.”

“The Lost Indians?” Roy exclaimed. “You mean the Indians no white man has ever seen?”

“Sink” Weston shook his head with a half smile.

“I seen ’em. An’ _he_ seen ’em.”

“He? Who?” persisted Roy.

“Who?” repeated “Sink,” with a strange laugh that startled the boy. “Tell me? I been aching fur more’n ten years to learn that. To say nothin’ o’ the hole in the bowels o’ the airth where he took me and plugged me and kep’ me fur--well, I never knowed jist how long--”

“Mr. Weston, or ‘Sink,’” broke in Roy, “you’re getting me all mixed up. I don’t seem to follow you.”

“O’ course not. But I’ll make it straight jist as soon as I git a chanst. Then ye kin understand. Till then, call me ‘Sink.’ When I git around to the yarn, ye’ll say mebbe as how it’s a good enough name fur me, ‘Sink Hole’ Weston!”

“We’ll be in camp to-night. It’ll make a campfire tale,” suggested Roy.

The leader of Roy’s cavalcade nodded his head and for some time rode silently ahead, as if in thought. The pace brought them to Cortez about nine o’clock. Here they had agreed to wait for the wagon to overtake them.

From Cortez you might strike on a bee line to the southwest and never strike another white man’s village until you entered southern California. Its bank, stores, cement buildings and telephones were the last signposts of civilization on the edge of the desert.

Roy was to pay Weston a dollar a mile for transporting the aeroplane to Bluff. That meant a cost of about ninety dollars. Weston, for this, furnished the wagon, the six horses, the services of both Dan Doolin and himself, and the feed for all animals. Roy was to provision the party. Food supplies were to be laid in at Cortez.

When the boy asked about a tent, Weston laughed. He explained that tents were a superfluity. The weather was ideal.

“It’s your saddle fur a piller, and blanket fur a mattress. As fur a coverin’ above ye--ye jist want to try the sky. It beats houses er tents.”

Roy was eager enough to try it. The freight wagon carried frying pans, tin dishes and a coffee pot in the tail box. The food bought was simple--salt pork, bacon, flour, baking powder, crackers, coffee, and a variety of canned goods in the way of beans, meats, and fruits. These articles purchased, packed and paid for, Weston left the lad for a time.

Roy was glad enough to do a little sight-seeing. He visited all the stores and at last found himself in a half drug and half general store in one corner of which was a stock of unique Indian relics. In a few moments the boy was on familiar terms with the proprietor--an old doctor. And in the next half hour he had selected a real Navajo blanket for his mother and an equally interesting turquoise set, silver ring for his father, although he knew that the latter parent would never wear it.

As the doctor curio-dealer was preparing the purchases for shipment by express to Newark, he said:

“Aren’t you the young man who came in this morning with Sink Weston?”

Roy answered that he was.

“Going back to-day?” continued the doctor.

“Going on,” he replied. “We’re goin’ to Bluff with a wagon of freight.”

“To Bluff?” exclaimed the storekeeper in apparent surprise. “With Sink Weston?”

“Yes,” retorted Roy, a little indignant. “Why not? Any reason why I shouldn’t travel with Mr. Weston?”

“No,” faltered the storekeeper. “No real reason, I guess. But--”

“But what?” added Roy sharply.

The curio-dealer puckered his lips. Then, significantly, he touched his head with his finger.

“He’s honest enough. But, hereabouts, we all kind o’ consider him a little off--cracked in the upper story.”

Chapter IX

In The Canyon Of The San Juan

Long before night came, Sink Weston’s one-wagon train had crossed McElmo Creek and was well down toward the Mesa Verde. The evening campfire was almost within the shadow of the old Aztec cliff home. The Cortez curio-dealer’s suggestion that Weston was a “little off” had bothered Roy a great deal; but his early apprehension had worn off somewhat as he failed to detect any outward signs of “crackedness” in the old guide.

Naturally Roy associated Weston’s vague references to the “Lost Indians” and the “old man of the sink hole” with what the storekeeper had said. And, as he thought the matter over, he finally concluded: “We are all a little daffy in some line. I suppose I’m crazy over aeroplanes. If Sink has a soft spot or peculiarity, why should I bother about it?”

However, concluding that the “sink hole” story, whatever it was, might be Weston’s hallucination, the lad decided to say no more about it.

In the gray-blue shadows of the Mesa Verde, Weston and Roy picketed their ponies and made camp. Long before Doolin came up with the wagon, they had collected wood and made a fire. The stars were showing when the wagon arrived. Then followed Roy’s first camp experience.

After all, the way Doolin and Mr. Weston did it, it was very simple. Water for this first stop was carried in a barrel. The horses were watered, given oats and picketed. A pot of coffee was made; two cans of baked beans were heated; a can of peaches was opened; the crackers were passed--there was not even condensed milk for the coffee--and the evening meal was over.

Immediately, with no dishes to wash, old Doolin extracted a rifle from somewhere in the wagon and, charging his pipe, strolled away in the dark “to stretch his legs,” as he put it. The sky was black-blue; the stars were like white hot carbons; no insects disturbed the breezeless soft surroundings, and the red-yellow glow of the dying cook fire sent a straight line of thin smoke upward.

“Goin’ huntin’?” asked Roy, indicating old Doolin.

“Doolin never sets by the fire,” explained Mr. Weston. “He may not be back till midnight. Jist onrestless. But he ain’t lookin’ fur no game. That gun’s like a cane to him. He may be up on the Mesa Verde afore he gits sleepy.”

Roy was tired, after his first day in the saddle. He was lying on a blanket, his eyes on the little fire, and wondering if he would like to be going with the “onrestless” Doolin. Weston was sitting with his back against a wagon wheel, his knees crooked before him, with one hand lazily grasping his bubbling pipe.

“So ye want to know why they call me ‘Sink?’” he said suddenly, as if the two had just been discussing the subject.

Roy cast his eyes again in the direction Doolin had taken. Their companion had disappeared. Somewhere, at that moment, a shivery half-bark and half-wail sounded.

“Coyote,” said Mr. Weston without moving.

The cook fire was but little more than a dying blaze. Just a little wave of apprehension crept over the boy. Was he alone with an irresponsible man? Was his companion about to recall an imaginary experience, an hallucination that might work him into a frenzy? Roy was almost sorry that the teamster had left. He was not afraid, but--

“Yes,” he answered stoutly, “I’d like to hear it.”

For a few moments, the guide, marshal and sheriff, said nothing. Then he recharged his pipe, threw a couple of bits of mesquite upon the fire and resumed his position.

“When I’m done,” he said at last, “ye’ll say I’m bughouse. They all do. Anyway, ye’ll know why I’m Sink Hole Weston.”

Roy breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Weston’s tone was calm enough.

“In ninety-eight, I brung a party of railroad prospectors to Durango,” Mr. Weston began. “That winter, I herded sheep and fit Utes. In the spring, I was sick o’ Injuns and I made up my mind to do a little minin’. Jist then, a couple o’ fellers named Labarge an’ Moffett showed up in camp. They wuz nice men an’ it wuz bad fur ’em an’ others what happened to ’em, but it came nigh bein’ as bad fur me. These men come all the way from Washin’ton to make a map o’ the San Juan river. They had money an’ a outfit an’ a boat that come in pieces. The wages they offered me to go with ’em settled the minin’ idee.

“In May, when the arroyos wuz bank full and better, we toted the pieces o’ that boat up in the San Juan mountains beyant Pagasa Peak. Two weeks later, down about Alcatrez--or whar Alcatrez is now--we found timber and them fellers figured out they wanted a raft big enough to carry us an’ the boat. We made it. But it must a bin a bum raft. At the first bad rapids we struck, whar the river cuts through the Carriso mountains, the raft went to pieces and we all went down. Labarge he never did come up.”

“Drowned?” exclaimed Roy.

“An’ smashed,” explained Weston, tamping his pipe. “We saved the boat, an’ me and Moffett went on. The river was now sartin deep in the canyon. Mebbe Moffett knowed whar we was, but I didn’t. He put it down in his book. Then it got so bad thar was not no stoppin’ any more an’ we jist shot ahead. I don’t know whar we wuz, as I said, but it wuz about four days arter Labarge was lost ’at Moffett figgered out he was due to climb out o’ the canyon. It was like a mine shaft fur deep and dark, but he had some projeck about gettin’ his bearin’s. So we tried it. He lugged them instruments o’ his an’, I’ll say this fur him, he mighty near done it when somepin’ happened. He dropped six hundred feet like a rock.”

Roy shuddered and pulled his blanket nearer the fire. Mr. Weston snapped a piece of mesquite.

“When I got down to the water agin, they was not even his little books and measurin’ traps. Ever’thing but the boat was gone in the foam o’ the San Juan. I never knowed whar Moffett was killed. But it was about ten o’clock in the mornin’ I calkerlated--I didn’t have no watch.

“Before I started I et a good meal fur I knowed, the way that river was a boilin’ and roarin’ below me, I was not agoin’ to make no more stops till somepin happened. An’ I didn’t. It happened arter dark. When I couldn’t see no more, an’ it was plum dark down thar long afore the sun went down up on the plains five or six hundred feet above, I shoved off. I didn’t make no bluff at steerin’.

“I jist waited. Mebbe I was not goin’ a few? I shore was sorry I hadn’t stuck to my minin’ idee. I was sorry fur a good many things when the dark come on. I got tired o’ thinkin’ an’ waitin’ at last an’ I says to myself, says I, ‘let her come now an’ git over with it.’ I was accommodated.

“When I come to I was alive, but I didn’t believe it fur a long time. I peeled off the blood an’ by feelin’ round concluded I was on the rocks. But I was so nigh the water that the foam an’ spray was a blanket fur me all night. That’s whar I laid till it come light agin. O’ course the boat was gone, my chuck was gone an’ them walls o’ stone stood up afore and behind me--straight? They seemed like the inside o’ a ball.”

“How did you get out?” asked Roy. “And where were you?”

“I ain’t agoin’ to answer neither,” replied Mr. Weston, crawling over to the fire and using a coal to light his recharged pipe.

“Why ain’t I?” he added without a smile. “’Cause I don’t know. Don’t know no more today ’an I did then. Somehow I did git out. But it was not that day ’cause I slep’ on the rocks agin. I kin tell you this, though: when I fell down on the sand up thar some’ere on the top o’ that gash in the airth, my clo’es was in rags an’ two finger nails on each hand was missin’. I reckon I clumb some.”

“This was not the sink hole, was it?” interrupted the boy.

The plainsman took several long puffs at his pipe.

“What happened on the river was only what ye might expec’. What happened arter ain’t no man got no right to look fur. In a way, it was even excitin’. Or I don’t know as ye could say that. It was unusual, though.”

Roy’s apprehensions returned to him.

“I’ll try not to string it out,” resumed Weston. “But, remember, I ain’t askin’ ye to believe it.” The fire flared up and Roy saw that the man’s face was both sober and thoughtful. “Nobody believes it. Some of ’em’ll tell you I’m nutty. I’m used to it. I jist want to explain why I’m Sink Hole Weston.”

“Tell it all,” pleaded Roy, suddenly.

“I don’t know what day it wuz I found myself up thar in the sand. An’, as ye kin guess, I don’t know whar it wuz. Don’t know yit,” he added as if this were one of the regrettable details of his adventure. “But one thing I kin make affedavit to,” he said, with a drawl,--“my gun wuz gone, the soles wuz tore off my boots, an’ my hat wuz with the gun, I reckon, I didn’t have a scrap o’ food an’ as fur water, they was a plenty about six hundred feet below me an’ none, I reckoned, within a hundred miles ur more in front o’ me. I set down an’ tried to round up. I knowed I wuz so fur frum whar I started, that I was not agoin’ to try to git back by follerin’ that cursed river, though t’aint a bad river at that, take it all in all.

“It was comin’ night an’ the sun was facin’ me. By that my right hand was pintin’ north. Ef I went south, it stood to reason I must be some’ere nigh Navajo land. That settled goin’ south. Ef I went west, about the only thing I knowed of ’at I could find afore I come to the Nevada Mountains wuz the Ralston desert. An’ I had plenty o’ that whar I wuz. Goin’ east, I had my chice o’ dead craters, the Colorado and Green Rivers, which was like the San Juan only wuss, an’ more deserts.”

“You were certainly up against it,” sighed the boy. “You went north, I suppose.”

“Sometimes north an’ sometimes northwest,” continued Weston. “Depended on the goin’. I was not at jist the top o’ condition, as ye kin guess. But I cut off the tops o’ my boots, patched up a pair o’ soles an’, it bein’ evenin’ then, took a snooze. Sometime in the night I woke up an’ started. It was not much uv a start I didn’t have no preparations to make. Layin’ a trail by the north star I set out kind o’ northwest.

“It begun to git rough right away. That’s the way all along them rivers--the river hole, then a fringe o’ sand an’ then higher ground. Long afore sun up, I was makin’ up some purty stiff hills. When day come, I wuz in ’em. You’d a thought they wuz some life an’ timber thar. Ef they was, I didn’t see neither. As near as I could figger, it was like as ef they’d took all the rock out o’ the San Juan an’ piled it up on a kind o’ table land. They seemed to be big, high ridges o’ rock stretchin’ all over the country with here an’ thar a heap uv it high enough to make a peak.

“That day an’ the next, I knowed I was giner’ly goin’ northwest. At the end o’ the second day, I didn’t keer much whether I ever woke up agin. Only I didn’t exactly go to sleep. My head was wrong, an’ I knowed it. Onct I found myself diggin’ in the sand. I got up sneerin’ at myself. I knowed well enough they was not no water up thar. Then you know what I found myself adoin’? I caught myself atryin’ to spell out my name by layin’ little pieces o’ rock on the sand. That was the limit.

“I cut out restin’ an’ got up an’ says, ‘When I stop agin, it’ll be whar I’m goin’ to stay.’ My boots was not no good any more--leastways I didn’t somehow keer to try to tie ’em on no more. Then I rickollected ’bout starvin’ people chawin’ thar shoe leather. I tried it. Don’t you believe it’s wuth while. Anyway, I was not hungry. A little water would ahelped but, mostly, I reckon I jist longed to git out o’ that rock. That’s what bothered me. Curious like, it got to seem as if I could git whar I couldn’t see them walls ever’thing’d be all right. You’re agettin’ batty when you git that way.

“I kin remember the moon come out. But that made me mad. It looked so much like the sun. It was ashinin’ all over the rocks I had come to kind o’ despise. But thar was one place ’at wuz dark and I throwed away my boots an’ run in thar like as if somepin was a chasin’ me. An’ I kept agoin’ till, I reckon, I jist keeled over. I was not plannin’ to wake up no more, but I did. An’ thar was them rocks.

“I didn’t feel much like gittin’ up. But, fin’ly I turned over so’s I wouldn’t see them bits o’ granite er whatever they air. An’, lo and behold, they was not no rock at all whar my eyes fell. After awhile, I figgered out that this was a good thing. And then I knowed what I wuz tryin’ to do--I wuz tryin’ to convince myself ’at I ought to go over whar the rocks stopped.

“I couldn’t walk, so I crawled. Some o’ my thinkin’ apparatus seemed gone, but I got away all right--I was out o’ the rocks. Then I rickollected. I says, ‘They ought to be water here whar they ain’t no rocks. Whar’s the water?’ They was not no answer to that, an’ they was not no water. I wuz the maddest man ye ever see. ‘Whar’s the water?’ I yelled. Not actu’ly, ye know, ’cause my tongue was not movin’ seein’ as how it had my jaws pried open.

“Now comes a cur’ous thing,” continued Mr. Weston. “You’d athought I was all in, me acrawlin’ on my hands an’ knees the night before. But this goin’ without no water has funny angles. I was mad and demandin’ the water that should ’abeen waitin’ fur me. An’ on them raw feet o’ mine I started to find it. I couldn’t talk, an’ I couldn’t think, to speak of, but I could see. An’ afore I quit I saw smoke.

“Somehow, that didn’t int’rest me; didn’t even surprise me. But it was right whar I thought water was, an’, somehow, I kept goin’. This is one place they say I’m nutty. I’ve forgot a good deal about gittin’ out o’ the rocks, but I’ll make affedavit I went toward that smoke all day. How do I figger that? It was black all around me when I quit goin’.

“When I knowed anything agin, I knowed I was with Injuns. Couldn’t fool me on Injun smell. An’ when an old Injun woman poured water on my tongue, I jist shet my eyes an’ went to sleep agin.”

Chapter X

The White God Of The Sink Hole

For the last few moments, Roy had leaned forward as if afraid he might miss some word of his companion’s strange tale.

“Indians had saved you!” he exclaimed huskily.

“A white man,” remarked Mr. Weston. “The High Mucky-Muck o’ the Sink Hole--the high priest o’ the Lost Injuns--him that they say loosened some o’ my screws.”

“Go on,” interrupted the boy impulsively, now wholly indifferent as to the result of possibly drawing out the plainsman’s hallucination. Weston arose, went over to the water barrel and put his mouth to the spigot.

“You don’t never see me wastin’ any o’ that sence the day I got out o’ the rocks,” he explained, “an’ I got a purty high regard fur it ever sence.”

He moved the fire coals together with his foot and added a couple new mesquite roots to the embers. As the coals flared into a flame, he took from his hip pocket a worn and greasy pocketbook. The flap was reinforced with a string. Slowly untying this, Weston opened the book and extracted a little pocket or envelope made of what appeared to be thin, black oilcloth. The boy was on his knees close by the fire. Weston squatted on his heels, opened the oilcloth packet and took out a piece of yellowish paper, about twice the size of an envelope, folded once in the middle.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Roy, moving closer.

Weston opened the old sheet, almost ready to come apart in the center. The quick-eyed boy could make out only what seemed to be three words in either hieroglyphics or some language unknown to him, dim with age, and a single line resembling an arrow.

“What’s that?” repeated Weston. “Ef ye’ll tell me that, I’ll know what I been tryin’ to find out fur a good many years. It’s what makes folks say I’m wrong in my upper story.”

As the boy reached forward to take the mysterious sheet in his hands, Weston withdrew it, put it back into its case, dropped it into the pocketbook, and, with the latter in his hands, took a new position cross-legged before the fire.

“In a minute,” he went on. “But let me finish my yarn. I’ll show it to you then. Them as hev seen this ain’t so sure I’m off. Them as ain’t, don’t know. What it means, I reckon they ain’t no one kin tell. I tuk it offen the high Mucky-Muck white man when them Lost Injuns killed him.”

There was already a little chill in the night air. The whole world seemed asleep. Roy wet his lips and looked behind him. He was wondering if old Doolin were near. And yet, neither Weston’s eyes nor voice seemed to be those of a man not in his normal senses.

“I’ll give what happened to you brief,” the westerner went on, slapping the pocketbook on his knee. “As fur as I kin make out, them hills an’ rocks was purty much my imagination. Leastways, I never seen ’em agin, and couldn’t find ’em though I looked offen enough. After gettin’ that drink from the squaw I must a mended fast. When I come to agin, I knowed I was in a cave, but a cave that wa’n’t made by no man. An’ settin’ by me was a Injun fur yer life. I seen about ever’ kind uv Injun in the west, but I ain’t seen none like him before nur sence. An’ he was one uv about thirteen, half squaws an’--I was agoin’ to say bucks--but they wa’n’t bucks. They wuz old men--every one of ’em who wa’n’t an ole woman. No papooses an’ no young people.

“That cave was jist a kind o’ room. They wuz other rooms an’ galleries--plenty of ’em. The Injun by me, an ole man, was on guard. So I sung purty small seein’ I was a pris’ner. He had Injun hair all right, but gittin’ bald. This is where the wise ones all laugh when I tell about that gang. ‘A bald Injun?’ they say. No matter--squaws and men alike they was all more or less bald.

“As fur looks, they didn’t look like no one ’at I ever see, exceptin’ the picters o’ Eskimos an’ Chinks. They had sort o’ slant eyes. But their skins was the unusuallest part uv ’em. They ever’ one looked kind o’ cold-gray-brown like a Injun whose been dead a day or two.”

Roy looked again toward the star-crowned black wall of the Mesa Verde, as if hoping that the absent Doolin might be coming campward.

“Where was this?” he asked, nervously.

“Ain’t no doubt in my mind,” went on Mr. Weston, “but that gang was the last o’ them Lost Injuns. And afore now they’re all gone, I reckon. Where wuz it? Well, sir, that tribe didn’t have no range--they lived in a Sink Hole. That’s the answer. That’s why I reckon they ain’t but two white men ever seen ’em an’ never will.”

“I don’t understand,” interrupted the boy. “What is a Sink Hole?”

“A Sink Hole is whar onct was a volcano er whar the water frum the mountains bores a hole in the desert. Somewhar out thar in Utah,” continued the speaker, “somewhar between the Colorado River an’ the western mountains is the Sink Hole o’ the Lost Injuns. A quarter uv a mile away they ain’t no sign uv it exceptin’, as I seen it first, smoke o’ sulphur driftin’ out. It’s sides ain’t fur climbin’--they air nigh straight except whar the dry river bed falls into the pit. When the wet season’s on ye can’t get in er out. In the dry months they’s steps cut in the arroyo bed.

“When the floods begin to eat a hole in the sand whar that pit is, they dug out holes in the rocks. Then the water et furdder down and made more holes. An’ that’s the way it went on, I reckon, makin’ drifts like a silver mine. Then these Eskimo-Chink Injuns come along, fur the water that wuz at the bottom o’ the sink mebbe, and scooped the caves bigger and jined them till it was a home under the desert.”

Roy’s eyes bulged with amazement.

“And they found you and took you down there?”

“The white boss did. I calkerlate that sulphur smoke leakin’ out o’ the lower tunnels wuz what did the business. And sence them Injuns don’t stir ’round much, I reckon I must a stumbled into that dry arroyo. Like as not, I was on the aidge o’ the sink when the white man seen me. Anyway, they took me in.”

“And the white man?” asked Roy. “What about him?”

“You’d a thought he’d a give me the glad hand now, wouldn’t you?” continued the westerner. “He did--_not_. I didn’t even know about him till night was comin’ on agin. Ye could tell it was night an’ day down thar because near’ all them rooms er caves had a winder looking out on the sink. Towards night, after I was feelin’ a good sight better, and was figgerin’ on jist what sort uv a deal I’d put over on the Injuns, all my plans wuz knocked galley west.

“Ye kin imagine. It was jist shadderin’ into dark when a figger come into the room like he was a emperor or somepin. He was the imposinest being I ever see. I knowed he was white by his hair and beard which was spread out over his chest like one o’ them Bible prophets what are offerin’ up lambs fur sacerfice. On his feet they wuz sandals. An’, instid o’ white men’s clothes, he was dressed mainly in a white blanket with a belt o’ silver buckles ’at I reckon’d weigh five pounds.

“‘Thank God,’ I mumbles kind o’ thick like an’ tryin’ to set up. He only bowed like I wuz a salutin’ him an’ never cracked a smile. ‘I’m much obleeged,’ I went on, tryin’ to be sociable, ‘fur the water.’ Instid o’ sayin’ he was glad or somepin pleasant, the old geezer, in a voice like a preacher, begun to talk Injun to the old baldy by me. An’ sich Injun! Then he left, old baldy makin’ a low bow as his white boss walked away, like as if he was leadin’ a army. Thet night, they brought me some kind o’ meal mixed with water an’ more water, an’ another ole grandpa come an’ set by the door o’ my room till day.

“They w’a’n’t no use tryin’ to do anything in the dark. So I snoozed. When I woke up, it looked as if somepin was doin’. Five er six uv them Injuns was crowded in the door o’ my cell er room or cave.

“‘Come in,’ I says, feelin’ a mighty sight stronger an’ pearter. But they didn’t. They ducked like yearlin’s. All but one. He wuz on guard. I was gittin’ purty cur’ous by this time. So, seein’ no one but a single baldy on watch, I got up, pushed him to one side and walked out into a kind o’ corridor. It was not till then that I knowed anything about the lay o’ the land. This hall was like a gal’ry in the side o’ the sink hole. On the outside they wuz openin’s, nacherl like, jis like holes in the rock. Out o’ these ye could look down whar it was black and smelly with sulphur. Up above, ye could see the sky. On the inside o’ the gal’ery, they wuz the caves, an’, I discovered later, some other gal’ries runnin’ back to I don’t know whar or what. Like enough, store rooms.

“Ye kin bet, they wuz a commotion. Sich gibberish as wuz set up would a made ye tired. I didn’t keer much fur the old Injuns, but ole bearded-boy was right on the job. They w’a’n’t no place to go, an’ I hadn’t no gun, so when ole White Blanket come up and laid hold o’ me, I knowed it wuz all over. He had a grip wuss’n Dan Doolin fifteen year ago. He carried me back to my coop an’ dropped me on the floor like a piller.

“But I seen one thing. When he nailed me, I wuz in what ye might call the holy o’ holies. It was a big room about the middle o’ the main gal’ry. I never seen it but that one time, my boy, but that was enough. Mebbe I’m ‘off,’ ‘cracked,’ ‘nutty,’ an’ ‘bughouse’--ye don’t have to believe it--but ef I didn’t see more gold and silver dishes in that room ’an ye could carry away in a wagon, I ain’t a settin’ here.”

Treasure--gold and silver lost in a cave! Roy’s heart thumped. Did he hear right?--was he dreaming or reading some old tale of fiction?

“You saw it?” was all he could say.

“’Bout that long,” answered Weston, snapping his fingers. “But it don’t take no camera long to take a picter. What I seen I seen. They was a altar an’ a lamp burnin’ on it. An’ that wuz no Injun racket. Wa’n’t no corn an’ grain an’ painted sticks an’ eagle feathers an’ false faces. What I see was a white man’s work.”

“But the gold and silver?” exclaimed Roy, forgetting hallucinations, Dan Doolin and all else.

“That tribe must a been a real tribe onct,” went on Mr. Weston. “That’s the only way I kin explain it. In that room wuz, I reckon, all the dishes ’at they ever made. They wa’n’t on the altar only. They was ever’whar. Can’t fool me on gold and silver. I seen ’em. Them on the altar had turquoises over ’em like dirt. I don’t know whether I figgered right, but, layin’ thar that night, I couldn’t see it but one way. Ole White Blanket wuz a fake. He wa’n’t thar to teach no religion nur to save no souls. He was gittin’ that plunder all together fur no good purpose--no better’n mine ef I’d a got the chanct.”

“Well,” urged Roy. “What then?”

“I couldn’t figure it but one way, as I say. They wa’n’t nothin’ fur me to do but to git away, locate the sink hole an’ git back with help to chastise the old geezer an’ mebbe git the stuff he was atryin’ to steal. I saved a little chuck each meal fur a couple o’ days, an’ then tried it. O’ course I had to tap the old baldy guard on the head jist heavy enough to keep him still a while. I selected the time jist about daybreak, an’ I thought I was goin’ to hev no more trouble. I was out o’ the gal’ery an’ on the arroyo steps when I got this,” said Mr. Weston tapping the long scar on his arm. “That was frum old high Mucky-Muck hisself. I didn’t allow he had no gun.

“That meant I was two weeks laid up. But the Injuns give me a square deal. They tended me like brothers, even the old one I had to be vi’lent with. Then, one day jist when I was feelin’ it wuz about time to try it agin, who should come in but the boss hisself. You wouldn’t believe what that ole duffer done--hot as it wuz out there in them deserts. An’ I guess he wa’n’t no thief after all er he might a saved hisself all his trouble by just knockin’ me on the head an’ bein’ done with it. He had a hood, made out uv a piece o’ blanket, and some hide strings. With him wuz four old men ready fur travelin’, as I could see. An’ so wuz the white man. Instid o’ his blanket an’ sandals, he had on a white man’s boots, a long black coat and a big hat.

“Without askin’ my leave an’ no special talk among ’em, they tied my arms behind me an’ dropped that black hood over my head.” Weston paused awhile, in which interval he lit anew his long neglected pipe.

“I reckon,” he began again, at last, “ye’ll imagine they took me out on the desert an’ turned me loose. They jist traveled with me two days. An’ the last days we wuz in the mountains. I could see what was comin’, though in all that travelin’ they wa’n’t one word spoke to me.

“That’s whar ole High Mucky-Muck made his mistake. He might as well a’ talked all he wanted. He was wuss off’n I was. But he didn’t know it. That night, like the fust night, they tied my feet, although two o’ the Injun ‘has-beens’ stood guard. We didn’t have no campfire, an’ only meal an’ water fur chuck. I slept all right till it got cold--we wuz well up in the mountains somewhar--an’ then I woke up. My feet an’ hands wuz free and them that brung me two days’ travel wuz gone.

“I understood like it wuz all wrote down. It was jist to be shore I couldn’t never find my way back to them as didn’t relish my company. An’ I cussed. Then I figgered it out. I was lucky to be alive, an’ I turned over an’ went to sleep agin. When it was day, I found they’d left me a bag o’ meal an’ a bottle o’ water.”

Roy’s tense feelings relaxed with the explosive inquiry:

“And that’s how you escaped? But the paper--the funny writing?”

Weston shrugged his shoulders.

“I could tell east and west and I knowed the way I had ought to go, but did ye ever know a man to do what he’d ought to--always? That white man wore boots. I couldn’t no more keep from trailin’ him an’ I could fergit that plunder. It wa’n’t easy, in that high ground, but I kep’ goin’ an’ I knowed I was doin’ a good job. About sun down, I come to the end o’ the trail, as we say out hyar.”

“You lost it?”

“One of ’em, I never lost,” said Mr. Weston slowly. “Jist when the sun was makin’ shadders on the mountain side, I seen somepin afore me I wisht I’d never seen. On a pile o’ rocks, sort o’ square like, was the big white man stark an’ stiff dead.”

“Dead?” almost shouted the awed boy.

“With a hole in the back o’ his head like this,” added Mr. Weston solemnly, holding out his closed fist.

Roy shuddered.

“The Indians killed him?” he almost whispered.

“Shore,” answered Weston. “And they wasn’t but one answer to that. It took me days to figger it out, but thar was only one reason. How that white man come among ’em o’ course no one’ll ever know. But bein’ thar, he wuz the biggest thing ’at ever happened. They’d never seen a white man afore. He might’a been a kind a holy thing to ’em. Mebbe even a god. An’ when I came along they seen they wuz other white men on earth. Ef he’d been a god he wa’n’t the only one. So they went back to their old feathers an’ painted sticks an’ Injun totems. But they sacerficed the new god first.”

“And the paper?” asked the boy, after a long silence.

“’Ceptin’ his gun and boots,” said Mr. Weston, “it wuz the only thing on him I took. What it means, I guess the White God o’ the Lost Injuns knowed. But I don’t. If it’s Injun, ain’t no Injun I ever met could read it.”

“And you?” said Roy. “What then?”

“I piled stones on the dead man an’ slept thar that night. The next day I tried to pick up the trail o’ the Injuns. But they air the kind that don’t leave no trails. Then I lit out northwest. My meal lasted, but the water didn’t. In six days, I struck a trail an’ the next day wuz picked up by a ore wagon comin’ off Awapa Plateau--out o’ my head.”

When the guide had finished his story, he again opened his worn pocketbook.

“Mebbe you’d like a look at the paper,” he added. “An’ remember. Ye don’t have to lie. Ye don’t have to say ye believe a word o’ what I been tellin’ ye. But that scrap o’ paper and this,” pointing to his arm again, “air all I got to prove that A. B. Weston, which is me, has actu’ly seen the Lost Injuns o’ Utah, their goods and chattels o’ solid gold and silver an’ the White God o’ the Sink Hole. Anyway, that’s why I’m ‘Sink Hole’ Weston.”

Weston spread out the paper and handed it to Roy. As he did so, he punched up the fire and the boy leaned forward. For a moment, the boy’s eyes were fixed on the three hieroglyphic words. Then, at the bottom of the sheet, Roy detected two other words in faded ink.

“It’s a name,” exclaimed the lad suddenly.

“But that don’t mean nothin’. Ain’t no one I ever met ever heerd it.”

Roy caught his breath, started, looked again and then shouted:

“I know it. I’ve heard it. You’re not crazy. That’s the name of a man I know. It’s my great uncle!--a Mormon.”

Weston caught the boy by the arm.

“What’s his name?” he asked, in a thick voice.

“Willard Banks.”

The plainsman sprang to his feet, laughed nervously and then exclaimed:

[Illustration: THE REMARKABLE HIEROGLYPHICS]

“I reckon there’s some one then ’at’ll believe me.”

“Every word,” answered Roy, handing back the paper. “But,” and he too laughed in an excited way, “I’m glad you had that proof.”

Chapter XI

The Real West

Roy’s idea of a camp at night included a smouldering fire in front of a tent wherein, on fragrant spruce boughs, carefully sheltered from the wind and the chill, one went to bed wrapped in blankets. When Sink Weston scattered the last coals of the little cook fire and pointed to the sand under the freight wagon as a “likely place to bunk,” the boy felt a little disappointment. It was one of a number of new things he learned that summer about life in the “open.”

Another one was, that riding all day on a lively cow pony when you are not used to it, does not exactly limber up your limbs. When the boy attempted to jump up early the next morning, he found his legs bent almost like hoops. The result was, when a breakfast of salt pork, crackers and coffee had been eaten, Roy complied with Sink’s good-natured orders and climbed up on the wagon seat along with Dan Doolin. His pony was tied to the tail board.

The day was perfect. The party was in sterile country--land that could hardly be called desert, although at that point, it was without water. There was mesquite and sage, rocks here and there--and now and then a jack rabbit. The misty blue mountains of New Mexico greeted them over the top of the gray Mesa Verde; peaks of the far Rockies, white-capped and cold, lay behind, while in front, beyond pink-tipped Ute mountains, rose the wall of the Utah Desert.

Before Weston could gallop on ahead, Roy begged of him the mysterious sheet of hieroglyphics. He wanted to see it in the daylight. Since he had heard the tale of the Lost Indians, he was able to think of little else. Sink Weston’s story had taken possession of the boy. He had told Weston all he knew of his great uncle, and where the Mormon had once lived. But they had both decided that it availed little to know that the disciple of Nauvoo had once lived in Parowan.

Even if Willard Banks left children or other relatives, it was certain that these would know nothing of the hidden Sink Hole. Weston was positive in his belief that the indecipherable words formed a key describing the location of the secret Indian city. And he was almost as positive that the words were beyond reading by any one but their writer. He had long since ascribed the existence of the paper to the fact that, before the Mormon elder visited the Lost Indians, he had learned their secret, probably from other Indians with whom he had lived in his missionary work. Not trusting to his memory, he had made a record of his secret in cipher.

As Roy took the paper and Weston rode on, old Dan Doolin smiled grimly.

“So ye got it, too, hev ye?” he said, chuckling.

Roy opened the paper and pointed to the name on it.

“I suppose you’re like the rest of ’em,” the boy answered, with some satisfaction. “Well, you’ve all laughed too soon. There _was_ a Willard Banks, and he was my _great uncle_!”

Old Doolin started to smile, but, changing his mind, he turned and exclaimed:

“W’ot’s that?”

“There was such a man as Willard Banks,” continued Roy, with spirit. “He was my great uncle. He was a Mormon elder, and he lived at Parowan.”

“Wal, by hokey!” exclaimed old Doolin, straightening up. “Ef that’s right, I reckon I been a laughin’ out o’ the wrong side o’ my face. Say, Kid,” he continued, after a moment’s hard thinking, “I seen fellers ’at had seen ships asailin’ in the desert. Likewise I seen many a dockymint o’ them Spanish sharps locatin’ mines an’ sich--mines as ain’t no one kin find. I never set no more store on Sink’s ramblin’s an’ I do on Injun tales. An’ nobody else, I reckon. But you listen to me! Ef thar was a live man o’ that name o’ Banks,” and he shook his head slowly, “thar’s a many ’at have been makin’ fools o’ theirselves, an’ Sink ain’t one uv ’em.”

“Did you ever see anything like this?” asked Roy, smiling and opening the paper on his knee.

“I never did and never expec’ to agin. Ain’t no more sense to it ’an a snake’s trail in the sand. That writin’ ain’t fur nuthin’, but I reckon mebbe, ef what you say’s right, Sink seen the hole in the ground. Mebbe he seen a white man thar--I’ll even stand fur that, now,” continued the grizzled teamster, “an’ mebbe he seen some dishes o’ copper er clay er say they wuz even gold and silver; fer argymint sake, I’ll stand fur that, too, seein’ ye know thar was a man o’ that name. Fur as _them_ things goes, I’ll take off my hat to Sink; but one thing I won’t stand fur, not even if the old Mormon was hyar and jined Sink in a affedavit--that’s them bald-headed Injuns. They ain’t no sich a thing. They cain’t be. Injuns ain’t made that way.”

The boy laughed outright.

“But what, after all,” he said, “if there _did_ happen to be such a place and just such Indians?”

“Bald-headed?” snorted the veteran teamster, cracking his whip as if to emphasize his contempt. “Tell me them plates is studded with diments an’ I’ll swaller it, but I draw the line at bald-headed Injuns.”

For a long time, Roy studied the enigmatic words while the wagon bumped along the rough and rocky trail. But it was no use. The first line had in it ten characters or signs; the second seven; the last eight. Not one of them resembled a letter of any alphabet that Roy knew. Some of them seemed patterned after certain Greek letters, and a few were not dissimilar to “shorthand” or stenographic marks. But neither of these were familiar to Roy. Naturally, they did not suggest Greek or “shorthand” to Weston. The arrow might mean anything; death, the chase, or, as was generally agreed by those who had studied the writing, a point of the compass, which would be south.

When the party stopped at noon, Roy returned the paper to Weston.

“I give it up,” he said, “but if I ever get near Parowan, and I hope to be there before I go back, I’ll send you word of all that I learn about my relative.”

Secretly, he was longing for the guide to make some overtures to him regarding a sort of partnership in a new quest for the Sink Hole. Of course, that could not be at once, but he was a boy, and as full of the spirit of adventure as he was of energy.

“Are you going to make any more attempts to find your Lost Indians?” he asked, while Doolin was preparing the noonday meal.

“Well,” answered Weston, with a peculiar smile, “I promised my wife I wouldn’t. I promised her purty strong, too. That is, I jist told her positive I wouldn’t lessen somepin happened wharby I kin read that writin’.”

“Maybe we could find the Sink Hole with the aeroplane,” suggested Roy, voicing an idea that he had been nursing all day.

Weston shook his head.

“I don’t know much about yer sky machines,” he replied, “but ye could look down into them sink holes all over Utah, an’ ye wouldn’t know _my_ sink hole frum a thousan’ others. I done that aplenty. No, sir. Ye got to read it right thar on the paper. Ain’t no other way, as I kin see.”

That afternoon Roy mustered up courage to return to his mount. And as the hours went by and they came nearer the mountains lying to the south, the tale of the Lost Indians began to drift into the background. They were hastening through a corner of the Ute Indian reservation, where the trail ran, and this was excuse enough for the opening of Weston’s book of reminiscences. The guide had Indian tales of all kinds--narratives covering their lives and crimes.

Toward dusk, Weston, riding not far ahead of the wagon, called Roy’s attention to a dark mark ahead. It was the unmarked chasm of the San Juan River. And on the banks of this swift stream, flowing at the bottom of its open tunnel bed, the second camp was made. A place had been selected where an Indian trail afforded access to the water below. And after the horses were cared for Doolin celebrated the crossing of the Utah line by making a batch of biscuits baked in a skillet.

“The advantage o’ them biscuits over woman’s bread,” explained old Dan, smiling, “is ’at they’ll stick to yer innards. Ye won’t need no more uv ’em till ye git to Bluff.”

“An’ not then,” said Weston, without a smile, “ef I kin get kitchen bread.”

That evening, despite what Weston had told the boy about Doolin’s habit of never sitting by the campfire, Roy noted that the teamster did not leave the camp. On the contrary, he turned in and was snoring long before the boy was sleepy. The next day he was told the reason. They were camping on the Ute Indian land. To a Ute horse stealing is a minor crime. Doolin slept until one o’clock and Weston kept watch. Then the guide turned in and Doolin kept an eye open for unannounced visitors.

Just when the stars began to show the next evening, the aeroplane cavalcade raised the lights of Bluff, and at ten o’clock entered the town. Roy was tired but happy. So far no accident had marred his expectation. Because of the lateness of the hour, Roy had planned to stop at a boarding house frequented by Weston at times and to report to Mr. Cook, of the Development Company, in the morning. The wagon, therefore, did not proceed to the center of the town, but was stopped at the “San Juan Stables.” The “stables” were little more than a horse corral. There being no one in charge, Doolin was left with the wagon, the teamster and cook appropriating horse provender with western freedom. When Weston and the boy left him, he was preparing to make a fire and boil some coffee, after which he was to sleep near the wagon and its valuable freight.

Unencumbered with baggage, Roy and his companion made their way along the main street toward the center of the wilderness city. The boy discovered at once that the brilliant lights came, not from stores, but from a dozen or more saloons. Adobe sidewalks soon gave way to a board passageway--timber swept down the San Juan from the far away mountains--and in the center of the town these were covered by roofs reaching to the street.

For what would have been a block, had there been any cross streets, each door under the wooden awning on each side of the street opened into either a saloon or a gambling resort. And each door was wide open as were the windows. Men were coming and going at each place, but few were loafing on the walk. Among them Weston and the boy strode without attracting a great deal of attention and speaking to none.

Near the end of the row, Weston slackened his pace and said: “Ye don’t mind, do ye, ef I stop at the ‘Crater’ fur a drink? Ye kin see I don’t drink but a little--ain’t had a drop sence I left home.”

Roy hesitated. He had been in saloons--out of curiosity. But his curiosity had been satisfied. In his own town and in the drinking resorts he knew, the only persons to be found therein were those who should have been somewhere else, or loafers and drunkards. But, while he hesitated, he decided that circumstances were different. In that community of rough men, cut off, almost, from all civilization and refinement, saloons were common meeting points.

“I’ll wait for you,” answered Roy, stepping just inside the door. Instantly he was sorry he had done so. The place was aglow with light from a half dozen oil chandeliers; the air was heavy with tobacco smoke and odors from the sloppy bar, and the room was well filled with men. Almost tempted to return to the street, for his companion at once hurried toward the bar, Roy was held for a moment by the fascinating picture afforded by the occupants of the place.

Above all rose the clink of spurs. Here at last was the “real thing.” Almost lost in the desert and hanging on the precipitous banks of the deep San Juan as if to prevent being swept away and buried in the sandy plains, the town of Bluff, the last echo of civilization, was the rendezvous of miner, prospector, cow puncher, sheep herder and outcast. And within Roy’s sight were examples of each.

Confused, bewildered, and wholly out of place, Roy attempted to withdraw. But something seemed to hold him--the silver bands on an Indian, the gaudy color of a cowboy’s handkerchief, the set angle of another’s hat and everywhere the oaths, the racy slang of the plains and the always present, swaying firearms. Here were the men of whom he had read, whose freedom--as a boy--he had often envied.

In the moment that Roy hesitated there was a familiar “E yawp!” and a half dozen answering yells. The boy knew at once that Sink Weston had found old friends. Then he made out Weston’s big, black, dust-covered hat making its way toward the bar in the midst of a group of white sombreros, and he turned and left. At the door, an arm intercepted him. He drew back somewhat alarmed. It was a man who had lunged forward from the end of the bar near the door.

“Fur the love o’ God, Kid, buy me a drink.”

The mumbling speaker was a man who might have been eighty years old. Age and whisky had wrecked him. An unkempt, white beard, covered a worn, red flannel shirt. His ragged boots, into which greasy pants were stuffed, were not those of a horseman, and his gnarled, trembling fingers fell on the boy’s arm like talons. His hair, dropping from under a limp, grease-banded, ragged hat, lay on his shoulders in yellow-white, knotted locks. Almost toothless, he repeated, huskily:

“Jist one, Kid, jist one!”

Roy was shocked, and attempted to pass on. But the man, almost in collapse, held to him and dragged himself to the walk outside.

“Jist one drink’ll brace me up fur to-night. Mebbe to-morrer, I won’t need none.”

“Won’t anything else help you?” said Roy, at last. “Are you hungry?”

“Hungry?” almost moaned the broken being. “Yes, I’m hungry. But I got to hev liquor er die.”

“Why don’t you try eatin’ first?” asked the boy, not knowing what else to say. “I’ll buy you food.”

“Gimme a drink an’ I’ll eat. I ain’t et in two days.”

The boy was puzzled. His sympathetic heart was touched. Next door to the “Crater,” the usual saloon sign was surmounted by the words, “Joe’s Imperial Palace Restaurant.” In the window was a display of canned goods: sardines, asparagus, pepper sauce and bologna sausage. Grasping the old man by the shoulder, he half led and half pushed him into the eating resort. A man at the bar scowled at sight of the decrepit man, but smiled as he saw the brisk looking lad.

Three tables were lined up on one side of the room. Leading the whisky supplicant to one of these, Roy almost dropped him into a chair and then stepped over to the bar. Handing a two-dollar bill to the barkeeper, he said:

“The old man wants whisky. Looks to me as is he needs something to eat a good deal worse.”

The barkeeper grunted:

“To be decent he’d orter to eat, sure. But, as fur liquor, he’ll sartin die without it.”

“Well,” said Roy, “fill him up with somethin’ to eat. Then, give him his drink.”

The old man was stumbling toward the bar as Roy hurried from the place. Outside the “Crater” he waited some minutes for Weston. Apparently, more than one drink was demanding the Colorado man’s attention. And the boy grew nervous. From time to time he peered into the glaring resort, and at last had about concluded to make his way to the corral and spend the night with Doolin when the waited-for Weston suddenly appeared.

“That’s part o’ the game out here, Son,” he began by way of apology, “but I’m sorry to keep ye waitin’. Now we’ll turn in.”

They had scarcely started along the walk when there was a sudden commotion in the adjoining restaurant. With what seemed to be the crash of chairs overturning, there was an oath and a scuffle and a shrunken figure was hurled across the plank walk. Instantly, a dozen men seemed to spring up. Several hands grasped a senseless red-shirted body and straightened it out on the dust-covered walk. A smear of red covered the prostrate man’s yellow-white uncovered hair. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily.

“Humph,” exclaimed Weston, as he pushed Roy around the onlookers. “Old Utah Banning--an’ all in.”

Chapter XII

Assembling An Aeroplane In The Desert

Weston explained that the old man was known in the camp only as Utah Banning. For years he had been too old for any active work. No one knew how he managed to exist. On the edge of the town, furthest from the river, he lived alone in an adobe hut. Roy was disturbed by what had happened, but when Weston told him this was the old man’s nightly experience, the boy tried to dismiss the incident.

On the way to their boarding house, Weston pointed out the office of the Utah Mining and Development Company. It was a one-story building, covered with tin pressed in imitation of stone, with a large enclosed yard in the rear. As they passed the dark structure, it was almost like meeting an old friend to read on the big, plate-glass window the words, “R. C. Cook, Manager,” in brilliant gold letters.

“Them fellers,” remarked Weston, in passing, “don’t make no great splurge, but they’re the Rothchilds er the Stan’ard Oil Company er the Pierpont Morgans o’ this land. An’ when ye speak o’ the firm yer goin’ to work fur, ye don’t have to say nothin’ but ‘Company’--ever’body knows.”

Weston and Roy were just finishing a hot breakfast of tortillas and chili-con-carne about eight o’clock the next morning--the boarding house was an adobe structure with an interior court and conducted in Mexican style--when there was a clutter of pony hoofs on the sandy street without and an energetic, middle-aged man, much better dressed than those Roy had seen the night before, came striding into the court where the new arrivals were dining.

“Well, Sink,” he exclaimed in a quick, pleasant voice, “thought you’d surprise me, eh? Howdy?”

He reached out his hand, and looked inquiringly at Roy.

“Had to come on business,” answered Weston, with a chuckle. “Brung my friend hyar. I kind o’ thought I’d stay awhile lessen ye’ve changed yur mind.”

“Job’s open. Glad to have you,” added the newcomer. “Heard you blew in last night--from one o’ the boys.”

“Shake hands with Mr. Osborne,” interrupted Weston, by way of introducing Roy and the stranger. “Roy, this is Mr. Cook, o’ the ‘Company.’”

The boy sprang forward and clasped Mr. Cook’s hand vigorously.

“I see you don’t know who I am,” he exclaimed with a smile. “I reckon they didn’t send you word. I’ve been sent out here by Mr. Atkinson, of the American Aeroplane Company, to work for you.”

Mr. Cook almost dropped his hat. Stuffing it under his arm, he clasped Roy’s hand in both his and then patted him on the back.

“Well, sir, my boy, those are about the welcomest words I’ve heard in a long time. I’m sure glad to see you. And you’ve got your machine with you?”

Weston smiled and answered for Roy:

“That’s what brung me, Colonel. Old Doolin’s got her down to the corral.”

“You don’t say so,” exclaimed Manager Cook. “The whole danged shebang?”

“Everything,” said Roy, laughing. “And I’m glad to meet you. I’m ready to get busy, too. I’ve been a long time gettin’ here.”

“The whole business?” went on Mr. Cook, as if the news was too good to be true.

“If it isn’t,” said Roy, with another smile, “I’ll be pretty well disappointed.”

“Well, sir,” went on Mr. Cook, looking at Roy again and patting him on the back, almost affectionately, “you’re about ten or fifteen years younger than I thought you’d be.” Then he sobered, suddenly. “They told you what the work was, did they?”

“I understand, perfectly,” answered Roy. “I can do it.”

“That’s the talk,” snapped Mr. Cook. “Come,” he added, glancing around at the rather squalid courtyard. “Let’s go over to the office and talk it over. Where’s your baggage?” he added, turning to Roy.

“Down at the corral.”

“Well, don’t send it here. You’ll bunk with me. Sink,” he went on, “what d’you mean by steerin’ the boy up against this?” He pointed to the Mexican food.

“I enjoyed it,” exclaimed Roy, smiling.

Mr. Cook sniffed.

“You think you did, youngster. But you’ll find out later that it ain’t fit for white men. Sink’s been here so long he ain’t really white any more,” continued Mr. Cook, with a dig at Weston’s ribs; “but that’s no reason why he should poison you. Keep them things out o’ your system as long as you can. Let’s vamose!”

There was only a short stop at the company’s office, and then all went at once to the corral. But the stay in the company headquarters was long enough to show Roy that he had become connected with no small company. Roy presented his letter of introduction and another from Mr. Atkinson, the president of the aeroplane company, in reference to Roy’s expenses and compensation.

“No trouble about that,” exclaimed Mr. Cook impulsively. “But we won’t stop to thresh over figures this morning. When you get time,” he said to Roy, “make out a statement of all your expenses, and I’ll include the amount in our check to the company. The salary is all right. You won’t find much use for money down here. But, whenever you need any, let me know.”

Roy assured hi