CHAPTER XI.
A DANGEROUS GAME.
A DANGEROUS GAME.
A DANGEROUS GAME.
“I’ll tell you my idea of the situation in about one minute!” Jimmie broke in. “If you follow my advice, you’ll get into the aeroplanes and get away from this old smuggler’s den. I want to get somewhere where I can lay down and sleep, and get up and eat, and go back and sleep, and get up and eat again, without being interrupted!”
“Does the young man express the sentiments of the meeting?” asked Carl with a laugh.
“He expresses mine!” answered Kit.
“And mine, too,” replied Ben, “only——”
“Only, what?” demanded Jimmie.
“Only it strikes me,” Ben continued, “that we’ve stumbled on a streak of luck.”
“I don’t see how!” Jimmie argued.
“Look here,” explained Ben, “if Phillips and Mendoza are in this vicinity they are familiar with the stir of outlaw life about this place. It is quite probable that they know exactly what is going on, and it is also quite probable that they have not made their presence here known to the smugglers.”
“Do you get the idea?” asked Carl turning to Jimmie. “I’ll tell you right now that I don’t.”
“So, you see,” Ben went on with a tolerant smile, “the outlaws will credit any rumpus that takes place here to the smugglers.”
“That’s all right, so far as we’re concerned,” replied Jimmie, “but what will the smugglers say to our nesting down here and cuddling up to them?”
“I can answer that question!” Carl cut in. “The first time we leave camp they’ll smash our machines and consume our provisions!”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Ben mused. “I have an idea that they’ll just naturally get their imported Chinamen out of the way and abandon the camp!”
“That beacon fire to the south may be shouting a warning to the skies right now!” Jimmie exclaimed. “They may be sending a mob up here, right now, to steal our machines and give us decent burial.”
“I wish Mr. Havens could drop out of the sky just about now!” suggested Carl. “Perhaps he could tell us what we ought to do.”
“I think I know what we ought to do now,” Ben interrupted. “We ought to go down to the end of the canyon and see if there are any steamers gathering about that beacon light. We wouldn’t exactly like to have a mob of cutthroats rushing in here with another cargo of Chinks.”
“That’s a fact!” Carl agreed. “We ought to be finding out what that beacon means!”
The boys walked down to the end of the canyon and looked almost straight below into the tumbling surf of the Pacific ocean. The second beacon was on a headland a little more than a quarter of a mile to the south.
Its flames leaped high in the comparatively still air, and a wide area of mountain and sea was disclosed. Standing out a short distance, pitching heavily in the swell of the ocean, lay two coast steamers of fair size.
“There they are!” Carl exclaimed. “Just watch, and you’ll see boats loaded with Chinks making their way to some cove in the coast not far distant.”
“Well, what are we going to do?” asked Ben.
“We just can’t stay here!” shouted Carl.
“Of course not!” Jimmie added.
“What about it, Kit?” Ben asked, turning to the boy with a laugh.
“I don’t care where you take me, so long as there’s something to eat there!” the lad answered.
After a long consultation, it was decided to take the machines out of the canyon that night. The boys knew that in time the unlawful acts of the smugglers would bring them to punishment. Their arrest might take place within one day, or within one year, but, whenever it was, the lads decidedthat they could not afford to be in any way implicated by knowledge of the smuggling, or by being in a position to be suspected of knowing more than they really did.
After a hastily-eaten supper, the boys ran theBerthaaround so as to face the sea and stowed on board of her the packages of provisions which had been removed and opened.
This done, Ben ran both machines back to the crag and paced the distance to the abrupt drop into the sea.
“How far is it?” asked Jimmie.
“Something less than a hundred paces!” was the reply.
“The machines will rise in that distance, all right!” Carl cut in.
“If they do, it’s all right,” Ben answered, “and if they don’t, we’ll all be dumped into the Pacific ocean.”
“Well,” chuckled Jimmie, “we came clear across the continent to get to the Pacific ocean, didn’t we?”
“Couldn’t we swim out?” asked Kit innocently.
“Probably,” grinned Carl, “with a surf washing twenty feet up on the rocks! Why,” he continued, “there wouldn’t be enough of us left in a minute to wad a gun.”
“TheLouisewill make it all right!” Jimmie insisted. “I’ve pulled her into the air in less than two hundred feet!”
“TheBerthacan make anything theLouisecan,” Ben answered rather impatiently. “I’ll go first with Kit and see what the prospects are,” he continued. “If I’m not killed, you can follow.”
Kit shivered as he stepped into the seat.
“I wish right now,” he grumbled, “that I was asleep in Robinson’s barn.”
“Steady now, hold her right!” Jimmie called out, as Ben pressed the starter and the wheels under the aeroplane began to revolve. “Hold her tight and steady, and push on the bottom of the seat when you get over the ocean. If you drop, whistle!”
“Cut it out, you little idiot!” stormed Carl. “That’s no fool of a trick Ben’s trying to do! The air massed before and under the machine as it moves along over the ground will push over the precipice, and then the aeroplane will shoot downward, no matter if the wheels do leave the surface before she comes to the edge.”
“That will be all right, if she comes up again!” Jimmie grinned.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t feel so merry over the proposition if you were going in the first machine,” Carl said, impatiently.
“Huh!” grunted Jimmie with an exasperating smile, “we’ve got to go over the precipice, too, haven’t we?”
TheBerthawheeled slowly and steadily down the slight incline toward the line of demarcation between the white sand and the open air, the Pacific pounding upon the rocks a thousand feet below. Watching the flying machine at the critical moment, Jimmie’s red hair almost lifted his cap from his head as the great planes swept for a moment below the level of the canyon floor.
The planes rose again in a second, however, and lifted almost instantly into the red light of the beacon fire gleaming from the headland below. It seemed to the anxious boys that she must drop down again, but, instead, the planes lifted higher and higher until she sailed like a bird out of the limited circle of illumination.
“Now for it, Carl!” shouted Jimmie, and together they sprang to their seats and started theLouise.
Notwithstanding the fact that theBerthahad made the trip into the air in safety, the young aviators felt shivers navigating their backs as they dropped down at the edge of the precipice.
For an instant it seemed as if the motors would never lift the planes in time to prevent a tumble into the ocean, but at last theLouiseleaped upward and onward, past the light of the signal fire, and into the semi-darkness which lay over the scenery.
By this time Ben was some distance away with theBertha. Jimmie turned theLouisein his direction and the two flying machines were soon side by side. For a moment the boys tried to converse together, but the clatter of the motors and the rush of air prevented the spoken words from reaching the ears of the others.
Failing to communicate to Jimmie and Carl the thing which was on his mind, Ben lifted a hand and quickly pointed to the north.
The headland in that direction still flamed red with the signal which had been observed at twilight.
Although the distance was nearly two miles, the boys saw that people were moving about the fire. Straight west from the headland a second schooner lay rocking on the pulse of the waves.
“It’s a wonder the government wouldn’t send gunboats down here!” shouted Jimmie in his chum’s ear. “It’s bananas to beams that both those steamers are carrying contraband goods in the shape of Chinks and opium.”
“They can carry anything they like, so long as they let us alone!” Carl answered back.
For a time both machines passed straight out to the west, rising slightly as they advanced. Then Ben turned away to the south, evidently with the intention of passing above the deck of the steamer which lay in front of the second beacon.
Jimmie, of course, followed his example, and directly both flying machines dipped down to within a hundred yards of the deck. There was no longer any doubt concerning the mission of the vessel. At least a score of Chinamen were in sight.
The appearance of the flying machines naturally created great excitement on the deck below. Hairy-faced sailors shook their fists violently upward, and the Chinamen were driven like cattle into a hatchway and passed out of sight.
“We haven’t got a line on the bank burglars yet!” Jimmie shouted into Carl’s ear, “but we’ve butted in on a mighty prosperous game just the same!”
Ben, of course, was beyond the reach of his chum’s voice, but he expressed his acknowledgment of the situation by turning in his seat and waving an arm in the direction of theLouise.
As soon as the two aeroplanes passed beyond the beacon on the headland, they turned to the sea again and moved out some distance from the shore. It was the intention, of course, to pass down the coast in quest of another landing-place, and they swung out to sea in order that their movements might not be observed in case they were watched from the mountain.
Perhaps three miles from the second beacon and schooner they turned sharply to the east and lifted to an altitude sufficient to enable them to cross the line of summits which guarded the coast.
They proceeded in this direction for a short time passing over what seemed to them to be the highest peak of the Sierra de Santa Lucia, and then dropped down into what appeared, in the dim light of the stars, to be a round bowl of a valley between two parallel ridges.
It was desperate and creepy work, settling down to earth, but the usual luck of the boys prevailed, and before long they found themselves in a grassy valley some two thousand feet below the summit. They all shivered as they stepped out of their seats and gathered in a group.
“What did you see when you crossed the summit?” asked Ben, turning to Jimmie. “Anything particular attract your attention?”
“To tell you the truth,” the boy replied, “I was so frightened, and so busy following your lead, that I saw only the neck-breaking places below and the stars above.”
“Well,” Ben went on, “if you had taken a good look to the north, you would have seen a flying machine hovering over the headland where we saw the first signal.”
“A flying machine?” repeated Carl.
“That’s what I said!” insisted Ben.
“And that means,” Jimmie argued, “that the blond brute who tried to blow up our aeroplanes not far from St. Louis reached the ocean about the time of our arrival.”
“That’s the way it looks to me,” Ben agreed.
“Have you any idea he saw us?” asked Carl.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ben answered, “and I can’t quite make up my mind. You see,” he went on, “it’s just this way: If he crossed the range while our machines were reflecting the light of the lower beacon, he undoubtedly saw us. If he crossed after we passed out to sea and turned back to the east, he probably doesn’t know that we’re here.”
“He’ll find out quick enough!” suggested Carl.
“How?” asked Jimmie.
“Why, the fellows who were sneaking the Chinamen across the Mexican border will tell him all right!” was the answer.
“Don’t you ever think they’ll tell him,” Ben broke in. “He won’t give them a chance to tell him anything! He’ll dodge them as if they had the small-pox.”
“That’s about right,” Jimmie agreed. “He’ll head straight for Phillips and Mendosa and tell them that there’s a red-headed boy who will cross their life-lines in about twenty-four hours!”
“I hope he doesn’t know where to find them!” Ben observed.
“He probably does,” Ben suggested.
“Say,” cried Jimmie dancing about on his toes, “I don’t believe he knows where they are any more than we do—nor half so much.”
“What’s the answer?” asked Ben.
“Do you remember the note Kit found in the barn where that monkey-faced aviator had his arm set?” asked Jimmie.
“That’s a fact!” exclaimed Ben. “Who’s got the note now?”
“I have!” shouted Jimmie. “I have it at this moment secreted about my person, but it isn’t necessary for me to read it again to tell what it says. It gives an address and the address is Two Sisters canyon.”
“This blond cruiser may have a copy of it,” suggested Carl.
“Of course, he may,” returned Jimmie, “but I don’t believe it. This monkey-faced fellow seems to me to be the big squeeze in this game, and thieves don’t trust each other a little bit.”
While the boys talked, the aeroplane which had been observed in the light of the north beacon came sailing over the summit to the west and dipped down toward the surface only a short distance away from where the boys were sitting.
“There!” Ben observed, “he either saw and followed us, or he knows where Two Sisters canyon is and is heading for it.”
“As the Bureau of Forecasts would say,” chuckled Jimmie, “threatening weather may be expected about this time.”
“It looks to me like I never would get any more sleep!” wailed Kit.