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“Now drive in the best spots,” he said.
“I’ll take to the fields,” answered Mr. Pierce.
He was as good as his word, and traveling became easy for the geese, so that they made rapid progress. They kept on until nightfall, passing through Afton, where Andy bought a postal card and mailed it to Mr. Webb, stating his money had been left with Mr. Dawson. By eight o’clock the next morning they reached Wade, and there, at a place called the Collins’ farm, Andy was paid off and given the clothing and shoes promised. He changed his suit in a shed on the farm, and then the youth bid his new friends good-by and went on his way.
CHAPTER VI – THE SKY RIDER
“Hold on, there!”
“Don’t stop me – out of the way!”
“Why, whatever is the matter with you?”
“The comet has fallen – ”
“What?”
“On our barn.”
“See here – ”
“Run for your life. Let me go, let me go, let me – go!”
The speaker, giving the astonished Andy Nelson a shove, had darted past him down the hill with a wild shriek, eyes bulging and hair flying in the breeze.
It was the afternoon of the day Andy had said good-by to Mr. Pierce and his friends. He was making across country on foot to strike a little railroad town, having now money enough to afford a ride to Springfield.
Ascending a hilly rise, topped with a great grove of nut trees, Andy got a glimpse of a farmhouse. He was anticipating a fine cool draught of well water, when a terrific din sounded out beyond the grove. There were the violent snortings of cattle, the sound of smashing boards, a mixed cackle of all kinds of fowls, and thrilling human yells.
Suddenly rounding the road there dashed straight into Andy’s arms a terror-faced, tow-headed youth, the one who had now put down the hill as if horned demons were after him.
Andy divined that the center of commotion and its cause must focus at the farmhouse. He ran ahead to come in view of the structure.
“I declare!” gasped Andy.
Wherever there was a cow, a horse, or a chicken, the creature was in action. They seemed putting for shelter in a mad flight. Rushing along the path leading to the farmhouse, a gaunt, rawboned farmer was sprinting as for a prize. He cast fearsome glances over his shoulder, and bawled out something to his wife, standing spellbound in the open doorway, bounded past her, sweeping her off her feet, and slammed the door shut with a yell.
And then Andy’s wondering eyes became fixed on an object that quite awed and startled him for the moment. Resting over the roof of the great barn at the rear of the house was a fantastic creation of sea-gull aspect, flapping great wings of snowy whiteness. Spick and span, with graceful outlines, it suggested some great mechanical bird.
“Why,” breathed Andy, lost in wondering yet enchanting amazement, “it’s an airship!”
Andy had never seen a perfect aeroplane before. Small models had been exhibited at the county fair near Princeville, however, and he had studied all kinds of pictures of these remarkable sky-riders. The one on the barn fascinated him. It balanced and fluttered – a dainty creation – so frail and delicately adjusted that his mechanical admiration was aroused to a degree that was almost thrilling.
Blind to jeopardy, it seemed, a man was seated about the middle of the tilting air craft. The barn roof was about twenty-five feet high, but Andy could plainly make out the venturesome pilot, and his mechanical eye ran over the strange machine with interest and delight.
A hand lever seemed to propel the flyer, and this the man aloft grasped while his eyes roved over the scene below.
How the airship had got on the roof of the barn, Andy could only surmise. Either it had made a whimsical dive, or the motive power had failed. The trouble now was, Andy plainly saw, that one set of wings had caught across a tin ornament at the front gable of the barn. This represented a rooster, and had been bent in two by the tugging airship.
“Hey, you!” sang out the man in charge of the airship. “Can you get up here any way?”
“There’s a cleat ladder at the side.”
“All right, come up and bring a rope with you.”
Andy was only too glad to be of service in a new field that fascinated him. The doors of the barn were open. He ran in and looked about busily. At last he discovered a long rope hanging over a harness hook. He took possession of it, hurried again to the outside, and nimbly ascended the cleats.
“Look sharp, now, and follow closely,” spoke the aeronaut. “Creep along the edge, there, and loop the rope under the end of those side wings.”
“I can do that,” declared Andy. He saw what the man wanted, and it was not much of a task to balance on the spout running along the edge of the shingles and then climb to the ridge-pole. Andy looped the end of the rope over an extending bar running out from the remote end of the last paddle.
“Now, then,” called out the aeronaut in a highly-satisfied tone, “if you can get to the seat just behind me, fetching the rope with you, we’ll soon be out of this tangle.”
“All right,” said Andy.
“And I’ll give you the ride of your life.”
“Will you, mister?” cried Andy, with bated breath and sparkling eyes.
The boy began creeping along the slant of the barn roof. It was slow progress, for he saw that he must keep the rope from getting tangled. Another hindrance to rapid progress was the fact that he had to be careful not to graze or disturb the delicate wings of the machine.
About half the directed progress covered, Andy paused and looked down. The door of the farmhouse was in his range of vision, and the farmer had just opened it cautiously.
He stuck out his head, and bobbed it in again. The next minute he ventured out a little farther. Now he came out on the stoop of the house.
“Hey, you!” he yelled, waving his hands up at the aeronaut.
“Well, neighbor?” interrogated the latter.
“What kind of a new-fangled thing is that you’ve stuck on my barn?”
“It’s an airship.”
“Like we read about in the papers?”
“Yes.”
“Sho! and I thought – Who’s afraid?” and he darted back again into the house. Immediately he reappeared. He carried an old-fashioned fowling-piece, and he ran out directly in front of the barn.
Andy read his purpose. He readily guessed that the farmer was one of those miserly individuals who make the most out of a mishap – the kind who think it smart to put a dead calf in the road and make an automobilist think he had killed it. At all events, the farmer looked bold enough now, as he posed in the middle of the road, with the ominous announcement:
“I’ve got a word for you up there.”
“What is it?” inquired the aeronaut.
“Who’s going to settle for this damage?”
“What damage?”
“What damage!” howled the farmer, feigning great rage and indignation; “hosses jumped the fence and smashed down the gate; chickens so scared they won’t lay for a month; wife in a spasm, and that there ornament up there – why, I brought that clear from the city.”
“All right, neighbor; what’s your bill?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
The aeronaut laughed.
“You’re not modest or anything!” he observed. “See here; I’ll toss you a five-dollar bill, and that covers ten times the entire trouble I’ve made you.”
The farmer lifted his gun. He squinted across the long, awkward barrel, and he pointed it straight up at the sky-rider and his craft.
“Mister,” he said fiercely, “my bill is two hundred dollars, just as I said. You pay it, right here, right now, or I’ll blow that giddy-fangled contraption of yours into a thousand pieces!”
CHAPTER VII – JOHN PARKS, AIRSHIP KING
“Keep right on,” ordered the aeronaut to Andy in a low tone.
Andy squeezed under a bulge of muslin and wood and reached what looked like a low, flat-topped stool.
“Do you hear me?” yelled the farmer, brandishing his weapon and trying to look very fierce and dangerous.
The aeronaut, Andy noticed, was reaching in his pocket. He drew out two small bills and some silver. He made a wad of this. Poising it, he gave it a fling.
“There’s five dollars,” he spoke to the farmer.
The wad hit the farmer on the shoulder, opened, and the silver scattered at his feet. He hopped aside.
“I won’t take it; I’ll have my price, or I’ll have the law on you, and I’ll take the law in my own hands!” he shouted.
Snap! – the fowling-piece made a sound, and quick-witted Andy noticed that it was not a click.
“See here,” he whispered quickly to the aeronaut; “that man just snapped the trigger to scare us, and I don’t believe the old blunderbuss is loaded.”
“All ready,” spoke the aeronaut to Andy, as the latter reached the seat.
“Yes, sir,” reported Andy.
“When I back, give the rope a pull and hold taut till we clear the barn.”
“I’ll do it,” said Andy.
“Go!”
There was a whir, a delicious tremulous lifting movement that now made Andy thrill all over, and the biplane backed as the aeronaut pulled a lever.
Andy gave the rope a pull and lifted the entangled wing entirely clear of the weather-vane.
“Now, hold tight and enjoy yourself,” spoke the aeronaut, reversing the machine.
“Oh, my!” breathed Andy rapturously the next moment, and he forgot all about the farmer and nearly everything else mundane in the delight and novelty of a brand-new experience.
Andy had once shot the chutes, and had dreamed about it for a month afterwards. He recalled his first spin in an automobile with a thrill even now. That was nothing to the present sensation. He could not analyze it. He simply sat spellbound. One moment his breath seemed taken away; the next he seemed drawing in an atmosphere that set his nerves tingling and seemed to intoxicate mind and body.
The aeronaut sat grim and watchful in the pilot seat of the glider, never speaking a word. He had skimmed the landscape for quite a reach. Then, where the ground began to slant, he said quickly:
“Notice my left foot?”
“I do,” said Andy.
“Put yours on the stabilizing shaft when I take mine off.”
“Stabilizing shaft,” repeated Andy, memorizing, “and the name of the airship painted on that big paddle is the Eagle. Oh, hurrah for the Eagle!”
“When I whistle once, press down with your foot. Twice, you take your foot off. When I whistle twice, pull over the handle right at your side on the center-drop.”
“‘Center-drop’?” said Andy. “I’m getting it fast.”
Z – zip! Andy fancied that something was wrong, for the machine contorted like a horse raising on his rear feet. Toot! Andy did not lose his nerve. Toot – toot! he grasped the handle at his side and pulled it back.
“Good for you!” commended the aeronaut heartily. “Now, then, for a spin.”
Andy simply looked and felt for the next ten minutes. The pretty, dainty machine made him think of a skylark, an arrow, a rocket. He had a bouyant sensation like a person taking laughing gas.
The lifting planes moved readily under the manipulation of an expert hand. There was one level flight where the airship exceeded any railroad speed Andy had ever noted. Farms, villages, streams, hills, faded behind them in an endless panorama.
Toot! – Andy followed instructions. They slowed up over a town that seemed to be some railroad center. Beyond it the machine skimmed a broad prairie and then gracefully settled down in the center of a fenced-in space.
Its wheels struck the ground. They rolled along for about fifty yards, and halted by the side of a big tent with an open flap at one side.
“This is the stable,” said the aeronaut, showing Andy how to get from his seat on the delicate and complicated apparatus of the flyer. “Dizzy-headed?”
“Why, no,” replied Andy.
“Wasn’t frightened a bit?”
“Not with you at the helm,” declared Andy. “Mister, if I could do that, I’d live up in the air all the time.”
“You only think so,” said the aeronaut, the smile of experience upon his practical but good-humored face. “When you’ve been at it as long as I have, you’ll feel different. What’s your name?”
“Andy Nelson.”
“Out of a job?”
“Yes, sir.”
The aeronaut looked Andy over critically,
“That little frame building at the end of the tent is where we keep house,” he explained. “The big rambling barracks, once a coal-shed, is my shop. I’m John Parks. Ever hear of me?”
“No, sir,” said Andy.
“I’m known all over the country as the Airship King.”
“I can believe that,” said Andy, “but, you see, I have never traveled far.”
“I’ve made it a business giving exhibitions at fairs and aero meets with this glider and with a dirigible balloon. Just now I’m drilling for a prize race – five thousand dollars.”
“That’s some money,” observed Andy, “and I guess you’ll win it.”
“I see you like me, and I like you,” said John Parks. “Suppose you help me win that prize? I need good loyal help around me, and the way you obey orders pleases me. I’ll make you an offer – your keep and ten dollars.”
“And I’ll be near the airship?” asked Andy eagerly. “And learn to run it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my!” cried the boy, almost lifted off his feet. “Mr. Parks, I can’t realize such good luck.”
“It’s yours for the choosing,” said the aeronaut.
“Ten dollars a month and my board for helping run an airship!” said Andy breathlessly. “Oh, of course I’ll take it – gladly.”
“No,” corrected John Parks, “ten dollars a week.”
CHAPTER VIII – THE AERO FIELD
“That’s settled,” said the Airship King. “Come, Andy, and I’ll introduce you to our living quarters.”
Andy felt as if he was treading on air. He was too overcome to speak intelligently. Clear of the spiteful Talbot brood, the proud possessor of a new suit, a watch, five dollars, and the prospect of a princely salary, he felt that life had indeed begun all over for him in golden numbers. He caught at the sleeve of his generous employer.
“Mr. Parks,” he said with emotion, “it’s like a dream.”
“That’s all right, Andy,” laughed the aeronaut. “I’m pretty liberal, they say – that is, when I’ve got the money. I’ve seen my hard times, though. All I ask is to have a man stick to me through thick and thin and I’ll bring him out all right.”
“I’ll stick to you as long as you’ll let me,” declared Andy.
“Yes, you’re true blue, Andy, I honestly believe. I’ve staked a good deal on the aero meet next month. I’ve just got to get that five-thousand-dollar prize to make good, for I’ve invested a good deal here.”
“I hope I can help you do it,” said Andy fervently.
“The Eagle is only a trial craft. Over in the workshop yonder, I’ve got a genius of a fellow, named Morse, working for me, who is turning out the latest thing in airships. Here’s our living quarters.”
Mr. Parks led Andy into the shed-like structure that formed the back of the tent which sheltered the aeroplane and also a dirigible balloon. They passed through several partitioned-off spaces holding cots. Then there was a comfortable sitting room. Next to it was a kitchen.
This room was sizzling hot, for it held a big cooking-range, before which an aproned cook stood with an immense basting spoon in his hand. He was the blackest, fattest cook Andy had ever seen. His eyes were big with jolly fun, and his teeth gleamed white and full as he grinned and nodded.
“I’ve brought you a new boarder, Scipio,” said Mr. Parks. “His name is Andy Nelson. You’ll have to set another place.”
Then he stepped through a doorway outside, and Scipio took a critical look at Andy.
“’Nother plate, eh?” he chuckled. “Dat’s motion easy, but what about de contents of dat plate? Fohteen biscuit do de roun’s now. Yo’ look like a likely healthy boy. I reckon I have to double up on de rations.”
It was a royally good meal that was spread out on the table in the sitting room about four o’clock in the afternoon.
“Where’s Mr. Morse, Scipio?” inquired Mr. Parks, as the cook brought in a smoking roast.
“Mistah Morse have to be excused dis reflection, sah, I believe,” responded Scipio. “I ask him ’bout noon what he like foh dinnah. He dat sorbed in his work he muttah something bout fractions, quations and dirigible expulsions; I hab none ob dose to cook. Jus’ now I go to call him to dinnah, an’ I find him deeper than ever poring over dose wheels an’ jimdracks ob machinery, and when I say de meal was ready, he observe dat de quintessimal prefix ob de cylinder was X. O. plus de jibboom ob de hobolinks. It sounded like dat, anyhow. Berry profound man, dat, sah. I take him in his meal later, specially, sah.”
From this and other references to the man in the shop, Andy decided that Mr. Morse must be quite a proficient mechanician. He longed to get a peep into his workshop. After dinner, however, Mr. Parks said:
“Would you like to stroll over to the big aero practice field, Andy?”
“I should, indeed,” responded Andy.
He found the aviation field to be a more or less shrouded locality. It was reached only by crossing myriad railroad tracks, dodging oft-shunted freight-cars, scaling embankments and crossing ditches. The field was dotted with shelter tents for the various air machines, trial chutes and perfecting shops.
There were any number of monoplanes, biplanes and dirigible balloons. On the different tents was painted the name of the machine housed therein. There was the Montgo, Glider, the Flying Dutchman, the Lady Killer, and numerous other novelties with fanciful names.
“Every professional seems to be getting up the oddest freak he can think of,” explained Parks. “Do you see that new-fangled affair with the round discs? That is called the helicopotol. That two-winged, one-hundred-bladed freak just beyond is the gyropter. Watch that fellow just going up with the tandem rig. That’s a new thing, too. It’s of the collapsible type, made for quick transportation, but not worth a cent as a racer.”
Andy was in a realm of rare delight. He passed the happiest and most interesting hour of his life looking over and studying all these wonderful aerial marvels about him.
When they got back to camp, the aeronaut showed Andy where he would sleep, and told him something about the routine.
“I am making test runs with the Eagle,” he explained, “and will want you to sail with me for a day or two. Then you may try a grasshopper run or two yourself.”
“I shall like it immensely,” declared Andy with enthusiasm.
When Mr. Parks had left him, Andy wandered outside. The sound of a twanging banjo led him to the front of the kitchen quarters.
Seated on a box, his eyes closed, his face wearing an expression of supreme felicity, was Scipio. Strains of “My Old Kentucky Home” floated on the air. The musician, opening his eyes, happened to spy Andy.
“Tell you, chile,” declared the portly old cook, with a rare sigh of longing, “des yar Scip could play dat tune all night long.”
“Keep right at it, Scipio,” smiled Andy. “You go on enjoying your music, while I do up any little chores you have to attend to.”
“If it wouldn’t be a deposition on yo’,” remarked Scipio thoughtfully, “dar’s de suppah dishes I’d like brung back from Mistah Morse’s quarters.”
“Can I find them?” inquired Andy.
“Yo’ jess follow yo’ nose down through the big shed,” directed Scipio. “Mistah Morse nevah notice yo’. He’s dat substracted he work all night.”
Andy proceeded on his mission. Passing through one shed, he saw a light at the end of one adjoining. In the second shed he came to a halt with sparkling eyes and bated breath.
Across a light platform lay the skeleton of an airship. Its airy elegance and fine mechanism appealed to Andy intensely. He went clear around it, wishing he had the inventive faculty to construct some like masterpiece in its line.
Just beyond the machine was a small apartment where a light was burning. Near its doorway was a table upon which Andy observed a tray of dishes and the remnants of a meal.
He moved forward carefully to remove them, for seated at a work-bench and deeply engrossed in some work at a small lathe, was a man wearing great goggles on his eyes.
“It must be Mr. Morse, the airship inventor,” thought Andy.
Just then the inventor removed his goggles, rubbed his eyes and turned his face towards Andy.
With a crash the boy dropped a plate, and with a profound start he drew back, staring blankly at the man at the bench.
“Oh, my!” said Andy breathlessly.
CHAPTER IX – THE AIRSHIP INVENTOR
Morse, the inventor, made a grab for his eye-goggles. He had become a shade paler. He did not take up the goggles, however. Instead, he turned his back on Andy.
Our hero had a right to be startled. He stood staring and spellbound, for he had recognized the inventor in an instant. He was the handcuffed man he had poled down the river from Princeville the night of the flight from the Talbots, and who had given him the very watch he now carried in his pocket with such pride and satisfaction.
The man had shaved off his full beard since Andy had first met him. This made him look different. It was the large, restless eyes, however, that had betrayed his identity. Andy would know them anywhere. He at once realized that the inventor had sought to disguise himself. Probably, Andy reasoned, he had caught him off his guard with the goggles off his eyes.
“What did you say ‘oh, my!’ for?” suddenly demanded the inventor.
“I – I thought I recognized you – I thought I knew you,” said Andy.
“Do you think so now?” inquired the inventor, turning sharply face about.
“I certainly thought I knew you.”
“And suppose you was right?”
“If you were really the person I supposed,” replied Andy, “I would have done just exactly what I promised to do when I last saw that person.”
“And what was that?”
“To forget it.”
“You’d keep your word, eh?”
“I generally try to.”
The man’s eyes seemed riveted on Andy in a peculiar way that made the boy squirm. There was something uncanny about it all. Andy experienced a decidedly disagreeable creeping sensation. The inventor was silent for a moment or two. Then he asked:
“Who sent you here?”
“I wasn’t sent by any one. I just came.”
“How?”
“With Mr. Parks – in his airship.”
“Are you going to stay here?”
“He has hired me at ten dollars a week and board,” proudly announced Andy.
“He’s a good man,” said Morse. “I don’t think he’d pick you out if you were a bad boy. What time is it?”
This question was so significant that it flustered Andy. He drew out his watch in a blundering sort of a way, fancying that he detected the faint shadow of a smile on the face of his interlocutor.
“It’s half-past seven,” he reported.
“Watch keep good time?”
“Yes, sir. The man who gave it to me was the man whom I took you for.”
“Good timepiece.”
“Splendid.”
“U-m. What’s your name?”
“Andy Nelson.”
“I’m going to trust you, Andy Nelson; I don’t think I will have any reason to regret it.”
“I will try to deserve your confidence, Mr. Morse.”
“Oh, you know my name?”
“Yes, sir. I heard Mr. Parks speak of you.”
“I see – of course. I must be cautious after this, though. I had an idea that shaving off my beard would change my appearance, but as you recognized me, I must not be seen by outsiders without my goggles. Andy, I do not wish Mr. Parks to know anything about that handcuff affair of mine.”
“All right, sir.”
“I suppose it struck you suspiciously.”
“It did at first,” confessed Andy. “When I came to think it over, though, I remembered that I was in trouble and acting suspiciously myself. I knew that I was right in my motives, and I hoped you were.”
“I’ll tell you something, Andy,” said the inventor. “It won’t be much for the present, but later I may tell you a good deal more. A bad crowd have a hold on me, a certain power that has enabled them to scare me and rob me at times. I am an inventor. They knew that I was getting up a new airship. They captured me and locked me up. They demanded a price for my liberty – that I would disclose my plan to them. I consented. They even forced me to make a working model. The night before the day I intended to complete it I made my escape, but handcuffed. You came along and helped me on the way to freedom. After I left the barge on the creek I got to the home of a friend, disguised myself, and came here and hired out with Mr. Parks.”
“But your invention the rascals got away from you?”
“Let them keep it,” responded the inventor, “so long as they do not trouble me again. There was a defect in the model they stole from me. Unless they are smart enough to remedy it, they may find out they haven’t made so big a haul as they anticipate. Look here, Andy.”
Mr. Morse beckoned our hero over to the work-bench and showed him a drawing.
“The work you see in the big room,” he said, “is the skeleton of this machine. I am basing great hopes on it. I want to make a record in aviation, for I believe it will be the most promising field for inventors for many years to come. If you are going to work with us, you should know what is going on. This is my new model.”
As Mr. Morse spoke, he became intent and eloquent. He lost himself in his enthusiasm as an inventor. Andy was a ready listener, and it was delightful to him to explore this marvel of machines.
“What I hope to accomplish,” explained Mr. Morse, “is to construct a combined steerer and balancer on one lever. I aim to make this lever not only tilt the flyer to which it is attached on a transverse axis, but also on a longitudinal axis. It is called a double-action horizontal rudder, and if I succeed will give instantaneous control of a flying-machine under all conditions, be it a high wind or the failing of motive power. I combine with it a self-righting automatic balance. It is a brand-new idea. I thought those villains I have told you about had stolen my greatest idea, but this beats it two to one.”
“Will they try to use the invention they stole from you?” inquired Andy.
“Of course they will – to their cost – if they are too rash,” declared the inventor seriously. “That was a rudder idea, too.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. Morse,” pleaded Andy; “I am greatly interested in it all.”
“I am going to tell you, Andy,” responded the inventor, “because I believe the men who imprisoned me will try to enter the prize contest, and I want to keep track of them. I don’t dare venture among them myself, but I may ask you to seek them out and bring me some news.”
“Yes, sir,” said Andy.
“The head man of the crowd is an old circus man named Duske. It is a good name for him, for he is dark in looks and deed. The idea they have stolen from me is this: In place of the conventional airship rudder, I planned to equip the aeroplane with movable rear sections of pipe, the main sections of this pipe to extend the full length of the craft. Suction wheels at each end of the main tube force the air backwards through the tube, the force of this air explosion driving the nose of the craft into the air when the movable section of the tube is raised, lowering it when it is pointed downwards, and providing for its lateral progress on the same principle. Do you follow me?”
“I can almost see the machine right before my eyes, the way you tell about it!” said Andy, with breathless enthusiasm.
