“Came down to rest our wings,” Jimmie replied, saucily.
“Where you from?” asked the other farmer.
“New York,” answered Jimmie.
“We’re carrying government despatches to Japan,” Carl added, with a grin. “We’re in the secret service!”
Ben gave the two boys a jab in the back, warning them to be more civil, and, stepping forward, began asking questions of the farmer regarding the country to the west. The two men looked at each other suspiciously.
“Is this him?” one of them asked.
The other shook his head.
“Might be, though!” insisted the first speaker.
“No,” replied the other, “this is not the man!”
Ben looked at his chums significantly for a moment. He was thinking that the farmers might be referring to an aviator who had passed that way not long before. He was thinking, too, that that aviator might be the identical one who had started out to beat the Louise and the Bertha to the Pacific coast.
“When did you boys leave New York?” one of the men asked, in a moment.
“About midnight,” was the reply.
“And you’ve come two hundred miles in three hours?” asked the man, incredulously. “I don’t believe it!”
“Our machines,” Ben answered, very civilly indeed, “are capable of making the distance in two hours.”
“Well,” the farmer went on, “the other fellow said he left New York about dark, and he didn’t get here until something like an hour ago. He lit right about where you are now.”
“Where is he now?” asked Ben.
“Why, he went on just as soon as he tinkered up his machine.”
The boys glanced at each other significantly, and then Ben asked:
“What kind of a looking man was he?”
“He looked like a pickpocket!” burst out the farmer, “with his little black face, and big ears, and hunched up shoulders. And he was, I guess,” he continued, “for we heard him sneaking around the barn before we came out of the house.”
“What did he say for himself?” asked Ben, now satisfied that the man described was the one who had pursued the Louise on the previous afternoon.
The two farmers looked at each other a moment and broke into hearty laughter. The boys regarded them in wonder.
“He said,” one of the men explained, in a moment, “that he was a messenger of the government, taking despatches to the Pacific coast. If he didn’t say almost the same thing you said, you may have my head for a pumpkin.”
“And that,” added the other man, “is what makes us suspect that you chaps are in cahoots. Mighty funny about you fellows both landing down here by our barn, and both telling the same story! I’m a constable,” he went on, “and I’ve a good mind to arrest you all and take you before the squire as suspicious persons. I really ought to.”
“What are we doing that looks suspicious?” demanded Jimmie.
“You’re wandering about in the night time in them consarned contraptions!” declared the other. “That looks suspicious!”
Daylight was now showing in the east, and the sun would be up in a little more than an hour. The boys were positive, from information received from the farmer, that the aviator who had made his appearance on New York bay the previous afternoon was only an hour or so in advance of them. By following on at once they might be able to pass him.
It was their intention now to wheel farther to the south, and so keep out of the path taken by the other. It was their idea to reach the coast, if possible, without the man who was winging his way toward the murderers knowing anything about it.
Of course the fellow would suspect. There was no doubt that he fully understood that the Louise and the Bertha were to be used in a race to the Pacific. Had he been entirely ignorant regarding the plans of the boys, he would never have found it necessary to follow the Louise over New York bay and Manhattan island for the purpose of ascertaining her capability as a flier.
“Well,” Jimmie said, after a moment, “We may as well be on our way. We stopped here because we were afraid of butting into some wrinkle in the old earth if we proceeded in the darkness.”
“I don’t know about letting you go on!” broke in the constable.
There was greed in the man’s eyes. There was also an assumption of official severity as he glanced over the three youngsters. The machines were standing in the middle of a fairly smooth road running directly east and west.
To the right of the thoroughfare stood the shabby barns referred to before. To the left ran a ditch which had been cut through a bit of swamp lying on the other side of the road. As the farmer concluded his threatening sentence, Jimmie and Carl sprang to the Louise and pressed the button which set the motors in motion. For a moment the farmers were too dazed to do more than follow the swiftly departing machine with their eyes.
When they did recover their understanding of the situation, they both sprang at Ben in order to prevent his departure. This, doubtless, on the theory that one boy was better than none. If they couldn’t get three prisoners, they did not intend to lose the opportunity of taking one.
In carrying out this resolve, the men made a serious mistake in not seizing the machine. Had they thrown their muscular arms across the planes at one end it would have been impossible for the machine to have proceeded down the road in a straight course.
Instead of doing this, they both made an effort to seize Ben. Now Ben had been in many a rough-and-tumble skirmish on the lower East Side, and knew how to protect himself against such clumsy assaults. One of the farmers cut a circle over the shoulder of the boy as he fell from a hip-lock, and the other went down from as neat a jolt on the jaw, as was ever delivered in the prize ring.
While this remarkable contest was in progress, Jimmie was whirling the machine, he had mounted, into the air. When he saw one of the farmers land in the ditch he came swiftly about with a jeer of defiance and thrust an insulting face toward the ground.
“Say, you feller!” he shouted. “That’s Billy Burley, the Bruiser. Don’t you go to getting into a mix-up with him!”
The man who had tumbled into the soft muck of the trench clambered slowly out and shook his fist at the freckled, scornful face bent above him.
“I’ll show you!” he shouted. “I’ll show you!”
By this time Ben had taken possession of the Bertha, and the motors were clattering down the road. In a second almost the flying machine was in the air, and the boys were off on their journey, leaving the two farmers chasing down the road after them, shouting and waving pitchforks desperately in the air.
It was now almost broad daylight, and the boys sent their machines up so as to attract as little attention as possible from the country below. A few miles from the scene of their encounter they shot off straight to the south, resolved to reach the Pacific coast by way of Kansas and lower California. It seemed to them that the aviator who had preceded them had purposely lingered in order that they might come up with him. This looked like trouble.
If it meant anything at all, it meant that if possible they were to be interfered with on their way across the continent. This prospect was not at all to their liking. They wanted to the get to the Pacific coast as soon as possible and begin the quest in the mountains.
Shortly after five o’clock they saw the city of Baltimore stretched out below them. Deciding that it would be much better to land some distance from the city and prepare breakfast out in the open country than to attract universal attention by dropping down in the city, Ben volplaned down on a macadamized highway some distance out of the town. Jimmie followed his example at once, and before long a small alcohol