“Well, it’s been done once!” declared Jimmie. “And it may be done again. And now, if you’ve got all the kinks out of your system, perhaps you’d better help me take Mr. Havens into one of the tents.”
“I can’t lift a pound!” declared Carl. “I thought for a second that Jimmie had been obliged to let go of the rope and drop!”
Ben and Jimmie lifted the millionaire aviator, now almost unconscious, and carried him into one of the shelter-tents. His face was very pale and his breathing was uncertain.
“I don’t see what’s the matter with him,” Jimmie exclaimed after examining the man’s head and breast. “There is no wound here that I can find!”
Then Ben pointed to the aviator’s feet.
“Strange we didn’t notice those before!” he said.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Jimmie with a shudder. “Have his feet been cut off?”
The aviator wore no shoes, and his feet were closely wrapped in bandages which had evidently been made from one of the blankets carried in the store-box of the Ann. The bandages were stiff with congealed blood.
Ben began to remove the cords which held the bandages in place, but Jimmie motioned him away.
“We’ll have to get hot water before we can get those off!” the boy said. “We’ll need plenty of hot water, anyway, so you’d better go and tell Carl to put on the big kettle.”
While Ben was gone, Mr. Havens opened his eyes. He glanced around the tent and smiled when his eyes encountered those of his companions.
“Did I fall?” he asked faintly.
“I should say not!” was the reply. “I guess if you’d had a tumble out of the air, you wouldn’t be lying here in this tent, able to talk, would you? You’d be all smashed up on the rocks!”
“I felt myself falling!” insisted the aviator.
“That was after the machine landed,” Jimmie explained.
“Did some one get into the seat with me?” the voice went on weakly.
“Why, sure!” replied Jimmie. “I dropped over into the seat and we came down together. Don’t you remember that?”
“I do not!” smiled the aviator.
“We saw something was the matter with you,” Jimmie went on, “and so Carl and I went up to see what caused the Ann to reel along like a drunken sailor. We got there just in time!”
“I was weak from loss of blood,” replied Mr. Havens. “I camped last night in a valley occupied by hosts of yellow-haired porcupines.”
“I’ve heard of ’em,” Jimmie grinned.
“In the night,” the injured man went on, “I got out of my sleeping bag to mend the fire and stepped on a whole host of the fellows, cutting my feet into ribbons, almost.”
“Wouldn’t they get out of the way?” asked the boy.
“They never get out of the way!” was the answer. “Instead, they will walk in a man’s path, like a pet kitten, and refuse to turn aside.”
“Did you get the quills all out of your feet?”
“I don’t know whether I did or not. They bled terribly, and I am now in great pain with them. You boys will have to find out about that later on! I’m too tired now to talk.”
Ben now brought a kettle of blood-warm water while Carl appeared with a cup of strong coffee. After the aviator had swallowed the coffee, the bandages were removed and his feet carefully examined. There were many quills still in the flesh, they having worked in instead of out, as is usual in such cases. These had caused the bleeding to continue, and this in a measure accounted for Mr. Havens’ weakened condition.
By midnight the aviator was able to sit up and listen to the story of the two visitors.
“I quite agree with you,” he said, after Ben had concluded the recital, “there is no doubt in my mind that the men are simply mountain bums. And I’m afraid that we’ll have trouble with them in future. These machines must be guarded night and day!”
“How long are we going to stay in this blooming old valley?” asked Jimmie. “I’d rather be sailing over the mountains!”
“You can go sailing over the mountains to-night if you want to,” Carl chuckled, pointing, “there seems to be a beacon fire waiting for you!”
CHAPTER IV.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF COLLETON
“I’m glad the fellows took the trouble of building a fire of their own instead of wanting to lounge around ours all night,” Jimmie observed, as the boys looked at the leaping flames toward the north end of the slope. “I should think they’d freeze up there!”
“I hope they do!” cried Carl.
“I wish we had some way of finding out what they are doing here,” Ben said. “They don’t look like mountain men to me.”
“There are probably a great many such characters in the mountains,” Mr. Havens explained. “Perhaps they’ll let us alone if we let them alone.”
“Is there any chance of their being here to interfere with our work?” asked Carl. “It really seems that way to me.”
“I don’t think so,” the millionaire aviator replied.
“What did you learn at Denver?” asked Ben. “Was there any indication in the messages received from Washington that the mail-order frauds were turning their attention to the west?”
“Not a word!” replied Mr. Havens. “We have a clear field here, and all we’ve got to do is to locate this Larry Colleton. I shall probably be laid up with sore feet for a number of days, but that won’t prevent you boys flying over the country in the machines looking for camps.”
“Huh!” grinned Jimmie. “They won’t keep Colleton in no camp! They’ll keep him in some damp old hole in the ground.”
“I presume that’s right, too,” Mr. Havens replied. “But you boys mustn’t look for camps entirely. Whenever you see people moving about, it’s up to you to investigate, find out who they are and where they are stopping. You’ll find that all this will keep you busy.”
“We’re likely to be kept busy if there are a lot of tramps in the hills!” Ben answered, “for the reason that it may take two or three days to chase down each party we discover.”
“I haven’t told you much about the case yet,” Mr. Havens continued, “and I may as well do so now. About six months ago, letters began coming to the post-office department at Washington complaining that a certain patent medicine concern which was advertising an alleged remedy, Kuro, was defrauding its customers by sending about one cent’s worth of quinine and water in return for two dollars in money.”
“Keen, level-headed business men!” exclaimed Jimmie.
“Larry Colleton, one of the best inspectors in the department, was given the case. For a long time, after the investigation began, this Kuro company manufactured a remedy which really worked some of the cures described in the advertising. This was expensive, however, and at times the shipments fell back to the one-cent bottle of quinine water.”
“More thrift!” laughed Ben.
“Another fraud-charge was that the Kuro company often failed to make any shipment whatever in return for money received. Colleton bought hundreds of bottles of their remedy, but the difficult point was to establish the fact that the company was not at the time of the investigation manufacturing the honest medicine. The officers of the