Читать книгу The Flying Machine Boys on Secret Service - Frank Walton - Страница 2

The boys stepped back from the bear as the men came up. It was growing dusk now, and as the men drew nearer their faces were seen only by the dancing flames of the fire. They were not prepossessing faces, and the boys wondered if it was the illumination which produced the shifty and suspicious glances they caught.

The two bent over the bear for an instant, and then one aimed his rifle slowly and fired a bullet into the animal’s head. No report followed the shot, and then it was observed that the weapon carried a Maxim silencer. This doubtless accounted for the fact that the shot which had brought the bear down had not been heard at the camp.

After talking together in whispers for a moment, as the acrid smell of powder drifted out into the sweet air of the valley, the men turned questioning looks toward the boys. From the youthful faces their eyes soon roved to the two aeroplanes not far away.

There was more whispered talk, and then the two stepped over to the Louise and began a careful and rather impertinent inspection of the motors. The boys looked on angrily but said nothing.

“Rather fine machines you have there,” one of the fellows said, after the deliberate examination had been completed.

“We think so!” Ben answered shortly.

“Where are you from?” asked the other intruder.

Ben gave Jimmie and Carl a sly nudge to remain silent and answered the question in a manner which, while the exact truth, did not reveal the starting place.

“Denver,” he said.

The fellow bent down and read the names of the machines from little silver plates screwed to the frames.

“The Louise and the Bertha,” he said. “It appears to me that I have heard something of these aeroplanes before.”

“The names are common enough,” Ben answered.

“The machines I refer to,” the visitor went on, “belong in New York. Are you sure you didn’t bring these machines from a hangar on Long Island?”

Jimmie could restrain himself no longer. From the first he had felt a feeling of aversion for the men, and he had inwardly resented not only the question asked but the impudent and uncalled-for examination of the aeroplanes. In spite of a warning hand from Ben he blurted out:

“What do you care where we came from?”

The two intruders eyed the boy sharply for a moment, as if trying to look him out of countenance, and then one of them said:

“None of your lip, now, youngster!”

“Well!” exclaimed Jimmie. “You’ve got your nerve with you!”

The man who had spoken before seemed about to make an angry reply, but his companion drew him away, and again they talked together in whispers.

“What are you fellows doing here, anyhow?” Jimmie demanded. “If you think you’re going to work the third degree on us, you’ve got another think coming! You’re too fresh, anyway!”

Presently the men turned back to the boys again, and the light of the fire on their bearded faces showed that they were about to adopt a new course of conduct. The fellow who spoke smiled as he did so.

“I can’t blame you for resenting our supposedly unwarranted interference,” he said. “We should have informed you at first that we are in the employ of the Canadian government as mounted policemen.”

“Where’s your horses?” demanded Jimmie.

“At the other end of the valley.”

“Where’s your uniforms?”

“We rarely wear uniforms in rough mountain work.”

The fellow answered the two questions with apparent frankness, but there was a set expression on his face which showed that he was restraining a naturally vicious temper by great effort.

Ben now stepped forward and extended a hand in greeting.

“We’re glad to see you, I’m sure!” he said. “Still, I hardly think you will blame us for resenting apparently impertinent questions.”

“That’s all right, boy!” replied the other, trying his best to bring a conciliatory expression to his sullen face. “It’s part of our duty, you understand, to visit camps in the mountains and make inquiries as to the intentions of strangers.”

“We understand that, of course,” Ben answered. “We are willing to answer any questions you care to ask, now that we know who you are.”

“I hope you’ll answer my first question in a manner entirely satisfactory to myself!” laughed the other.

“I shall try,” answered Ben, “what is it?”

“Have you any coffee left?”

“You bet we have!” replied the boy. “And if you’ll sit down here by the fire, we’ll make you a quart inside of ten minutes.”

Jimmie turned away to the provision box of the Louise to bring out fresh coffee with apparent willingness, but both his companions saw an angry expression on his face.

Carl followed him back to the aeroplane and whispered as they bent over the coffee sack together:

“You don’t like ’em, eh?”

“They’re snakes!” was the reply.

“But they belong to the mounted police!”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Anyway,” warned Carl, “you’ve got to keep a civil tongue in your head and not let them know that you think they’re lying.”

“You don’t believe that mounted police story yourself!” declared Jimmie. “They don’t look like mounted policemen, either!”

“I hardly know what to believe,” Carl replied, “but I’ve got sense enough not to let them know that I’m still guessing.”

Jimmie returned to the fire with the coffee and sat down on the grass not far from the visitors. While Ben prepared supper one of the men walked out to the carcass of the grizzly and began removing the hide.

Carl rushed up to his side and stood looking down at the clumsy manner in which the fellow was operating.

“Say,” the boy proposed in a moment, “why can’t we all have bear steak for supper? We boys had supper not long ago, but I think I could eat a bear steak right now!”

The man looked up with a puzzled expression.

“Bear steak for supper?” he repeated. “You don’t eat bear meat, do you?”

“Would a duck take to the water?” asked Carl. “Of course we eat bear meat! Sometimes it’s a little tough, unless you know exactly how to cook it, but I can broil a bear steak so it’ll melt in your mouth!”

“Then do so by all means!” the visitor answered.

Carl removed several tender steaks, took them back to the fire and then called Jimmie to one side.

“You’re all right, kiddo,” he said, as the two seated themselves in the shadows some distance from the blaze.

“Have you just found that out?” demanded Jimmie.

“I mean about those imitation mounted policemen,” Carl went on. “They’re no more mounted policemen than I am!”

“Then they’re a long ways from it!” Jimmie laughed. “But why this sudden conversion to my view of the case?”

“They don’t know about eating bear meat!” was the scornful reply. “One of them just told me that he didn’t know that they ever ate bear steak!”

“That does settle it!” cried Jimmie.

“Of course, it settles it!” agreed Carl. “And now the question,” he continued, “is this: What are they doing here, and why are they posing as mounted policemen? You don’t suppose they’ve got word from New York, do you?”

“Word from New York about what?”

“About our being out looking for the post-office inspector the mail-order brigands abducted not long ago.”

“Of course not!” was the reply. “These fellows are just plain mountain bums! They came here principally to get supper!”

“Or to steal the machines!” suggested Carl.

“We’ll see that they don’t steal the machines!” Jimmie declared.

“Well, I wish Mr. Havens would come,” Carl put in, with rather a longing expression in his voice. “We don’t know anything about the case we’re handling, and we don’t know whether we’re going to remain in this camp an hour or a month. For all we know the men we are trying to find may be in Mexico before this!”

“If they’re in Mexico,” Jimmie suggested, “the United States government can go chase itself for all of me. If you don’t remember what a beautiful time we had in Mexico, I do, and I don’t want any more of it!”

Those who have read the previous volumes of this series will doubtless remember the adventures of the Flying Machine Boys at the burning mountain. During that trip, it will be understood, they suffered the loss of some of their machines, and Jimmie came near meeting his death in a mountain lake known as the Devil’s Pool.

“I’m going wherever Mr. Havens sends me,” Carl answered, “and I’m going to get all the fun out of it there is to get. What’s puzzling me now is to know exactly what we ought to do with these bums.”

“Aw, we can’t do anything with them,” Jimmie grunted. “We’ve just got to feed them and see them hanging around here, trying to steal our machines, and sit peaceful, like a wooden Indian in front of a Bowery cigar store. It makes me sick!”

However, the boys were not called upon to take action of any kind at that time. Ben broiled bear steak enough for the whole party, made some excellent coffee, and brought out a couple of loaves of bread. At the conclusion of this second meal, at least on the part of the boys, the two intruders arose, threw their rifles over their shoulders, and turned away. However, one of them stepped back in a moment.

“We haven’t seen you do any shooting yet,” he said with a smile on his face which Ben regarded as most insincere, “but we don’t know when you will be hunting big game, so you may as well show us your licenses.”

“There!” Jimmie whispered to Carl as Ben produced the three licenses from an inside pocket. “They’ve saved their important question for the last moment!”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Carl.

“Why, those fellows are not mounted policemen!” the boy answered.

“We had made up our minds to that before!”

“Then why should they want to see our licenses?”

“I know!” exclaimed Carl. “I know just why they want to see our licenses! They want to get our names!”

“That’s it!” Jimmie answered. “They never asked to see the licenses in order to make good their bluff about being officers!”

After examining the papers the two visitors left the camp and proceeded down the valley to the west. Upon their departure the boys gathered closer about the fire and seriously discussed the situation.

At first Ben was inclined to argue that the men were actually Canadian officials, but Jimmie and Carl soon reasoned him out of this.

“Why,” Jimmie said, “a mounted policeman would know how to skin a bear without cutting the hide full of holes, and he’d also know that bear steak is considered quite a luxury in British Columbia. They’re frauds all right,” and this view of the case was finally accepted by all.

Throughout the evening the boys kept their eyes open for the return of the unwelcome guests, but nothing was seen of them. At ten o’clock, when the lads were thinking of drawing lots to see who should remain on guard through the night, Jimmie caught sight of a strong light far up in the sky. Ben had his field-glass out in a moment.

“That’s the Ann, all right,” he decided after a long inspection. “There’s no other aeroplane in the world carries a light like that!”

“I’m glad Mr. Havens is coming,” Jimmie said with a sigh of relief.

“I said it was the Ann!” Ben returned after another long look. “I didn’t say Mr. Havens was flying her! It seems to me that the man on board doesn’t know as much about the aviation game as Mr. Havens does. She’s wobbling about something frightful!”