“Then as to that matter of Muggs Murray, I honestly think you’d stand a first-class chance of nabbing him if you came along with us. In the course of your work, aloft in the air, you’d be called on to scan practically every foot of the border in this section. Sooner or later you’d be likely to come across him and his band. And you’d have the whole troop of Rangers behind you to help you round him up.
“Now that’s the whole story. I’ll have to stop now as I have to turn in a report. Think it over carefully, old scout, and call me up tomorrow night. Regards to the rest of the boys and so long.”
The voice ceased, leaving the listeners’ minds in a tumult.
“Well,” said Phil, “we’ll put it up to the folks. I have a hunch that before many days have passed we’ll be in Texas, down by the Rio Grande.”
“If you do get there,” remarked Mr. Denby as he rose to go, “I can see that there isn’t going to be much monotony in your lives for the next few months. You boys certainly have a knack for finding adventure, and what is more important still a knack of coming through it somehow with a whole skin. Let’s hope that this won’t prove an exception to the rule. At any rate I’m glad that you are going to have a chance to ferret out and capture that rascal Murray. Now,” he added with a smile, “you see that I was right when I denied that you were relying on a forlorn hope in trusting to radio. It showed you tonight what it could do.”
“I should say it did,” agreed Phil warmly as he accompanied him to the door. “It’s the most wonderful thing in the world.”
He bade the professor good night and returned to his companions. They were all too wrought up to think of sleep, and they sat up late discussing the possibilities that had opened up so suddenly before them.
The next day was spent chiefly in argument with their respective families. As they had feared, they met at first with the stiffest sort of opposition. Their parents took a much more sober view of the enterprise than did the boys themselves and conjured up all kinds of harrowing things that might happen to them. But the boys urged their case with such fervor and persistence that Phil and Dick finally carried the day.
Tom’s task was the more difficult, as his parents lived in Chicago, and he had to communicate with them by radio. His father had a powerful set and was almost as much of a radio “fan” as his son himself, and both were kept busy the greater part of the day in transmitting and receiving messages arguing the case pro and con. But from Tom’s point of view the day was well spent, for he was able at the end of it to come to his chums with the joyous news that his father had yielded a final, albeit a reluctant consent.