“How do you suppose Luther Barr ever managed to locate the mine?” asked Frank wonderingly.
“That puzzled me, too, at first,” said the sheriff, “but now, since I have found that Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes knew Wild Bill Jenkins, it is a mystery no longer. Wild Bill boasted some time ago that he knew where the mine was, but he was forced to become a fugitive from justice before he had time to file any claim to it.”
Suddenly the voice of Billy Barnes, who had wandered out onto the trail with a rifle, was borne to their ears:
“Boys! Boys! Come quick!” he cried. There was urgent entreaty in his tone.
Rushing out in the direction of the cries, the boys found Billy struggling in the grasp of Fred Reade, Luther Barr, and Slade, while the red-headed mechanic was striking at the aeroplane with a big wrench.
“There! If we can’t fly any more, no more can you,” he exclaimed viciously, making a savage smash at the engine. There was a sound of splintering metal.
“Consarn ’em, they’re trying to bust up our aeroplane,” yelled Bart Witherbee, making a dash at the group.
As they saw the boys and their companions coming the men took to their heels, Reade alone looking back to shout out:
“Now you can’t fly, either. You’re out of the race.”
This the boys construed to mean that the Slade aeroplane was too badly crippled to fly. And so they afterwards learned. The engine had developed a serious flaw, and one of the cylinders was cracked from top to bottom. In the part of the country in which they were it would, of course, have taken weeks to get a new engine.
“No, it would be useless. Hark! they’re in their auto now, and would be away ahead of us by the time we got after them,” rejoined Frank.
The sound of an auto’s exhaust rapidly growing fainter reached their ears. It was the last they saw of Luther Barr and his gang, for that night they left Calabazos and making their way to the railroad took a train east. The skeleton of Slade’s unlucky aeroplane still remains in the little settlement, and greatly puzzles visitors there, some of whom think it is the framework of some extinct animal.
Billy Barnes soon told how, while shooting in the woods, he had heard an auto coming up the trail, and suspecting some mischief had hastened to the spot where the aeroplane had been left. He found his surmise correct when Barr and his companions suddenly emerged from the woods and began their attempt to wreck the craft. Before Billy, who indignantly sprang forward, could seize the arm of the vandal with the wrench, he had been seized. Luckily he had time to cry out before they thought of stopping him, and so the aeroplane was saved from serious damage. It was found, in fact, that the blow aimed at it had done no worse harm than to splinter a spark plug, which was soon replaced.