“A thousand miles,” responded Roy on a guess, and with a smile.
“Yes, certainly,” added Mrs. Osborne. “I know. Just beyond the Rocky Mountains. Utah--Salt Lake City. It’s where the Mormons live.”
“Right,” exclaimed Roy, laughing. “Do you care if I go?--I want to very much.”
“That’s where my Uncle Willard Banks went.”
Roy, who had taken the basket of flowers from his mother’s arm, stopped short.
“I didn’t know that,” he began. “I didn’t know you had an uncle out there. Is he alive?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t even remember him. He was my father’s only brother, and when father came east from Illinois--before he married--my Uncle Willard went west. He was a Mormon,” Mrs. Osborne added. “Or, I think he was.”
“And he went out to Utah to live with the Mormons?” asked Roy, with increasing interest, forgetting for the moment, his real mission with his mother.
“I don’t remember just why he went,” explained his mother. “I don’t believe I’ve thought of him for years. He sent father his picture. He used to write to father, too. He must be dead now.”
“Perhaps I can find him,” suggested Roy, coming back to the subject.
Mrs. Osborne looked at him a few moments and then walked ahead to the front porch where Mr. Osborne, at ease in a large swinging seat, was apparently awaiting his wife and son. As Roy and his mother reached the porch, Mrs. Osborne exclaimed:
“He says I’ll starve to death or die of thirst or be scalped by the Indians.”
“Mercy me,” exclaimed Mrs. Osborne, sinking into a porch chair. “Are there wild Indians out there yet? I thought the last of the Indians were in the Wild West shows?”
“See?” exclaimed Mr. Osborne. “Your mother don’t want you to go either.”
“I hadn’t said so,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “I want to hear all about it, first.”
Roy told her everything. She sat and listened with all a mother’s interest. When he had finished, she turned to her husband.
“You mean the aeroplane?” interrupted Mrs. Osborne.
“No,” replied her husband slowly. “Of course, there are safer things than manipulating a flying machine, but I guess the kid could manage that.”
“What other risk do you mean?” persisted Roy’s mother.
“Do you want him to go into the wildest country in America? Why, this man Cook told Mr. Atkinson that there are canyons a mile deep, alkali deserts that’d turn water into steam, only no water ever touches ’em, and Indians that haven’t even seen a white man. Do you think that’s the place to send a child?”