CHAPTER XXVI

SEEN FROM ABOVE

Below the boys in their airship there unrolled the fields and plains of Square Z ranch, as on some vast map. As the craft rose higher and higher the figures of the cowboys, gazing upward in wonder, became, to the eyes of the Motor Boys, first like dwarfs, then like a child’s dolls or toy soldiers. Then the men took on the similitude of ants, and were but tiny specks on a vast field of green.

“Wonder what will happen before we get back there again,” ventured Bob.

“No telling, but plenty, I hope,” said Jerry who was steering.

The airship was somewhat differently outfitted than when they had first used it in the West. A sort of cabin had been put on, it having been shipped to them from home, and this shut out much of the noise of the engine so that it was possible for them to converse without yelling at the tops of their voices in the ears of one another.

“Yes,” put in Ned, “if we discover the cattle thieves and find the professor that will be enough to hold us for a while.”

“We may find them together,” suggested Jerry.

“Then you believe the rustlers got him?” asked Bob.

“I can’t imagine what else could have happened to him. Of course he might have fallen, and been fatally hurt that night when he went away alone, and his call that someone had him might have been a delusion.

“But I prefer to think otherwise. If the rustlers got him they’d keep him pretty close, so he wouldn’t have a chance to escape. If anyone else caught him, say a party of hunters or cattlemen who might think him an escaped lunatic, as he has been suspected of being more than once, by this time they would have let him go. But as not a word has come from him I believe he is a prisoner of the cattle thieves.”

After some talk, Ned and Bob were of the same opinion as was Jerry, and then they began to discuss ways and means of conducting the search in the airship.

“Where are you heading for, Jerry?” asked Ned, as he saw the tall lad change the course of the airship, which at the start had flown due north from the ranch buildings.

“I thought it would be a good plan to go to the site of our old camp, and make that our real starting point. There’s a good landing place there, on top of the mountain, and there is just a possibility that the professor may have gone back there. We left a notice on a tree, you know, telling him, if he did come, to proceed at once to the ranch, leaving word on the reverse of our notice that he had done so.”

“Well, it’s a pretty slim chance, but let’s take it,” conceded Ned.

That the boys had not before used their airship to make an investigation on top of the mountain was due to the fact that in making a flight one day they had broken a wheel of the engine and had had to send to Chicago to have a new part made. The craft was now, however, in good running order.

The speedy airship was not long in reaching a point above the place where the camp had been made--the camp from which Professor Snodgrass had disappeared. Jerry, at the controls, sent the craft about in a spiral, bringing it lower and lower, for they had risen to quite a height.

“Nothing down there, I’m afraid,” said Bob, peering down through the celluloid window set in the floor of the cabin. “There’s not a sign of life.”

“We’re too high to see,” declared Ned. “Wait until we get a bit lower.”

“That’ll be in a few seconds,” said Jerry, and he sent the machine down at a sharper angle.

“Hand me those glasses,” said Bob to Ned, who took a pair of powerful binoculars from their case on the cabin wall and gave them to his chum.

“See anything?” Jerry inquired, after waiting a few seconds.

“Take a look, Ned,” requested Bob, and there was that in his voice to indicate that he was laboring under some excitement.

“What’s this?” cried Ned, as he fixed the focus to suit his eyes. “I--I see smoke down there in the old camp!”

“Smoke!” cried Jerry.

“Yes--in little puffs--as though someone were signaling with a damp fire and a blanket--the way the Indians used to do. Here, give me the wheel, Jerry, and take a look yourself.”

As the two changed places there was a sharp metallic sound near the engine--a clang of metal that sounded above the noise of the explosions. And, just as Ned took hold of the wheel which Jerry relinquished, the motor stopped.

“Look out!” yelled the tall lad. “We’re falling! You’ll have to volplane down!”

“I know,” replied Ned, coolly. He and his chums had done this before, both in emergencies and when they had purposely shut off the engine.

Volplaning down in an airship is like coasting down hill on a sled, only in the former case the hill is nothing more substantial than a bank of air. But by letting the airship slide down on slanted wings, and then by sending it sharply upward, by means of the vertical rudder, its speed can be nicely controlled, so that a landing can be made.

This was what the boys aimed to do. Ned was now at the wheel and controls in place of Jerry, who, seeing that his chum had matters well in hand, turned to look downward through the binoculars.

“Can you see the puffs of smoke?” asked Bob.

“No, I can’t,” murmured Jerry, not taking his eyes from the instruments.

“I wonder what made the engine stop?” asked Ned. “Did you have plenty of gas, Jerry?”

“Sure! Both tanks filled before we left. Wait, I’ll try the self starter.”

He set this in motion but it did not operate the engine. There seemed to be something broken, and as the motor was not readily accessible from the cabin the boys would have to wait until a landing was made.

This was in a fair way to be accomplished, and near the spot of their former camp. Ned was scanning the ground, which seemed coming up to meet them, for a smooth place on which to let the airship run along on its wheels.

“How about over there?” asked Jerry, indicating a spot to the left.

“All right,” assented Ned. “See any more smoke?”

Jerry resumed his observations, but shook his head to indicate that he saw nothing. They were soon near enough to see by the use of their unaided eyes, but the nearer they came the more it became plain to them that the camp was deserted.

“And now to see what it all means, and what happened to the engine!” exclaimed Ned, as he made the landing neatly and leaped out, followed by Bob and Jerry.

“Hello! Anybody here?” yelled Jerry as he looked about near the place where the shelter tent had stood. There was no reply save the echo of his own voice.

“Well, it couldn’t have been the professor, or he’d have been so glad to see us that he’d be jumping about here now,” commented Bob.

“But where is the fire that made the puffs of smoke?” asked Ned.

“I think there wasn’t any fire,” said Jerry.

“No fire? What do you mean? Didn’t I see smoke?”

“But smoke doesn’t always mean a campfire. Come on, let’s have a look at the engine.”

They went carefully over the machinery, the perfect working of which was so vital to their safety. It did not take Jerry long to discover what the trouble was.

“Look!” he cried. “One of the carburetors is smashed.”

“Smashed!” echoed Ned.

“Yes. No wonder we couldn’t get any explosions, even when the self starter spun the propellers. She wasn’t getting any gas, and the spare carburetor wasn’t in service.”

“But what would make it break?” asked Ned.

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” Jerry stated. “Did you hear a sort of click just before the machinery stopped working?”

“Yes,” assented Ned, “and I wondered what caused it.”

Jerry was looking with careful and eager eyes over different parts of the powerful motor.

“I think this caused it,” he said, and with the point of his knife blade he pried from one of the propeller blades, where it was not deeply imbedded, a bullet.

Silently he held it in his palm for the inspection of his companions.