CHAPTER III.

DON FERDINAND DISAPPEARS.

Tom Bodine had seen them start across the field, and by the time they reached the side of the big De Haviland used by the Border Patrol flyer, the motors were gently idling. Tom, clambering out of the cockpit announced proudly that everything was ship-shape.

Captain Cornell’s face beamed as he took his place in the front cockpit. This was real service. He liked Tom, good man. He liked these Hamptons, too. His practiced eye ran over the dials in front of him, noting that air pressure, temperature, and oil pressure were correct. The big bomber breathing fire from its exhaust pipes as it strained against the wheel blocks was like a great bird eager to take the air.

A sudden thought came to Captain Cornell, and leaning out he shouted through cupped hands in order to make himself heard above the roar of the warming motor:

“I’ll look up Ramirez’s record in Laredo and give you a call on the radio if I learn anything.”

Jack shook his head. He couldn’t hear. Captain Cornell throttled down and repeated his words.

“All right,” shouted Jack. “And if I can be of any help, call on me. And, say, Captain,” he added as an afterthought, “I’ll be dropping in on you at Laredo one of these days. Dad and I want to see a bull fight. Maybe you’ll take us over into the Mexican town.”

“Surest thing you know,” the flyer called. “Come on a Sunday.”

Then with the battery charging and the motor firing sweetly, he threw off one switch of the double-ignition system in order to listen for breaks in the twelve-cylinder Liberty. The same operation on the other. Both running true. A wave of the hand, in farewell, and he eased the throttle on. Slowly the tachometer climbed up the scale, showing increasing revolutions.

The flyer nodded to Tom and Jack at the wings. They disappeared and then popped out, dragging the wheel blocks. Tom’s assistant stepped away from the tail. Then the big ship started forward easily, smoothly, and within thirty yards the tail-skid left the ground. Motor roaring without a break, the De Haviland ran a bit farther, then took the air. Driving along a little above the ground, it shot upward. Then a right bank and the flyer circled the field, making sure his great plane was running true before letting her out for Laredo. Twice around the field, and then away shot the ship.

“Some bus,” said Jack.

None of the little group had said a word up to then.

“Lot more trouble to work her than your little racer, Jack,” said Tom Bodine with the freedom born of years of friendship.

Jack nodded. “Some day I’m going to ask Captain Cornell to let me handle her. If I ever see him again,” he added, as he and Mr. Hampton returned toward the house.

But Jack was to see Captain Cornell again, and that right soon.

In the meantime, he spent the next several days engaged on his radio experimentation. Mr. Hampton saw little of him, except at meals. But the older man was himself engaged, being deep in the writing of a technical engineering paper. So the time did not hang heavy on his hands.

Jack reported one night enthusiastically that his research had definitely established that the complicated Super-Heterodyne could be simplified to the point where anybody, “even a child,” he said with such a tone of scorn as to make his father smile, could work it. Then he plunged again into his experiments.

Four or five days after the unexpected visit of the army flyer, Tom Bodine returning from a ride into Red Butte, ten miles away, brought a bundle of mail. Mail at the ranch was always an event, so Jack was summoned from his radio shack to the house, and he and his father abandoned their various pursuits for the time being.

“Oh, I say, Dad, here’s a letter from Frank,” cried Jack, pouncing on a bulky missive, and slitting it open. “Now to hear the news from home.” And with the stiff sheets crinkling, he threw himself down in a deep leather chair while his eyes started to devour the page.

The next moment he bounded to his feet with a whoop.

“Hurray, Dad,” he shouted, “Guess what! The fellows have both passed their exams. Now they have nothing to do for six weeks, when they’ll have to show up for Commencement. They’re coming out to spend the intervening time with us.” His eyes skimmed the pages. “Been planning on this for a long time but kept it a secret. Bob wasn’t sure he could pass, but he crammed. Got a creditable rating. And Mr. Temple’s coming, too. What do you know about that, Dad?”

And tossing the letter upon the table, Jack grabbed his father by the shoulders and began whirling him around the room. Not until he had kicked over several chairs and bumped into the table with a crash that brought a howl of pain did he come to a halt. Then Mr. Hampton looked at his flushed face and shining eyes and shook his head.

“Yes, Temple told me the same thing here,” he said, extending the letter he himself had been reading. He shook his head. “Poor Temple and I. We’ll have our hands full.”

“They’ll be here— Let’s see.” Jack retrieved the letter from the table, turning to the date. “Why, they’ll be at San Antone the twentieth. And this is the seventeenth, isn’t it? I lose track of time out here. Stay in San Antone a day, and then come on to Red Butte. Golly, Dad, they’ll be here in five days.”

The next day Jack announced he was going to carry the news to their friends in Mexico. They would be glad to hear it, he said, especially Don Ferdinand who had taken a great liking to big Bob Temple because of the way in which the young athlete had performed prodigies of strength in the rescue of Mr. Hampton, several years before. Don Ferdinand had been the victim, but he was a game loser. And because of the warm friendliness which had developed between the two parties since that bygone time, he could afford to smile at all that had happened now.

“Why don’t you go along with me, Dad?” Jack suddenly suggested. “Do you good to get away from your poky old writing. Come on. Blow the cobwebs out of your brain.”

“Believe I will,” said Mr. Hampton, after a moment or two of thought. “Wait till I tell Ramon we won’t be home for dinner. He’d feel hurt if we didn’t let him know. Besides, I’ll need my helmet and goggles.”

While he was absent, Jack and Tom Bodine tuned up the motor of Jack’s two-seater, of which Tom stood in considerable awe, yet which he teasingly referred to as “Jack’s air flivver.”

Mr. Hampton returned wearing a puzzled expression. He explained that he had been unable to find Ramon. This was strange, as the old fellow seldom stirred from his kitchen. He inquired of Tom whether the latter had seen him since breakfast. Tom shook his head in denial, but his tow-headed assistant, a youngster from Red Butte, who approached in time to overhear the question, spoke up.

“Yes sir, Mr. Hampton, I seen him light out toward Red Butte ’bout an hour or two ago. He come out o’ the back o’ the house soon after breakfast. I was out here where I sleep”—nodding toward the hanger. “He was hobblin’ right fast on them bad feet o’ hisn. Stops by the road an’ along comes that Mexican feller in town what runs the flivver at the station, just like he had a date t’ meet Ramon. So the old feller gets in an’ away they go toward Red Butte.”

Mr. Hampton’s face cleared.

“Oh, I suppose he wanted to go to Red Butte to order supplies,” he said. “But it’s queer he didn’t say something about it at breakfast. Well, come on, Jack. Let’s get going. You fellows will have to feed yourselves, Tom. I think there’s plenty of food in the storehouse, and I know how well you can cook flapjacks. So I guess you won’t starve before Ramon gets back. We’ll be back tomorrow. Don Ferdinand wouldn’t let us come back tonight, I know.”

Thereupon, at a nod from Jack, Tom and his assistant who was known as “Whitey,” withdrew the wheel blocks. The motor was already well tuned, everything was working satisfactorily. Jack glanced up at the wind-indicator, noting that the take-off would be south, just as he was headed. Then he advanced the throttle smoothly, being careful not to over-feed the motor, and the graceful light plane instantly started forward in response.

A quick shoot forward, then up. When his altimeter showed he was up twelve hundred feet, and with everything running smoothly, Jack dropped the flying field behind and headed away for the distant mountains within which lay Don Ferdinand’s feudal estate.

Before starting he had suggested that his father should endeavor to call Don Ferdinand on the radio from the plane. The German who once, in the don’s belligerent days, had operated the radio outfit, long since had taken his departure. But Jack had instructed Manuel Sanchez, an intelligent young fellow of Don Ferdinand’s retainers, in the operation of the radio station. He had even overhauled the two-way station himself recently. If Manuel had succeeded in restoring the outfit to working condition since Jack’s last visit, Mr. Hampton might be able to get a response.

However, no response was received. And at the end of an hour and a half of flying over bare untrodden desert country giving way to foothills, Jack finally crossed the top of a low range and their destination appeared in the valley below.

Jack swooped downward and leveled off a foot above the ground of the flying field. Nobody came running, but that was nothing unusual. Since Don Ferdinand had dispensed with his airplanes, the field was deserted. Only when Jack departed after a visit could the men whom he had trained to help in the take-off be found at hand. His hand dragged back on the stick, and he dropped to the hard-packed sand for a perfect three-point landing, wheels and tail-skid hitting together.

Shutting off the motor, Jack and Mr. Hampton climbed out and started for the house. There was no danger in leaving the plane. None of Don Ferdinand’s people would have dared approach Jack’s plane or touch it.

As they walked toward the eucalyptus grove shielding the house from the flying field, a lithe, slender figure, skirts fluttering, emerged from the trees, and began to run toward them.

“Rafaela,” cried Jack, and darting away from his father’s side he ran to meet her.

Mr. Hampton smiled and continued at his own more sober pace. He saw them meet, and saw Jack suddenly take Rafaela in his arms.

That was a surprise.

“Great guns,” he muttered. “I didn’t know affairs were that far along.”

But when he approached closer he saw that Rafaela was crying and that Jack was trying to comfort her.

Jack looked up at him, an expression of dismay on his face.

“I can’t make much out of this, Dad,” he said, “except that Don Ferdinand has disappeared, and Rafaela is dreadfully worried.”