E. J. Craine - Airplane Boys Discover the Secrets of Cuzco

Airplane Boys
Discover the Secrets
of Cuzo

BY
E. J. CRAINE

THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING CO.

CLEVELAND, O. NEW YORK, N. Y.

Copyright, 1930
by
THE WORLD SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America
by
THE COMMERCIAL BOOKBINDING CO.
CLEVELAND, O.

Humph! I wonder where in the name of pulverized pups that young Slick-and-Slippery took himself. He sure knew how to cover his trail up good and pronto. It wasnt the unseasonable weather that made Bob Caldwell shiver slightly as he glanced ahead at the deserted ranch which was rolling toward him. It was the recollection of that day, only a few months ago, when he had taken Sergeant Bradshaw and Allen Ruhel, the Canadian Royal Mounties, to identify the outlaws.

Staring at the empty ranch buildings, the boy experienced an uncanny feeling; it seemed to him that in the weeks which had elapsed since the Gordons, Senior and Junior, had been forced to vacate so hurriedly and abandon their schemes, that the huge property had become amazingly desolate. Drawing swiftly nearer he saw doors swinging disconsolately in the wind, and although he knew perfectly well that no such sound could reach his ears, he thought that even the strips of forest wailed dismally over their condition.

Anyway, he remarked with relief, the old man is safely in prison, and I reckon that Arthur had aplenty of Texas, so we dont have to worry about his turning up here again. Curiosity prompted him to take the glasses and examine the vicinity more closely. The rambly old-fashioned house in which the father and son had made their home for three years, swayed slightly. Many of its windows were broken, sections of the roof sagged, and one corner of the veranda was separated from its supporting pillar. A small shed in the back had fallen in, the bunkhouse entrance was blocked with debris, the corral fences leaned wearily, and the tall cottonwood trees that had been decorative during the summer, were stripped of their biggest branches.

Guess they didnt do any more repairing than they had to while they lived there or it wouldnt be tumbling apart now, he suggested as an explanation. His eyes rested for a moment on the twisted bole of a gnarled oak and he thought he saw something move swiftly around its base, but he decided that it was probably a wild animal that had taken shelter there because of an instinctive confidence that its haunts would not be molested.

Caldwell had witnessed the ignominious capture of the older man and the unceremonious retreat of Arthur Junior, who had fled the country without stopping to lock the place or make provisions for the hundreds of head of stock which roamed the range. Humane ranchers had driven the cattle to shelter, and Bob knew that the sheriff or some of his assistants occasionally patroled the property on watch for signs of the return of young Gordon or any of his associates, but so far the place had been shunned by members of the gang as if it were plague stricken.

At that, some of them might make it a hang-out as soon as they think people have forgotten or are too busy to keep an eye on it. He noted the rugged cliffs which rose like irregular saw-teeth and curved around sharply, like a protecting elbow. From the ground the place isnt easy to reach without being observed. Well, what a nice little scare-cat Im getting to be, he upbraided himself as he resolutely put the glasses into their case and turned his attention to the business of flying.

Bob Caldwell was the younger member of the Flying Buddies and he was returning from a hop in Her Highness to Crofton where he had done errands for his mother and picked up the mail for the three adjoining ranches above the Gordons on Cap Rock; his own, the Cross-Bar on the Pearl River; the K-A which was the Austins and his home; and Don Haureas of the Box-Z. The recollection of the stirring events and the eerie atmosphere about the lonely ranch made him turn the planes nose toward the blue dome of northwestern Texas until its magnitude and beauty enabled him to dismiss the sense of impending danger.

We are all as safe as if we were in church, he grinned cheerfully, then, as the altitude meter read twenty thousand feet, he leveled off, and shot north. At the boys right stretched the seemingly endless miles of level plain under an almost unbroken expanse of pure white, while at his left below the great ledge lay miles and miles of sharp hills, narrow valleys, and in the distance the Pearl River bottom. Presently he saw the timber line bounding the south of the K-A.

Good old ranch, he chuckled. And Jim, the blithering highbrow, is all healed up, thank goodness. He sure has deserted us for Don Haureas laboratories. The boy gave the machine an affectionate tap but he felt no resentment over the new interests of his step-brother for he too was culling valuable information from that same source, only Bob was applying everything he learned to the immediate development of the Cross-Bar ranch. Shell be some producer by the time Im twenty-one. That happy date was five years off and he whistled gaily as his mind tried to visualize the achievements possible to accomplish during those years.