CHAPTER XVII.
THE WRONG MAN.
In the meantime, while the glare of the flames still shone behind them, two autos were speeding over the plains. The first, in which was seated Luther Barr, Frank Reade and Hank Higgins, had been waiting just outside the town ever since the boys had heard it chug away before the fire started.
Barr and his companions had spent the interim in ill-disguised impatience. Reade in particular seemed gloomy and apprehensive.
“This is dangerous business, Barr,” he said. “If anything falls through, we might as well make up our minds to be lynched.”
“What is the use of talking like that,” snapped the old man. “Wild Bill Jenkins is a reliable man, Hank.”
“He sure is that, Barr,” rejoined the gambler. “If he says he’ll do a thing that thing is as good as did, and you may take your gospel on that.”
“And your partner, Noggy Wilkes?”
“Why, Barr,” declared the other earnestly, “that feller would rather stick up a stage or rob a bank than sit down to a chicken dinner.”
“Hum,” said old Barr, evidently highly pleased by the very dubious recommendations, “he must be an enterprising young man.”
“I don’t know what that ther word may mean, Barr,” declared Higgins, gravely, “but if et means he’s a good man for this job you can take your Davy he is.”
“I wish they would hurry up and start in,” the old man began again, after an interval of silence; “they take a long time getting to work.”
“Well, you know this isn’t a job to be hurried,” declared Hank.
“No, indeed,” stammered Frank Reade nervously, “it’s better to do it safely and have no blunders. If it was found out that we had attempted such a thing it would be our ruin. What will we do with Witherbee when we get him?”
“Drop him down a shaft some place; we want to be sure he doesn’t follow us to the mine,” said Hank.
The occupants of the touring car were silent for a time, and then suddenly old Barr held up a finger.
“Hark!” he exclaimed.
Very faintly the uproar that accompanied the outbreak of the fire was borne to their ears.
Suddenly a brisk little puff of the night wind of the prairie blew toward them. On its wings were borne the cry for which they had been waiting:
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“They’ve done it,” grinned old Luther Barr.
“That’s what,” assented Hank Higgins, as a tongue of flame shot upward above the black huddle of shadows that marked the town.
“I only hope it destroys their aeroplane,” viciously remarked Fred Reade, “we’ve got to win this race.”
“I suppose you’ve been betting on it,” sneered old Barr.
“And if I have it’s none of your business, is it?” demanded Reade fiercely.
“Oh, no; not at all. Don’t be so savage, my dear young man, or I shall have to ask Hank here to subdue you,” smirked old Barr.
“He’d better not, or I’d soon fix him with this.”
Reade drew out a huge revolver and brandished it, at which the desperado grinned despisingly.
“Why, you’d be scared to handle it, even if you knew how. You let shooting irons alone till you git through with your nursing bottle,” he sneered.
“I’ve a good mind to show you,” shouted Reade angrily.
Old Barr quieted him with a reassuring tap on the shoulder.
“My dear young man, you are of undoubted courage. I believe you would fight a regiment if you thought it necessary.”
Like all cowards, Fred Reade was very susceptible to flattery.
“You have the right estimation of my character, Mr. Barr,” he blustered; “this wild and woolly westerner here cannot appreciate a man of grit and brawn unless he wears a pair of moustaches like a billygoat and swaggers around drinking at frontier bars.”
“Is that so, Mister Reade?” sneered Hank Higgins, despite Barr’s urging him to keep quiet. “You’re a writing gent, ain’t yer?”
“I am a journalist—yes, sir.”
“Wall, while we are waitin’ here and watching that ther pretty bonfire that Noggy Wilkes and our Wild friend have lit up, I’ll just tell you a little story of one of your trade who come out west looking for sensations.”
“All right, go ahead and amuse yourself,” said Reade sullenly.
“Don’t get mad.”
“Oh, I’m not mad. But cut out all your talk and tell your story.”
“Very well, Mr. Reade, it goes this way. One night there was seated in the bar at El Paso a young writing gent just like you are. He was a very bored young writing gent, and he says to a fren’ who was with him:
“‘I thought the west was full of sensations. It’s deadly dull as I find it. Why don’t suthen happen?’
“Wall, partner, jus’ then two gents as had bin ridin’ cattle for a considerable period, an’ hed quite a hatful of coin ter celebrate with, blew in.
“‘Ho! see that little feller!’ says one, indercating the tenderfoot writing chap. ‘I’ll bet he’s a good dancer.’
“‘I’ll bet he is, too,’ says the other. ‘Kin you dance, stranger?’
“‘No,’ says the tenderfoot, ‘I can’t.’
“‘Oh, you cawnt, cawnt you,’ says one of the range-ridin’ gents. ‘Then this is a blame good time to larn.’
“With that Mister Reade he whips out a big gun—jes like this one I’ve got here it was—and says:
“‘Dance!’
“‘I cawnt, I told yer,’ says the tenderfoot.
“Bang! goes the old shooting iron, and the bullet plows up splinters right under his left foot. Wall, sir, he lifted that foot mighty lively, I kin tell yer. Livelier than a ground-owl kin dodge inter its hole.
“‘Now, dance!’ says the cattleman.
“‘I cawnt,’ says the tenderfoot, still unconvinced of the powers that lay in him.
“Bang!
“This time it come under his right foot, and he lifts that.
“‘Now, do it quick,’ says the range rider, and they do say that the way that feller shuffled his feet while them bullets spoiled a perfectly good floor under ’em was as purty to watch as a stage show. Wall, later in the evening them two cattle rustlers gits tired of that an’ they gits in a game of poker. Now, there’s where that tenderfoot should have quit, but he didn’t. He goes and sits inter it with ’em. Wall, purty soon a dispute arises. One of them cow-punchers calls on the other to lay down his hand, and there, stranger, they each have three aces.”
“Wall, you couldn’t see the room for smoke, they shot so fast, and one of ’em died there and other on the doorsill. Wall, there had ter be an inquest, yer know, and among ther witnesses they rounded up was this yar tenderfoot.”
“‘Whar was yer when ther first shot was fired?’ the coroner asks him.”
“‘At the poker table,’ says the tenderfoot.”
“‘And when the last was fired?’ goed on the coroner.”
“‘At the Southern Pacific depot,’ says the tenderfoot, and I reckon that’s the kind of a gun fighter you are, young Mister Reade,” he concluded.
By the time Hank Higgins concluded his narrative the glare of the fire had spread over the whole sky, and the sounds of excitement in the town could be clearly heard. Perhaps this was what prevented the men in the waiting auto hearing the approach of another car till it was close upon them. At any rate, the other auto, which did not have any lights, was close up to them before Luther Barr exclaimed triumphantly:
“Good; they got it.”
“Is the aeroplane destroyed?” was the first question Reade asked.
“Did you get the man?” was Luther Barr’s eager query.
“One at a time, one at a time,” growled Wild Bill Jenkins, “we’ve had enough trouble to-night without answering a dozen questions at once, ain’t we, Noggy?”
“That’s right,” grumbled Noggy Wilkes, who was driving the auto, “and I’m none too skillful now at driving a buzz wagon, although once I owned one.”
“Well, I reckon you see that we set the fire all right,” remarked Wild Bill Jenkins, “and the joke of it was we could hear the kids warning that old fool of a mayor about the attempt we were going ter make ter attack ’em all the time we was settin’ the fire and putting kerosene on it.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Noggy Wilkes, as if an immense joke had been related.
“Now, tell us, what about the aeroplane?” demanded Reade.
Now Wild Bill Jenkins and Noggy Wilkes had agreed to make all they could out of the deal they had undertaken, so when Fred asked this in an eager voice they responded:
“Oh, she’s all burned up. Nothing left of her.”
“Good,” exclaimed Reade, passing over a fat roll of bills, “now, we can go ahead just as slowly as we like when we get to the mine at Calabazos. If we can file the claim to it it will be worth a lot more to us than winning the race.”
“Speaking of the mine,” put in Luther Barr, “where have you got Witherbee?”
“Right in the tonneau, guv’ner,” responded Wild Bill; “he made a lot of trouble and I had to give him a tap on the head to quiet him, but he’ll come to all right.”
“It’s just as well,” approved Luther Barr, “it will keep him quiet. Have you searched him yet?”
“No, not yet; we wanted to get out of town before those kids found out we’d swiped the auto. They can’t get after us in anything faster than an old buggy, and we’ll be far away by the time they pick up the trail.”
“Well, as you haven’t searched him, you might just as well leave him where he is till we get to the place. You know that we are not going to Pintoville.”
“Not going there, guv’ner!” echoed Wild Bill amazedly.
“No, I said we were at Pintoville for a blind. You never know who may be listening. Instead of going there we will make for White Willow. We’ve got the aeroplane there.”
“Say, guv’ner, you’re a smart one.”
“That’s how I made my money,” grinned old Luther Barr.
“Then, you’ve not been in Pintoville at all?”
“No, not for a minute. We had to land at White Willow; there’s something gone wrong with the engine of Slade’s ship. They are working on it now.”
“That’s why we were so anxious to have the boys’ aeroplane disabled, so that we could take our own time,” put in Reade. “You are quite sure it is burned up?”
“Sure; why, I saw it with these here eyes,” declared Noggy Wilkes. “Do you think we’d have taken your money if it hadn’t bin all destroyed, Mr. Reade?”
“What do you think we are—thieves?” demanded Wild Bill Jenkins, with what sounded like real indignation.
“Come, come, let’s be getting on,” urged old Barr. “They may pick up our trail, you know.”
As he spoke and the autos started, there was a low growl of thunder. One of the rare thunderstorms that occasionally sweep over the desert where it adjoins the mountains was coming up.
“Not after the storm they won’t,” laughed Hank Higgins confidently, “the rain that that will bring will mighty soon wash out our trail.”
As they speeded along a few minutes later the rain began to fall in torrents.
“Good-bye, boys, you’ll never catch us now,” exultingly cried Luther Barr.
A short time later they rolled into White Willow, where, on account of the size of the party, a whole house—of which there were many vacant in the half-abandoned settlement—had been engaged. As the autos drew up the downpour ceased and the growls of thunder went rolling away in the distance.
“Say, that feller’s bin mighty quiet; we’d better have a look at him,” suggested Frank Higgins; “maybe you tapped him too hard, Wild Bill.”
“Not me,” laughed the other. “I’ve stunned too many of ’em for that, but he fit so hard I had to wrap him up in a blanket.”
“He throwed it over him so sudden I didn’t even see his face,” said Noggy admiringly; “he’s a quick worker.”
“Well, that makes no difference; I knowed him the minute I seed him,” confidently declared Wild Bill; “you gave me a good description—gray whiskers, tanned skin and a gray hat. Here he is as large as life.”
He drew back the blanket that had covered a figure lying in the tonneau of the big car. As he did so, Luther Barr and the others who were crowding round with a lantern gazed on the still features with a howl of rage.
“You fool,” fairly shrieked Barr, springing at Wild Bill in his anger, “that’s the wrong man!”