What had happened soon transpired as the men in the auto hastily jumped out and started to rip off the shoe of a rear tire.

“I guess a cactus thorn punctured them,” commented Harry.

“That’s just about what happened,” rejoined Frank.

“I see Wild Bill Jenkins,” suddenly shouted the sheriff. He bent over and picked up one of the rifles with which the side of the chassis was furnished.

A hasty exclamation from Frank checked him.

“Don’t shoot!” cried the boy

“Wall, stranger, if you don’t beat all. The reward holds good for him alive or dead.”

“Well, we can just as easily capture him alive,” said Frank coolly, “and I don’t want to see human life taken in that wanton manner.”

The sheriff regarded him amazedly, but nevertheless put down the weapon.

“Wall, if we lose him it will be your fault,” he remarked grimly.

But they were not to lose the desperado. As the aeroplane swooped to earth the sheriff hailed the auto party which comprised Luther Barr, the red-bearded man, Wild Bill Jenkins, and Fred Reade. They looked up from their frenzied efforts at adjusting the tire and, surmising from the authoritative tones of the sheriff who he must be, old Barr hailed him in a piping voice:

“We have done nothing against the law, sheriff. What do you want?”

By this time the aeroplane had come to a standstill, and the boys and their companion were on the ground.

“I ain’t so sure about that frum what these boys told me of yer doings last night,” said the sheriff dryly; “but as they ain’t got no proof on you, I suppose we can’t arrest yer. But we want one of your party—Wild Bill Jenkins yonder.”

As he spoke there was the vicious crack of a pistol, and the sheriff’s hat flew off. The man they were in search of had hidden himself behind the tonneau of the machine, and it was he who fired the shot. There would have been further shooting but for the fact that at that moment old man Barr, much alarmed lest he should be implicated in the proceedings, called out:

“You had better give yourself up, Bill Jenkins. I won’t protect you.”

“That’s because I didn’t kidnap the right man for you, you old scalliwag, I suppose, and you got my plan of the mine, too,” angrily muttered Wild Bill. “Well, I’ll get even with you yet. All right, sheriff, I’ll go along with you.”

“Just stick up those hands of yours first, Bill, and throw that gun on the ground,” ordered the sheriff.

The bad man, realizing that there would be no use in putting up a fight, meekly surrendered, and a few seconds later he was handcuffed.

“Now, then,” demanded Frank, stepping up to Luther Barr, “where is our auto that you stole last night and where is Mr. Joyce?”

“Your auto that we stole, my dear young man?” meekly inquired Barr.

“Ha! ha! ha! that’s a good one,” laughed Reade.

“Yes, that you stole—you or the ruffians you have chosen to make your associates.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” resumed old Barr; “but I will tell you this: two bad men, named Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes, did bring an auto in White Willow this morning. I suspected they’d stolen it somewhere.”

“Ha!” cried the sheriff, “I want those fellows, too. Where are they?”

“How do I know, my good man?” asked Luther Barr.

“Well, if you won’t tell, I’ve got no means of making you,” rejoined the sheriff, “although I’m pretty sure you do know. By the way the boys told me your party had two autos. Where’s the other?”

“Why—why, it’s gone on ahead,” said old Barr, who seemed somewhat taken aback.

“Gone on ahead? Then, that’s where Hank Higgins and Noggy Wilkes are, for sure,” exclaimed the sheriff. “Well, it’s no good chasing after them now, besides, there’s no reward for them, anyhow.”

“At least, you will not be so hard-hearted as not to tell us what has become of Mr. Joyce?” said Frank, seeing that it was no use to threaten old Barr, who seemed to have the upper hand just then.

“Joyce—Joyce,” repeated Barr, professing to be very much puzzled. “Oh, yes, I do remember an old man of that name—one of your friends, wasn’t he? Why, my dear boys, if you don’t know where he is how should I?”

“Base as you have shown yourself to be, I didn’t think you would carry your wickedness to this pitch,” exclaimed Frank, his fingers itching to strike Reade, who sat by with a sneering smile on his face while his aged companion mocked the boys.

“Come, Harry, there is no good waiting here,” he went on. “We must get back to White Willow. Mr. Joyce must be there. But, mind,” he exclaimed, “if any harm has come to Mr. Joyce I shall hold you responsible before the law for it.”

Still sneering, Barr and his companions drove off.

The sheriff accepted the boys’ offer to carry them through the air back to White Willow, and in a few minutes’ time they were there, Wild Bill Jenkins, it is safe to say, being thus the first prisoner to be carried to jail in an aeroplane. The first man they sought out in the town was the old inventor to whom they had sent the wireless message. They found him a dreamy, white-haired man, more interested in his inventions and their aeroplane than in the questions with which they plied him. He insisted, in fact, on taking them up the hillside, in which scores of abandoned mine shafts still remained, to show them an invention he had for washing gold. He was in the middle of exhibiting the workings of his device when the boys were startled to hear a low groan which seemed to come from near at hand.

At first they had some difficulty in tracing it, but they finally located the sound as proceeding from the mouth of one of the empty shafts.

“Who is there?” they shouted, while the old inventor stood in amazement.

“It must be the ghost of Bud Stone who fell down that shaft and was killed,” he exclaimed and started to run away.

“Who is there?” cried Frank again, leaning over the deep pit which seemed to be of considerable depth.

“I am Eben Joyce—help me!” came a feeble cry from the regions below.

“Hold on!” shouted Frank. “Be brave, and we’ll soon have you out. Are you hurt?”

“No; but I am most dead from thirst,” came the answer.

“Have you strength enough to attach a rope beneath your shoulders if we lower one to you?”

“Yes—oh, yes. Oh, boys, please get me out of this terrible place.”

It did not take long to get a rope and followed by half the population of the little town, the boys made their way back to the mouth of the shaft. But here a fresh difficulty presented itself. It seemed that old Mr. Joyce had swooned. At all events he did not answer their shouts to him.

Frank began making a noose in the rope which he slipped under his own armpits.

“What are you going to do?” asked Harry.

“Going down there to get the old man out,” was the cool reply.

Despite Harry’s protestations Frank was finally lowered over the lip of the black pit. It had been agreed that after he reached the bottom that two tugs was to be the signal that he wished to be hauled up. Pretty soon the men lowering him felt the rope slacken and knew that he had reached the bottom of the pit. It seemed a long time before the reassuring two tugs gave them word that all was well.

But when they started to haul the boy and his unconscious burden up a fresh difficulty presented itself. The rope which was already badly chafed would certainly break under the uneven hauling of the men, and also the rough edge of the pit mouth would undoubtedly wear it through before the boy and the old man had been hauled to the surface.

“Get another rope,” cried Harry.

“There ain’t another long enough in the camp, stranger,” replied one of the army of rescuers.

“Here, I hev it,” suddenly exclaimed the sheriff, who, by this time, had placed his prisoner in the town lockup and had joined the onlookers, “let’s git a log of wood and use it as a roller.”

“That’s a good idee,” was the consensus of opinion, and soon two men were lying one at each end of a round log, over which the rope had been run. Then the crowd began to heave again, but although their intentions were good their manner of hauling was so jerky that every tug strained the rope almost to breaking point.

“Ef only we had a windlass,” groaned the sheriff, “we could git a good, even pull and soon hev ’em on terrible firma.”

“I know what we can do!” suddenly exclaimed Harry, “we can hitch the rope to the automobile and get them out.”

In his excitement he had forgotten that they had not yet located the auto.

“But where is yer buzz wagon?” objected the sheriff.

“That’s so,” said Harry in a chagrined tone. “Where can they have hidden it? It must be here somewhere.”

“What’s that, young feller?” asked a tall man in blue overalls.

“Why, our auto. Some men stole it last night and drove it here. They stole the poor old man who is down in the pit, and brought him here in it,” exclaimed the excited lad. “So far as we know, it’s here yet, but we don’t know whereabouts.”

“Maybe I kin help yer, thin. There’s a buzz wagon down back of my house behind a haystack. Looks like some one tried to hide it there.”

“That’s it,” cried Harry, racing off and in a few minutes he was back with the auto which, to his great joy, was found to be unharmed.

To attach the rope to it was the work of a second, and then as Harry started up the engine the half-suffocated man and boy were hauled out of the pit. It took quite a little time for old man Joyce to recover, but Frank was soon himself again. As soon as he could talk Mr. Joyce told the boys that in their rage and fury at finding that he was the wrong man and not Bart Witherbee whom they had intended to kidnap, Barr and his associates had lowered him into the mine shaft, and then on the threat of shooting down it and killing him, had made him undo the rope, which they then hauled up.

“I wonder what became of Barr’s other auto?” queried Frank as the boys and their friend, the sheriff, surrounded by an admiring crowd, walked back toward the town.

“Why, Barr said it had gone on ahead,” replied Frank. “Maybe he wasn’t telling the truth, though, and it’s still here.”

But the other auto had gone on ahead, as the boys found out later, and in it had also gone the Slade aeroplane, repairs on which had not been finished. But White Willow, having suddenly come to be regarded by Luther Barr, for obvious reasons, as unhealthy, it had been decided to hustle the machine out of town on the motor car.

“But,” exclaimed Harry, when the boys heard of this from some men in the town who had seen the aeroplane loaded onto the automobile, “that is an infraction of the rules of the race. The contestants must proceed under their own power.”

“Well, we’d have a hard time proving they did such a thing,” rejoined Frank, “so the best thing for us to do is to buckle down and make up for lost time. We’d better get right over to Gitalong in the auto, pick up the others, and start on our way. You can drive over with Mr. Joyce, and I’ll fly the Golden Eagle over.”

The rejoicings in Gitalong on the part of the young adventurers may be imagined when they saw the auto coming, speeding over the level rolling plain with the aeroplane flying high above it. The sheriff and his prisoner followed on horseback. With warm handshakings and amid a tornado of cheers and revolver shots, the boys started off once more on their way half an hour later, more determined than ever to win the great prize.