The Sky Detectives; Or, How Jack Ralston Got His Man. Newcomb Ambrose

man devils as them two.”

      “No danger of my trying to make a landing where the chances are ten to one it just can’t be done,” explained Jack, seeing that his companion was almost ready to mutiny if any such mad proceeding were contemplated. “I’d just feel better if I knew they’d reached ground okay; then we could keep on our way, and it’d be up to them to get out of the scrape.”

      “Huh! I get you, partner,” grunted the relieved Perk. “Don’t think I’m bitter about the thing, ’cause they’re sure hot stuff all right; but I’m a bit slow to accept that forgive and forget stuff, specially after any guy’s tried his level best to gimme a dirty deal.”

      “We’ll try the thing out while on the job,” Jack announced. “Our own wonderful escape from meeting just that same kind of fate makes me kind of soft. Perhaps we’ll not be able to learn a single thing; you know how it often is when you’ve finally struck ground after quitting the ship by the chute route – all out of breath – sometimes knocked up a bit, if you escape broken bones – not any shape to shout, or do anything but just lie there, and suck in the air in big gasps.”

      “Yeah, that’s right for you, old hoss,” Perk readily agreed. “Me, I once got a collar bone smashed that way. No harm in our makin’ a few swings around these diggin’s ’fore we put out for Orleans. That fire keeps burnin’ like things they got sprinkled right well with the juice when the tank blew up. Go to it, Jack, just as you please, never mindin’ a few squeals from a hard-boiled guy like Perk Perkiser.”

      “I’m going to shut down on the engine, and take a little glide, so we can pick up anything like a yell,” announced the pilot a minute later.

      “Go to it – duck then, boy!” snapped Perk, as he temporarily relieved himself of his ear-phones in order to catch anything bordering on a shout from the ground below.

      The simple expedient was carried out successfully, and when once again they leveled out, to continue circling, Jack asked eagerly:

      “Get anything, Perk?”

      “Not a bleat, partner,” replied the other, who had hurriedly held his earphones in position so as to cover the emergency.

      “Sorry for that, but we’ll try a couple more times before calling it all off,” suggested Jack, who could be more or less persistent when the occasion arose for such action, though never carrying it so far as to be reckless.

      So a dozen seconds or so afterwards he again gave warning that it was time for another drop of a few hundred feet – not that they meant to take any chances by getting too close to the unknown terrain lying in the pitch blackness under the flying ship; but simply to be able to listen with the horrid clamor of the bustling engine momentarily stilled.

      No better success followed this second maneuvre – all was deathly silent around, above, below, as though never a solitary living human being existed within miles of the spot where the destruction of the Ryan monoplane had taken place.

      “We’ll give a third and last try,” was Jack’s announced decision, to which Perk added:

      “Three times, and batter’s out – by then I rather guess we’ll be down close enough to the solid ground to make another drop dangerous. Either way I’m satisfied we’ve done the right thing, old hoss. Suit yourself when you see fit to coast,” whereupon he once more denuded his ears of the exceedingly useful and really indispensable phone harness, to await the occasion of the last try in the line of an aviator’s duty.

      “How about it, Perk? – get a whisper?”

      They had completed the glide, and were once more on a level course, with Jack even turning the nose of the ship a bit heavenward; since neither of them knew what the nature of the ground below must be – whether some hill lay directly ahead, against which they might smash for a complete wipeout.

      “Huh! a heap more’n that, partner!” came the triumphant reply. “Heard a shout, an’ then another some distance off – struck me both jumpers had lit okay, and were tryin’ to communicate, so’s to get together again. Guess things ain’t so bad after all with them guys, an’ we c’n be movin’ on our way without botherin’ any more ’bout their safety. Some two-legged varmints seem to be watched over by Old Satan hisself, they bein’ that venomous, and evil-minded.”

      Jack made no rejoinder to this remark, tinged with bitterness as it was, only pointed the nose of his craft upward, and started to spiral for altitude. Undoubtedly he was feeling greatly relieved because of their having escaped so miraculously from the hovering peril; and best of all managed to turn the tables on those who would have encompassed their destruction just in order to defend the lawless game in which they were engaged in connection with Slippery Slim.

      Perk must have been doing a little hard thinking as the time passed and they raced on their way, for later on he started to speak; and as usual his line of chatter told that he was seeking information, trying to find a solution of certain exasperating puzzles that were “twisting his intellects,” as he himself described matters.

      “Things kind o’ got me goofy, partner, an’ I’d like you to raise the curtain some, if so be you feel so bent. First place I guess it goes without questionin’ that these huskies must be in cohunks with that there big gun, Slippery Slim Garrabrant?”

      “Oh! that’s a dead certainty – who else would have any reason for waylaying us in Atlanta, and setting up this trap for us to fall into?”

      “Shucks! then it stands to reason, boss, he’s got means for findin’ out what the Secret Service aims to do; an’ so has been able to play the boys for suckers every time they set out to lay him by the heels, eh, Jack, old hoss?”

      “That’s past history, Perk; even the Big Boss got wise to it, and tried everything possible to learn where the great leak happened; but our experience proves they haven’t discovered it so far. I’m making up my mind that the closer we draw to the headquarters of this rotten clique of crime, where they make the bogus long-green that’s been flooding the whole West for a year and more, why, the harder our job is bound to be.”

      “Which tickles me a heap, boy – I’m just yearnin’ for comin’ to grips with that gazaboo o’ a Slim; and now we’re on to the job I’ll never be happy ’till he’s on his way to that big Government pen we glimpsed in Atlanta, where some other lads we helped to pinch are doin’ time.”

      “Well, if you keep on as you’ve started, Perk, we’ll flatten the whole gang like pancakes – they’ve stacked up against a new sort of revenue dog when they started a shooter of your calibre on the trail. First you smashed their searchlight, and then sent a chuck of lead into the gas tank that broke up the game. That’s the kind of a pinch hitter you are, partner; and right now I want to congratulate you on such dandy marksmanship.”

      “Lay off that stuff, Jack – nothin’ but great luck fetched the bacon home for this lad. But me, I’m shakin’ hands with myself ’cause I had that hunch a bear gun mightn’t be such a bad thing to tote along on a trip that’s goin’ to carry us across the border, an’ into Old Mex, like as not; where the greasers are sometimes tough nuts an’ hard to handle they tell me. ’Spose we’ll run across them two hill billies again, partner?”

      “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if we did,” replied the pilot, leveling off at a three thousand foot ceiling, and still heading due southwest. “Like as not they’ve got plenty of ready cash along; and after having been so cleverly upset in their calculations, due to your beating them silly with a barrage of hot lead, they’ll be hot to wipe out their disgrace. Oh! yes, we’re going to run up against that foxey pair again before the book is closed for keeps.”

      CHAPTER VII

      STRIKING THE FOG BELT

      With the stars shining brightly above them, and a moon just past its full climbing the eastern heavens, having dissipated the darkness of the earlier part of the night, Jack and his fellow voyager continued plunging along in a very satisfactory fashion, having no reason for feeling further concern regarding the peril to which they had been so lately subjected.

      But