The Motor Boys on a Ranch; or, Ned, Bob and Jerry Among the Cowboys

by Clarence Young

  CHAPTER XIV

  AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

  Ned in the lead, the boys were hurrying to their ponies in order to setoff on a gallop for the railroad station, about thirty miles away, toarrange about getting the airship which had been shipped in parts. Buthalf-way to the corral Jerry called a halt.

  “Look here,” he said in that drawling tone he often used when he hadnot quite prepared his thoughts. “Have any of you fellows told thecowboys about the airship?”

  “I haven’t,” answered Bob. “I was afraid, after what had happened, andthe way they sort of looked down on us, that they’d laugh and make morefun of us than ever, if we told them we could navigate an airship.”

  “Same with me,” admitted Ned.

  “I haven’t mentioned it to a soul,” went on Jerry, “and I think theprofessor has been so busy catching bugs that he hasn’t spoken of it.”

  “Well, what’s the idea?” asked Bob.

  “Just this. What we want to do is to spring a surprise on Hinkee Deeand his friends--make them think we amount to something after all, evenif we can’t spot the cattle thieves right off the bat. Now my notionis that if we could put the airship together in some out-of-the-wayplace and then, some day, come sailing over the ranch in it, and flopdown out of the clouds, so to speak, it would make them sit up and takenotice.”

  “Say, Jerry, you’re right!” cried Ned.

  “Good idea!” exclaimed Bob. “But how are you going to do it?” he added.“The airship is at the freight station, and Ned has a card saying it’sarrived. Somebody is sure to talk about it.”

  “Not necessarily,” put in Ned. “This card I just got doesn’t sayanything about an airship. It just says some crates and boxes have beenreceived for us. And you know the way we packed up the wings and theengine in parts no one by looking at the outside of the boxes couldtell what was in them.”

  “That’s so,” admitted Bob.

  “Then we’re all right,” came from Jerry. “Instead of riding in on ourponies we’ll take our car. By leaving out some of the fittings we’llhave plenty of room to carry the airship in about two trips I think,and no one will ever know what we have. Then if we can find somesecluded place where we can put it together we’ll be all to the merryand we can spring our big surprise.”

  “That’s the idea,” Ned declared.

  So instead of galloping off post haste to the freight station, theboys proceeded to get their car in shape to bring back the parts ofthe airship. They left in the automobile only a few needful things,took along plenty of ropes and some food, for they expected to beaway all day, since it might require some little searching to find asufficiently secluded spot.

  “We want to pick out some place in the woods where the cowboys don’tcome,” suggested Jerry. “If one of them happened to spy the craftbefore we had her together it would spoil the surprise and we’d loseall the effect we want to produce.”

  His chums agreed with him, and after a little judicious inquiry made ofthe foreman they got on the track of a place that they thought wouldjust suit their purposes. It was in a clump of rather wild wood on theedge of a sandy plain. As the sand prevented the grass from growing, itwas avoided by the cattle. In consequence of this there was no need forthe presence of the cowboys in that vicinity.

  “And it will be just the place for us,” Jerry said. “The sandy plainwill be an ideal starting ground for the beginning of our flight.There’s no water near there and we’ll have to cart enough in the autofor the airship radiator, but we can easily do that. And now we’llstart.”

  “Got ’em in there?” asked Hinkee Dee in his sneering voice as he sawthe boys start for the railroad station in their big car.

  “Got who in where?” Bob questioned before he thought.

  “The cattle thieves!” chuckled the assistant foreman. “I s’pose you’vegot ’em hog-tied and all ready for the sheriff.”

  “Not yet,” admitted Jerry, trying to be good-natured about it. “Butwe’re on their trail.”

  “Oh, yes!” went on Hinkee Dee. “All you’re waiting for is a post cardfrom ’em, givin’ their address so’s you can call for ’em. I’ve heardof such detective work before!” and with a jingle of his spurs he rodeaway at a fast pace, he and his pony being soon lost to sight in acloud of dust.

  “I don’t like that man,” said Bob, who was usually the most forgivingand good-natured of the three.

  “He isn’t very pleasant,” admitted Jerry.

  Two days later, had anyone chanced to pass the vicinity of a certainclump of trees, one would have heard some such talk as this:

  “Pass that hammer this way, will you?”

  “Yes, and heave over that monkey wrench. I never can find it when Iwant it.”

  “I say, which way does the steering wheel chuck face? I’ve tried itevery way I know and it doesn’t seem right.”

  “No wonder, you’ve got it adjusted upside down. Fat chance we’d have ofsailing that way--more like loop-the-loop.”

  Then would come a period of silence broken by hammering, sawing orfiling sounds and there would come another call for tools placed ormisplaced.

  The assembling of the airship was under way. The boys had successfullytransported it from the freight station in its boxes and crates, and,so far as they could learn, no one of the cowboys was aware of what wasafoot, or, it might be said, in the air.

  The airship was much simpler than the big combined dirigible in whichthe motor boys had had many adventures, and they had often beforetaken it apart and put it together. When it had been shipped West thenecessary tools had come with it, so now the boys had no difficultiesin doing the reconstruction work.

  Their workshop was under the trees, and as the weather was now settled,with little prospect of rain, they needed no shelter. Their absenceeach day from the ranch was easily enough accounted for--they gaveout that they were looking about the country for traces of the cattlethieves, and, in a way, this was true enough. They were laying plansfor the search.

  Since the cattle raid the night of their arrival no more of Bob andNed’s fathers’ stock had been run off, but there was no telling whenthe rustlers might again descend on Square Z ranch.

  “Though as for them tenderfeet stoppin’ ’em, I wouldn’t give that!”declared Hinkee Dee, snapping his fingers in scorn.

  “Well, I don’t set such a great store by the boys myself,” admitted theforeman. “But it won’t do for me to say so. Mr. Baker and Mr. Sladelikely thinks their sons is all right, and maybe can do detective workof this sort, and it isn’t for me to undeceive ’em. I’ll help ’em all Ican. But when some of the best cattlemen in the country can’t get traceof the rascals I don’t see how a crowd of college chaps is goin’ to.But, as I said, far be it from me to open their eyes. They’re havin’fun out of it, and that’s what they come out for--one of the reasons,anyhow.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll surprise us, some day,” ventured Gimp, andhis words came true sooner than he expected, though not just as heanticipated.

  “Huh!” scoffed the Parson. “Them boys’ll never catch the thieves. Thatbald-headed professor stands a better chance, for he roams all over theground and he goes slow and careful. I’ve watched him and seen him lookover a space not more than a yard square for more than an hour.”

  “That was because he wanted to find a pink grasshopper or a blue-toedsnake,” laughed the foreman.

  “Well, maybe. But he’s careful like, and that’s the way you got to bewhen you’re trailing cattle thieves.”

  “Oh, well, give the boys a chance, I say!” exclaimed Gimp.

  Meanwhile, Ned, Bob and Jerry were working on the airship. They hadspent each day for about a week in the woods now, and the craft wasnearly ready for flight. That it would sail the boys had no doubt forthey had made many a trip in it.

  “Yes, it’s beginning to look like an old friend,” commented Jerry, ashe stepped back to observe the general effect. “I think----”

  “Speaking of old friends, here c
omes one now!” interrupted Bob.

  “Where?” exclaimed Ned and Jerry in a breath, for, so far, they had notbeen molested by man or beast in their little retreat.

  “There!” said the stout lad, and he pointed to the approaching figureof Sid Munson, the bediamonded individual the boys had last seen in DesMoines.