Eagles of the Sky; Or, With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes

by Ambrose Newcomb

  CHAPTER XVII

  OKEECHOBEE THE MYSTERIOUS

  "Say that again, Perk!" demanded the startled pilot, as though thatapparently innocent question had given him a severe jolt.

  "Oswald Kearns--kinder queer name, I kinder guess now, an' I'm wonderin'if I ever heard it before--that's all, Jack."

  The pilot was busy with his work in handling the ship and thereforedebarred from turning his head to look at his companion but at least hecould put the astonishment he felt into words.

  "So--you think that's a queer name, do you? Well, I'm asking you again,where did you ever run across it--who ever spoke it in your hearing,Perk?"

  "Why--er, guess it was on'y _you_, partner," came the hesitatingreply.

  "You don't say?" gasped Jack, tremendously excited, "please tell me whenthat happened because I don't remember doing such a thing, though Imeant to carry out our partnership arrangement this very night when wehad settled down and could have a nice quiet confab--go on, though, andsay when I lifted the lid, and let you into this part of our big game,Perk."

  "Huh! you talked in your sleep some, old hoss--first time ever I knewyou to do sech a thing--said that name exactly three times, like itmeant a heap in the bargain."

  "You mean _tonight_ while I was picking up a few winks of sleep--isthat a fact, Perk?"

  "Sure thing, boss--course I knew somethin' must be pesterin' you likeall get-out, so I made up my mind to ask you who that Oswald might bean' what we'd got to do with such a critter."

  Then Jack laughed as the humorous side of his recent thrill had begun togrip him.

  "Well, well, seems like I'll soon have to put a padlock on my lips afterthis when I hit the hay. It's a serious offence for a fellow in_our_ profession to give away his secrets like that! Never knewmyself to be guilty of babbling that way before. Lucky you were the onlyone to hear me give the game away so recklessly. The joke is on me,partner."

  "But say, Jack, whoever is this Kearns guy anyhow--I sure never heardhis name before tonight an' I kinder got the idee in my head he must besome big-wig you ran up against when in Washington--somebody who had theorderin' around o' poor dicks like me'nd you."

  "That's a far guess, brother," Jack told him, "for the fact of thematter is, this Oswald Kearns happens to be a certain party just nowunder suspicion as being the king-pin of these smugglers who're givingUncle Sam a run for his money down along this gulf coast!"

  Perk took it with a little break, as though the information fairlystaggered him, but he was quickly back again at his fly-casting--seekinginformation at the fount in which he had so much faith.

  "You sent me into a reg'lar tail spin that time, Jack, but after tellin'me so much, it'd be right cruel to keep me a'guessin' any longer."

  "I don't mean to keep you in the dark after this, Perk," he was told injerky, broken sentences, as though Jack found it difficult to talk andpay the proper attention to what he was doing, for the amphibian hadagain commenced a steep dive, seeking a much lower altitude. "There aretoo many things connected with the story to try and spin it now--justhold your horses till we settle down on that lake, and you'll getit--all I know, or suspect, anyhow. Just now I can only tell you thatthis Kearns is a most remarkable personage, a baffling mystery to theDepartment who's outsmarted the whole Service and played his game ofhide-and-seek before their very eyes--nobody so far has been able topick up a shred of positive evidence that would convict him.

  "Gosh, amighty, we're flyin' high, buddy!" was what Perk exclaimed andimmediately his wits went into a huddle. He must get busy and figurethings out, just as football teams do when a change in signals becomesessential.

  They had been passing over the land for some little time and still Jackkept heading almost directly into the northeast. He knew just where heexpected to make his goal, due to a close application to his charts andmaps of the Florida region.

  Debarred from fishing for information while the flight was on, Perk wasforced to seek consolation in making good use of his binoculars,sweeping the heavens for signs of other suspicious planes or endeavoringto make out the character of the terrain over which they were speeding.

  Occasionally he managed to discover some tiny light and this gave him anopportunity to speculate as to its meaning--if isolated he concluded itmust either be a campfire made by alligator hunters, or a street lightin some small hamlet, such as he imagined might be found in this almostwild section of lower Florida where the Everglades with their eternalwater kept settlers from picking out locations for starting truckpatches or citrus groves--all of which would probably be vastly changedwhen the great reclamation plans for draining had been fully carriedout.

  He often felt certain he glimpsed water below and had enough knowledgeof the country to understand what that would mean.

  "Wonder jest how long he means to keep this up," Perk was saying tohimself when the better part of an hour had passed since they left theopen gulf behind, "huh! by this time we must a'gone more'n sixty milesan' say, in places the hull State ain't more'n a hundred across from theAtlantic Ocean to the Mex. Gulf. Whoopee! could it mean he's aimin' tostrike that terrible, big lake--Okeechobee--that overflowed its banksnot long ago when they had that nasty hurricane and drowned a wheen o'poor folks around Moore Haven? Gee whiz! it's got me a'guessin' but thenJack knows what he's tryin' to do, an' I'm goin' to leave it all up tohim to settle."

  Somehow this suggestion appealed to Perk as being quite in line with themagnitude of their tremendous task--it was only appropriate to have thescene of their coming operations the biggest freshwater lake by longodds in the entire State, barring none--it would have been what Perkmight term as "small pertatoes, an' few in a hill," to have such awizard of an operator as Oswald Kearns pick out an ordinary body ofwater, say of a mile in diameter, as his secret headquarters where hecould continue to keep his whereabouts unknown to the Government revenuemen.

  Lake Okeechobee--well, that certainly offered some scope for any displayof their own cleverness in finding the proofs they so yearned to possessin rounding up the "cantankerous varmint," as Perk was already callingKearns in his Yankee vernacular.

  It could not be much longer delayed, Perk assured his eager self--lessthan another hour of this sort of work would take them entirely acrossthe peninsula, and cause the plane to fetch up somewhere along theAtlantic coast between Miami and Palm Beach. Much as Perk would like toset eyes upon those two opulent Southern winter resorts in the midst oftheir splendor, he felt that such a thing would hardly be proper underthe conditions by which their visit would have to be governed--smallchance for anything bordering on secrecy to be carried out in such aregion of sport seeking and excitement day after day.

  Ah! it must be coming closer now, he decided on noting how, far belowthe plane, he could make out what looked like a vast sea with littlewavelets glimmering in the light of the moon--assuredly that must indeedbe the lonely lake, long known as the home of mystery, Okeechobee, themightiest stretch of fresh water in the whole country of the South.

  Jack was passing up along the western shore line as though his plan ofcampaign called for a descent in some obscure quarter where they couldfind a hideout in which to park their aircraft while they pursued theirurgent call ashore.

  Not the faintest gleam of light anywhere proved that settlers wereindeed few and far between and this fact would also explain just whyOswald Kearns, wishing for secrecy and isolation, had selected thisregion as best suited to his purpose.

  Now Jack was dropping steadily, his silencer in full play--it was timefor Perk to get busy and through the use of his marine night glasseskeep his pilot posted regarding what lay below them.