Mystery of the Desert Giant

by Franklin W. Dixon

  “It’s ours!” Chet cried out.

  At that instant the craft disappeared, swallowed up by a cloud. When the plane reappeared in the distance, they could hardly see it.

  “No—it’s not ours,” Frank reassured the others at last. “I don’t like it, though. What’s he circling us for? Could be a spy!”

  He hastily pulled out a pencil and jotted down the registration number which was printed in large figures on the underside of the plane’s wing.

  “You win, Chet,” Frank conceded. “Let’s get back to our own ship—fast.”

  Less than half an hour of brisk hiking brought the boys back within sight of their plane. At the same time, they saw a weird and frightening sight. A huge spiral-shaped cone of sand-filled air was blowing across the desert at great speed. It was headed in their direction.

  “Wh-what’s that?” Chet cried out.

  “A dust devil,” Frank answered grimly. “And it’s a devil all right—more like a young tornado. It’ll turn our plane over and smash the wings! Come on! We’ve got to push the plane out of the way!”

  The boys dropped their tools and made a wild dash out into the desert. Could they reach the spot ahead of the dust devil, and if they did, would they succeed in moving the plane to safety?

  “Faster!” Joe yelled.

  When the boys reached the plane, the dust devil was still a hundred yards away, but advancing rapidly. Frank and Joe grabbed the wing struts on either side of the fuselage while Chet stationed himself at the tail.

  “Now! Push!” Frank cried out.

  They shoved with all their strength. The combined effort started the plane rolling. It gathered momentum. When the craft was fifty feet from its starting point, the dust devil whirled by, just missing the boys and the plane!

  “Whew!” Chet exclaimed, then dropped, breathless, to the ground. “What next?”

  Joe, relieved, grinned. “Don’t be so impatient, pal. You’ll have plenty of surprises.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” his chum answered.

  The boys retrieved their tools and canteens, then climbed aboard.

  “I guess we’d better not leave the plane unguarded again,” Frank declared.

  “Suppose we go back to Blythe and get ready for our expedition downriver,” Joe proposed.

  They made a quick flight back to Riverside County Airport. While Joe and Chet unloaded, Frank went over to Gene Smith’s office.

  “Can you tell me who is flying this ship?” he inquired, producing the number of the plane that had circled above them. “It was hanging around today up near the giants.”

  Gene studied the paper and checked some forms on his desk. “Let’s see.... That’s a couple of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Taking photographs of those big drawings on the desert.”

  Relieved by the information, Frank rejoined his partners. A taxi carried the boys back to the comfortable motel where they had stayed before. The surprised but happy manager greeted them.

  “Couldn’t stay away, I see, boys!” he declared triumphantly. “Nobody can resist this climate. Have you tried our fishing yet?”

  “No.” Joe laughed. “But I guess we will tomorrow.”

  That evening in their room Frank and Joe studied maps of the winding Colorado River, which flowed through the state of Sonora in Mexico.

  “How long will it take us to reach Mexico, do you think?” Joe asked his brother.

  “Hard to say,” Frank returned. “The distance is only about a hundred miles. But look at this river! Islands, sand bars, and three major dams to portage around.”

  “Imperial Dam is the first one,” Joe noted. “That’s about eighty miles from Blythe. Laguna Dam is right after that, then there’s Morelos Dam on the Mexican side of the border!”

  “The thing that worries me,” Frank said slowly, “is having all of us away from here. Dad may show up!”

  “Say,” Chet spoke up, “how about my staying here? I can look around for any clues and maybe use my camera. That boat trip sounds a little rough for a landlubber!”

  The problem was solved.

  Soon after dawn the following morning, Frank and Joe waved good-by to Chet and the taciturn old-timer from whom they had rented their boat. They also had rented fishing rods and equipment, and had laid in a supply of bait, food, and general supplies.

  Joe took the tiller first. The two powerful outboards, yoked together, were managed by a single lever. Joe headed the red-and-white craft slowly out toward the channel.

  At this hour of day the river was brown in color, its surface glassy smooth. The regular, muffled sound of their motors hardly disturbed the quiet that hung over the water. Now and then ripples shaped like round, expanding targets appeared as a fish gently broke the surface to feed.

  Frank, seated forward in the boat, rigged one of the rods with a spinner and dropped the line over the side. Joe saw the flashing lure, catching light from the sky, disappear astern as his brother let his line run out.

  Within minutes the supple rod was bending and bucking in Frank’s hands. Twenty yards astern a silvery fish leaped into the air, twitching madly, and then dropped below the surface again.

  “Bass,” commented Joe softly. “Play him easy.”

  Soon Frank brought the exhausted fish, which had broken water five more times, to the side of the boat, where Joe netted it.

  “Four pounds, anyway,” declared Joe appreciatively. “He’ll do for lunch!”

  Once out in the channel, Joe opened the throttle. The prow of the boat rose as it sped forward. The boys rounded some islands and passed under the Blythe highway bridge.

  All morning Frank and Joe scanned the shore on both sides for any possible clues to the missing men or the boys’ enemies. They noted the high bluffs across from Ripley, where they knew two of the giant effigies lay. The familiar area yielded no new lead from this fresh vantage point.

  Shortly before noon the boys put in to shore. Frank made a small, hot fire and cooked the big bass for their lunch.

  “We ought to be near Imperial Dam,” Joe remarked. “We’ve been on the water over five hours.”

  A short run after lunch brought them to the wide, calm water above Imperial Dam. They put into a dock on the California side, where they were met by a big friendly man wearing a red polo shirt and a blue baseball cap.

  “Howdy, boys. Going on down the river? I’ve got a truck waiting here. Be glad to carry you down below the dam!”

  “Swell,” Frank agreed. “But first we’d like some information. We’re looking for a number of men wanted by the police.”

  As the young sleuth had hoped, his announcement brought forward several people—fishermen, boat-dock proprietors, and truckers.

  “Wanted by the police? What did they look like?” the first trucker asked.

  One by one, Frank gave careful descriptions of Grafton, Wetherby, the man who had posed as a bellman, and the two rough-speaking, strong-arm men.

  “Waal,” drawled one old fisherman, “I been coming here every day for twelve years, and I never seen any of them.”

  “The first two would probably be together—one is very skinny.” Joe tried to prod their memories. “And the big men are called Ringer and Caesar.”

  The circle of men shook their heads.

  “Nope.”

  “ ’Fraid not.”

  “Me neither.”

  Discouraged, Frank and Joe helped the friendly trucker to load their boat and secure it onto a rack. After the craft was launched again below the dam, Frank paid the man, and the boys pushed off once more.

  This time Frank took the tiller, and Joe looked keenly about him from the front of the boat. Abruptly, as the craft headed down the middle of the river, Joe jumped to his feet and pointed excitedly to the Arizona shore.

  “Look!” he cried. “The bellman!”

  CHAPTER X

  The River Chase

  IMMEDIATELY Frank gunned his motors, and the red-and-white craft sprang forwa
rd in the water. But the sudden, powerful roar had aroused the suspect’s attention. Catching sight of the boat racing toward him, he slipped from view behind some rocks.

  By the time the young detectives reached the spot, the man had disappeared completely. All they discovered was a small green motorboat moored to a pole that had been driven into the river bottom.

  “Think it’s his?” Frank asked, perplexed. “Maybe we’d better land and go after him. He couldn’t be far away yet!”

  Tall, irregular cliffs rose within a few yards of the water’s edge in this wild spot. The shore was strewn with huge boulders that had broken away from the cliffs at some time in the past.

  Joe shook his head. “We’d never find him in this maze of rocks. He probably knows his way around, too. Let’s sit it out here. He’ll have to come for the boat sooner or later.”

  “Unless,” Frank pointed out, “he gets somebody else to come. And it could be the boat isn’t his.”

  “Let’s take the chance. I know it was the bellman. I had a good look at his face.”

  Already their boat had begun to drift. Carefully Frank maneuvered it back upstream. When they were in position just out in the river from the abandoned motorboat, Frank and Joe each slipped an anchor overboard.

  “Out here, we can keep our eyes on those cliffs,” Frank noted.

  “Good idea,” his brother approved. “Funny we haven’t seen the bellman climbing up somewhere!”

  “There’s probably a trail leading to the top that’s invisible to us from here,” Frank replied. “Watch out for anybody spying from above!”

  For about an hour the vigilant youths watched both rocks and cliffs carefully. Finally Joe Hardy decided to relax. “May as well enjoy ourselves,” he said.

  From their fishing box he took a bright-colored plug, which he attached to one of the casting rods. “Here goes for another big bass!”

  Joe flipped the plug into likely spots along the shore. No unwary fish followed the wiggling lure back to the boat.

  His brother laughed. “Too fancy. Let me show you how it’s done.” Digging into the bait pail, Frank came up with a long, lively night crawler. “Now, Joe, you use the artificial lure and I’ll try this fellow. We’ll see who gets a bass first.”

  “Okay, Isaak Walton!” Joe accepted the challenge.

  But the fish did not seem to find the night crawler any more attractive than the fancy plug. Now it was Joe’s turn to laugh.

  “Just like detective work,” he commented. “Sometimes you wait hours for a bite.”

  At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Frank caught sight of the white shirt and blue dungarees of a man stepping from behind the rocks on shore. He told his brother, adding in a low voice, “Keep right on fishing.”

  Next time Joe made a cast in the man’s direction. Though he seemed only to be watching his plug, he was really looking the newcomer over. “Not the bellman,” he said in an undertone.

  The strange man did not seem to be interested in Frank and Joe, either. He removed his shoes, waded out to the moored boat, climbed in, and untied the painter. Drifting slowly, he wound up the starting cord and gave a quick pull. Then, with his small motor put-putting, the man steered down the river.

  Meanwhile, Frank and Joe had reeled in their lines and hauled in their anchors. “He may be planning to pick up the bellman,” Joe whispered. “Let’s keep him in sight.”

  With their powerful twin outboards, there was no danger of the man’s outrunning them. Frank kept between fifty and a hundred yards behind the other boat.

  After a while the stranger, glancing behind him, slackened his speed. Frank slowed up, too. In a minute the man cut his motor altogether. Turning, he waved the boys forward with his arm.

  “No, thanks!” Instead of passing, Frank cut his motor, too.

  “Wise guys!” the man shouted angrily, menacing with his fist. “Looking for trouble, are you?”

  “We just want to talk to the passenger you’re going to pick up,” Frank replied calmly.

  “I ain’t goin’ to pick up no passenger. So get on your way!”

  “Is that so?” Frank returned. “I think we’ll hang around, anyway, and make sure.”

  Furious, the man took the starting cord and whipped his motor into life again. Calmly, Frank did the same.

  “How far will he go?” Joe wondered.

  The man chugged on steadily without taking notice of the Hardys again until both boats entered the wide expanse of water above Laguna Dam.

  In the middle of the reservoir, the surly stranger cut his motor again. When he saw that Frank did the same, he turned on the boys in a rage.

  “I’ll yell for the cops!”

  “Don’t bother,” Joe broke in. “Here comes a police launch now!”

  Frank turned and caught sight of the big police cruiser traveling swiftly across the water in their direction. As the launch bore down on them he heard the boat of the bad-tempered stranger pick up speed. Frank turned quickly. The suspicious motorboat was racing toward the Arizona shore. Even as the police came alongside, they saw the man leap from the boat, dash up the beach, and disappear.

  Then Frank and Joe noticed that one of the policemen had been watching the strange man through binoculars. “It’s that stolen motorboat, all right!” he announced to his fellow officer.

  “He beat it when he saw us coming,” the second policeman answered.

  “Did you say that boat was stolen, Officer?” Frank called out.

  “Right. We’ve been looking for it all day.”

  “We have reason to believe the thief is probably a member of a gang wanted by the police,” Frank said.

  Briefly and clearly Frank and Joe related their discoveries in the Grafton case to the two startled officers. “And we’re sure this motorboat was going to pick up the fake bellman!” Joe finished.

  The officer in charge sized up the situation quickly. “This looks like serious business. You boys had better proceed downriver according to your plan. We’ll start a search here for this boat thief and your phony bellman. They couldn’t have gone far. When you get to Yuma, check in at police headquarters for news.”

  In another moment the police launch was roaring toward the Arizona shore, while Frank and Joe steered for the boat docks on the California side.

  Again Frank questioned the group of fishermen, loungers, and truckers on shore about Grafton and Wetherby and the three known members of the gang, but without success. Then Joe added a description of the surly boat thief, but nobody recognized him, either.

  “Well, if they’ve been heic, they sure kept out of sight,” observed Joe, after the boys had launched their boat again below the dam.

  “Don’t be too sure,” his brother cautioned. “They may have been here. These people could even have seen them. The trouble is, they don’t remember. Most people don’t fully develop their powers of observation. After all, they’re not detectives!”

  “That’s true,” agreed Joe, who had taken over the tiller once more. “Say,” he added suddenly, “have you noticed how dark it’s getting? I can hardly make out the ripples that mark the snags and sand bars.”

  The blurred forms of birds dipped and swooped over the water in search of insects. Only when they were silhouetted against the pale, luminous sky could the boys see them clearly. Bats flew about, veering sharply with their awkward, fluttering wings.

  “Time to pitch camp,” said Frank. “We were up early, and we’ve had a long day sleuthing.”

  Gently, Joe ran the nose of the boat up to a sand bar that made a pleasant beach. Frank leaped out carrying an anchor, and Joe followed with the rucksack containing food and cooking utensils.

  The boys kindled a cheerful fire with bits of white, dry driftwood. Soon the pleasant sound of sizzling pork chops and their sharp, appetizing aroma filled the air. Joe, the cook, squatted on his haunches before the fire, turning the chops in the fry pan, toasting and buttering bread, and putting on water for their coffee. Meanwhil
e, Frank opened a can of applesauce and another of vegetables.

  Tired from their long day, the young detectives leaned comfortably against a driftwood log and ate their supper from tin plates. Firelight flickered on their faces and threw shadows over the surrounding rocks.

  “Now for dessert,” said Joe happily, skewering a marshmallow to toast over the dying fire.

  Later, as Frank spread out their sleeping bags, he remarked, “We’ll be glad to be inside these bags toward morning. It’ll be damp right next to the water.”

  Before turning in, Joe Hardy baited a strong line, attached it to a stout stick, and cast it into the river. “Night is a good time for catfish!” he said. “Let’s see what we have in the morning!”

  The boys crawled into their bags and slept soundly on the soft sand. Early the next morning they breakfasted upon the big catfish that Joe had hauled in on his night line.

  “Tastes pretty good, for such an ugly customer!” Frank marveled.

  Two hours later the boys docked their motorboat at Yuma, Arizona. A short walk from the river brought them to police headquarters.

  “So you’re the Hardy brothers!” the desk sergeant greeted them. “No news on your boat thief and his accomplice up at Laguna Dam, I’m sorry to say. Looks as if they’ve slipped through our fingers.”

  Disappointed, Frank and Joe returned to their boat and headed down the river once more.

  “Anyhow, we know they’ve been using the river,” Joe figured. “The only thing to do is stick to our plan. Maybe we’ll run into Grafton or Wetherby or some others involved in this mystery.”

  “I hope they let us through!” Joe said as they neared San Luis on the Mexican side.

  “Why shouldn’t they?” returned his brother. “We aren’t smugglers!”

  A uniformed customs official came to meet them. “Buenos dias,” the aduana inspector said. “You would like to visit our country? Have you some proof of identity with you? Visitors’ permits, perhaps?”

  “We sure do.” Frank and Joe handed over their permits.