CHAPTER VIII
THE SECRET FOE
The young pilot of the Ariel was sufficiently interested to follow his assistant down into the yard. The farmer followed. Three pairs of eyes scanned the sky with no result.
“I say, it’s queer,” persisted Hiram, trying to get a new focus of view by running about out of range of surrounding trees and buildings.
“Mebbe they alighted behind the barn,” suggested the farmer.
“Then they pretty nearly came straight down,” declared Hiram.
“There’s a holler over beyond the orchard,” explained the farmer.
“I’m going to find out where they landed,” persisted Hiram, running away from the others.
He rounded the barn, a corn crib and then the windmill shed. He heard: “Chug—chug!” Keen as a ferret, the guiding sound spurred him on. Suddenly Hiram halted.
“There it is,” he said to himself. “They dropped, but they could not have touched the ground. Sure, it’s the Curtiss. Why—the vandals!”
In a flash the quick senses of Dashaway’s apprentice took the alarm. The antics of the Curtiss had been curious. Now something caught the attention of Hiram and awakened positive suspicion; alarm, too, for the strange machine arose from amid the haystacks where the Ariel had anchored.
“It means something,” muttered Hiram, resuming his run. “Fire!”
For an instant he was appalled. A smell of smoke was wafted to his nostrils. Then, getting in range of the haystacks, he caught a gleam of leaping flames. Rounding the first great heap of fodder, Hiram uttered an angry cry. The Curtiss was sailing away, and it was fully evident that its occupants had descended purposely to set a match to the enormous heaps of hay within ready reach.
“They were after our machine!” shouted the lad, and he snatched up the gun the farmer had left behind him. It was double-barreled. Hiram fired twice. He fancied he could hear the shots rattle against the planes of the fast-swaying biplane aloft. Its speed was not diminished, however. He threw down the gun and made a dive through a fire-fringed space between the two nearest haystacks.
The one further along, near which the Ariel stood, was now a mass of wispy, shooting blaze. Two others beyond it had also ignited. It was now that the lad ran fastest. His face was hot and blistered as he came up against the tail rudder of the imperiled machine with a force that gave him a rebound.
The smoke and the heat choked and blinded him. He bent his head and gave the running gear a start. He could not see before him now. With desperate resolve Hiram buckled down to his task. The aeroplane, upon which his hopes and interest were fixed so intensely, was in peril. He knew it was scorched, from the faint smell of melting varnish.
All he thought of was getting the Ariel outside the spreading circle of fire. He could choose no lanes between the numerous stacks, for the smoke now obscured everything. He had to trust to luck. Now he was running the machine along.
“The mischief!” uttered Hiram abruptly, and went spinning back half a dozen feet. He had driven the biplane squarely into an unseen stack. The rebound shook him loose. He stumbled and fell. Then his head met some hard solid substance and he closed his eyes with a groan—senseless.
It was the echo of the two shots that first aroused Dave Dashaway, who had stood looking after Hiram until he disappeared, and then awaited his return. The farmer had gone back to the porch, but now he ran down into the yard again with the words:
“Hello! that was my gun—I’d know its sound anywhere, I think.”
“Then something is wrong,” instantly decided Dave, quite stirred up. “I see nothing of the airship—”
“No,” shouted the farmer, “but there’s a fire!”
The moment he got beyond the barn, Dave also saw the smoke and flames.
“My haystacks!” cried the farmer.
“The Ariel!” murmured Dave. “And there is the biplane Hiram saw. Mr. Rudd, there’s something wrong going on!” but the farmer was speeding towards the central scene of action. Dave broke into a run. He out-distanced his companion.
The stranger airship was now high up in the air, and heading due west. Dave could not make out those on board. He fancied there were two in the machine.
“Hiram! Hiram!” he shouted, and strained his gaze to try and locate the Ariel. A sudden flurry of wind lifted the smoke. Dave fancied he saw his machine. It was in the midst of the stacks and seemed doomed. Down a fire-fringed pathway he darted, however. Then, more by the sense of feeling than seeing, he came up against his sky-craft.
It was heroic work, for the heat was blistering, the smoke and cinders blinding. Dave discerned that the Ariel was wedged into the edge of a stack. He drew it back, whirled it about heading a new way, and bore it along with a strong push.
He gave a great breath of relief as it wheeled free of the last stack. He fairly reeled the last few yards of progress. Free of the fire, he held to the tail of the machine for support. Dave was exhausted, almost overcome with the ordeal he had gone through. His leather suit, however, had saved him from being badly burned. As it was, his hair was singed and his face and hands red and blistered.
“Where is Hiram?” he breathed anxiously. Then Dave called his chum’s name, steadied himself, and rubbed clear his cinder-filled eyes.
“Had a fall—stumbled right over your partner,” panted the farmer, and he emerged from the blazing space with unsteady feet.
“Why, what’s this?” cried Dave.
The farmer was half-carrying, half-dragging a human form. He flopped to the ground himself overcome, as he dropped his burden.
“Hiram!” exclaimed the young aviator, recognizing his senseless assistant.
“Lucky I found him,” panted the farmer. “He lay on the ground the way he is now. My feet hit him, and I took a header. If I hadn’t come across him, it would have been all day for him.”
Dave was now kneeling at the side of his unconscious chum. He lifted Hiram’s head. A damp spot met his hand. Then he discovered a long scalp wound, bleeding profusely. The farmer stood dumbly viewing the destruction going on. He was of a philosophical turn, it seemed, for finally shrugging his shoulders resignedly he observed:
“Lucky most of it is poor swamp hay. It’s got to go, I see that. Let it burn out, we can’t save any of it, and I reckon it won’t reach the sheds. Hurt bad?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Dave, but anxiously. “There’s a cut in the back of his head.”
“Mebbe he fell against one of the big stone weights used for holding down the hay. See here, he’s the first to think of. We must get him to the house.”
Dave was anxious to do this. They ran the Ariel safely out of range of danger. Then they lifted Hiram and carried him in the direction of the house. By this time some field workers, near by and on neighboring farms, came running to the spot. They got rakes and bags and beat out the dry stubble surrounding the stacks, which had become ignited.
They put Hiram on a bench near the well, and the farmer filled a pail, and wetting his big handkerchief applied it to the head of the insensible lad. Its effect was noticed at once.
“Hello!” cried Hiram, sitting up and opening his eyes. “Where did those rascals get to, Dave? Oh, I remember now!” Then his glance swept the blazing mass two hundred yards away. “Oh, Dave!” he exclaimed, the tears coming to his eyes. “I did what I could, but the Ariel is gone up!”
“No, ’tain’t—your partner saved it!” spoke the farmer quickly.
At that glad news Hiram struggled to his feet. He was wild-eyed and still unsteady, but his old grit was fast returning.
“Dave,” he cried, “don’t let them get away—the fellows in that big Curtiss, I mean. They set that fire!”