“That’s something we can only make a stab at,” replied Jack. “Chances lean that, way, I must say; but just the same it might have been some mail plane that’s got blown off its regular course, and is beating it for the home port. Then again I understand the border patrol are handling a few ships in their line of intercepting flyers making a business of smuggling Chinese aliens across the line night-times.”
“I’d give a heap to know the answer to that puzzle,” continued Perk, who disliked enigmas, and all that sort of thing calculated to make a fellow lie awake nights, bothering his poor brains. He never had been fitted by Nature for the job of being a real detective.
“We’ll never know,” his pal told him, “unless it happens we run afoul of the other crate when our courses draw closer together and if it’s Slim whose fingers grip that stick we’d rather be excused for having that happen—our job is to fetch him back alive, and not make him lose his life in a crash.”
“Me, I ain’t peticular just what does happen to the slick guy,” Perk wound up the little talkfest by saying. “Only, when it comes to a real showdown either Slim or us got to go to the wall—dead or alive, the thing’s goin’ to be settled for keeps!”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE SIERRA MADRE CHAIN
Another thing Perk noticed—this was the fact that Jack seemed to have changed his mind with regard to making haste for the ship was racing along at top-notch speed, as though engaged in a race with some unseen rival.
“Hey! what’s the big idea, Jack?” he called out, when this thing had been going on for some time, and his burning curiosity could no longer be held in leash. “Why doin’ the sprintin’ act, I’m awonderin’?”
“Less chance for us to run foul of that other boat if we forge well ahead, don’t you see, partner?” exclaimed the pilot, sententiously.
“Yeah! that’s a fact,” returned the enlightened Perk. “An’ then mebbe it’d be jest as well for us to get there ahead o’ the boss in the bargain.”
“I’m aiming to do that,” he was told. “It happens that we can’t keep on in the boat till we strike close to his hideout—the racket would stir the whole bunch up like a hornet’s nest you’ve kicked when going through the brush, with the mad critters swarming out to tackle you.”