The plane cabin was soon emptied, and apparently it had held an enormous cargo. They saw the two men forming the crew head toward the dining hall, as though to await the call to supper. Perk, having begged to hold the glasses, was eagerly staring at the pair, wearing dingy flying togs.
“Hot-diggetty-dig!” he muttered, just loud enough for Jack to hear him, “so that’s what took ole Nat outen San Diego, was it? Did somethin’ to make him want to skip by the light o’ the moon, an’ then hitched up with this ere rotten bunch o’ crooks. He sure had it comin’ to him, bein’ he’d been skatin’ on the edge o’ goin’ bad some time back.”
“You seem to know some one, Perk, from what you’re saying?” ventured Jack.
“Yeah! a galoot called Nat Tucker, once a fair sorter pilot; but kinder crooked, some folks used to say behind his back. That’s him, the stouter lad with a limp—got that onct when he had to step off a mile high, an’ his chute didn’t work as nice as it orter, lettin’ him crash when he landed in a hay field—would a been killed if it’d been rocks, like these here. Found his level okay when he struck this rotten crowd. Had a sorter nice halfbreed squaw fur a wife, too, pretty as a picture; but I heard she kicked Nat aouten the house, so he’s cleared up fur keeps. Well, he’s kinder classy as a pilot, an’ said to be a reg’lar dare-devil in his way. The boys’ll sure be some s’prised to hear what’s happened to ole Nat.”
As the crowd down in the valley had thinned out by this time, most of them passing into the big log cabin, Jack concluded there was no necessity for himself and Perk to remain any longer at their lookout point.
Once back at their former campground Jack picked up his supper at the point he had quit when the sound of the oncoming airship drifted to their ears.
Perk looked expectant, as though he still remembered that his chum had promised to enlighten him concerning various discoveries made during the day just then closing.
“I’ve been figuring things out,” Jack commenced saying, as he continued his interrupted meal, “and from a number of little things I saw I’m almost certain these banded crooks must be carrying on a bogus-money plant up here—several times when the wind changed I thought I could catch a queer sort of sound that was along the line of machinery, a press perhaps working at printing the counterfeit bills.”
“Gee whiz! I wonder!” ejaculated the deeply interested Perk, his eyes aglow with half suppressed excitement.
“Stop and figure it out for yourself, buddy,” Jack went on smoothly, as though his own mind was already fully made up. “Could anybody think up a finer and safer location for such an illegal plant than up here, where they could carry on their work without molestation? And then, when they had a good grist of bogus stuff to scatter over the western country, how easy to send it out aboard that swift airship? I warrant you they’re doing a land-office business—no stagnation in this neck of the woods, even if it’s said to be the case nearly everywhere else all over the world.”