“Can’t strike off any too soon to please me, Jack. I’d even go without any grub if by saving an hour we could have a better chance o’ strikin’ pay dirt an’ turnin’ him up alive.”
“No such desperate hurry as all that,” the other assured him to put a quietus on his nervous desire to be winging their way toward the scene of all the excitement and thus add one more ship to the flotilla already seeking information concerning the whereabouts of the missing mail pilot. “Also, Perk, as nobody knows when we may get another chance to eat, it would be wise for us to take advantage of the present opportunity as well as lay in a little grub for emergencies. For all any one can say to the contrary it may be our hard luck to get caught in an air pocket and take a tumble just as Buddy probably did when such things would come in mighty handy. I’m leaving that little task for you to handle, Perk, because you’re right clever when it’s grub that’s needed.”
“Yeah, I always aim to be that way an’ I take it as a compliment you’re payin’ me when you talk that way. Nobody c’n amount to thirty cents when he hasn’t stoked his engine properly with fuel.”
“I don’t know whether you’re on to it or not, brother,” pursued Jack as they began to hastily assemble their few possessions preparatory to stepping out; “but I’ve been clipping every account I could find in the papers you fetched home, covering Buddy’s dropping out of sight.”
“Huh! I sure did take notice of the fact, but never dreamin’ we’d have a peep-in at this wide search. I jest guessed you was enough int’rested to want to compare these here wise-cracks about the cause o’ his trouble with what it really must a’been, in case they found the remains o’ his crate in some canyon or gully.”
“That was one reason,” admitted Jack candidly, “but somehow, though I never let on to you, I seemed to have a sort of feeling we might be working on that mystery sooner or later—you might call it an inspiration and let it go at that.”
“Glory be Jack, an’ what have you got in that wise coco o’ yourn, if it’s all right for you to up an’ spill the game?”
“Some time while we’re on our way,” the other explained just as if he had the thing all laid out, even to the smallest particulars, “while you’re running the ship, I mean to go carefully over those newspaper reporters’ accounts and try to figure out just what could have happened to bring about Buddy’s disappearance—also, find what sort of weather he must have struck right after jumping off from his last port of call to drop mail sacks and pick up others.”
Perk thereupon wagged his head as though he began to understand what a skillful way his chum had of getting at the “meat in the cocoanut.”
“No wildcat skirmishin’, an’ heatin’ about the bush for you, eh partner?” he blurted out in sincere admiration. “An’ I’d wager all I got in my jeans you’re bound to hit on the real facts when everything’s figgered up.”