“Huh!” ejaculated the man, as he put away his weapon. “I took you for a sheriff when you tackled me that way. It’s a good thing you aren’t, for I had the drop on you. But anyhow,” he added quickly, “I didn’t do anything. It was another fellow.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Mr. Snodgrass, as he made some notes about the blue spotted lizard. “And now can you tell me where I can find some luminous snakes?”
“Luminous snakes?” ejaculated the man. “Say, let me out of this. First it’s blue lizards, and now it’s luminous snakes! I wonder if you’re crazy, or I am,” and he made his way through the throng.
The airship was now attracting much attention, and when Bob began preparing a meal in the galley the crowd was so great that they threatened to overturn the craft in their eagerness. So Jerry and his chums stretched a rope about the Comet, and after that they had more seclusion.
They did not intend to stay in Bolton long, merely to wait for the gale to subside, and to look over the craft for possible damage. None was in evidence, and, while Jerry was ascertaining this, Jim Nestor and Harvey Brill went about the town. They saw no one they knew, for which Mr. Brill was glad, as he did not want to have to answer embarrassing questions.
“And I don’t see any of the grub-stakers, either,” he said; “though some of ’em who got on my trail did hang out here.”
It began to look as if they could start on their way to the Border, and their search for the golden valley, without being annoyed by men who would stop at nothing to accomplish their ends. As for Noddy Nixon and his cronies, nothing more had been seen of them.
“We’ll start for the Border to-morrow,” decided Jerry, after a day spent in Bolton, during which the professor got many new specimens. The boys and the two men, in order to give color to their pretended characters, assisted the scientist in getting specimens, though Mr. Snodgrass laughed at the varieties they brought in.
“I have them all—every one,” he said. “You must learn to look for new and rare kinds.”
The people of Bolton were sorry to see our friends leave, but as the weather was now good, Jerry decided that it was useless to remain longer. Accordingly the Comet was sent aloft, and steered for the Canadian Border.