“We might get up in the air and drop a few sticks of dynamite down on him!” suggested Carl. “You know we always carry dynamite in small quantities. He ought to be blown off the earth, anyway!”
“There’s no doubt about that,” Ben cut in, “but we ought not to be the ones to do it.”
“Well, we ought to do something!” insisted Jimmie. “If that blond brute gets to Phillips and Mendosa, we may as well trek back to little old New York! We never can find them in all this mess of hills if they know we’re doing the detective stunt.”
The boys discussed the problem for a long time without reaching any decision. At last Ben and Carl went to the shelter-tent and fell asleep. There had been very few hours of uninterrupted rest since leaving New York, and the boys were really “about all in” as Carl expressed it.
Jimmie, thus left alone, climbed into one of the seats of the Louise and sat for a long time in deep thought, his freckled chin resting heavily in the palm of his right hand.
“I don’t know what the boys would say,” the lad finally mused, “but I’ve a great notion to try it!”
He leaped to the ground and began a careful inspection of the Louise, looking to every detail of the mechanism.
“I wish I knew whether he would or not,” the boy thought, a slight smile coming to his face. “I just wish I knew whether he’d be fool enough to do it.”
Next, Jimmie went to the convenience box under the seat and drew out two automatic revolvers and a searchlight. He saw that the light was in good working order and that the revolvers were loaded. After that he drew on a belt stuffed with cartridges and again took his place on the seat of the machine.
Looking about cautiously, almost furtively, at the shelter tent and the Bertha, he saw Kit making his way toward him.