“At the camp.”
“The others won’t dare bring it out, of course?” asked Liu.
“Doubtful,” Ned replied. “Frank has always taken a great interest in the machine, and was studying its mechanism when I left, but I don’t think he will attempt to operate it. He ought not to, anyway.”
“If the men who left here to pinch the boys,” Jimmie said, “showed up at the camp, an’ Frank got a chance to mount the aeroplane, you bet your life he’s shootin’ through the air with it this minute, or hidin’ in some valley.”
“But there were three of them,” Ned urged, “and all couldn’t ride.”
“They’d try!” gritted Jimmie, “unless Pat got cold feet an’ run away.”
Ned glanced up at the sky, now very thick with smoke, as the boy spoke. He looked with indifference at first, then with interest, then with anxiety. There was a shape moving up there, coming slowly toward the plateau.
“There they are!” shouted Jimmie, whose attention had been attracted to the sky by Ned’s fixed gaze. “Frank’s runnin’ the machine. I’ll bet dollars to apples that he’ll dump her into the cañon when he tries to land here.”
The aeroplane, indeed, looked as if there were an uncertain hand at the helm. She wavered, tipped in the air currents, dipped wickedly, circled staggeringly, but finally swooped down on the plateau and, more by good luck than good handling, settled down within a dozen feet of the lip of the cañon. Frank and Jack were aboard. Pat, they said, had taken to his heels at the first suggestion of his joining the others in the ride.
Ned examined the machine carefully and found it in excellent shape, although the gasoline was getting low.