their invasion of Mexico, moreover, the boys found several radio stations which were links in a chain that had been built by German spies operating in Mexico against the United States during the World War.
Frank and Bob also owned an all-metal airplane outfitted with radio, which had played a leading role in their Mexican border adventure. Frank was an orphan living with the Temples. Bob’s mother was dead. The two estates of Mr. Hampton and Mr. Temple adjoined. Jack, the oldest of the trio, was 19, while Frank and Bob were a year younger, Frank being the youngest of the three. All attended Harrington Hall Military Academy, and were on their summer vacation when the Mexican border adventures immediately preceding these about to be recorded occurred.
On their way to San Francisco the party had gone by a circuitous route through Denver in order to visit the Mile High City of the Rockies. They were now on the last day of their journey and passing through the Sierras down the famous Feather River Canyon.
Accompanied by Mr. Harlan the group made its way to the observation platform on the rear of the Flyer. Hour after hour they sat there while the scenery about them gradually changed its character with the passing of the afternoon, the mountains giving way to foothills and seeming to recede farther
and farther to the rear. In reality, of course, the train was drawing away from them and descending into the lower ranges.
Harlan was a pleasant companion, and from him the boys learned more intimate history of California than they ever had been able to obtain from textbooks. He told them of the days of ’49 and the treasure seekers; how the latter had come overland by wagon trails in some cases, fighting Indians and starvation, leaving many in nameless graves by the wayside during the long trek across the desert and through the mountains; how, in other cases, the adventurers had sailed in windjammers, or ships propelled by sails alone and without engine power, spending as much as a year in the long trip from the eastern seaboard clear around South America and Cape Horn, although the majority had sailed merely to the Isthmus of Panama and crossing by horseback or in wagons, had taken ship on the other side for San Francisco.
“Those were the days,” said Harlan. “Of course, I didn’t experience them personally, for I’m just a young man now. But my father was a forty-niner, came out from Tennessee. And the stories he used to tell of San Francisco in the early days made me mad because I hadn’t lived there then.
“She was just a crazy little town of crazy little
wooden shacks, built any whichway over the hills, but the people that built her were the hardy spirits of all the world and the breath of romance must have been in the very air.”
At a question from Frank, who, like his chums, was intensely interested in these stories of early California, Mr. Harlan launched into a description of the Spanish Dons inhabiting the land before the invasion of the gold seekers.