The shouts behind him were not repeated. Perhaps, after all, his identity was not yet suspected and he was not pursued. Jack might be keeping all hands busy at the ranch.
In great leaps, he approached the airplane and, as he drew near, another thought obtruded itself. If he were to take flight in it, how was he to get away? Who would crank the motor by twirling the propeller?
This latter difficulty was quickly solved. Two Mexicans stood at respectful attention as he approached. Bob was dismayed for a moment, but then, seeing their awkward salute, he chuckled inwardly. They mistook him for Von Arnheim and evidently that German officer was a martinet who exacted a measure of discipline from the slovenly rebel soldiers.
Cracking an order at them in his best garbled Spanish, Bob clambered into the pilot's seat. He was understood, and better, was obeyed. One man gingerly approached the propeller and started twirling it, while the other went to the side of the plane and helped push it forward.
The propeller began to whirl furiously as Bob worked the starting mechanism. The Mexicans leaped out of the way. The plane began to bump ahead.
Shouts of anger burst forth at the same moment, there was the crack of a rifle, and a bullet sang unpleasantly close to Bob's ears. Out of the tail of his eye he could see a number of dark figures running toward him from the grove.
But Bob did not wait to be interviewed. With a swoop, the airplane left the ground and started upward. His pursuers were so close at hand they could almost grasp the wheels, as they leaped upward. Yet not quite. Bullets whistled about him, and several pinged against the body of the machine with a sharp metallic ring. Bob thanked his stars that the plane had an all-metal body. Once above pursuit, he was safe from stray rifle shots.
With a curse the baffled Muller, who had been quick to realize that if one masquerader was not Morales, then the other was not Von Arnheim, watched the airplane shoot away at dizzying speed and disappear beyond the guarding hills to the north.
Then he turned back toward the ranch house, eager to learn how the pursuit of Jack had ended.
But for young Herr Muller and the Calomares ranch in general the night alarms were not ended. In fact, they had just begun.