The flying reporter switched on the motor again and fed fuel into the white-hot cylinders. Their speed increased until they were flashing through the sky at two hundred and five miles an hour. Curly and Hank Cummins were clinging to the combing of the front cockpit, their knuckles white from the desperation of their grip.
Tim eased up on the throttle and slowed down to the sedate pace of one hundred and fifty miles an hour. Curly and Hank settled down in their seats, only to lose their hats when Tim swung the Good News into a loop. From that he dropped into a falling leaf and ended up by flying upside down.
“Can a bronco do stunts like that?” asked Tim when the Good News was again on an even line of flight.
“One or two,” Curly managed to say, “but they can’t buck upside down for that long a time. Take me home. I’ll be glad to get out of this sky horse.”
The Good News fairly snapped the miles out of its exhaust and it was only a short time after they had left the field at Atkinson when Tim brought the plane to rest in the meadow below the ranch buildings.
Boots and Jim were waiting for him with the sacks of mail they had taken from the wreckage of Lewis’ plane in the Great Smokies.
Tim checked the sacks.
“Every one of them here and nothing damaged,” he said. “By night they’ll be on their way east again by air mail.”
Hank Cummins urged him to go to the ranch house for a warm lunch, but Tim refused the invitation.
“Then pay us a visit this summer when you have your vacation,” insisted the owner of the Circle Four. “Come out here with the boys. They’ll teach you how to ride and rope and maybe do a little fancy shooting. There’s good fishing in the streams back in the hills and maybe, if the rustling that started last summer keeps on, you might run into a little excitement.”