“Water,” he said huskily.
The situation was not only pitiful, but perilous in the extreme. Roy could not use more than one hand to subdue or control the delirious man—there was no possible way to give him water—and yet, should the man escape the boy’s grasp, it meant certain death by being dashed hundreds of feet to the ground below.
Like an inspiration, the knowledge came to Roy that there was but one thing to be done. Throwing his left arm about Stenhouse’s shoulders and arms, he suddenly drew the man’s body close to his own. The sick man struggled for a few moments. One of his feet came in contact with a cross bar of the section floor and, as it snapped, the engineer’s right leg shot through the hole.
His body would have followed, but Roy, with desperate exertion, drew the weakened man closer to him. Exhausted, the partly revived man sank on his preserver’s arm almost a dead weight. For over thirty minutes the gritty boy held the engineer from certain death. When the lights of Bluff came in sight at last, Roy’s arms were almost immovable. The pain had almost gone, for the circulation in the left arm had stopped and it was as rigid as if cast in metal.
He made no attempt to reach the corral. Back of the town, in some manner, with his free arm, he managed to shut off the engine and make a landing. When the aeroplane came to a pause, Roy was too stiff to move. In time, he attracted attention, and those who came to his rescue carried the engineer to Mr. Cook’s house. Later in the evening, Roy was able to make another ascent and he removed the Parowan to the Company yard.
But his hazardous flight was without avail. Young Stenhouse died two days later.
[CHAPTER XVII]
THE SECRET DECIPHERED
On the evening of the last day of August, a sort of reunion and farewell dinner took place in Mr. Cook’s bungalow. Two guests were particularly jovial. One of these, Sink Weston, had, as they say in the far north, “cast up” from Abaja with his gang the day before leaving the dry upper Montezuma choked with logs waiting for the winter rains. Another was old Dan Doolin just in with food supplies and gasoline from Dolores. The others were Roy Osborne and the host, Manager Cook.