The Air Ship Boys : Or, the Quest of the Aztec Treasure

by H. L. Sayler

He put his arm under his friend's head. For a moment the unconscious form yielded and then convulsively straightened. Elmer knew that his companion and protector was dead.

With strength that he did not know he had Elmer laid Buck's dead body behind the little wall of freight boxes.

Then, as if by intuition, he sprang forward and found what he suspected—the unmoving form of an Indian. Unable to see, Elmer quickly felt over the adjacent ground with his hands and discovered the dead Ute's rifle. The revolver was gone. In the same manner he recovered both Buck's rifle and revolver, and then prepared to do his duty—to protect his employer's goods so long as he could.

He was scarcely entrenched again, with the three magazine rifles laid on the barricade before him, when his straining ears heard a new sound. Far away and faint, but meaning only one thing, the soft chugging of a motor. The Cibola! There could be no doubt of it. The instant feeling of relief was shattered even as it gave Elmer new courage; to attempt to light the signal fires would probably mean instant death. And without them how would his friends know his position or peril? But one thing he could do; and even knowing that it would mean an answering shot from the skulking horse thieves he discharged his revolver into the air.

Then the sound of the motor died away and the long minutes dragged by. When it began again, and more softly, the sound was nearer. Nearer, and nearer it came and then the circle of light fell on the wagon and was gone. "At least they know where I am," thought Elmer to himself, and settled down courageously for renewed attack, determined to hold out to the last. At this moment came the shot that put out the Cibola's light.

The nervy boy had been tempted to abandon the wagon and follow the light, but his second judgment was against this. "If they can, the boys will come back," he argued, "and I'll only get out of this when I have to."

To Elmer's surprise the attackers had been strangely silent for some time. With more experience he would have known that this meant even greater danger, but he only hoped it was due to the distracting and mysterious flying light. Then the sepulchral green light burst out in its funnel-like volume. It was coming back. It flared, went out, shot over the distant sands again like a searching' eye and then began moving straight up the river bank towards the wagon. Then came the earth rending explosion. Nor could the besieged boy know even then that Ned's well-aimed bomb had sent five Utes to their last sleep.

When the sound of the explosion had died away and Elmer had recovered himself—for the shock had thrown him forward on the barricade—the whirr of the Cibola's motor was again far away. But it was directly above him!

As if the attackers had been paralyzed by the explosion, the long interval continued without a shot. Then suddenly, from the right and left and front, the real attack began. One shot sounded as a signal, and then from a half circle before him half a dozen bullets tore their way towards the boy and his barricade. Most of them went wild. Two hit the boxes and half stunned the lone guardian behind them. The assailants did not know that one of the two white men was dead, and Elmer, in hopes temporarily to deceive them, fired two of the rifles at the same moment.

But his enemies were closing in; the half circle was growing smaller and the crash of the bullets in the wagon above him and in the barricade in front told the boy that the end could not be far away. To the right in the direction of the explosion there was a gap in the fast closing circle. It was folly to delay longer. If escape were possible, it was in that direction. He would make one desperate attempt. One shot remained in his rifles. Putting it where he thought it would do the most good, and catching up the two yet full revolvers, the colored boy crawled under the wagon and crept hastily along the river bank.