The lawyer looked at his watch. It was three-forty-five.
“It’s no use to hurry now,” he explained. “We’ll go on till we come to the section road and cross over to the Little Town pike. Then we’ll go to Little Town. We’ll probably meet some one who’s seen him. If we don’t we’ll get supper at that place an’ do some telephonin’. He can’t hide that thing out in the open country.”
Some minutes before Bud’s estimated return, Josh Camp, perched upon the roof of the mill, set up a shout.
“Here he comes,” was his cry to those waiting below, and almost before Josh could reach the ground, the bird-like craft was slowly drifting to rest in the mill place—the engine shut off, and the propellers at rest. Eager hands caught it and eased it to the ground, and Bud, trembling under the strain, climbed stiffly from his seat.
“I’ve had the time of my life,” he began abruptly. “Old Andy Pusey chased me around the track with some kind of a paper—said I was under arrest.”
“Are they after you?” interrupted Mr. “Stump” Camp at once.
“Sure,” went on Bud. “Mr. Stockwell and Andy had a buggy and Pusey’s big bay horse. You can bet they’re after me. But I don’t believe they saw me after I got in the ‘slashins.’ I didn’t see them.”
Bud’s hands trembled so that he could scarcely assist in disposing of the aeroplane. But he was hardly needed. Before five o’clock, the airship had been hauled into the sawing shed on the log car, drawn to the roof by means of the waiting tackles and the false floor put into place. To the uninformed, a glance into the shed suggested as unlikely a place for hiding a forty-foot aeroplane as the top of a haystack.