“I think they’ll be back,” spoke up Mr. Trevor, who seemed to be the only person not mystified. “Meanwhile,” he added addressing the hundreds present, “I have been told by the Wolves that you need expect no bulletins from the field until the enemy has been located.”
Between the wonder over the apparent retreat of two of the Wolves, and some disappointment over this news—which made it plain that they must have a system and meant to give all their time to the search instead of running in to report each man found—the crowd gradually melted away among the trees.
A few minutes after two o’clock a man lying in the grass suddenly sprang up with a shout and wildly waving arms. As he plunged toward the open, dusty road a wave of picnickers joined him.
“An aeroplane!” rose in a chorus. “A flyin’ machine!”
High above the road leading back to town, a brown expanse of canvas was gliding through the air toward the iron bridge as swiftly and steadily as a hawk with its eye fixed on a field mouse below. The whirr of two glistening propellers ran before the object. On its lower frame sat two boys. One of them with a small object in his lap, was holding a pair of field glasses on the gaping crowd. The other, with his hands upon the levers, was holding the machine on a course directly over the road.
“It’s Trevor and that circus boy!” yelled some one. And almost before the crowd could get on the road, Willie Bonner’s resurrected aeroplane slid over the camp and, with an upward dart, was beyond the gaping crowd.
“Nothin’ doin’!” yelled an excited man, Mr. Chase. “They can’t put that over on our boys. This ain’t a circus. The rules say: ‘No outside help.’ That’s outside help. Rule ’em out.”
The umpires, puzzled, looked at each other. Then adherents of the two patrols crowded about the committee, shouting, protesting or denying charges. Bonner had banked and headed his aeroplane down the river and was out of sight before a decision was reached. But in the end, even the Coyotes’ umpire had to agree that the use of the aeroplane was within the rules, as it belonged to the Wolves and was operated by them.
Those in the camp who first saw the aeroplane shooting across the river, at once connected it with the two boys who had disappeared in that direction. But the concealed Coyotes had no such suggestion to help them in identifying the occupants of the aeroplane. This was as the Wolves had hoped and expected.
“Now,” began Bonner as the aeroplane headed down the river, “get ready. I’ll cover every foot of the district. Watch your chart and use your glasses. I reckon those who are inside of anything’ll pop out to see what’s doin’.”