From the slant of the barn roof a fanatical voice croaked back, “Lightning power belongs up in the sky. The Lord’s agin humans what steals his lightning. Fire and brimstone! But the wire’s cut! And I’m a-saving King’s Cove!”
“Better be saving your own hide!” shouted old Gem. And from that second-story window roared a pistol shot.
A thud and a bump from the barn roof. Then footsteps crashing off, running through the underbrush.
Into the radio room limped Gem Renaud, wiping off a smoking, long-barreled old pistol. “Just shot up in the air,” he announced angrily. “But I hope I put enough fright into that old nuisance to run him into the next county.”
CHAPTER VIII
COMPRESSED POWER
“How far a piece you goner take it?” questioned Lem Hicks.
“You stay here. I’ll amble on down to where the road forks off into the woods. That’ll put us more’n a mile apart. This outfit worked all right just from room to room, but we’re giving it a real try-out now.” Lee Renaud’s voice was full of suppressed excitement.
He wore a contraption, the like of which was never seen before. On his head was a cap of straps that held a pair of radio ear phones in place. On his chest hung a small transmitter that could be adjusted to his lips. Slung against his back, all neatly packed into a sort of knapsack, was a mechanism that operated by means of a crankshaft driven by hand. The whole machine was less than twelve inches square, but so geared that when its hand crank was turned at thirty-three revolutions per minute, its generators made thirty-three hundred revolutions per minute. In Lee’s pocket was folded a miniature aerial.
Lemuel Hicks wore a similar outfit.
Portable radio—that was something ambitious for a youngster to be tackling!