“Lead me to it,” exclaimed Tom.
“Well,” said Phil, “we’ll put it up to the folks. I have a hunch that before many days have passed we’ll be in Texas, down by the Rio Grande.”
CHAPTER VI
A Lively Fight
“If you do get there,” remarked Mr. Denby as he rose to go, “I can see that there isn’t going to be much monotony in your lives for the next few months. You boys certainly have a knack for finding adventure, and what is more important still a knack of coming through it somehow with a whole skin. Let’s hope that this won’t prove an exception to the rule. At any rate I’m glad that you are going to have a chance to ferret out and capture that rascal Murray. Now,” he added with a smile, “you see that I was right when I denied that you were relying on a forlorn hope in trusting to radio. It showed you tonight what it could do.”
“I should say it did,” agreed Phil warmly as he accompanied him to the door. “It’s the most wonderful thing in the world.”
He bade the professor good night and returned to his companions. They were all too wrought up to think of sleep, and they sat up late discussing the possibilities that had opened up so suddenly before them.
The next day was spent chiefly in argument with their respective families. As they had feared, they met at first with the stiffest sort of opposition. Their parents took a much more sober view of the enterprise than did the boys themselves and conjured up all kinds of harrowing things that might happen to them. But the boys urged their case with such fervor and persistence that Phil and Dick finally carried the day.
Tom’s task was the more difficult, as his parents lived in Chicago, and he had to communicate with them by radio. His father had a powerful set and was almost as much of a radio “fan” as his son himself, and both were kept busy the greater part of the day in transmitting and receiving messages arguing the case pro and con. But from Tom’s point of view the day was well spent, for he was able at the end of it to come to his chums with the joyous news that his father had yielded a final, albeit a reluctant consent.
So that it was in a jubilant mood that they called up Steve that night and told him that the preliminary battle had been won and that he might expect them at some time within the next week or ten days.
“Bully,” was Steve’s reply. “Best news I’ve heard since Sitting Bull sat down. Come a runnin’. And say, fellows, if you can, bring the Arrow along with you. It’s a dandy machine and you’re so used to it that you can probably get better results with it than you could with any plane we could furnish you. It’ll be a nice cross country trip for you, and beat traveling in stuffy railroad cars, to say nothing of making better time. I’ll tend to everything on this end of the line, see that your quarters are prepared for you and every other little thing. Believe me, fellows, you’re going to have the time of your young lives.”