“Thanks to these young men and their aeroplane, we are all right,” answered the elder of the two, Alice Brady. “They snatched us right out from under the noses of the Mexicans, when we had given up all hope of ever getting away from them.”
“Tell us about it,” directed the Captain, “I know I’d never get half the story from Strong and his friends. They’re too modest.”
“Oh, we just did what we were sent to do,” muttered Phil, uncomfortably; “any of the rest of the bunch would have done the same thing if they’d been in our places.”
“You keep quiet,” ordered the Captain, with twinkling eyes, “let the young ladies have their say.”
The young ladies had their say, and painted their rescue in glowing colors. When they had finished, Captain Bradley nodded.
“I guess I sent the right men for the job, all right,” he remarked. “You couldn’t have done better, and the Rangers are proud of you.”
And the boys soon found that this was no idle phrase. The Rangers were proud of them, and were not backward in letting them know it. The Radio Boys had won a secure place for themselves in the esteem of these daring frontiersmen, which further acquaintance only served to strengthen.
The Rangers took an added interest in the Arrow from that time on, and whenever the boys were working on it, they always had an interested audience. After their return with the two girls they had had considerable trouble patching the wings, where they had been torn by the Mexicans’ bullets, but at last succeeded in getting everything in fine shape again.
“Them Greasers is sure poor shots,” commented Dan, as he viewed the aeroplane critically the day after the boys’ triumphant return. “Ef they’d been anyway decent shots, they’d sure have drilled a hole or two in that thar gasoline tank, and then you’d have been out o’ luck.”
“You can bet we were thinking of that all the time we were going up,” grinned Phil. “It was pretty dark, though, and we were moving kind of fast.”