Still sneering, Barr and his companions drove off.
The sheriff accepted the boys’ offer to carry them through the air back to White Willow, and in a few minutes’ time they were there, Wild Bill Jenkins, it is safe to say, being thus the first prisoner to be carried to jail in an aeroplane. The first man they sought out in the town was the old inventor to whom they had sent the wireless message. They found him a dreamy, white-haired man, more interested in his inventions and their aeroplane than in the questions with which they plied him. He insisted, in fact, on taking them up the hillside, in which scores of abandoned mine shafts still remained, to show them an invention he had for washing gold. He was in the middle of exhibiting the workings of his device when the boys were startled to hear a low groan which seemed to come from near at hand.
At first they had some difficulty in tracing it, but they finally located the sound as proceeding from the mouth of one of the empty shafts.
“Who is there?” they shouted, while the old inventor stood in amazement.
“It must be the ghost of Bud Stone who fell down that shaft and was killed,” he exclaimed and started to run away.
“Who is there?” cried Frank again, leaning over the deep pit which seemed to be of considerable depth.
“I am Eben Joyce—help me!” came a feeble cry from the regions below.
“Hold on!” shouted Frank. “Be brave, and we’ll soon have you out. Are you hurt?”
“No; but I am most dead from thirst,” came the answer.
“Have you strength enough to attach a rope beneath your shoulders if we lower one to you?”