“Just snore as loud as ever you can. There is no doubt that they will creep up here after a while to see if we are asleep. If they hear you snoring they will think everything is all right.”
Frank, Harry and their hard companion were soon out of the window and on the ground. They found themselves on a back street, or rather, a mere trail on the prairie, for the town consisted of but a single street. They rapidly made their way to the livery stable. The man who owned it was there, and at first was inclined to be angry at being awakened.
He appeared at his door with a gun.
“Git out of here, you no good drunken cattle rustlers,” he bellowed, “or I’ll fill you full of lead. Don’t come skylarking around me.”
“We are not cattle rustlers. We’re the boys who own that aeroplane,” explained Frank. “We heard to-night, or rather we overheard, a plot to damage it so that it could not win the race.”
“What’s that?” demanded the other, “some no good, ornery cusses undertook ter come roun’t here and do up that thar contraption of yourn?”
“That’s it.”
“Wall, I don’t know as I’d blame anyone fer wantin’ ter bust up such things. Hosses air good enough fer us out here in the west, but nobody ain’t goin’ to hurt nothin’ of nobody’s while it’s under my care. Come on in an’ tell me about it.”
The boys’ story was soon told. When it was concluded the stable man was mad clear through.
“What, that hobo of a Wild Bill Jenkins, as he calls his self, come aroun’ here and try monkey tricks in my barn? Not much,” he kept repeating. “Hev you boys got shootin’-irons?”