There was no reason why Puss should also descend, save that he wished to be rid of his unwelcome passenger. The revolutionist might now make his way to camp and electrify his fellows with a stirring account of his various adventures. And one could easily guess that they would lose none of their zest in the telling.
Puss did not expect to halt again when the monoplane was brought down. He could make one flight of it now and reach the home of his uncle, where doubtless Sandy was mourning him as lost.
Just as Frank had expected, Puss on saying good-bye tried to appear as though something along the order of gratitude might be striving to gain a foothold in his crooked nature.
"Say, Frank, I'm sorry now I ever tried to do you dirt," he observed, as he held out his hand. "Let's forget the past and start all over again."
"Sure," replied Frank, as he readily took the offered hand; but it lay like a cold toad in his grasp, as Andy afterward expressed it, for Puss insisted on also bidding him good-bye ere he made a start in his biplane.
"Well, now, what d'ye think of that?" said Andy, as they stood and watched the other mount upward and caught the wave of his hand ere he started down river, being fully five hundred feet high. "Did he mean it, Frank? Would you really want to go so far as to trust that snake if the chance ever came again for him to do you a bad turn?"
Frank shrugged his shoulders.
"Say, ask me something easy, won't you?" he remarked. "Because you know how hard it is for a leopard to change its spots. Perhaps Puss has seen a light; but excuse me if I doubt it. Naturally he felt kind of cheap, because we got him out of a bad hole and placed him under obligations. But that will wear off in a short time."
"Right it will," declared Andy. "I give you my word, Frank, that the next time we see him he'll have a fine story all fixed about how he was just going to jump on that Spanish revolutionary fellow, and twisting his gun out of his hand, shoot him down, and then fly away. Oh, don't I know Puss in Boots, though? He'll hate us both worse than ever just because he's beholden to us. Rats! him reform? Not much!"
By the middle of the afternoon they had advanced far enough to know that another lap ought to carry them to town, and of course all of them were anxious to have the journey completed.