“Bet you I know what she’s got!” exclaimed Andy; “thinks we might get lost somewhere out on the desert, and she’s made us up a lot of grub to carry along. Wait till I look and see if there’s plenty of water in that jug I fixed to the back of the seat. Yes, brimful, I’ll tie the guns here. Wait for me just three minutes, won’t you, Frank? I’m going back to the house.”
“What notion have you got in your head now, Andy?” demanded the other a little impatiently.
“We ought to have the glasses, you know,” came back to him.
“You’re right, and it was a good thing you thought of them,” called Frank, only too well pleased to commend his chum for a thing of this kind.
Andy fairly ran at top speed toward the house, and plunged in through the open door, not wanting to waste a second more than could be helped. He was back again at the hangar before the time allowance he had given himself had expired; and so on arriving found that Frank had made all other preparation necessary, so that there was now nothing to prevent their immediate start.
“Oh! how I will pray that you get back our little darling safe and unharmed!” the housekeeper called out to them, as they were taking their places.
“Tell Mr. Witherspoon when you see him that we mean to do everything we can to bring little Becky back home,” Frank said, as his last words.
“And look up poor old Tige,” called Andy, “just as like as not you’ll have to bury him, because he must be dead; or else chased after the boys last night.”
Frank gave the word; each of them had a part to do in the successful starting of the aeroplane; as the little motor burst into a merry song they found themselves commencing to move slowly along the level ground. Faster and faster grew the pace until Frank, deeming that the time had come to mount upward, changed the planes, and immediately the clever flier left the ground, rising gradually until he felt able to increase the speed, and climb upward in spirals.
The first thing that seemed advisable in Frank’s mind was to get some sort of bird’s-eye view of the surrounding country.