Even though he cast an occasional glance ahead on his own account, as yet he had not been able to exactly locate the fugitives. This might partly be on account of the smallness of two ponies at such a distance; and then again the glare of the sun, far up in the heavens, in spite of the early hour, was very strong on the desert sand.
There was one thing that Frank was pretty positive about; he believed that the fugitive Mexican could hardly as yet have discovered what was coming after him. To his naked eye the aeroplane would hardly be noticed at all; or if it did accidentally catch his attention, he would believe that it was merely some buzzard, or perhaps a great bald eagle floating in space far up in the blue expanse of sky.
If he looked back at all he would be more apt to confine his anxious gaze to the level horizon, for it would be there an enemy was apt to appear; no sane man could dream of an attack from above, since aeroplanes have not yet become so common as to be recognized by everyone.
And so the pursuit went on.
Andy seemed deeply engrossed in his business of “keeping tab” on the movements of those so far in front.
Presently he began to notice that Frank was doing something to effect a change in their relative positions.
“Are you going down now?” Andy demanded a little fearfully, as though he could not understand why such a move should be in order. “Better now, than later on,” returned the pilot. “We’re too high up to be able to make any sort of landing when we want to. Besides now that you’ve got track of Jose, there’s really no need of keeping to this high elevation.”
“Then after you bring the biplane down to a lower level, we can just rush things, if we think it best, is that it, Frank?”
“My notion to a dot, Andy.”
They were already circling around, so as to descend in the safer “spirals.” Frank would not take the great risk of volplaning when the other way answered just as well, and at one-tenth the chance of accident.