Osceola’s shout almost broke Bill’s eardrums, coming as it did through the close-pressed receivers of his headphone set. Automatically, he dropped the glasses, caught at his safety-belt to see if it was fastened and shoved forward.
The Ryan bucked into a nosedive and dropped earthward with the speed of a shooting star.
Osceola’s premonition of danger had been a wise one. Beneath the trees, Dorothy and Deborah were struggling with two men.
Chapter II
NUMBER FIFTY-SEVEN
Bill levelled off with an abruptness that jarred the very vitals of the plane. Then he allowed the tail to drop slightly, the wheels made contact and the monoplane rolled forward over uneven ground, propelled by her own momentum. Before she actually came to a stop, both lads flung themselves from the cockpits and raced for the trees thirty or forty yards away.
It soon became evident that they would be too late to come to close quarters with the girls’ assailants. Brave enough when they had members of the opposite sex to deal with, the ruffians had no desire to mix it up with a couple of husky young aviators. Flinging the struggling girls aside, they turned tail and legged it toward their car with a burst of speed worthy of Olympic runners, and no split seconds to spare.
Bill and Osceola immediately sheered off toward the road, but by the time they reached the edge of the field, the motor was only a cloud of dust hurtling down the valley.
“If I’d had a gun,” said the Seminole, without the slightest catch of breath, “there’d have been a different ending to this affair!” He scowled at the disappearing car and turned to Bill. “I thought you always packed a gat aboard your crates—when we went into that nose dive, I nearly broke my neck trying to find one.”
“Sorry,” gasped Bill, whose sprint had left him winded, “I never thought of them as necessary adjuncts to picnics before! Next time I’ll come provided. It’s just as well those thugs got away, though. Two scalped bandits would mean all kinds of unpleasantness up here in New England. Here come the girls, now. They seem to be none the worse for their adventure.”
“You,” declared the chief, “make me infernally tired.” He strode off toward Deborah.