"Aw, let 'em talk!" the redhead said with a hoarse laugh. "Maybe they'll try selling us some of them Defense Bonds."
"And you shut up, too!" the pilot snarled. "I don't feel like hearing anybody talk, see?"
The redhead looked both surprised and angry.
"Okay, okay!" he said. "So nobody talks."
Silence once more settled over the interior of the cabin, but it was the kind of a silence that feels charged with high voltage electricity, and apt to strike all over the place at an instant's notice. Turning his head, Dave snapped a quick glance out the window, but what he saw didn't help his spirits any. The plane was grinding northward over wild mountainous country that looked every bit as uninviting as that narrow strip of ground where they had force landed. Whether or not they had reached the Utah line, or were still in Arizona, Dave couldn't tell with that one quick glance. And he didn't bother taking a second look.
Fact was, it didn't matter where they were. Through a crazy twist of fate they were helpless prisoners in the hands of two men who would shoot them dead at the slightest provocation. The single warning shot that the redhead had snapped across Colonel Welsh's shoulder had been proof enough that he wasn't afraid to use his gun.
Yes, they were helpless prisoners. And their captors knew all about them: who they were, where they had been heading, and why. As those three truths came home to Dave, again he swallowed hard and shivered slightly. It was like a crazy nightmare, only it wasn't. It was stark reality; nothing out of a story book. The pilot and his redheaded companion had received orders to make sure that Freddy Farmer and he did not sail on the Aircraft Carrier Indian. They had tried the first time last night by attacking them with machine guns in a plane.
They had failed, yet in a way they had succeeded. They had drilled the Lockheed's engines and forced Dave to sit down on that narrow strip of smooth ground deep in a valley. Not knowing the exact results of their efforts, the two men had cruised about over the area as soon as it became light, and—by another crazy twist of fate—they had seen the smoke signal that had been sent up to attract help. Seeing that the plane had not crashed, the two men had done the logical thing, from their point of view. They had landed and picked up their prey. Kidnapped them, yes, but for a very good reason. Some other plane passing over might have landed and given them a quick lift to their destination. So the redhead and the pilot had picked them up to make sure somebody else wouldn't do it.
And the reason they hadn't been killed on the spot was simple to figure. Death in the dark during that air attack last night would have been different. The plane would have crashed and burned up, and when its charred ruins were found no one would ever had dreamed that bullets had sent it hurtling down to its doom. But three dead men lying beside a force landed plane was something else again. A scene like that naturally screamed murder all over the place. And so the redhead and his pilot had kidnapped them so that if another plane landed to investigate, it would look as though the occupants of the Lockheed had tried to find their way back to civilization on foot, and had become hopelessly lost in the mountains.
"But they know all about us! How?"