“There it is,” he said to himself. “They dropped, but they could not have touched the ground. Sure, it’s the Curtiss. Why—the vandals!”
In a flash the quick senses of Dashaway’s apprentice took the alarm. The antics of the Curtiss had been curious. Now something caught the attention of Hiram and awakened positive suspicion; alarm, too, for the strange machine arose from amid the haystacks where the Ariel had anchored.
“It means something,” muttered Hiram, resuming his run. “Fire!”
For an instant he was appalled. A smell of smoke was wafted to his nostrils. Then, getting in range of the haystacks, he caught a gleam of leaping flames. Rounding the first great heap of fodder, Hiram uttered an angry cry. The Curtiss was sailing away, and it was fully evident that its occupants had descended purposely to set a match to the enormous heaps of hay within ready reach.
“They were after our machine!” shouted the lad, and he snatched up the gun the farmer had left behind him. It was double-barreled. Hiram fired twice. He fancied he could hear the shots rattle against the planes of the fast-swaying biplane aloft. Its speed was not diminished, however. He threw down the gun and made a dive through a fire-fringed space between the two nearest haystacks.
The one further along, near which the Ariel stood, was now a mass of wispy, shooting blaze. Two others beyond it had also ignited. It was now that the lad ran fastest. His face was hot and blistered as he came up against the tail rudder of the imperiled machine with a force that gave him a rebound.
The smoke and the heat choked and blinded him. He bent his head and gave the running gear a start. He could not see before him now. With desperate resolve Hiram buckled down to his task. The aeroplane, upon which his hopes and interest were fixed so intensely, was in peril. He knew it was scorched, from the faint smell of melting varnish.
All he thought of was getting the Ariel outside the spreading circle of fire. He could choose no lanes between the numerous stacks, for the smoke now obscured everything. He had to trust to luck. Now he was running the machine along.
“The mischief!” uttered Hiram abruptly, and went spinning back half a dozen feet. He had driven the biplane squarely into an unseen stack. The rebound shook him loose. He stumbled and fell. Then his head met some hard solid substance and he closed his eyes with a groan—senseless.
It was the echo of the two shots that first aroused Dave Dashaway, who had stood looking after Hiram until he disappeared, and then awaited his return. The farmer had gone back to the porch, but now he ran down into the yard again with the words: