“I suppose you saw them smoking ruins. Them was a shed, a pigsty and a stack of hay. I don’t reckon fifty dollars would replace them.”
“What has an airship to do with them?” inquired Hiram.
“Everything. See here, just at daylight this morning I came to the back door. I heard a whir and a ping overhead, and I saw an airship going licketty-switch. Just as it passed over the house, some one in it must have thrown a lighted cigar overboard. I didn’t see it fall, but after I had gone into the house and finished dressing and came out again, I saw the airship dropping into the basin on top of Pike Hill up yonder. Then I smelled smoke. I ran around towards the sheds. The stack was blazing. I know it was a cigar that started it, for I found one on the ground where the fire started, and we smoke nothing but corncob pipes around these diggings.”
“And you say the airship landed on top of Pike Hill, as you call it?” inquired Dave. “How do you know that?”
“Say, get up on this rock with me. That’s it. Now then, take a squint past the spur of rock way up near the crest of the hill. See it?”
“Hello!” instantly exclaimed Hiram, in a state of great excitement.
“Why, sure as you live it’s the end of a wing,” declared Dave. “Have you seen anything of the persons running it, mister?”
“No, I haven’t. The way I figure it out is that they ran out of steam. Mebbe they thought no one saw them when they flew over the farm. Mebbe they’re hiding. Mebbe, when they saw me start on guard down here with my rifle, after we’d tried to put the fire out, they were afraid to budge.”
“It is very likely they alighted on account of the lack of gasoline,” Dave said to Hiram. “We didn’t leave much in the tanks last night.”
“That’s so,” assented Hiram. “What are you going to do?”