"Get out your mule, and go for Dr. Gladby. If he isn't home, get Dr. Kurtz. Hurry, Rad!"
"I's mighty sorry, Massa Tom," answered the colored man, "but I cain't hurry, nohow."
"Why not?"
"Because Boomerang done gone lame, an' he won't run. I'll go mahse'f, but I cain't take dat air mule."
"Never mind. I'll go in the Butterfly," decided Tom quickly. "I'll run up to the house and see how dad is, and while I'm gone, Rad, you get out the Butterfly. I can make the trip in that. If Dr. Kurtz had a 'phone I could get him, but he lives over on the back road, where there isn't a line. Hurry, Rad!"
"Yes, sah, Massa Tom, I'll hurry!"
The colored man knew how to get the monoplane in shape for a flight, as he had often done it.
Tom found his father in no immediate danger, but Mr. Swift had had a slight recurrence of his heart trouble, and it was thought best to have a doctor. So Tom started off in his air craft, rising swiftly above the housetop, and sailed off toward the old-fashioned residence of Dr. Kurtz, a sturdy, elderly German physician, who sometimes attended Mr. Swift. Tom decided that as long as Dr. Gladby did not answer his 'phone, he could not be at home, and this, he learned later, was the case, the physician being in a distant town on a consultation.
"My, this Butterfly seems big and clumsy beside my Humming-Bird," mused Tom as he slid along through the air, now flying high and now low, merely for practice. "This machine can go, but wait until I have my new one in the air! Then I'll show 'em what speed is!"
He was soon at the physician's house, and found him in.