Roy Rockwood - Dave Dashaway, Air Champion - or, Wizard Work in the Clouds

Between two settlements, some fifteen miles apart, Hiram began to descend. It was where a two mile reach of level pasture land intervened, dotted here and there with underbrush and stunted trees. The Scout landed and its young pilot alighted. Under one arm he carried some sheets of white paper. He halted to place one of these on the ground, holding it flat by stones weighing down its corners. He then proceeded fully half a mile farther, again placed a sheet on the ground, gradually, in like manner, making a circle of fully a mile and a half. Finally he came back to the Scout , and got up into the air again.

“Target practice!” chuckled Hiram, as he circled away from the spot, made a sharp turn and volplaned full speed, as though aiming to land, nose first, directly upon the first white sheet in his course. Hiram made a magnificent dive. He swung over the control so that fifty feet from the ground the machine turned the reverse arc of a circle of nearly two hundred feet. His hand shot down beside him and grasped one of the bags, lifted it, aimed it and practically fired it at the “target” in view.

“Missed,” he grimly observed, but quite pleased all the same, for the bag landed flat and did not roll, and lay not two feet away from its intended mark.

“Hit it!” crowed the excited Hiram as, with a second swoop, he made a direct hit of the second target with a second bag. The third was a miss. The fourth was like the second.

“If I can make it that good, what can’t Dave Dashaway do?” soliloquized the young aeronaut, as he gathered up the bags and replaced them in the Scout . “I’ll spring the scheme on him just as soon as he makes up his mind to go into that International contest, which he’s just got to do!”

Hiram went afloat once more, determined on a swift run west, a turn, and then a course homeward bound.

“Hum” he chuckled. “If any of the airmen saw my maneuvers with those bags they’d think I was practicing to go over to Europe and drop bombs. Now what does that mean?” murmured the lad suddenly, and, with a quick start, Hiram slackened his speed, to study out the details of a lively scene in progress directly beneath him.

“I’m not going to stand that!” suddenly shouted Hiram, and he started a spiral descent, on the spur of the moment.

The young airman was warm-hearted and impulsive. Hiram was usually in the midst of any “scrimmage” going on in his vicinity, but it was generally when his sympathy, or chivalry, were aroused from interest in others. Just now all that was manly in him awakened his natural championship of “the under dog in a fight.”

Just below him was a wide swampy spot, and about forty feet from the solid land, edging it on one side, were two men. One of them, portly and mean-faced, was waving a cane and shouting angrily at a younger companion. This individual was wading stumblingly towards him. His feet were mired in the soft, mushy soil, and the water came up to his waist.

Upon a little swamp-island was a ragged, barefooted boy of about sixteen. He had a broad piece of tree bark in his hand. This he was using as a scoop. Dipping it down in the black, watery mire near the edge of the swamp, he would lift it aloft. Then with a dash and a swing he would fling it at the retreating man in the water.

At a glance Hiram read the situation. The boy looked like a half-starved runaway. The old man resembled some cruel relative, or guardian. He was in a fury. Suddenly he seized a flat stone at his feet, and sent it whizzing through the air. It landed against the boy’s cheek, drawing the blood.

“Now’s your chance – make for him!” cried the older man.

His younger and mired helper half turned, but it was to find the boy not yet out of the ring. The latter staggered slightly under the blow he had received, and the bark scoop dropped from his hand. He quickly picked it up, however, and sent into the face of his returning foe a deluge of black, blinding muck. The man rubbed his eyes, veered about again and made for the shore.

The irate old man was brandishing his cane, and shouting. He seemed to be censuring his defeated aide, who, dripping and bespattered, stood disgustedly on dry land.

“They’re trying to corner that boy, and he’s too plucky to let them,” decided Hiram. “There goes another stone. Good! it missed, and the boy is safe under cover.”

The lad had slipped behind a tree, but he kept the scoop in his hand. The two men gesticulated and parleyed. Finally the old man pointed toward a little settlement about a mile away. His companion started in that direction. The old man mopped his head with his handkerchief. Then he sat down under the shade of a tree as if exhausted with rage and his unusual exercise.

“He’s sent for help; maybe for the police,” reflected Hiram. “Right or wrong, the boy looks in need of a friend. I’m going to know the ins and outs of this affair.”

So far no one of the three persons in sight had caught a view of the descending machine, so absorbed had they been in the conflict in which they were engaged. At the sound of the snort of the exhaust of the aeroplane, however, the barefooted lad started nervously, and looked up.

The Scout had landed in the middle of a clear spot edged by some bushes. Hiram who had some time since shut off the power, faced the astonished lad not twenty feet away from him.

“Hello!” he hailed, leaping out, and advancing. “What’s the trouble here?”

For a second or two the lad did not speak. The startling appearance of airship and pilot seemed to benumb him. He looked appealingly at Hiram, as though trying to figure out whether his strange and unexpected arrival meant help or harm. Then, something in the friendly face of the newcomer seemed partially to reassure him. His wan face twitched and his lips puckered.

“I’m in trouble,” he said – “terrible trouble.”

“Those men, I suppose?” questioned Hiram, pointing to the spot across the watery space.

“Yes, I’ve been on a run for hours, till I’m ready to drop. I thought I was safe here on this island, but they hunted me out. I’ve been fighting them off for nearly an hour.”

“Who are they, anyway?” asked Hiram.

“That old man claims to be my uncle. The other fellow he sent to town to get a constable, and hunt me out, is one of the half a dozen bad men he’s in with. Oh, he’s led me a terrible life! I just had to break away from him. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Oh, is there any way to keep me out of their hands?”

The speaker looked up in a beseeching way. The tears were running down his wasted cheeks. Hiram was much stirred.

“Say, I’ll do anything, any time, for a fellow in the fix you’re in, if I believe he’s right!” he cried valiantly. “I think you are. That old man has seen us now. Look at him rage.”

By this time the older man, on the mainland, had caught sight of the newcomer and of the machine that had brought Hiram to the rescue. He leaped to his feet, and seized his cane. He ran, brandishing it, to the edge of the water.

“Hey, say; you there!” he yelled. “Whoever you are, don’t you dare to interfere. The law will soon be here, and attend to that young rascal.”

“Yes, it will be all over for me when the constable comes,” choked out the lad by Hiram’s side. “Please, please help me, if you can! I don’t care for myself. It’s my little sister. They could hammer me, and I’d grin and bear it, but when they began on her I simply had to get away.”

“Little sister – what? Where?” inquired Hiram, in perplexity.

“Look there,” was the response, and the boy parted some bushes. Hiram uttered a wondering and a pitying cry, as he looked over the shoulder of his guide and saw a little girl, not more than four years of age. She was lying asleep on the dry grass, her head pillowed on a coat, evidently belonging to the lad, her brother. Her attire was as torn and threadbare as his own. Her face showed tear stains and exhaustion.