H. L. Sayler

“ As the aeroplane touched the sand with a jolt and bumped ahead on its light wheels, Roy felt Mr. Cook drop from the car. When the trembling car at last came to a stop, 300 yards beyond Hassell, the young operator also sprang to the ground. As he turned and caught sight of the two men, he felt cold all over. Something in their attitude told him that the voiceless men facing each other would not speak in words. ”

“ From his father Roy had learned that he would probably go to the little town of Dolores in southwestern Colorado, the nearest railroad point to his destination in Utah. Dolores was in the mountains and, on a map he had secured, Roy traced his route into the valleys and out across the deserts toward Bluff, a hundred miles or more further west.
It was all desert, to be sure, but the very barrenness of the map thrilled the boy. The canyons, the isolated mountains, the desolate plains, fascinated the eager lad. ”

“ Roy had to smile. “Pleasure of the excursion,” he thought. “Racing over the desert after a cold-blooded murderer and thief who’ll probably shoot us full of holes at the first chance.”
“Rule number one,” he went on, his smile broadening. “And number two is: ‘It takes only one person to operate an aeroplane.’ I’ll be that person. Never interfere. It’s worse than a woman grabbin’ the reins when you’re drivin’.”
“Anything else?” asked Mr. Cook, with assumed soberness.
“Yes,” added Roy. “The car balances itself. It may turn over, but it’ll come up again. If anything happens, hold fast and wait. ”

“ Atkinson’s business instinct had brought him a sudden idea. “Mr. Cook,” he added, a moment later, “we talk a good deal about the practicability of the aeroplane. This is the first real, business demand I have yet had for an aeroplane. The idea is great. There is no doubt the aeroplane can be utilized in just the way you outline. Within a radius of two hundred and fifty miles it could make daily visits to the remotest of your men, take orders to them, bring back reports, and—if necessary—carry them food and water.” ”

“ Cook, as the crowd good-naturedly took its leave and Roy and his friends made ready for the noonday meal. “But the boys are sort o’ hungry for something besides faro and whisky. I’m glad it amuses ’em.”
“That’s nothing,” remarked Roy. “If you’d open up that outfit in the streets of New York [160] or Chicago, the people’d tramp each other to death to get a sight of it. Everybody’s crazy about airships. And I’ve got it bad,” he concluded, laughing.
Mr. Cook took the entire “aeroplane crew” to his own house, having previously sent word to his cook. ”

“ Cook was now about to make a similar search to the west. Three or four miles the whirring airship cleaved the breezeless, tonic air to the west. It was after eight o’clock and the strain was beginning to tell on Roy. The car was working perfectly, but an aviator’s nerves never relax. Four or five hours in an aeroplane frequently leave the controller utterly exhausted.
At this point, the fringe of plateaus or buttes ended abruptly in a wide, basin-like valley of sand and alkali. As the aeroplane shot out over this, there was a sharp whistle from Mr. Cook and the instant command: “South again!” ”

“ Osborne, the highest paid mechanic in Newark—one of the leading manufacturing cities in America—had only recently been secured by the newly organized aeroplane company. It was his ingenuity and practical methods that had already combined a dozen patents in an ideal flying-machine.
“A one-propeller car will always be popular,” Osborne insisted, “but two propellers are as essential for long distance work as two screws to a steamer. If one gives out, you have the other.” ”

“ Tom Allen, president of the club, said yesterday: ‘You bet we are going to do it. Every one of the six members of the club risked his life to earn that money and why shouldn’t we spend it as we like? We are going to use five thousand dollars to buy an aeroplane, one thousand dollars to fix up our club house over on Anclote Island, and divide the rest. The court awarded us the money, and we’re going to beat the men of Pensacola by bringing an aeroplane down here before they wake up.’
Then followed nearly a column story that set Roy’s nerves tingling. ”

“ His mother sidled up close to the boy as he began to set down the items of his outfit, and at the very first article, she entered a renewed and vigorous protest. If ever a boy, who knew nothing of the woods or the wilderness from actual experience, had longed for and dreamed of the day when he might own and carry a modern firearm, that boy was Roy Osborne.
Had he been starting out on a yawling cruise down the New Jersey bays, he would have been tempted to carry a revolver. ”

“ The aeroplane company manager shook his head. Mr. Cook looked at his watch. Then he grunted his disappointment.
“Well,” he said, rising, “it was an idea. If you can’t help me, I guess no one can. I’ve got to go—got to catch the two o’clock limited. Just keep my card. My offer stands. I’ll make it five thousand dollars for a machine if you send a man to do the trick. You can take four thousand dollars if you like and give some one a bonus of the other thousand to take the chance. I’ll pay him what you say and keep him long as he wants to stay.”
Mr. Atkinson was thinking hard. ”

“ He’ll land before he gets too far. He knows the Colorado’s below him. And then, like enough, he’ll take a chance among the Navajos.”
“Why didn’t you tell Marshal Wooley that?” asked Roy.
“Because,” laughed Mr. Cook, “he hasn’t any imagination. I saved the idea to test the aeroplane.”
Roy straightened up.
“At daylight,” said Mr. Cook, taking a long draw on his cigar, “you and I are going to get up steam and make a little flight over the desert south of the San Juan down toward the Calabasa Mountains. If we don’t scent our game, there won’t be any one to give us the laugh. Can we do it?” ”

“ But, above all others in gripping interest, was the vague story of the hidden Indians, savages buried in the uncharted wastes of the southwestern Utah mountains, who had as yet evaded the white man. As Eskimos are known to dwell on the ice fields of the far northern British America who have never seen human beings other than of their own race, so, it was reported, a like remnant of Indians concealed themselves between the deep canyon of the Colorado and the terrible Death Desert to the west. ”

“ Till then, call me ‘Sink.’ When I git around to the yarn, ye’ll say mebbe as how it’s a good enough name fur me, ‘Sink Hole’ Weston!”
“We’ll be in camp to-night. It’ll make a campfire tale,” suggested Roy.
The leader of Roy’s cavalcade nodded his head and for some time rode silently ahead, as if in thought. The pace brought them to Cortez about nine o’clock. Here they had agreed to wait for the wagon to overtake them.
From Cortez you might strike on a bee line to the southwest and never strike another white man’s village until you entered southern California. ”

“ Roy was surprised to find Mr. Cook already arisen and the Jap busy in the kitchen. As day began to break, they had coffee and bacon. Then Mr. Cook wrote a note which he left in charge of the house boy and with a small parcel of food, he and Roy proceeded to the Company office and the corral.
“You mustn’t do that while we are in the air,” said Roy laughing, as Mr. Cook lit his usual after breakfast cigar.
The manager looked at him in some surprise.
“Can’t smoke?” he replied.
“Better not,” answered Roy. “Rather risky. We’re right beside the gasoline, you know. ”

“ But, well, I know one thing. There isn’t any doubt that there was a white man, and he was likely enough a priest. His name was certainly Willard Banks, and I know this man was my great uncle, a Mormon elder.”
[221]
“Thar you air,” shouted Weston, defiantly hanging the table again. “Did I dream that? Answer, whar did I git the paper?”
Mr. Cook seemed amused. He had many times heard the wild tale of Weston’s fabled sink hole, but the Parowan end of the story, the knowledge that here old man Banks had lived, was unknown to him until the day Roy named the aeroplane. ”

“ Cook, “is the rarest speciment of Navajo metal work that you can find. And that stone—you won’t see its like in Tiffany’s. No matrix there—the true turquoise. As for the copper—well, look at it!”
He held it off and feasted his eyes on it as if it had been of gold and diamonds.
[203]
“I’ve heard of two others,” the absorbed enthusiast went on. “There isn’t any way to gauge its value. Colonel Oje, of Dolores, has one. You couldn’t buy it. He got it out of a religious Khiva down on the Tunit-Cha Mountains. He says it’s older than the Aztecs.”
Roy looked at the ring with new interest. ”

“ Cook a detail that Mr. Atkinson and his father had taken the liberty to add to the ordinary aeroplane such as the Development Company had bought.
Model No. 1 was planned to start, practically, from the ground without track or wheels. But this presupposed ideal conditions—a smooth surface and the assistance of attendants. Realizing that the aeroplane would often face far from ideal conditions in both starting and landing [161] and that it would be mainly where there would be no one to assist in either starting or landing, Roy’s father had sent with the airship a set of starting wheels. ”

“ Then his voice changed; he threw off his disappointed look and added cheerfully: “But business is business. I’m satisfied. Only—” and he smiled, “if I wasn’t just starting for Utah, I’ll bet I could go down there and sell those boys an aeroplane.”
“I haven’t any doubt of it,” answered Mr. Atkinson.
It was a curious coincidence that, hardly had this account of Roy Osborne’s remarkable adventures been written, than a story came on its heels that found in Roy an enthusiastic reader. ”

“ Osborne.
“You mean the aeroplane?” interrupted Mrs. Osborne.
“No,” replied her husband slowly. “Of course, there are safer things than manipulating a flying machine, but I guess the kid could manage that.”
“What other risk do you mean?” persisted Roy’s mother.
[37]
“Do you want him to go into the wildest country in America? Why, this man Cook told Mr. Atkinson that there are canyons a mile deep, alkali deserts that’d turn water into steam, only no water ever touches ’em, and Indians that haven’t even seen a white man. Do you think that’s the place to send a child?” ”

“ No one stood higher in the New York financial world.
“I see,” observed Mr. Atkinson, now glad that he had extended to the westerner his best box of cigars.
“Well,” went on Mr. Cook, “we’ve got a big lot of work cut out down there in the desert—petroleum mainly,” he explained, “but metal, too. And just now it’s all prospecting. Maybe you don’t know southern Utah?”
The aeroplane company manager smiled in the negative.
“When they git done tellin’ you about the plains of Arizona, and New Mexico, just add one hundred per cent and call it Utah,” went on Mr. Cook. ”

“ Although the operations of the Utah Development Company were on a large scale, the clerical force in the general office was small. In addition to Mr. Cook, two men were on duty there. Both [171] these men had given more attention to the work on the aeroplane than to their books during the day. In fact, they had both been absorbed spectators of the test of the engine. While Roy and Mr. Cook, leaving the set-up airship in charge of the corral watchman for the night, made ready to go to supper, the two clerks preceded them into the office by only a few minutes. ”

“ Then she grew sober again.
“But promise me one thing, Roy. If you do have to shoot ten rattlesnakes and a poor harmless deer, promise me you won’t kill any Indians—they’re [52] human beings. That would be murder. Promise me that!”
Roy was forced to laugh.
“I’ve got a notion, mother, that there is only one danger with that revolver if I ever fall in with Indians.” ”

“ At eight o’clock with the Escalante River not more than twenty miles away, the Parowan was started on the real search for the Sink Hole. All of Weston’s conviviality of the night before was gone. Roy was nervous. The prospect of meeting belligerent Indians did not frighten him, but he was surprised that neither Weston nor Mr. Cook seemed to reckon this as an item of danger.
“If we find the place,” Roy had asked in their [233] flight in the early dawn, “do you look for trouble?”
“Them old grandpa baldies?” answered Weston, as if surprised. “They ain’t got a gun among ’em.” ”

“ I may have to come back to Newark in a few months and settle down to common things, but I’ll make all I can of my opportunity. I’m not aching to fight Indians, and I’m not anxious to get lost in the desert, but I would like to get close enough to the wilderness to know what it means. I’m tired of machinery and coal smoke and trolley gongs.”
It is doubtful if Roy would have been so enthusiastic if he had known the adventures he was to fall into so soon. He got close enough to both Indians and the waterless wastes to understand just what they meant. ”

“ Cook’s company’ll pay your car fare. As for the other—I’ll advance it. What do you think you’ll need?” asked his father.
“I suppose,” said Roy slowly, “it’ll take one hundred dollars outside of my car fare.”
Mr. Osborne whistled and Mrs. Osborne’s face assumed a doubtful look.
“You know we aren’t rich, Roy,” his mother began.
“Pshaw, mother,” Roy exclaimed, springing to his feet, “don’t you worry about that. If you and father can spare the one hundred dollars, let me have it. I ain’t goin’ out west just to work for wages. That’s the greatest country in the world for a young man. ”

“ Wooley’s chase would be all right for a stage robber who rides a pony to death and then steals another. But Hassell ain’t agoin’ to do that. Couldn’t do it if he wanted to. He’d give out before the horse would. He’ll hide just like a city thief.”
“Hide?” repeated Roy. “Out in the desert?”
“A likely place would be the rocky banks of the San Juan as soon as he got out of sight of the town. I make a guess,” went on the cool, philosophic Mr. Cook. “If I was Mike, I’d go as far as Montezuma Creek. Where the Montezuma enters the San Juan, we’ve got a raft of mountain pine. ”

“ To a Ute horse stealing is a minor crime. Doolin slept until one o’clock and Weston kept watch. Then the guide turned in and Doolin kept an eye open for unannounced visitors.
Just when the stars began to show the next evening, the aeroplane cavalcade raised the lights of Bluff, and at ten o’clock entered the town. Roy was tired but happy. So far no accident had marred his expectation. Because of the lateness of the hour, Roy had planned to stop at a boarding house frequented by Weston at times and to report to Mr. Cook, of the Development [144] Company, in the morning. ”