“Well, I’m glad I stayed out here, then,” said Dick. “The propeller is better than an electric fan to keep a fellow cool on a hot day.”
“Oh, well, I didn’t really expect to find much here,” said Phil. “I suppose we might as well get going again. As long as you’re in the pilot’s seat, Dick, you might as well steer the old ship awhile. I’d like to sit back and loaf for a while, the way you and Tom usually do.”
“Huh!” snorted Tom, “whose fault is that, I’d like to know. We’d drive all the time, if we got the chance.”
“Yes, but then you wouldn’t have time to think up those swell jokes of yours, and think of what a loss that would be to everybody,” grinned Phil.
“It would be pretty tough on the world, I’ll admit,” said Tom. “I suppose I really should never have joined the Rangers. If you or Dick gets killed, it doesn’t matter, but if I do, it will be a big loss to humanity.”
“Oh, I guess humanity would manage to stagger along some way, even without the joy of hearing your jokes,” said Dick. “The world got along fairly well before you came romping around with that phoney brand of humor, you know.”
“Yes, but then people didn’t know what they were missing,” said Tom, modestly.
“If they had known, wouldn’t they have been thankful?” retorted Dick, and before Tom could think of a suitable retort, he had opened the throttle, and the _Arrow_ was once more soaring high above the green earth.
They flew in great sweeping circles, raking the hills and valleys below with their powerful fieldglasses, but saw nothing that would indicate the presence of the bandit stronghold. Noon came, and the boys decided to land, have lunch, and let the motor cool off awhile.
They landed in a grassy meadow, close to the edge of a forest of stunted trees. At the edge of the woodland flowed a little brook of clear cold water, and Phil and Tom agreed that Dick was a good picker of locations.
“There are plenty of big logs lying around to lean against, anyway,” said Dick. “There must have been a bad windstorm to knock so many trees down.”
“It’s queer, though, that they’re so much larger than any of the trees growing around here,” said Phil. “They feel mighty hard, too.”
He drew his hunting knife and tested the surface of the prostrate cylinders, but instead of its sinking into soft wood, it gave the gritty sound of steel scraping against stone.