_ CHAPTER XII. AN EMPTY RIFLE SHELL
In that few steps till they reached the smoking mass of wreckage, many things became clear to Jerry. He realized that Lost Island had been merely a building ground for Mr. Fulton's experiments in aeronautics, that this sorry looking ruin was his invention. He remembered the long, low shed on the island--that was the workshop.
Then they were at the verge of the twisted and wrecked machine, frantically tugging at rods and splintered wood in an effort to get at the unconscious form covered by the debris. Fortunately there was no great weight to lift, and there was really no fire once the smoke of the explosion had cleared away. In a very few seconds they had dragged the man clear and laid him out flat on his back in a grassy spot, where Tod remained to fan the man's face while Jerry hurried toward camp for water. Blackened and bleeding as the man was, Jerry readily recognized him as Billings.
He found Budge startled by the explosion and hesitating about leaving the camp unguarded to go to the rescue. Jerry's shouted command brought him galloping across the field with a pail of water, and the two boys made good speed on the way back. They found the man still unconscious but beginning to writhe about in pain.
"I think his leg's broken," cried Tod, his face white with the strain of helpless waiting. "From the way he doubles up every little bit I think he must be hurt inside. The cuts that are bleeding don't seem to be very bad. Let me have the water."
"Do you suppose we really ought to----" began Jerry, but paused, for Budge had answered his question effectually.
Without a word he stooped over the moaning man. Outer clothes were taken off in a trice. Without jarring the man about, almost without moving him, garment by garment Budge gradually removed, replaced, examined, until every part of the man's anatomy had been looked over. Finally he straightened up, and for the first time the other two, who had stood helplessly by, saw how set and white the young Scout's face was.
"Leg's broken all right," he said slowly. "So's his arm--and at least two ribs. Maybe more. Side's pretty badly torn and I think he's bleeding internally. We've got to get a doctor without a second's loss of time. Tod, you chase along like a good fellow and see how quick you can get to a telephone. Jerry, lend a hand here and we'll fix a splint for his leg--lucky it's fractured below the knee or we'd have a time. I don't know whether I can do anything for his ribs or not. Hustle up, Tod--what you standing there gaping for?"
"Where--where'd you learn to do things like that?" blurted Tod, as he started away.
"What? This?" in surprise. "Every Scout knows how to do simple things like this." And he turned back to his bandaging, for he had brought along the camp kit, with its gauze and cotton. Out came his big jackknife and he cut a thumb-sized willow wand, which he split and trimmed. In less than no time he had snapped the bone back into place and wound a professional looking bandage about the home-made splint. He was just about to turn his attention to the injured side when a great crackling in the brush caused both boys to turn.
Three men came bounding across the open space, the foremost, Mr. Fulton.
"Is he alive?" he exclaimed before he recognized the two boys.
"Yes," answered Jerry, "but he's hurt pretty bad--inside, Budge says. Tod just----"
"Tod! He here? Did he go after a doctor?"
"Here he comes now. Did you get the doctor?" shouted Budge and Jerry together.
"I got his office. It's our own Doctor Burgess. I got Mrs. Burgess and she says the doctor is out this way, and she'll get him by telephone--she can locate him better than I could. He ought to be here most any minute. I'm to watch for him along the road." Tod darted back toward the line of bushes that marked the highway.
But it was a good half hour before a shout proclaimed the coming of the doctor, and in that time Budge had had a chance to show more evidences of his Scout training. After a hurried trip back to camp he fashioned bandages that held the broken ribs in place; he bound the scalp wound neatly, and stopped the flow of blood from an ugly scratch on the man's thigh. The others stood about, helping only as he directed. It was with a wholesome respect that they eyed him when the job was finished.
But it took the doctor to sum their admiration up in one crisp "Bully--couldn't have done it better myself."
He felt about gently and at last straightened up and remarked:
"He's good enough to move, but not very far. Where's the nearest farmhouse?"
"Half a mile, nearly," answered Tod.
"I think he'd want to be taken--home," Mr. Fulton said hesitatingly. "If we could move him to the river bank I guess we could get him across all right--to Lost Island, you know. His daughter's there to nurse him."
"Lost Island?" questioned the doctor, raising his eyebrows. "We-l-l-- Son, can you make a stretcher?" turning to Budge.
"Come on, Jerry. Back in a minute," called Budge over his shoulder to the doctor.
Jerry followed to the Scout camp, where Budge caught up a pair of stout saplings that had been cut for tent poles but had not been needed.
"Grab up a couple blankets," he directed, setting off again through the brush on a run. Jerry was well out of breath, having contrived to trip himself twice over the trailing blankets, when he finally rejoined the group. Budge reached out for the blankets and soon had a practical stretcher made, onto which the injured man was gently lifted. Mr. Fulton and one of the strangers took hold each of an end and they set out directly for the bank of Plum Run.
For the first time Jerry had a chance to observe the two who had come with Tod's father. Heavy-set, rather stolid chaps they were, just beginning to show a paunch, and gray about the temples. They looked good-natured enough but gave the impression of being set in their ways, a judgment Jerry had no occasion to change later. They spoke with an odd sort of accent but were evidently used to conversing in English, although the first glance told that they were not Americans.
They were plainly but expensively dressed; they looked like men of wealth rather than like business men. They had come to see Mr. Fulton's invention tried out, Jerry surmised, and, if it proved successful, perhaps to buy it. Those two men he had seen with the rifles were foreigners too, but of a different station in life and, Jerry was sure, belonging under a different flag.
They were soon down to the water's edge, where was moored the launch Jerry had heard chugging over to the island not long before. Blankets were brought from the Scout camp and piled on the launch floor to make a comfortable bed, and poor Billings was carefully lifted from the stretcher and laid in the boat. The doctor and Mr. Fulton got in. The two men remained on the bank. Mr. Fulton looked at them questioningly, but their heavy faces gave no sign. So he asked:
"You will wait for me, I trust! I don't want you to feel that this-- accident----" he hesitated over the word--"makes the scheme a failure. There is something about it all that I can't understand, but a close examination may reveal----"
"Ah, yes," answered the shorter of the two, "we will want to be just as sure of the failure as we insisted on being of the success. But you understand of course that we feel--ah--feel considerably--ah-- disappointed in the trial flight. Oh, yes, we will wait for you. You will not be long?"
"Just long enough for the doctor to find out what needs to be done. That slim youngster there is my son Tod. He knows almost as much about my--about
it as I do. Tod, you take care of Mr. Lewis and Mr. Harris till I come back. You'd best stay close to the
Skyrocket; we don't want to take any chances, you know."
All the time he had been talking he had been tinkering with the motor, which was having a little balky spell. At his last words Jerry spoke up hastily:
"I'll chase over and keep an eye on the
Skyrocket while the rest of you take your time," and he hurried off, adding to himself: "
Skyrocket's a good name, 'cause it sure went up in a blaze of glory, and came down like the burnt stick." But he had other things in mind besides the mere watching of the wreck. At Mr. Fulton's hesitation over the word "accident" a picture had popped into his mind--two men carrying rifles and peering up over the tree-tops.
He was destined to see them again, for as he crossed the road he heard a crackling in the underbrush of someone in hasty retreat. He blamed his thoughtlessness in whistling as he ran along; perhaps he might have caught them red-handed if he had been careful. As it was, he saw the two scurrying toward the south, whereas before they had been going northward.
He did not go directly to the fallen aeroplane. Instead he picked his way carefully over the route the men had followed just after the explosion, stooping low and examining every spear of grass. His search was quickly rewarded. Just where the trampled turf showed that the two men had stood for some time he pounced upon a powder- blackened cartridge, bigger than any rifle shell he had ever seen before, even in his uncle's old Springfield. That was all, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions.
He walked over to the charred and twisted remains of the
Skyrocket, fighting down his strong impulse to pry into the thing and see if he could discover the secret of its astounding exploits before the crash came. It did not take more than the most fleeting glance to see, even with his limited knowledge of flying machines, that this one was very much different from the others. He was glad when the others came up to save him from yielding to his curiosity.
Tod and the two men were deep in a discussion of Mr. Fulton's invention, but Jerry gained little by that, as most of the technical terms were so much Greek to him. Tod talked like a young mechanical genius--or a first-class parrot. The two men listened to his glowing praises in no little amusement, venturing a word now and then just to egg the boy on--though he needed none.
Jerry waited for a chance to break in forcibly. "I say, Tod." he interrupted a wild explanation of the theory of the differential, "I expect I'd better chase along back home. I can just catch the interurban if I cut loose now. I--I want to hike back and spread the good news that you aren't decorating a watery grave."
"I s'pose I'll have to stay here and help the Scouts mount guard over the relics here--when will you be back?"
"To-morrow, maybe."
"You can come back with dad. He'll probably come back to Watertown to-night, after he takes these two gentlemen to Chester in the launch. He'll probably want you to help him bring down some repairs."
"You think he'll try to patch up the
Skyrocket? " asked Jerry. "Doesn't look hardly worth while."
"Worth while!" exploded Tod. "Is a half million dollars worth while?" Then he repented having spoken out so freely, reminded by the sharp glances of the two men. "Oh, Jerry's all right," he apologized. "Dad thinks as much of him as he does of me."
"Well, I'll be off," said Jerry hurriedly. "Tell your father I'll see him either to-night or early in the morning--and that I've got something important to tell him."
"About the
Skyrocket? " demanded Tod eagerly, but Jerry only shook his head teasingly and began to hurry across the fields and woods to the interurban tracks.
He was lucky, for hardly had he reached the road crossing before the familiar whistle sounded down the track. The motorman toot-tooted for him to get off the rails, as this was not a regular stop, but Jerry stood his ground and finally the man relented at the last minute and threw on the brakes.
Watertown reached, Jerry could not hold his good news till he got home, but to every one he met he shouted the glad word that Tod Fulton had been found, alive and uninjured. The open disbelief with which his announcement was met gave him a lot of secret satisfaction. In fact, he could hardly restrain an occasional, "I told you so." His mother was the only one to whom he allowed himself to use that phrase, but then, he
had told her.
He could hardly wait until Mr. Fulton should return from Chester, so eager was he to tell of his discovery there in the woods, but the slow day passed, and bedtime came without any sign of a light in the big house down the street. Reluctantly he finally went up to his room, but for a long time he sat with his nose flattened out on the window pane, watching patiently.
At last he was rewarded. Out of the gloom of the Fulton house he saw a tiny point of light spring, followed by a flood of radiance across the lawn.
"What are you doing, son?" came a deep masculine voice from the sitting room. "Thought you had gone to bed hours ago."
"Mr. Fulton just came home, pa, and Tod told me to tell him----"
"Guess it'll keep till morning, won't it? Besides, I expect Tod saw his father later than you did."
"I'll be right back, dad----" this from just outside the kitchen door. "It's just awfully important----"
The door banged to just then. Mr. Ring chuckled. He believed in letting boys alone.
Jerry sped down the dark walk and jabbed vigorously at the special doorbell, hurried a little bit by the fact that as he came through the wide gate he had a feeling that the big gateposts did not cause all the shadow he passed through. "I'm getting nervous since I saw those two men to-day," he reminded himself. "I'll soon be afraid of my own shadow--but I hope it doesn't take to whispering too."
Mr. Fulton came hurrying to the door, a big look of relief on his face when he saw who it was.
"I couldn't wait till morning, Mr. Fulton. I just had to tell you I knew the
Skyrocket didn't fall of its own free will. I saw two men skulking in the woods. They both carried big rifles. I was sure I heard one of them go off just before the explosion came, and on the ground where they stood I found
this!"
He handed Mr. Fulton the rifle shell.
"Good boy!" exclaimed the man, almost as excited as the youngster. "I'm beginning to see daylight. You keep all this under your hat, sonny, and come over as early in the morning as you can. We'll talk it over then, after I've had a chance to sleep on
this." He indicated the cartridge. "Tell me, though--was one of the men a tall, lean chap with a sabre scar on his jaw----"
"They were both heavy-set, scowly looking----" "Hm. That makes it all tangled again. Well, it may look clearer in the morning. Chase along, Jerry; I've got a busy night's work ahead of me. No," he added as Jerry began to speak, "you couldn't help me any. Not to- night. To-morrow you can."
Jerry wanted to tell him about the whispering shadows, but hesitated because it sounded so foolish. His heart skipped a beat or two as he drew near the tall posts, but this time the gateway was as silent as the night about him.
"Some little imaginer I am," he laughed to himself as he skipped back into the house. _