CHAPTER XVIII.
TRAILS THAT CROSSED.
WHEN the biplane bearing Chief Roque and Billy Barry cleared themountain top, the pilot and observer had a fixed understanding thatevery Russian camp was to be given a wide berth, for with fuel tanksgoing dry it would have been the top of folly to invite a long chasefrom the Muscovite airmen. And then, too, it was no part of a safe andsane program to risk an enforced descent in hostile domain.
"Keep her nose southward," commanded Roque, "and we may find theAustrian lines before we have lost our power. It's a desperate chance,of course, but there is nothing else to be done."
A precious hour was consumed in fruitless flight, with never a cheeringsign of the friendly forces sought by the anxious aviators.
"It has just dawned upon me that our army has again entrenched in themountains, for we could not possibly have come so far in the openwithout a single sight that would encourage further search in thisdirection."
Roque trained his glasses to the east, where the snow-capped peaks ofthe Carpathians were showing in the dim distance.
"It's a good forty miles in that turn," figured Billy, "and whether wecan make it or not with an inch or two of petrol is a close guess."
"Make a try for it, and count on the wind to help."
The mind of the chief was set on this last throw.
One satisfaction to Billy in this change of course was the definiteobjective--hit or miss, they were no longer wandering.
Within a mile of the first slope the pilot knew that the jig was upwith the motors. Over his shoulder, he called to the observer:
"This is no Zeppelin with a gas range, and it's the turf for us now."
The motors clanked and ceased to hum. The aeroplane took the downshootand skated to a standstill on the slippery soil.
"Stranded but not wrecked."
Roque accepted the inevitable with fairly good grace for him.
"What's the next move?"
Billy was curious to know what the chief had in stock for the emergency.
The boy was not immediately enlightened, for Roque evidently proposedto reach speech through meditation. The secret agent with his longcoat-tail dusted the powdery snow from a flat stone and calmly tookhis ease behind the glowing tip of a long cigar.
"He must have wireless communication with a tobacco shop," thoughtBilly, "for he never fails to find one of those black rolls when hereaches for it."
The young pilot, muffled in a blanket, stuck to his seat in thebiplane. It was his fortune, however, to see the first rift in theirclouded luck.
The color scheme of the mountain side, brown, white and gray, added inthe passing minute some new and stirring effects. On a higher slopewere arrayed a number of men wearing crest helmets, blue jackets andred trousers.
"Say, boss," drawled Billy, when he caught sight of these gorgeousfigures, "there's a circus band coming down the mountains."
Roque looked up. "Austrian dragoons!" he exclaimed. "We've rung thebell this time!"
Whether or not the dragoons heard Roque's exultant remarks, they were,nevertheless, gazing at and pointing to the spot where the strandedaviators were joyfully anticipating discovery. Willing to aid it,indeed, upstanding and waving welcome.
The soldiers came in haste to size up the strangely arrived visitors,and the leader recognized Roque as an oft-seen mixer in officialcircles. In calling him by name, however, the name was not "Roque."
The secret agent promptly explained the situation, and received heartyassurance that he could have enough petrol to carry him back toBerlin, if he wanted that much.
"We have fifteen air cruisers with us," stated the dragoon spokesman."By the way, who is your pilot? You must have plucked him young."
Billy, notwithstanding Henri's patient instruction, was a little shortyet in the Teuton tongue, but he had picked out of the conversationat this stage enough to put him wise to the fact that he was in thelimelight.
"A bud as to years, I'll admit, my dear lieutenant, but in genius,skill and daring a full flower; one of the master craftsmen of theflying profession, and I left a companion piece on the other side ofthe mountain."
Threading Roque's eloquent tribute no doubt was the memory of that mostrecent rescue performance of the Boy Aviators in the black pass ofUzsok.
The boy from Bangor felt like the bashful member of a graduating classwhen the dragoons committed friendly assault by slapping him betweenthe shoulders.
"Roten will steal you," laughingly predicted one of them. Billy laterdiscovered that Roten was the chief aviator at army headquarters.
It was decided by Roque that Billy and himself should rejoin Henri andSchneider at once, the reunited party returning together to this camp,and remaining until the development of new plans of the secret agent.
Roten suggested that as it was the intent of the aviation corps toinaugurate a reconnoitering expedition the following day, it would beof mutual pleasure and benefit to combine in the trip. Further, headvised Roque of a much more direct route over the mountains than theroundabout way uncertainly taken by the secret agent in coming.
"Consent"--this ready acceptance by Roque.
The army air scouts who were to participate in the expedition numberedeight, and the No. 3 piloted by Billy would measure speed with four ofthe swiftest biplanes in this branch of the service.
To the east of the Uzsok pass the Russians had constructed an elaboratenetwork of cement and earthwork trenches, and to make any headwayagainst the vigorous Muscovite defense at this point the Austriantroops would encounter a particularly difficult task.
It was up to the Austrian aviation corps to determine the true strengthof the position, and to weigh the chances of an assault with thepresent artillery equipment in support.
So it happened that the little fleet was going in just the rightdirection to enable Roque to reunite his own party, at the same timeaffording him the opportunity to see for himself what was going on.
Roten had been fully advised of the exact location in the pass of theforest tract where Schneider and Henri were supposed to be watching forthe return of their companions.
"We will find it without fail," he confidently declared, "and takingthe nearest way there."
A blinding snowstorm, beginning in the night, served to hold theaviators in shelter for another day. At the first sign of clearingweather, however, Roten decided to fly, though he explained that manylandmarks would be lost sight of under the drifts, markings recordedduring a previous journey.
"Follow the compass, old man."
This remark, ventured by one of the lieutenants, the chief airmanignored with a sniff.
"Pass the word to pull out," he snapped.
Five biplanes were off at the signal, and winging their way in perfectalignment. As far as vision extended billows upon billows of snowcapped the mountaintops and billows and billows of it smothered thedefiles. The observers shaded their eyes as best they could with theirhoods from the trying color effect, heightened by the reflection of thesun, and many times the pilots made hasty swipes with coat cuffs to drywet cheeks.
Roten changed the course more than once during the first hour out,indicating that he was missing here and there some familiar formationthat would aid the keeping of undeviating progress.
"We ought to get to the jumping-off place pretty soon at fifty miles anhour."
Billy felt that he had to say something to break the sailing monotony.
If Roque had an opinion he kept it to himself.
There was one thing sure, the flight had carried the aviators beyondthe path of the recent blizzard, for brown and gray were again showingabove the white in the checkered landscape.
That Roten was planning an intermission was apparent by the circlingaction of his machine over a plateau of broad expanse, probably anintermediate station with which he was acquainted.
His initiative set the balance of the flock on the down grade, and thepilots rejoiced over the immediate prospect of a thaw-out.
&nb
sp; The chief aviator wore a satisfied smile on his bewhiskeredcountenance. "The Carpathians were never built to down me," he brisklyproclaimed; "we'll go to the mark now like a bullet through cheese assoon as the steering boys get the cricks out of their backs."
"Come to think of it," volunteered Billy, "it is a tolerably niftymorning to hold a still curve for a hundred and twenty minutes at astretch."
Roten, who understood American, grinned appreciatively at thisrecognition of his welfare action in behalf of the pilots.
"Right over there, Mr. Roque," he continued, indicating a summit aquarter of a mile distant, "is a rise exactly on a line west from whereyou started the other day to hunt for petrol--some twenty miles orthereabouts."
"You ought to have a medal for accuracy, my friend," geniallycomplimented Roque, "and I apologize for holding the suspicion at leastonce to-day that the snow had thrown you out of balance."
"Can't blame you much, sir; I was mizzled a bit by too much whiteshroud back there. But here comes Ansel with the oil stove and thecoffee pot, and we will have a brew that will reach all the cold spotsunder the vest."
"You must have been born for this kind of business," piped Billy,viewing the food display on a blanket laid like a tablecloth and thesteaming coffee pot topping the little camp stove.
"I have had some experience in living in and out of an aeroplane,"modestly admitted Roten, "yet I have seen days when I wished that Ihadn't been born for this profession; hungry days, never-resting days,ever-perilous days. A sailor may be saved from shipwreck, a soldier hasa fighting chance on the ground, but when an aeroplane goes too farwrong, just save the pieces, that's all."
"Right you are, sir," earnestly declared Billy; "but get it in theblood once and there's no quitting."
"By the way, speaking of military aviation, and the cold we haveendured to-day, it is no more a question of climate in that sort ofwork. Why, Russia is away up in the hundreds in the number of itsaircraft."
"I expect that is true, Mr. Roque; I know I have met a few from overthere myself," grimly conceded Roten.
"Perhaps some that you will never meet again," suggested the secretagent.
"Perhaps," said the veteran airman, reputed to have been mixed up in asmany air duels as there were weeks in the year.
Billy, chumming it with Ansel, Roten's pilot, had challenged the newfriend for a footrace, which led the runners to the edge of the plateauon the north.
Looking across the intervening defile, their attention was attracted bya movement on the opposite slope, the first sign of life below observedsince they took flight from the Austrian camp early that morning.
"There is something doing over there," panted Billy, not yet recoveredfrom the exertion of beating his companion a foot or two in their speedcontest.
"I can't tell what it is, though," replied Ansel in broken English.
"It might be a bear," surmised Billy.
"More than one bear, then," claimed the Austrian, "for I just saw twoof the kind between the bushes."
"Your eyes are the better," conceded the boy; "there are two, one witha big hump on its back. I wish we could get over there."
Ansel shook his head. "You can't cross there on foot. Too deep."
"We can chase back and get the glasses anyhow."
Billy was already on the way for the means of satisfying his curiosity.
When the boy had secured the glasses and was hastening by the grouparound the little stove, Roque hailed him.
"What are you up to now?"
"Just going to take a pike at some mountain freak on the other side ofthe gully."
"Wait a minute, young man; I'll come and see what you have started."Roque carried a big bump of curiosity under his cap.
In the meantime, Ansel had told Roten about the slope climbers,whatever they were, and the aviation leader concluded that any sort ofinvestigation on this trip required his presence.
The whole company, then, trailed after Billy across the plateau, with ageneral view of deciding in force the value of the alleged discovery.
From the lookout point a battery of glasses were soon trained upon theslope designated by Billy and Ansel.
Roten hit the moving mark first this time.
"I'll be blest," he ejaculated, behind the steady aim of the binocle,"if it isn't one big man carrying another on his shoulders, and ashorter fellow bringing up the rear!"