Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 106: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

732 Therefore, after a moment or two of up- ward climbing, Northrup straightened out to his course and sped away toward the looming ranges on the west. Bob continued for a longer time at cir- cling the field. It had been several months since he was up in the air, and besides he was operating an absolutely new plane. He wanted to get used to the feel of the joy- stick in his hand once more, and also to try the paces of his mount before he at- tempted much with it. However, he very soon found that he had lost none of his former skill. The ma- chine, too, to his delight, proved all that he could have wished, answering perfectly to the various controls, and showing no tricks or caprices in its steady flight. By the end of fifteen minutes he felt that he was all set for his job, and, leaving the field with its ring of upward-gazing specta- tors behind him, sailed away across the spires and chimneys of the town and out over the desert. The great dead expanse lay stretched out before him like a sea, with every hollow on its surface, every acclivity, every jutting rock, or growth of cactus as plainly visible in the vivid moonlight as though it had been midday. He followed in his general direction the trail which he had covered that morning with Van Carpen and J. P. in the flivver; for he and Northrup had agreed that it would be useless to search the country nearer town than the Rawlinson tract, since that had been thoroughly gone over by the various automobile parties that had been out. Bob’s plan, instead, was to start in at about the location of the oil well, and, using that as a landmark, to traverse a circle of about a hundred miles in diameter, then by flying in narrowing circles to cover the whole interior territory. If he failed to discover anything, he would take another circle and follow the same line of procedure, and so continue. It had taken them several hours to reach the oil well on that earlier trip, but at the rate he was traveling he expected te arrive there in less than thirty minutes. Yet strangely enough when his air sense ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. and his watch told him that he should have reached the spot there was no sign of the derrick and the little huddle of shacks about it. Could he have mistaken his direction? No; the stars indicated plainly to him the points of the compass. In addition, he had recognized several landmarks on the way which sufficiently confirmed his course. Moreover, even if he had erred by as much as twenty miles, his increased range of vision due to the height of the plane should have enabled him in that clear air and with such brilliant moonlight to dis- cern the objects of his quest. It never struck him, of course, that the elaborate plant he had visited was a mere stage setting put up to impose on him, and that now having served its purpose, and with the performance over, it was on its way to the next stand. Instead, baffled and at sea, he flew aim- lessly hither and thither, hunting for a sight of it. Mounting to a higher altitude in order to get a wider view, his searching gaze was finally caught not by the thing for which he was looking, but by a series of moving dots off on the desert. Or, rather, it was the thing he was look- ing for, only in another and unrecognizable form. It was in fact the caravan of motor trucks with which Red was moving on with his properties and paraphernalia, Bob never dreamed of such an explana- tion as this; but instantly he was on fire with excitement. The oil well and all his puzzled conjectures in regard to it were forgotten now. His one idea was to find out who was abroad on the desert at night in this fashion; for before he had started out he had learned that there would prob- ably be no one on the trails who had a legitimate errand. In such a sparsely settled country, where every householder knew all the other resi- dents for miles around and most of the details of their movements, this had not been especially hard to determine. The sheriff after half an hour spent at the tele- phone had been able to assure him that with one or two trifling exceptions none of the desert folk would be stirring at night. CoOmicloooks (C@