Chapter XVI: Fame--And a Little Fortune

"The returns are in from Devil's Lake City and Minnewaukon. Time, two hours and seven minutes. Distance traveled, ninety miles. This was at the rate of a little less than forty-five miles an hour, and the government ought to be completely satisfied. I know I am. Motor Matt, allow me to congratulate you."

One of the officers was doing the speaking.

It was three hours after the sensational finish of the trial. The crowds had departed. McGlory, a few officers, Cameron, and Matt were in the tent at Camp Traquair. Cameron, his head bandaged, was lying on a cot, but he was wide awake and smiling.

"I knew he could do the trick," said Cameron; "in fact, I've been confident of that ever since I saw him wabble around on his first flight with the aëroplane. What beats me, though, is how those ropes became notched."

"Sergeant O'Hara thinks he knows how it happened," explained the officer who had read off the _June Bug's_ record. "He and the other three guards were having a game of seven-up, last night, when they should have been giving their entire attention to watching the aëroplane. O'Hara thought he heard a noise around the machine. He investigated, but found no cause for uneasiness. After that, O'Hara declares, the card playing stopped; but, it now seems clear, the evil had already been done."

"We don't know that this fellow calling himself Siwash Charley was the scoundrel who filed the guy ropes," spoke up another officer.

"It's a positive certainty, in my own mind," declared Cameron.

"What your individual belief is, lieutenant, would hardly stand at a court-martial, or in a court of law."

"That's true, yes, sir. Siwash Charley was seen in Devil's Lake City yesterday----"

"Circumstantial, but hardly conclusive. He can't be found now. Fully a hundred men have been looking for him and are now on the trail, but Siwash Charley, if he was here, has vanished."

"I'm too happy over the way everything came out," put in Matt, "to waste any thoughts on Siwash Charley. The aëroplane has made good. There's no doubt about the sale to the government?"

"Not the slightest," came a chorus from the officers.

"There can't possibly be, Matt," added Cameron.

"That telegram of mine was sent to Mrs. Traquair?" Matt went on.

"It was sent from the post within half an hour after the aëroplane landed. By this time, Mrs. Traquair knows what Motor Matt has done for her."

"It wasn't that that I wanted her to understand, but the fact that a little fortune had come to her, and that she was no longer in the clutches of that loan shark, Murgatroyd."

"She knows that, too. A little fortune, I understand, has also come to Motor Matt."

"And more fame," put in McGlory, "than one modest young chap like my pard knows how to shoulder."

"What little fortune there is," smiled Matt, "is to be divided with my chum, Joe McGlory, who was a bigger help to me than I imagine he realized. Part of the fame should be his, too."

"Speak to me about that!" chuckled the cowboy. "Fame! Oh, yes, I ought to be plastered with it. Why, I wouldn't have gone up in the _June Bug_ for all the fame they tacked onto Napoleon."

There was a general laugh at this.

"I wonder what's become of Ping?" Matt inquired anxiously. "It isn't like him to hide out on us, in this fashion. The last I saw of him was last night."

"There is something queer about that," averred McGlory. "He ought to have been around to exult, Ping had, and it's----"

O'Hara stuck his head in at the tent flap, just at that moment.

"Beggin' yer pardon, sors, but there's an Injun just come, totin' a half-baked Chink. Do yez want thim insoide?"

"Sure!" cried Matt. "Send them in."

A Sioux Indian, looking anything but the noble red man in his moccasins and coat, hat, and trousers, pigeon toed his way into the tent with a brief but respectful "How!"

Behind him, half carried and half dragged, came Ping!

The boy was a sight.

He was bareheaded and barefooted; his usually neat blouse and baggy trousers were torn and soiled; his hands were bleeding, and there was a wild, despairing look on his yellow face. The wildness and the despair vanished, however, when he caught sight of Matt.

"By Klismas!" he gurgled. "Shiwas Charley no killee Motol Matt? Hoop-a-la!" and Ping ran to Matt and dropped down on his knees in front of him, hugging one of his hands in a maudlin expression of joy.

"Where have you been, Ping?" asked Matt.

"Allee same woods. Shiwas makee tie hands and feet, stoppee talk with gag. Whoosh! My thinkee you go topside, my no come tellee what Shiwas do. Velly bad pidgin!"

Then, little by little, Matt got the whole story of Ping's experience.

"You are positive Siwash Charley was one of the men who knocked you down, here at the camp, and carried you into the woods?" asked Matt.

"My savvy Shiwas plenty much," declared Ping.

"I guess there's our proof, gentlemen," said Cameron. "Siwash can't dodge that."

"Hardly," said one of the officers. "If Siwash is caught, he'll be taken care of. What a dastardly piece of work! What made the fellow such an enemy of yours, Matt?"

"He was only a tool in the hands of another," said Matt. "That other man was an enemy of Traquair's, and the fellow didn't want the aëroplane to stand the test she faced to-day. The money Mrs. Traquair is to receive will enable her to pay a mortgage which this other scoundrel holds on a quarter section of land in Wells County."

"And all this double-dealing is about a mortgage on a quarter section of prairie land! It hardly seems possible."

"There is something about that land I don't understand," admitted Matt. "But that's the way the matter stands, anyhow, no matter what is back of the mortgage. The government, I presume," he added, "merely buys the aëroplane? What it pays for the machine isn't a purchase of Traquair's patents?"

"Not at all," went on the officer who had been doing most of the talking. "The government simply buys this aëroplane, called the--er--the _June Bug_--a name, by the way, which I don't fancy--and the government likewise secures the right to purchase any other aëroplane using the Traquair patents, or to build such machines itself, paying Traquair's heirs at law a royalty."

"That," said Matt, "is liable to make Mrs. Traquair a rich woman."

"Well, hardly, unless the government goes into the aëroplane business rather more extensively than I think. Still, Mrs. Traquair should be assured of a modest competence, say, a hundred thousand dollars, or such a matter."

McGlory reeled on his chair.

"Modest competence!" he gulped. "Sufferin' poorhouses! Why, Mrs. Traquair wouldn't know how to spend a quarter of that money. She----"

"Tillygram, sor," announced O'Hara, again thrusting his head through the tent flap. "It jist came down from th' post an' has th' name av Motor Matt on th' face av ut."

Matt took the envelope and tore it open. His face crimsoned as he read, and he started to put the yellow slip away in his pocket.

But McGlory grabbed it.

"Listen to this once," said he, and read aloud:

"'How can a poor woman thank you for what you have done? You, and you
alone, have saved poor Harry Traquair's wife and children from more
bitterness and hardship than you will ever realize. God bless you!

MRS. TRAQUAIR.'"

THE END.

THE NEXT NUMBER (25) WILL CONTAIN

Motor Matt's Reverse;

OR,

CAUGHT IN A LOSING CAUSE.

Plotters Three--The New Aeroplane--Treachery and
Tragedy--Murgatroyd's First Move--A Startling Plan--The Air-line
into Trouble--Nothing Doing in Sykestown--Brought to Earth--The Coil
Tightens--The Door in the Hillside--A Revelation for Matt--Pecos
Takes a Chance--Besieged--The Broker's Game--Cant Phillips,
Deserter--The Losing Cause.

MOTOR STORIES

THRILLING ADVENTURE MOTOR FICTION

NEW YORK, August 7, 1909.

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