Chapter IV: Matt Explains to M'glory

Joe McGlory sat in front of the Gladstone House wondering what had become of his pard. Matt had been gone from the hotel for three hours, and when he left he thought he would be back in an hour. Just as McGlory had made up his mind to go bushwhacking around the town, in the hope of picking up his pard's trail, the king of the motor boys turned the corner, carrying a telescope satchel, and walking rapidly.

"Thought you were lost, strayed, or stolen, Matt," sang out McGlory. "What have you got there?" he added, his eyes on the grip.

"A flying machine," laughed Matt.

"Speak to me about that!" gasped the cowboy. "Has it come to this, pard, that every man can tote a flying machine in his grip, then unpack, and hit a trail through the clouds whenever he takes the blessed notion? Go on!"

"It's only a model," went on Matt. "Come up to our room, and I'll tell you about it."

"Let's sit in at grub pile first. The dinner gong was pounded half an hour ago, and I'm as hungry as a buck Injun on a diet of cottonwood bark."

Matt took the satchel into the dining room with him, and kept it between his feet all the while he was eating.

"You act like that thing was full of gold bricks," remarked McGlory, as he and Matt climbed the stairs to their room as soon as the meal was done.

"Not gold bricks," said Matt. "There's the biggest little thing in this grip, Joe, you ever saw in your life."

"Have you hired out to that Murgatroyd person as the human sky-rocket?" inquired McGlory, as he unlocked and opened the door of the room.

"I'm going to try out an aëroplane, up at Fort Totten, but not for Murgatroyd. A lot of things came up this morning, and that's what took me so long. The only way for you to get the whole business straight is for me to begin at the beginning. Now sit down, take it easy, and I'll tell you what I've found out, and what I've done."

The cowboy was anxious to see what was in the satchel, but Matt made no move to gratify his curiosity, just then; instead, he launched into his experiences at Murgatroyd's office, at City Park, and, lastly, at Mrs. Traquair's. When he was through, McGlory rubbed his eyes, stared, then rubbed his eyes and stared again.

"What's the matter with you?" inquired Matt.

"Dreamin'," answered the cowboy. "You're going to take a little fly for fame and fortune, and I'm in on the deal to the tune of two hundred and fifty cold plunks. It's all right, pard. I'd buy an interest in the North Pole if you thought there was any profit in icicles; but tell me: Will it be pleasant for your Uncle Joe to stand on the ground and watch you taking flyers in a thing that killed one fellow, and is hungry to wipe out another? Remember, I'm putting up two-fifty for the privilege. It's all very fine to help out a poor widow in distress, and to backcap a loan shark like Murgatroyd--that reads like a book, and I'm plumb tickled to help--but, son, there's your neck to think about."

"I'm not going to take any foolish chances, Joe," said Matt earnestly. "I'm hungry to run an aëroplane with a gas engine--and this aëroplane is the goods, don't forget that."

"Um-m! Suppose you let me look at the goods?"

Matt unbuckled the straps, and lifted the model of the aëroplane out of its case.

"Oh, tell me about that!" jeered the cowboy. "Two strips of cloth, one above the other, with an engine between 'em and a propeller behind! Fine! You'd look pretty a mile high in that thing!"

"This," said Matt, taking the model on his knee, "is the fruit of several hundred years of thought and study."

"Sufferin' buzzards! If I couldn't think up an arrangement like that in two minutes, and make it in three, I'm a Piute."

"When you understand it, Joe, you'll think differently. An aëroplane is like a kite, but instead of a string to pull it against the air, it has a propeller to push it. It's easy enough to fly a kite, but when you put a man in the kite, and a gas engine and other machinery, and take away the string that connects the kite with the earth, you're confronted with problems that it has taken centuries to solve."

"Keno!" spoke up McGlory. "And do you mean to say, Matt, that those two pieces of cloth have guessed the riddle?"

"They'll come pretty close to it," asserted Matt. "The thing that bothered, you see, was keeping the centre of wind-pressure coincident with the centre of gravity so the machine wouldn't turn turtle, or----"

"Help!" fluttered McGlory, throwing up his hands.

"A German named Lilienthal tried and failed, and so did an Englishman named Pilcher. It remained for the Wright brothers to work out the conundrum. Lilienthal and Pilcher shifted weights to keep their machine right side up in the air, but the American scientists shift the ends of the wings, or planes. Traquair's invention does away with the shifting of weights or planes. Look here, Joe."

Matt pulled a diminutive lever affixed to a platform in the middle of the lower plane. The ends of the left-hand wings drew in, and the ends of the right-hand wings simultaneously extended. By pulling the lever the other way, a contrary movement was effected.

"Sufferin' blockheads!" muttered the cowboy, pushing his fingers desperately through his thick hair. "I'm only in the primer, pard, and you're leading me through the hardest part of the fifth reader. Shucks!"

"You can understand, can't you," went on Matt patiently, "that closing or opening the wings distributes the air pressure on each side of the machine and holds it level?"

"Never mind me, pard," said McGlory. "Keep right on."

"These bicycle wheels," and Matt indicated three wheels under the aëroplane, "give the machine its start."

"It's got to have a running start, eh?"

"Sure. When a bird begins to take wing it has to have some kind of a start. A small bird jumps into the air, and a big bird, like a condor, has to take a run before its wings take a grip on the atmosphere. It's the same with an aëroplane. A speed of twenty-eight miles an hour is required before the air under the planes will lift the flying machine. The motor of this machine is geared to the bicycle wheels, at the start. When the machine is running fast enough, the power is switched to the propeller--and up we go!"

"Mebby we do," muttered the cowboy, "but I wouldn't bet on it. Then, again, if we go up will we stay up? And how can you guide the blooming thing skyward, or on a level, or come down?"

"Why," continued Matt, "these two little planes in front of the big ones attend to that." He shifted them with a lever to show McGlory how they worked. "This upright rudder behind," he added, "shifts the course to right or left."

"I'll take your word for it, Matt," said the cowboy. "I've taken a good many slim chances in my life, but you'll never catch me taking a chance on one of those things."

"I don't intend to ask you to take any chances, Joe," proceeded Matt. "All I want you to do is to trail along and attend to the work below while I'm in the air. Traquair has invented something here that's scientific and valuable, and I'm sure we can make a winner out of it, and not only help Mrs. Traquair, but ourselves, as well. That work of ours in Madison netted us more than twelve hundred dollars. The question is, do you want to put in two hundred and fifty dollars with me on the chance of raking in seven thousand five hundred up at Fort Totten?"

"You couldn't keep me from takin' that bet with a shotgun," averred the cowboy. "If you're in on the deal, then that means me, too, any old day you find in the almanac. We'll go to Fort Totten, Matt, and while you're paddlin' around in the air I'll hunt up soft places for you to 'light. Your head's pretty level on most things, and it's a cinch you must have this business figured out pretty straight, but----"

At that moment, a hullaballoo came up from the street. The room occupied by the boys was at the front of the building, and the two windows were open.

"Sufferin' cats," cried McGlory, starting for one of the windows, "I wonder if that's a fire? Ever since we had that close call at the burnin' boathouse on Fourth Lake, I'm scared of a fire."

But it wasn't a fire. A Chinese boy was rushing down the street like a whirlwind, his silk blouse and baggy trousers fluttering and snapping in the wind of his flight, and his pigtail standing straight out behind him.

Back of the Chinaman came a bear. The bear was muzzled, and there was a collar about its neck and some six or eight feet of chain rattling around its legs. The bear was going after the Chinaman like a brown streak, and a whopping crowd of onlookers was gathering on the sidewalks.

"Great jump sparks!" cried Matt, astounded; "Why, it's Ping!"

"Ping it is, pard, and no mistake!" gasped McGlory; "and we left Ping in Madison, workin' for Lorry. How did he get here? And how in Sam Hill did that bear pick up his trail?"

But Matt was already out of the room, and halfway down the stairs on a run for the street.