The Aeroplane Express. The Boy Aeronaut's Grit

CHAPTER I

A CONDITIONAL BARGAIN

“Far as we go!”

As the conductor of the trolley made this announcement, the car came to a stop in a suburb of Newark, New Jersey. About two blocks beyond the end of the line, and almost on the edge of the salt marshes, rose a new and wide two-story brick building. Even from that distance could be heard the hum of men and machines.

“Much obliged,” answered the man. “That the place?”

The conductor nodded.

“Thanks,” said the passenger, who, although apparently a middle-aged man, sprang lightly to the ground. “Have a cigar?”

“If you don’t mind,” answered the conductor, “I’ll save it until this evening. I don’t often get a smoke like this.”

The man laughed, shoved his hand into the side pocket of his loose coat and drew out two more high-priced cigars.

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“Never put off a good thing too long,” he added, “you may lose it. Grab things while they’re in reach. Give one to your friend Bill up there.”

As the man, still smiling, turned to go, the conductor called out:

“Thanks, Colonel, I guess you’re a westerner. Folks ’round here haven’t got sense enough to wear a hat like that.”

“You’re a good guesser,” replied the man; “I’m from Utah. Good bye.”

A few minutes later, the man was standing before a door in the long building, labeled “Office.” Above the entrance was a small, new sign: American Aeroplane Company. It was a hot morning, and, as the man stopped to wipe his perspiring face with a big, white silk handkerchief, he swung a picturesque gray plainsman’s hat before him like a fan. He was without a vest, and wore a narrow, dark belt. But, beyond these, a negligee shirt and a brown flowing neck tie, there was no sign of the westerner about him. His trousers, coat and shoes were all fashionable and apparently of eastern make.

As he stood before the door, he looked at his watch. Then he whistled softly to himself.

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“Ten fifteen!” he exclaimed, under his breath. “An hour and a half from the Waldorf. The same goin’ back—that’s a quarter to twelve. An’ I’ve got to catch the limited at two.”

He opened the door and stepped into a large room where two or three girls and a couple of young men were busy at typewriters, file cases and telephones.

“The boss in?” asked the visitor of a young man who greeted him.

“Do you mean the manager, Mr. Atkinson?”

“Like as not! The man who sells airships.”

“Have you a card?”

“Some’eres, I guess. But just tell him there’s man out here wants to talk flyin’-machine if he’s got time.”

“Won’t you sit down?” persisted the clerk. “I’ll see if he’s busy.”

“Just tell him I’m kind o’ busy, too.”

While the clerk disappeared within a room opening out of the main office, the active westerner made a hasty examination of the place. On a table within the railed-off space in which he stood was a tray of business cards. He picked one up and read it:

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AMERICAN AEROPLANE COMPANY

Factory: Newark, New Jersey

Offices: New York, London, Paris, Chicago

Mr. Robert T. Atkinson, President

Capital Stock $1,000,000

Tested Aeroplanes Ready for Delivery

“This Mr. Atkinson?” began the westerner when he had been ushered into that gentleman’s private office.

“I am,” responded the aeroplane company official. “Pretty hot?”

“Hot enough,” smiled back the visitor; “but I don’t mind the heat when I can find a little shade occasionally and a drink of water. Out my way we’re a little shy on shade and water. I’m from Utah. And that ain’t the worst—I’m from southern Utah.”

President Atkinson motioned to a chair next the open window.

“Never been there,” he replied in much the same tone he might have said he had never visited the north pole.

“Few people have,” added the westerner. “Don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

Before he could find one of his own cigars, the aeroplane manager had thrust at him a box

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 of perfectos. Mr. Atkinson at once saw in the stranger a man of affairs, who had not come all the way out to the aeroplane factory to gossip. He judged correctly.

“I’ve got a card somewhere,” began the westerner briskly, as he closed a pair of white, steel-trap-like teeth on the cigar, “but it don’t say nothin’ but that my name’s Cook—R. C. Cook. I’m from Bluff, Utah.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Cook,” politely remarked the easterner, wondering at the same time what possible business Mr. Cook, of Bluff, Utah, could have with the American Aeroplane Company.

“I’m in New York on a quick trip, but I saw one of your circulars last night. I cut this out. It’s yours, ain’t it?”

Mr. Atkinson glanced at the clipping, smiled and nodded.

The circular read:

“The aeroplane is no longer a novelty or a wonder. The American Aeroplane Company, organized with a paid-up capital stock of $1,000,000, is now ready to deliver reliable and tested aeroplanes, standardized in make-up and ready to fly. We offer F. O. B. Newark, New Jersey, a complete car for $5,000. It comprehends

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 every development up to date. The frame is of Oregon spruce and bamboo—the planes of rubberized silk balloon cloth. The power plant is a four-cylinder, gasoline, water-cooled motorcycle engine, 25 H. P., cylinders 3¾ by 4. The control is extremely simple. The elevation is regulated by a steering lever, the balancing planes are specially designed devices controlled by the movement of the feet. The machine starts from the ground without track or outside help, and it can be taken apart in two hours.”

“That’s the price, is it?” added Mr. Cook, taking a long puff at his cigar.

“Just reduced,” explained Mr. Atkinson. “Our first machines sold for seven thousand dollars. But we mean to lead in this business. We have purchased every patent that we believe is needed in making a high-class aeroplane; and with our facilities we mean to popularize aeroplanes until they become as common as automobiles.”

“I want one of ’em,” said Mr. Cook.

The manager nodded his head as if the customer had ordered a bicycle or a buggy.

“That is,” added Mr. Cook, “providin’—”

He took another puff on his cigar, and then added:

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“I want one if I can find some one to run the thing.”

Mr. Atkinson shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s the only trouble that confronts us, Mr. Cook. We have as yet developed no training-school for aviators, as we have schools for chauffeurs.”

“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Cook, laughing and shaking his head, “I think one of them flyin’-machines’ll fit in my business all right, but you’ll have to find me a man to work it. I’ve crossed Death’s desert, I’ve gone down the big Canyon, I’ve chased and been chased by the Utes, and I may do all of them things again. But there’s one thing I wouldn’t do—I wouldn’t risk my neck in the best aeroplane ever made.”

Mr. Atkinson smiled.

“I’d like to sell you one of our machines, my friend; but I can’t promise to find you a capable operator. Tell me,” he added, unable to longer restrain his curiosity, “what use do you figure on making of the machine?”

“I ought to told you,” hastened the would-be purchaser in explanation. “We got a company out in Utah—mostly New York people,” he added parenthetically—“the Utah Mining and

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 Development Company. I’m the manager. Mr. F. E. Estebrook, of Hartford, is the president.”

Mr. Cook immediately rose in Mr. Atkinson’s estimation. Mr. Estebrook was one of the wealthy insurance men of Connecticut. No one stood higher in the New York financial world.

“I see,” observed Mr. Atkinson, now glad that he had extended to the westerner his best box of cigars.

“Well,” went on Mr. Cook, “we’ve got a big lot of work cut out down there in the desert—petroleum mainly,” he explained, “but metal, too. And just now it’s all prospecting. Maybe you don’t know southern Utah?”

The aeroplane company manager smiled in the negative.

“When they git done tellin’ you about the plains of Arizona, and New Mexico, just add one hundred per cent and call it Utah,” went on Mr. Cook. “It ain’t sand and bunch grass down there,” he added, with a grim smile. “It’s alkali deserts, borax holes, rotten volcano craters and river beds that ain’t seen water in a thousand years.”

“Don’t the Colorado and Green rivers run through it?” asked Mr. Atkinson, stepping to a large wall map.

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Mr. Cook grunted.

“They do,” he explained, “right through it, and they might as well be buried in steel tubes. What you goin’ to do with a river shootin’ along at the bottom of a gash in the ground a half mile deep? Mr. Atkinson,” continued the westerner. “I’ve known many a man to die o’ thirst on the banks of them rivers with the sound o’ gurglin’ water in his ears. As for gettin’ to that water, well you might reach it with a shot gun—nothin’ else.”

Mr. Atkinson turned, ready to hear Mr. Cook’s explanation:

“I went to Utah five years ago—I’m a Pennsylvanian. My hair was black then. It’s gray now. I got that in one week down in the San Juan river canyon. Sailin’ an aeroplane down there ain’t a goin’ to be no county fair job.”

“I don’t quite understand,” exclaimed Mr. Atkinson.

“It’s this,” explained Mr. Cook. “We’ve got from four to eight prospectin’ parties out on them deserts all the time. For weeks and months we don’t hear from them. Now and then, with the use of a few hardened plainsmen, we get word to them and reports back. It would be a big help to us if we could keep in

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 touch with them. And, more often, it would be a big help to them. They say an aeroplane can travel forty-five miles an hour. Why can’t I use it to keep track of our prospectors?”

Mr. Atkinson sat up, perplexed and surprised.

“It’s a novel idea,” he said, at last, “but I can’t see why it isn’t just the thing. Looks to me as if it is—” then he stopped. Mr. Atkinson’s business instinct had brought him a sudden idea. “Mr. Cook,” he added, a moment later, “we talk a good deal about the practicability of the aeroplane. This is the first real, business demand I have yet had for an aeroplane. The idea is great. There is no doubt the aeroplane can be utilized in just the way you outline. Within a radius of two hundred and fifty miles it could make daily visits to the remotest of your men, take orders to them, bring back reports, and—if necessary—carry them food and water.”

“Looked that way to me,” interrupted the westerner.

“No question about it. I’m going to make you a proposition. Our machines are selling at five thousand dollars. I’m so sure of the advertising possibilities of your project, that I’m going to make you a price of four thousand

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 dollars. I can’t miss this chance to make a real demonstration of the practicability of the aeroplane.”

“The price ain’t botherin’ me,” commented the westerner. “How about some one to work it? Some one who can stand Utah and borax and alkali—maybe Indians. You can fix his wages.”

Mr. Atkinson’s face lengthened.

“That’s another matter,” he said after a pause.

“Haven’t any one on tap?”

The aeroplane company manager shook his head. Mr. Cook looked at his watch. Then he grunted his disappointment.

“Well,” he said, rising, “it was an idea. If you can’t help me, I guess no one can. I’ve got to go—got to catch the two o’clock limited. Just keep my card. My offer stands. I’ll make it five thousand dollars for a machine if you send a man to do the trick. You can take four thousand dollars if you like and give some one a bonus of the other thousand to take the chance. I’ll pay him what you say and keep him long as he wants to stay.”

Mr. Atkinson was thinking hard.

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“I’m trying to think of some one with experience and grit,” he said.

“If you do,” said the westerner, shaking hands with Mr. Atkinson, “nail him, and send him to me. If he wants excitement, I’ll guarantee him the time of his life.”