Chapter XVIII: Trails That Crossed

WHEN the biplane bearing Chief Roque and Billy Barry cleared the mountain top, the pilot and observer had a fixed understanding that every Russian camp was to be given a wide berth, for with fuel tanks going dry it would have been the top of folly to invite a long chase from the Muscovite airmen. And then, too, it was no part of a safe and sane program to risk an enforced descent in hostile domain.

"Keep her nose southward," commanded Roque, "and we may find the Austrian 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 cheering sign of the friendly forces sought by the anxious aviators.

"It has just dawned upon me that our army has again entrenched in the mountains, for we could not possibly have come so far in the open without a single sight that would encourage further search in this direction."

Roque trained his glasses to the east, where the snow-capped peaks of the Carpathians were showing in the dim distance.

"It's a good forty miles in that turn," figured Billy, "and whether we can 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 definite objective--hit or miss, they were no longer wandering.

Within a mile of the first slope the pilot knew that the jig was up with 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 aëroplane took the downshoot and 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 proposed to reach speech through meditation. The secret agent with his long coat-tail dusted the powdery snow from a flat stone and calmly took his ease behind the glowing tip of a long cigar.

"He must have wireless communication with a tobacco shop," thought Billy, "for he never fails to find one of those black rolls when he reaches for it."

The young pilot, muffled in a blanket, stuck to his seat in the biplane. It was his fortune, however, to see the first rift in their clouded luck.

The color scheme of the mountain side, brown, white and gray, added in the passing minute some new and stirring effects. On a higher slope were arrayed a number of men wearing crest helmets, blue jackets and red trousers.

"Say, boss," drawled Billy, when he caught sight of these gorgeous figures, "there's a circus band coming down the mountains."

Roque looked up. "Austrian dragoons!" he exclaimed. "We've rung the bell this time!"

Whether or not the dragoons heard Roque's exultant remarks, they were, nevertheless, gazing at and pointing to the spot where the stranded aviators 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 official circles. In calling him by name, however, the name was not "Roque."

The secret agent promptly explained the situation, and received hearty assurance that he could have enough petrol to carry him back to Berlin, 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 short yet in the Teuton tongue, but he had picked out of the conversation at this stage enough to put him wise to the fact that he was in the limelight.

"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 the flying profession, and I left a companion piece on the other side of the mountain."

Threading Roque's eloquent tribute no doubt was the memory of that most recent rescue performance of the Boy Aviators in the black pass of Uzsok.

The boy from Bangor felt like the bashful member of a graduating class when the dragoons committed friendly assault by slapping him between the shoulders.

"Roten will steal you," laughingly predicted one of them. Billy later discovered that Roten was the chief aviator at army headquarters.

It was decided by Roque that Billy and himself should rejoin Henri and Schneider 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 to inaugurate a reconnoitering expedition the following day, it would be of mutual pleasure and benefit to combine in the trip. Further, he advised Roque of a much more direct route over the mountains than the roundabout 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 numbered eight, and the No. 3 piloted by Billy would measure speed with four of the swiftest biplanes in this branch of the service.

To the east of the Uzsok pass the Russians had constructed an elaborate network of cement and earthwork trenches, and to make any headway against the vigorous Muscovite defense at this point the Austrian troops would encounter a particularly difficult task.

It was up to the Austrian aviation corps to determine the true strength of the position, and to weigh the chances of an assault with the present artillery equipment in support.

So it happened that the little fleet was going in just the right direction to enable Roque to reunite his own party, at the same time affording him the opportunity to see for himself what was going on.

Roten had been fully advised of the exact location in the pass of the forest tract where Schneider and Henri were supposed to be watching for the return of their companions.

"We will find it without fail," he confidently declared, "and taking the nearest way there."

A blinding snowstorm, beginning in the night, served to hold the aviators in shelter for another day. At the first sign of clearing weather, however, Roten decided to fly, though he explained that many landmarks would be lost sight of under the drifts, markings recorded during a previous journey.

"Follow the compass, old man."

This remark, ventured by one of the lieutenants, the chief airman ignored with a sniff.

"Pass the word to pull out," he snapped.

Five biplanes were off at the signal, and winging their way in perfect alignment. As far as vision extended billows upon billows of snow capped the mountaintops and billows and billows of it smothered the defiles. The observers shaded their eyes as best they could with their hoods from the trying color effect, heightened by the reflection of the sun, and many times the pilots made hasty swipes with coat cuffs to dry wet cheeks.

Roten changed the course more than once during the first hour out, indicating that he was missing here and there some familiar formation that would aid the keeping of undeviating progress.

"We ought to get to the jumping-off place pretty soon at fifty miles an hour."

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 beyond the path of the recent blizzard, for brown and gray were again showing above the white in the checkered landscape.

That Roten was planning an intermission was apparent by the circling action of his machine over a plateau of broad expanse, probably an intermediate station with which he was acquainted.

His initiative set the balance of the flock on the down grade, and the pilots rejoiced over the immediate prospect of a thaw-out.

The chief aviator wore a satisfied smile on his bewhiskered countenance. "The Carpathians were never built to down me," he briskly proclaimed; "we'll go to the mark now like a bullet through cheese as soon as the steering boys get the cricks out of their backs."

"Come to think of it," volunteered Billy, "it is a tolerably nifty morning to hold a still curve for a hundred and twenty minutes at a stretch."

Roten, who understood American, grinned appreciatively at this recognition of his welfare action in behalf of the pilots.

"Right over there, Mr. Roque," he continued, indicating a summit a quarter of a mile distant, "is a rise exactly on a line west from where you started the other day to hunt for petrol--some twenty miles or thereabouts."

"You ought to have a medal for accuracy, my friend," genially complimented Roque, "and I apologize for holding the suspicion at least once 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 white shroud back there. But here comes Ansel with the oil stove and the coffee pot, and we will have a brew that will reach all the cold spots under 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 the steaming coffee pot topping the little camp stove.

"I have had some experience in living in and out of an aëroplane," modestly admitted Roten, "yet I have seen days when I wished that I hadn't been born for this profession; hungry days, never-resting days, ever-perilous days. A sailor may be saved from shipwreck, a soldier has a fighting chance on the ground, but when an aëroplane goes too far wrong, just save the pieces, that's all."

"Right you are, sir," earnestly declared Billy; "but get it in the blood once and there's no quitting."

"By the way, speaking of military aviation, and the cold we have endured to-day, it is no more a question of climate in that sort of work. Why, Russia is away up in the hundreds in the number of its aircraft."

"I expect that is true, Mr. Roque; I know I have met a few from over there myself," grimly conceded Roten.

"Perhaps some that you will never meet again," suggested the secret agent.

"Perhaps," said the veteran airman, reputed to have been mixed up in as many air duels as there were weeks in the year.

Billy, chumming it with Ansel, Roten's pilot, had challenged the new friend for a footrace, which led the runners to the edge of the plateau on the north.

Looking across the intervening defile, their attention was attracted by a movement on the opposite slope, the first sign of life below observed since they took flight from the Austrian camp early that morning.

"There is something doing over there," panted Billy, not yet recovered from the exertion of beating his companion a foot or two in their speed contest.

"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 two of the kind between the bushes."

"Your eyes are the better," conceded the boy; "there are two, one with a 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 group around 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 of the 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 of investigation on this trip required his presence.

The whole company, then, trailed after Billy across the plateau, with a general view of deciding in force the value of the alleged discovery.

From the lookout point a battery of glasses were soon trained upon the slope 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 a shorter fellow bringing up the rear!"