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THE GREAT AIRSHIP WAS GOING A MILE A MINUTE, FOLLOWING THE WATER LINE BETWEEN THE TWO CONTINENTS.
Our Young Aeroplane Scouts
In Russia
OR
Lost On The Frozen Steppes
By HORACE PORTER
AUTHOR OF
“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In France and Belgium.”
“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In Germany.”
“Our Young Aeroplane Scouts In Turkey.”
A.L. BURT COMPANY
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1915
By A. L. BURT COMPANY
OUR YOUNG AEROPLANE SCOUTS IN RUSSIA
OUR YOUNG AEROPLANE SCOUTS IN RUSSIA.
CHAPTER I.
THE SIGN OF THE THUMB.
“Well, my young skyscrapers, I hear that you were lost in Petrograd, but the special messengers tell me that if anything else was lost it was not time on the way back.”
The aviation chief in Warsaw had this greeting for Our Young Aeroplane Scouts, Billy Barry, U. S. A., and his chum Henri Trouville, when the young airmen completed an interview with Colonel Malinkoff, the officer who had selected them as pilots for the dispatch-bearing aerial trip to the Russian capital.
“Maybe you think we are like bad pennies—always sure to turn up,” laughed Billy. “But, believe me,” continued the boy, “it was no merry jest to us when the strange streets seemed to have no end, and we knew that we were counted upon to pull out by daylight.”
“I can’t figure, upon my life, why you tried to foot it alone; at night, too, in a city like that.”
The aviation chief had another think coming to him, if he imagined for a minute that he was going to hear the real story of the Petrograd adventure from the youths he addressed.
“We thought the walk would do us good.”
Henri had some difficulty in keeping a serious face when Billy offered this plea as an excuse for the performance that had almost brought nervous prostration to Salisky and Marovitch, the dispatch bearers.
In a quiet corner later on, Henri had no desire to even smile when Billy gravely reviewed the possibility of the vengeful Cossack tracing them to Warsaw.
“You know,” said the boy from Bangor, “those fellows hang on like grim death when they have a grudge against anybody, and this wild and woolly scout is evidently anxious to stick his claws into us.”
“Maybe after all,” suggested Henri, “it is just because he thinks we are spies, having seen us working with or, rather, for the other side.”
“Why, then, didn’t he make his spring when we were within easy reach?”
“You forget, Billy,” replied Henri, “that by the time he had patched up his memory we were in Malinkoff palace, and even the tiger of the plains would hesitate before attempting to rough it with a Russian duke.”
“And there was a good reason why he did not have it out with us when we left the palace,” added Billy.
“A backway reason,” concluded Henri.
The Russian secret service, reputed to be a wonderfully efficient system, had now advices of the activities of that eminent arch-schemer, Roque, or whatever other name by which he was known, in this section of the war zone.
The blowing up of the war depot in Warsaw was less a mystery since the authorities had learned of the presence of this dreaded operator even so close as the width of a river.
If the wily Cossack could connect our boys with the previous movements of the aforesaid Roque, then, as Billy would say, “good night.”
In Colonel Malinkoff would be vested their only hope.
That the boys were not crazy about making another journey at present to Petrograd, goes without saying. They would be insane if they did, of their own accord.
But, luckily, their next flying assignment was the piloting of scouts sent out daily to observe the maneuvers of the great army in gray, then working on a new tack to break into the coveted city of Warsaw.
The aviators operated near a battle front nearly forty miles wide, and above a veritable hurricane of gunpowder, but in this experience Billy and Henri had grown old.
Once away from the city, and up in the air, their chief worry was behind them—their Cossack Nemesis could go hang!
From Salisky, now acting as observer in one of the biplanes, the boys learned of the fall of the great underground fortress of Przemysl, in and out of which they had served as aerial messengers, and where they had, not so long ago, bidden farewell to that gallant soldier-aviator, Stanislaws.
“I hope that ‘Stanny’ will be given a soft berth as a prisoner,” said Billy to his chum.
In the presence of the other airmen, however, the boys kept discreetly silent as to their acquaintance with the Austrian fort and town now overrun by the Russian forces.
Now and again there were days when Billy and Henri were relieved of the strain of constant aeroplane driving, and which was given to wandering about the streets of busy Warsaw.
One afternoon their steps inclined to the well remembered square with the tall column and heroic statue of bronze. In the door of a shop bearing the symbol of a silversmith, the proprietor happened to be standing when the boys strolled by.
This tradesman, at the time without trade, suddenly changed from sleepy attitude to one of alert anticipation after second view of the strollers. Under a skull cap of silk gleamed a pair of keen, blue eyes, and the smooth-shaven face of the man was alight with a half-smile of recognition.
He lifted his right hand with a peculiar gesture, the thumb folded into the palm.
Billy, idly glancing at the performer, remarked:
“That fellow wants to sell you a dinner set of fifty pieces, Buddy.”
“That hole in the wall wouldn’t hold half of it,” joked Henri.
The tradesman seemed puzzled at the lack of response to his thumb signal, but he was evidently determined to have a word with the boys.
With a low bow he stepped to the middle of the sidewalk, as if soliciting custom, and in English, with peculiar accent, softly mentioned a familiar term—Two Towers!
Billy started as if a torpedo had exploded underfoot.
“Where have I seen that face before?”
This thought wave was instantly merged into the sense of knowing:—
The coal heaver who had presented the soiled scrap of paper which summoned the young aviators to the twin towers on the day of the destruction of the war depot!
That face, though now clean of grime, was the same that had burned itself into the lad’s memory when the stirring message was delivered.
“I gave you the sign and you did not respond. Why?”
“Blest if I know what you mean,” Billy told the supposed silversmith.
“But it was to you that I was sent when the hour of need was near.”
“Now see here, for good and all, let me say that neither my chum nor myself has any knowledge of the inside workings about which you are trying to talk, and what’s more we don’t want to know anything about them. Mr. Roque showed us a lot, but I guess he stopped somewhere this side of the inner circle.”
Billy did not care to assume any new responsibility which might lead Henri and himself into some maze of mystery far beyond their depth.
The man addressed appeared to be puzzled at the boy’s reference to “Mr. Roque.” He evidently believed that Billy was fencing with him. “Kindly step into the store for a moment; I will not detain you long.”
Though both the boys had reached the same conclusion, that it was a sort of spider and the fly game, they impulsively followed the leader into the little shop.
Spreading a few articles of jewelry and silverware upon the top of the counter, as a cloak for the line of talk he was pursuing, he quickly remarked:
“I sometimes fear that I am a suspect, and we cannot be too careful in these times.”
Billy darted a look at Henri full of apprehension—“we cannot be too careful.”
“It is no use to hide behind the bush, one from the other, my young friends,” continued the man behind the counter; “of course, I do not blame you for being cautious, but now that we are past the limit of assurance, let us get together and talk straight.”
“You still have the advantage of us,” insisted Billy, glancing uneasily toward the door, as if contemplating a hasty move in that direction.
The keen blue eyes under the skull cap flashed a threat of growing irritation.
“Perhaps you do not appreciate, young man,” and the voice of the speaker sounding a harsh note, “that we sink or swim together. It is no ordinary tie that binds us, and woe to the one who breaks it.”
“Say, old scout,” interposed Henri, “this isn’t a theater.”
“Or an asylum,” added Billy.
How the silversmith would have resented these strokes at his manner of dramatic declaration was left for surmise, for at the moment his whole expression changed to one of bland greeting at the sight of a newcomer in the shop—a man who presented a wide front view, wearing a military cape and fairly bristling with authority, evidenced by his manner of pushing open the door and his heavy tread, which raised a creak from the floor as he strode to the counter where the boys were standing.
“They have just dug something that looks like a clock out of the ruins up there, Ricker, and as you are the nearest time tinker around here, I want you to come alone and see what you think of it.”
The boys saw the hue of ashes in the face of the tradesman, but the words that gave him the scare were as Greek to them.
“Certainly, sir; certainly,” the silversmith was saying, as he reached for his hat and greatcoat, hanging on a convenient peg. Turning to the boys, he politely directed them to the door, with an excellent imitation of regret that their expected purchase must be delayed by this emergency call.
On the sidewalk the boys watched the turn of the corner of the burly cape wearer and the silversmith, the latter walking like a weary soldier on a forced march.
“Here’s a pretty howdy-de-do, Buddy,” observed Henri, “getting twisted up with a fellow that evidently has a price on his head, and who thinks we are as deep in the muddle as he is. Did you ever see such luck?”
“If I knew a single word in the outlandish language spoken by that fat policeman I could tell better about our chances of being bothered again by the man with the thumb sign.”
It was not the first time that Billy had been stumped by the various lingoes in the war zone.
While the boys were dreaming that night of lurid initiation into some bloody brotherhood, there came riding into Warsaw a bevy of splendidly mounted horsemen, brilliantly attired in scarlet, gold-braided caftans, white waistcoats and blue trousers—imperial Cossacks from Petrograd!
CHAPTER II.
BETWEEN TWO FIRES.
The boys were aroused in the early morning by the shrill neighing of horses in the courtyard underneath the windows of their sleeping quarters, and other sounds indicating the incoming of a cavalry troop, created sufficient inducement, at least, for an after-waking peek at the night-riders who had cut off a good hour of slumber.
Billy, the first at the window, drew back with a sharp note of alarm.
“The fancy Cossacks!” he exclaimed.
“Quit your jollying,” cried Henri, unbelieving, bouncing out of his cot and barefooting it to the lookout point. “Jumping jimminy,” he excitedly admitted, when he saw one of the red horsemen in the act of dismounting, “you are right, sure enough.”
“But what are they doing here?” questioned Billy. “This is no stableyard.”
“Looking for us,” slyly insinuated Henri.
“Maybe there is more truth than poetry in that proposition.”
The boy from Bangor was taking the matter seriously.
In the interval several Cossacks, trailing their lances, crossed the courtyard to the main entrance of the building where the aviators were housed, and vigorously thumped for admission. These knights of the plain evidently held themselves to be privileged characters.
Billy and Henri, getting into their clothes as quickly as possible, poked their heads over the stair railing, from which location they could see and hear all that was happening in the spacious hall below.
By what they heard, however, they were not enlightened, for it was in the speech unknown to them, but enough and plenty in the sight of no other than the Cossack who had given them the evil eye in Petrograd.
The aviation chief seemed to be strenuously saying “no” to some question put by the giant in scarlet, shaking his head and handsweeping over his shoulder in directing manner.
The insistent intruder finally accepted the advices given, and with his companions again took to saddle, spurring their horses into a clattering gallop out of the paved enclosure.
Just as if they had not been watching and listening, the boys descended the stairs, giving their usual good morning salutations to their fellow aviators, who had all been attracted to the hall by the discussion just concluded.
To give the lads an understanding with the rest as to what it had all been about, the chief mingled French and English in his explanation.
“That big fellow is Nikita, who has been attached to the imperial service on account of his skill and daring as a scout. I heard a story about him only the other day. Along with ten comrades, he was captured through falling into an ambuscade. Three days later he turned up at the camp of his command with two bullets, one through his clothes, and one through his thigh. He was horseless, but carried his long lance. Without horse or weapons, he had crept during darkness from the tent in which he slept, got safely past the German sentries, and then reflected that it was a shame for a Cossack to lose his horse and lance. So, as the story goes, he crept back, recovered both horse and lance and galloped away. The horse was killed by a shot from an outpost, but I see that Nikita still has his lance. I tell you that this is a breed that never lets go.”
This last comment had a jarring effect upon both Billy and Henri. The latter, however, did not restrain a desire for some direct information:
“That’s a fine story, lieutenant, but it doesn’t tell what this wonderful warrior wanted here this morning.”
“He demanded an interview with the dispatch bearers who aeroplaned into Petrograd on a certain date—the same date, by the way, upon which you were detailed as pilots for Marovitch and Salisky. I had difficulty in convincing the Cossack that the men he was seeking were at present scouting along the Vistula south of Warsaw.”
“Where I wish we were this very minute.”
Billy had edged close to Henri to say it.
The aviation chief further advised that the Cossacks had gone to the general’s quarters, and would probably remain in Warsaw until they had completed a mission, of which he (the chief) knew nothing about, but which apparently had to do with some recent happening in Petrograd.
Right there the boys made up their minds that they had all the rest they needed, and Billy, as spokesman, so informed the lieutenant.
“If there are any air scouts going out to-day,” said the boy, “we want to be on the job.”
“All right, my birds,” agreed the lieutenant, “you will be marked first on the list.”
When at last the aerial assignment of the boys for the day was made they were greatly interested to learn that the flight was to be directly across the river, in which direction they had never traveled since the day they came into the city by the written directions of Roque.
The observers they were to pilot were immediately identified with the general’s staff, and the young aviators were duly advised of the rank of their passengers.
“They all look alike to me,” remarked Henri, as he and his chum waited at the hangars for the order to start—“all except Colonel Malinkoff, and he’s my pick every time.”
Nevertheless, the pilots showed proper deference when the officers boarded the aircraft, after briefly outlining the plan of journey. The boys did not take the time nor assume the trouble of telling that they needed no guide notes for this particular voyage!
The same old entrenchments skirted the mud-colored river, but thinly populated now, for the main body of German soldiery there had joined in the new move upon Warsaw from the northwest.
Billy and Henri had each an eye for their former earthy lodging, and marked in memory the very spot in the battlefield where the French boy had landed the firebrand Schneider for his desperate dash in rescue of the grounded colors.
Of the fate of the secret agent and his fighting attendant, however, no tidings came up from the mottled plain.
Somebody might know in the clean, white lodge-keeper’s kitchen, where the canary sang, but there was no available excuse to turn downward the swiftly sailing biplanes when they swept over the one bright spot in all that forbidding surface.
“I can recommend your license as master pilots,” jovially observed one of the officers when the machines again rested in the aviation field, just at sunset.
The other observer nodded approval of the compliment to the youngsters, and both found it not beneath their dignity to give Billy and Henri a hearty handshake.
The young aviators had hardly completed the housing of the biplanes when they were accosted by a loutish lad attired in a smock-frock and leather leggins.
With a pull at his forelock, the boy handed Billy a fold of notepaper, and then shuffled away.
“Some more shady business,” muttered Billy, opening the message.
One line, that was all:
“To-morrow noon. Sign of thumb.”
“Why can’t that fellow let us alone?”
With the petulant words Billy tore the note to shreds and cast them to the wind.
“Between the Cossack and this alleged silversmith,” complained Henri, “we will have more than enough practice as artful dodgers.”
“Got us both going and coming,” gloomily added Billy, “and no show for argument.”
“We don’t have to respond to that message, anyhow.”
“I don’t know about that, Henri; we might be able to convince the crank at the shop that we haven’t any hold on underground wires, and so get rid of him.”
“And then prove an alibi when we meet that Cossack.”
Henri wore a grin as he put this extra spoke in the wheel of hope that his chum was turning.
Humor, however, was not catching to Billy this evening. The boys sat in silence at the mess table, and as silently stole away to bed.
The young aviators had no call for their services the next day, and Billy insisted that they play a quitting visit to the little shop in the square. Besides, he had urged, they were less likely to encounter the Cossack out in the big city than if they idled about headquarters. His motion prevailed, and shortly before the tower clocks sounded the twelve strokes, the chums were rounding the tall column and nearing the symbol of the silversmith.
Ricker had an assistant on duty in front this day, a wild-eyed individual literally overgrown with hair on head and face. When the boys entered the shop the queer-looking clerk spoke not a word, but simply pounded with his knuckles on the counter.
The proprietor of the place quickly appeared from a curtained recess at the rear of the shop, and crooked a finger in beckoning invitation to the visitors to come back and join him.
The hairy assistant went to the street door, and after peering up and down the avenue, nodded clearance to his chief.
The boys perched themselves on a couple of high stools in the work room, while Ricker leaned against a low and broad shelf covered with equipment of the clockmaker’s trade.
Billy was determined to settle matters there and then and get clear of an annoying and dangerous complication.
“This is the last time,” he bluntly stated, “that we will stand for a call here. Just as I told you before, there was a limit to our knowledge of Mr. Roque’s affairs, and as he did not choose to take us all the way, we have no desire to be dragged along by any stranger. Running aeroplanes is our business, and we are not seeking to acquire any other profession. So it’s farewell on the spot.”
Ricker showed a red flush of anger rising to his cheekbones, but he tempered his reply to the boy’s declaration. “Stick to your flying trade, young man, as you will, but on your service the Cause has a claim, and the penalty for ignoring that claim will be exacted to the last farthing, be it blood or bones.”
The implied threat put a tingle in Billy’s spirited makeup, and, jumping from the stool, he impetuously took up the challenge of the silversmith with wordy proclamation:
“When we leave this place, understand me, we don’t return, and, again, not the slightest bit of attention do we pay to any further communication from you. You get me?”
Ricker put another curb on his temper, and his tone was even and subdued, slightly tinged with mockery as he replied to Billy’s forceful speech:
“You bluff beautifully, my young friend, but for one who was hand and glove with the great Herr Georges you wear your chains too lightly.”
“Herr Georges? Is he another growth in your mind?” Billy happened to think at the instant that “Georges” and “Roque” were one and the same person—as the secret agent changed his name as many times and as easily as he changed his clothes. But he let the question go as put, for a feeler, if nothing else.
“Oh, you know the one I mean, though you and I are seemingly at odds in naming him,” confidently asserted Ricker.
“But what of that?” argued Billy. “For all we know, Roque or Georges is beyond interest in the doings of earth, and, what’s more, we have paid our score and have been acquitted of the service.”
The silversmith turned thoughtful for the moment, hesitating as to his next word. Then, deliberately, he questioned:
“Do you mean to tell me that you knew nothing of the plot to blow up the war depot?”
The boys stared at the questioner in affright!
CHAPTER III.
TRAILED BY RED RIDERS.
The silversmith seemed satisfied that he had effectually unseated Billy from his highhorse position, and in cat and mouse attitude awaited complete surrender.
“You—you dare to voice that suspicion?” gasped the boy. “We never heard or even dreamed of such a plot, and with the coming of the shock hadn’t the least idea what caused it.”
“Is it not true that the pair of you at the very moment of the explosion were preparing to speed in aeroplanes to the rescue of at least two of the plotters?”
Ricker smiled as he presented what appeared to him to be a poser.
“Only half a truth,” cried Henri, “with the worst half added by you. We did intend to offer Roque a saving turn in one of his own machines, for old acquaintance sake, but not in the connection that you put it. For even that much, I know, you have us against the wall, but let me tell you, sir, if the worst comes to the worst we will confess our part to our friend Colonel Malinkoff and he can weigh the testimony that the three of us can give.”
This dropped Ricker, not only to a seat on a workbench, but in point of argument. Just back of him were the battered remains of a time-clock, with twisted wires still attached, for the custody of which he was responsible to the authorities, and about which, as an expert, he was expected to report the next morning. It was a part of the infernal machine dug out of the ruins of the war depot!
Both Billy and Henri were quick to observe that the silversmith was about all in, so to speak, and more than willing to play quits.
The man who had missed his reckoning an hour in the setting of a spring was not now disposed to perpetuate the error!
As the boys were about to push aside the curtain and get out into the open, a small bell suspended from the ceiling of the workroom softly tinkled. Ricker was on his feet in an instant and holding a finger to his lips.
At the store entrance some rapid-fire Russian was being exchanged, and Billy took the liberty of peeping through a slit in the drapery behind which he was concealed. The look was a blood freezer.
Nikita, the Cossack, and the hairy clerk were having it hammer and tongs about something, when all of a sudden the red rider unhanded one of his heavy leather gloves and with it struck the queer shop attendant full in the face.
Of all the malignant looks that Billy had ever seen on human countenance the blackest was pictured in the glaring eyes of the fierce servitor, who, retreating before the assaulting Cossack, had backed against the counter.
Ricker, catching the drift of the quarrel in front, turned quickly, and noiselessly pushed aside, in well-oiled grooves, a solid-back plate case, and to the opening revealed in the wall he beckoned the boys. “He is evidently after you, for some reason,” whispered the silversmith; “claims that he trailed you here. Is he friend or foe? Tell me quick.”
Without a word, Billy and Henri classed the hunter outside as a decided enemy by hurriedly slipping through the aperture, the case smoothly shutting the way behind them.
It was not in the program of Ricker that his shop should be the scene of an arrest, and, too, it was now in his interest that the boys should escape the probe of any investigation.
Having disposed of this dangerous exhibit in his back room, the silversmith hastened to the front to pacify, if possible, the unruly intruder.
Ricker, showing his best professional smile, stepped between the frowning Cossack and the enraged clerk, speaking a sharp word of warning to the latter, and asking the former what it was that he desired.
“Ah, two boys, air drivers, you say? I know them not. Reported to be in my shop? There cannot be good eyesight around here. Everything is open. This way, please.”
The silversmith moved backward, closely followed by the Cossack and several others of his kind, and pulled the curtains aside, with a sweeping gesture of invitation to search at will.
Though the keenest of trackers in the great outdoors, the red riders were at a loss when it came to detective work within four walls. They prodded with their lances bundles of wrapping paper in the several dark corners of the workroom and poked their heads into all of the packing cases, but with cunningly designed entrances into secret apartments they had no experience.
At last, scowling and grumbling, the baffled searchers marched themselves out of the shop. As the Cossack, Nikita, passed out the queer clerk shook a fist at the crimson-clad back, mumbling frightful maledictions to himself.
The silversmith assumed a busy manner, shifting the stock display on the shelves, winding clocks, and generally bustling about as if making up for lost time.
All this time the boys were completely shut off from every sight and sound in the musty room behind the plate-case.
“Wonder how long this lockup is going to last, Henri?”
“Until the shutters are put up in front, I suppose, Billy.”
“That’s entirely too long for me,” impatiently asserted the boy from Bangor. “Let’s see if there isn’t some other outlet to this den.”
But with all the sounding and pounding they could do, the lads found no back way to the dismal room.
And, too, they were baffled again and again by the mechanism of the sliding door by which they had entered.
Nothing more to do than to await the pleasure of the silversmith, and so they awaited, hour upon hour, seated on a rickety sofa, nursing their chins in their hands.
The one little, cobwebby window at the top of the dingy wall in front of them no longer showed light.
Then there was a click, a faint squeak, and Ricker appeared in the opening, cleared by the movement of the sliding case.
“Have they gone?” eagerly inquired Henri.
“Apparently so, but Hamar is out now to make sure that they have not set a watch on the place.”
“There’ll be somebody else hunting for us if we don’t get away pretty soon, and that will be a squad from headquarters. The lieutenant,” concluded Billy, “is mighty particular about the off-duty hours that the aviators keep.”
Hamar, the hairy lieutenant, had been a long time gone, and Ricker had difficulty in persuading the boys to lay quiet until positive assurance came that the coast was clear. With the next striking of the big clock in the square—it was eight—Billy declared against further delay.
“I really believe that Marovitch and Salisky have returned, without reason to the contrary have given the Cossack what they know of our history and identified us with the last trip to Petrograd. So what’s the use of further dodging? It will all come out, and if they hitch us onto the explosion plot—well, you can guess the rest.”
Ricker squirmed in his chair. “Say,” he pleaded, “hide here for a day or two and we will find a way to get you both across the river.”
“No,” declared Henri. “I’m going to put it up to Colonel Malinkoff this very night. He can, and I believe he will, save us from the fate of spies.”
“But what about me? Am I to be betrayed?”
The silversmith’s right hand was buried to the wrist within the breast-front of the loose coat he wore.
There was a muffled knock at the front door, twice repeated.
“Hamar,” muttered the silversmith, lowering his hand. “Stay where you are,” he hissed to the boys. With the turning of a ponderous key the wild-eyed servitor, hooded to the shoulders, pushed his way through the space in the half-opened door.
“Where in Satan’s name have you been?” growled Ricker.
The hairy man laughed—and it was a laugh to curdle the blood.
CHAPTER IV.
THE POISONED RING.
“Stow that yelp,” commanded Ricker; “it sets one’s teeth on edge. What are you playing the clown for, anyhow?”
Hamar threw back his hood, and with the black mane draping his temples and mingling with the mat on his face, eye and tooth glittering in the shaded glow of the swinging lamp overhead, he was the living picture of a fabled fury.
In words that ran in a stream of gutturals, deep in his throat, he told the story of the adventure that had prolonged his street scouting-mission, and here liberally translated.
“I sold him the ring—the very red man that struck me in the face—it was a rare work; he knew me not, my head down and covered. His dirty roubles—see?” (Hamar opened a clenched hand, in the palm of which were several silver coins.) “He has it on his finger. I told him it would bring him good luck—bring him to the worms I meant. Ha, ha. Go you,” addressing the boys; “no fear now.”
Ricker stood dumfounded at the completion of this outburst. Then he faced the young aviators, who had been held spellbound by the weird performance—meaning the actions, for the words were mere gibberish to them.
“Do you know what he has done?” exclaimed the silversmith—“why, he has put the death ring on the Cossack!”
Going behind the counter, Ricker took from under the glass case a tiny chamois bag and shook it over the polished surface. The bag was empty.
“This man, I tell you,” the silversmith cried, aiming an index finger at Hamar, who had relapsed into sullen indifference, “is a fanatic, not a patriot, and serves not for any government, but against all governments. That blow in the face went to his very soul, and here’s the result. What he has taken and used to wreak personal vengeance is known as a possession of mine, a curio, and often displayed to the curious, for the ring had this peculiarity—it is poisoned. The heat of the finger starts a poison to work that lies in the setting—whoever decorates his hand with it is dead in two weeks!”
“Yes, dead, dead,” mumbled Hamar.
“And woe to me if the foxes from the division of justice are in at the death; is it not enough,” groaned the silversmith, “that I am now beset on all sides?”
The passing thought to Billy and Henri—the wearing of the terrible jewel would rid them of their savage foe and avert a trial for their lives.
But, shuddering, the boys resented even the thought of such a relief.
The one overpowering impulse with both of them at the moment was to get out and away from this ferment of intrigue and passion, out into the free air, anywhere that offered a change.
With this end in view the lads had been slowly but surely edging, inch by inch, foot by foot, nearer the door, under cover of the exciting controversy between Ricker and his hairy henchman.
One twist of the key, a pull at the knob, and the trick was done.
But any mishap, a stumble, a catch in the lock, and Ricker and Hamar would be on their backs.
It was Henri, lightning fast in every movement, who essayed the first jump for the door. It was done in an instant when the silversmith, who was nervously pacing the floor, had faced the curtain in the rear of the store, and while Hamar had lifted his arms in the act of unfastening the loops that closed the collar of his heavy greatcoat.
The work of a second, and the bolt snapped back in the lock, the door rattled on its hinges by the force of its opening, and two lithe figures leaped out into the night!
If they were pursued they never knew it, for a deer would hardly have been in the running with them as they dashed across the square.
Once in the great avenue diverging northward, the lads again breathed freely, but wasted no time in making their way to aviation headquarters. If they had expected to be immediately hauled before stern judges to show cause why they should be permitted to live, they were agreeably disappointed. Not even the lieutenant was there to inquire about their overstay of leave.
“I can’t get that horrid ring business out of my mind,” said Henri, half rising from his cot, after the tired boys had supposedly settled for much needed rest.
“Neither can I,” promptly agreed Billy, who was just as wide awake as when he first jammed the pillow under his head.
“Do you suppose it might have been that those fellows invented that story just for our benefit?”
“Not a chance, Henri,” replied the U. S. A. boy; “that man Ricker is an actor all right, but in this show he was real; I’ll lay my life on that. And don’t tell me that the long-haired guy wasn’t in earnest. Steer me clear of him on a dark night.”
“What do you think we ought to do about it?”
No sleep for Henri until this question was settled.
“There you are,” said the sorely perplexed chum; “if we go to warn the Cossack it may not blunt the claws he has sharpened for us; if we tell it straight it will put Ricker on the rack, for nobody would believe that the crank who wished the ring on the red man did it of his own accord, and with Ricker against the wall there’s no telling how far he would go to fix us good and plenty.”
“If it was a fair fight like Schneider put up,” argued Henri, “it would be no strain of conscience, but to let slow poison work when we could stop it, it seems to me, would class us as first-aid assassins.”
“There is no other way then,” decided Billy, “but to get the tip, somehow, to the Cossack in the morning.”
If Nikita got the “tip” it did not happen in Warsaw, for the boys were informed in response to their break-of-day inquiry that the lance-bearing cavalryman had, the afternoon previous, been urgently summoned by aerial messenger to report at the headquarters of the greatest of Russian military commanders, a hundred miles east of Warsaw.
On steeds of tireless breed, and racing with the wind, the red riders had a long start of now these many hours.
“And that’s the end of it,” declared Henri, when told that the Cossack band was by this time far away, and by route known only to themselves.
Billy was as deep in thought just then as were his hands in his pockets.
“What’s the matter with chasing them in the biplanes?” he suddenly asked.
“Man alive,” cried Henri, “it is the very ticket!”
CHAPTER V.
STRIKING IT RIGHT.
How to bring about the flying assignment that would put them on the trail of the otherwise doomed Cossack was the next problem to engage the young aviators.
The boys well knew that aeroplane connection was being constantly maintained between Warsaw and the center of Russian operations at Brest Litovsk, one hundred miles east, even though numerous telegraph instruments, in the schoolhouse there occupied as headquarters by the mighty commander, ticked messages every minute day and night.
No weather conditions served to check modern aircraft, and hostile wire-cutters had nothing but the laugh due them when it came to intercepting or destroying aeroplane communication.
How much they would be compelled to tell to create an emergency for their journey, the boys had no fixed idea.
“Let’s try it first on the lieutenant,” suggested Billy, “and if he doesn’t see the way, have a talk direct with Colonel Malinkoff.”
“Whatever is to be done must be done at once,” declared Henri.
So they jointly proceeded in search of the aviation chief.
As though a change of luck had succeeded the recent adverse fortune assailing the lads, whom should they meet in crossing the aviation grounds but Salisky and Marovitch, the scouts and special messengers lately back from important mission to the front.
“Joy of my heart,” was the hail of Salisky, at sight of the pilots who had made the record flight from Petrograd, “if here isn’t the salt of the earth in two good packages.”
His companion observer showed equal pleasure in greeting the lads, and the four of them had a busy moment voicing questions and answers.
“Thought you had skipped with the Cossacks,” bantered Salisky; “the big chief of the riders put me through a regular course of sprouts in trying to get a line on you. I knew precious little, except that you were the right stuff and more than full hands in an aeroplane. Did he find you?”
“Not that anybody knows about,” replied Billy, “but we would like to find him just now.”
“You would have a noble chance of making that discovery if you were going with us,” put in Marovitch.
“Where are you going?” was Henri’s eager query.
“In two hours we will be in full sail for Brest Litovsk,” announced Salisky.
The boys each took an elbow grip on the speaker.
With one voice they cried: “Count us in on the flight, if you can!”
“Suits me all right,” promptly agreed Salisky, “but it is the lieutenant who names the pilots, and we are hunting for him now.”
“He’s the very man we have been looking for ourselves,” said Billy, “and we are more in a hurry than ever to get hold of him. Come along.”
The aviation chief had just emerged from the house quarters of a brother officer when the searchers surrounded him, Salisky presenting a written order, and the boys with difficulty refraining from putting their request in advance of the reading.
Indeed, the lieutenant had barely comprehended the text of the official billet before Henri was talking in one ear and Billy in the other. It was breach of discipline for which any of the veterans in the aviation corps would have forthwith been called down, but exuberant youth could not be denied.
The upshot of it was that the young aviators carried their point, having the hearty endorsement of the two men directly responsible for the success of the mission assigned to them.
“Talk about striking it right,” rejoiced Billy as Henri and himself were getting into suitable outfit for a long drive in the cold; “it certainly seems as if our good fairy were on the job to-day.”
“Maybe it was good intent that had something to do with the shaping of this venture,” added Henri. “It isn’t just like we were backing this effort with a solely selfish motive. If we have nothing to gain we might have everything to lose.”
“Come to think of it in that light,” said Billy, “if we don’t gain as much as the point at which we are aiming, it is somebody else that will lose—the Cossack will be minus his life.”
A corporal was calling from the hall below, and the pilots hastened to report themselves at the hangars where the military biplanes—the famous No. 3’s—were in trim for instant flight.
Salisky and Marovitch were ready and waiting, and at the signal from the aviation chief the aeroplanes were off like a shot, soon to be in touch with the directing power of the biggest army under one command in the world’s history of warfare—the Russian forces maneuvered by Grand Duke Nicholas along a battle front of 1,500 miles.
Yet in all the legions before them the hooded pilots, holding hard to the compass-set course of the winged cyclones, would first have eyes for but one equestrian figure, scarlet clad, with a sleeping death coiled in his hand.
From the observers behind them the Boy Aviators had withheld all mention of the original incentive for this particular service—but the time was approaching when this confidence must be extended. As well address an Eskimo in Arabic as to trip the tongues the lads knew over the language knowledge of Nikita, the wild horseman.
They must speak through the city-bred Muscovites with whom they were traveling—friends in need.
The main thing was to locate immediately the man they would warn and save, and with this end in view, a plea had been made to the observers to give note if in the sweep of their glasses they caught the ground picture of the crimson cavalcade.
But not once during the flight was there even a snapshot of anything like that picture—and it must needs be a waiting game, to be finished with the journey’s end.
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF THE CHASE.
A thin, spare figure rising to a height of over six and a half feet, in field uniform, without a show of ribbon, cross or medal, grim, silent and determined—this was the remarkable personality pointed out to the boys as the military head of the enormous army of seven million men.
The aviators had landed within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the Russian commander-in-chief.
When Salisky and Marovitch had reported to an adjutant and turned over the contents of their dispatch boxes to the proper authority, the time was opportune for the young airmen to solicit the aid of the veteran scouts in accomplishing that which they had set out to do.
“You are sure that nothing has turned your head?” anxiously inquired Salisky, when he had heard, in part, the thrilling story of the death ring and its secret menace to the life of Nikita.
“I am not cracked,” earnestly assured Billy, so earnestly indeed that his hearers’ unbelief was considerably modified, and both observers began to realize that the strange tale was not altogether the creation of a disordered mind.
Marovitch even recalled hearing some talk at one time of some such historical jewel owned in Warsaw, but memory failed him when it came to placing it.
The boys had said nothing to specify the former ownership of the dread decoration, and so did not repair this defect in the scout’s recollection.
“Taking it all seriously,” remarked Salisky, now about convinced that it was no myth with which they were dealing, “there is the duty of getting to the Cossack chief without delay. Death is an everyday visitor around here, but not in the form of slow poison, and there is peculiar interest enough in this idea of rescue to key us all up to high pitch.”
Marovitch, too, shared his comrade’s growing concern as to the importance of quick action. The driving force of intense interest inspired them all.
Consider their disappointment, then, when it was learned at headquarters that Nikita and his band had been but an hour in this camp, and were already pushing on toward Petrograd.
“Here’s where we stop, according to orders,” regretfully stated Salisky, “and I don’t know for how long, either.”
“Is there no earthly way to get a release?”
Billy was hoping against hope.
“Not unless by new instruction,” responded the scout.
“Do you suppose the ring story would let us out?” asked Henri.
“Don’t believe at all that they would swallow it,” advised Marovitch; “besides, it would probably take a lot of time to hit the trail of the red riders. Too much space out there.”
The speaker referred to the vast and trackless territory at the north.
Their first night in Brest Litovsk was not a happy one to the young aviators. They had set their hearts and minds to the mission of nullifying the vengeful scheme of Hamar, the very knowledge of which spelled guilt to them.
And here all their plans were as naught in the face of inexorable military rule, which held them fast until new commands succeeded the original order.
An attempt to steal away in one of the biplanes would be simply reckless folly, and of no avail—they had no definite advices as to the direction even that the Cossack band had taken in their proposed journey to the Russian capital, direct or roundabout, and, in addition, there was the fear that without an interpreter it would be equally foolish to approach Nikita, even though they located him.
The measure of life for the Cossack, with the death ring encircling his finger, fixed by Ricker as two weeks, and handed down, no doubt, with record of the ancient jewel, was still an uncertain quantity. It might be in this very hour that the slowly coursing venom had done its work.
The favor of just another day for the boys’ venture was needed to save it from hopeless failure. Once on the trail there was always the chance of making timely discovery; a continued internment in this camp, and there was left nothing but the distress of defeat and the reverse flight to Warsaw.
Would the streak of luck that in the first place had shunted the lads into the coveted aeroplane space be extended?
It so developed that that was just what happened, and Salisky was the early bird who brought the good news to the blanket bedsides of the drowsy pilots.
“There is a regiment of Turkomans reported on the move, riding up to the north line, and there is an order out for aeroplane service to convey directions to these troops from headquarters. Marovitch and I have the assignment—and that means our pilots, too.”
“Doesn’t that cover the route to Petrograd?” quickly questioned Billy.
“As far as two hundred and fifty miles,” advised Salisky.
“Bully! Do you hear that, Henri?”
“Well, I guess yes, Buddy.”
“Who are the Turkomans, anyhow?”
Billy wanted to learn a little every day.
“They are our new cavalry force,” explained Salisky, “and they are even quicker to ride at a fence of bayonets than the Don Cossacks, and that is saying something. They came from the desert, the oasis and the steppes of the Trans-Caspian provinces, as well as Caucasia, and they come of their own accord.”
“A famous fighting lot, that,” added Marovitch, “and of all the horsemen I have ever seen, these fellows are in the lead as whirlwind riders.”
“They’ll look good to us,” exclaimed Billy, “especially as they are the means of getting us out of here.”
While the scout-messengers were waiting for their orders, the boys put the biplanes in flying trim, and the party were off for the frozen north within the hour.
The young aviators had never seen entrenchments laid out on such a tremendous scale as in the early passing of this flight, and noted with wonder the fortifications set up by the Russians in the open field.
What Napoleon had once called the “fifth element”—Russian mud—was now sheeted with snow, and the great rivers and swamps were covered with ice—an impressive outlook with a real chill in it.
But of dead white scenery the young pilots had grown weary; with them the miles they left behind were of chief consequence—and full many a league had then been rolled backward under the top-speeding aeroplanes.
It was at Vilna, where the observers had been directed to go, that first landing was made by the aviators, and following which the scouts had advices of the near approach of the Turkomans.
Upon sight of these picturesque cavalrymen, who feared neither hardship nor danger, the boys were surprised at the youth of most of them, and for whom it had been said, “war is the great and only poem, their unique dream and faith.”
These bold riders wore dark-brown caftans, and full headdress, instead of the usual lambskin cap.
The sons of princes, khans or beks, the officers of these troops were keenly shrewd and intelligent, as well as fiery and impetuous.
They gave the envoys from army headquarters a respectful hearing, and in every way set back a common belief that the Turkomans generally were merely hordes without discipline.
Of greater interest than all else in the proceedings, as far as Billy and Henri were concerned, was the statement from a Turkoman chief brought out by inquiry from Salisky, and by the latter interpreted, that only the day before, traveling due northwest, the brown riders had met the red-clad Nikita and his comrade Cossacks at the crossing of the Duna River.
“One day’s ride, he says,” translated Salisky, “but he measures by the gait of a horse. Even counting upon the fact that the Cossacks have done some galloping since this meeting, it is no task to overhaul them now in our aeroplanes, providing, of course, we do not miss their trail. I will tell you what we will do,” continued the scout; “Marovitch and I will chance an extra dozen hours for this side expedition, but that is the limit of our discretion. We have no choice but to return to headquarters, and depend upon you drivers to make up most of the lost time.”
“You will get all there is in the motors,” assured Henri.
The upshoot of the biplanes presented a spectacular leave-taking to the horsemen, and they raised their lances on high in appreciation of the show.
The twelve hours allotted would have been all too brief in which to serve the purpose intended had the searching party been dependent upon ordinary means of locomotion, and with less wide range of vision.
But in less than three hours the biplanes had swept across the river mentioned by the Turkoman as the place of meeting with Nikita, and onrushed, with occasional deviations right and left from straight course, at hurricane speed.
The machines had traveled some fifty miles on the north side of the Duna, when a shout from Marovitch, in the craft driven by Henri, caused the pilot to suddenly set the planes for descent.
On the glittering white surface of the steppe there appeared a new color effect—moving discs of scarlet!
CHAPTER VII.
BROTHERS OF THE BLOOD.
The Cossacks rode in a wide circle, ’round and ’round the settled aeroplanes, at which the wild ponies snorted and seemingly feared to approach.
When, however, Salisky and Marovitch each gave vent to one of those weird calls peculiar to the denizens of the desert, the tribesmen drove their shaggy mounts full speed toward the searching party.
Nikita was the first to dismount. He knew the scouts, and gave them guttural greeting. The question in his keen eyes, though, did not sound from the lips. He had caught a glimpse of the boys, still seated in the biplanes. The tall chief was instantly a-quiver with a certain fierce joy of possession—that which he desired had apparently been delivered into his hands.
“You bring these young dogs to me?”
“We bring to you, chief, brave lads who have risked much for your welfare—for your life, chief, for your very life!”
Salisky, who had no knowledge of that past, wherein had crossed the paths of Nikita and these boys, and sizing only the present purpose of his young friends, was inclined to indignantly resent the address of the Cossack.
“With my life what have they to do?”
To the red rider the reply of Salisky was a riddle.
“They are but spies,” he continued accusingly, “and upon the heads of their kind is the blood of my brother.”
The speaker supplemented his words with a menacing movement toward the young pilots, who were wholly ignorant of the nature of this parley.
“Hold!”
The voice of Salisky had a hard note, and conveyed no double meaning.
Marovitch ranged alongside of his comrade, and each of the scouts rested a hand on the holsters attached to their belts.
The Cossacks, with lowered lances, closed in behind their chief.
Anything might have happened in the next minute if Billy, noting the trend of action, had not pushed himself to the front, and made eloquent plea to Salisky to avoid the threatened encounter.
“Explain to him,” cried the boy; “tell him right off the bat what we are here for; ask him about the ring; spar for time; scout, spar for time!”
Nikita, seeing this new breeze blow into the squall, was curious to know what the pleading was about. He grounded his lance, and his companions followed suit. The scouts relaxed their grip on their side arms.
The atmosphere had cleared a bit.
Acting upon the urgent suggestion of Billy, the scout, Salisky took the straight line in his talk to the Cossack.
“You bought a ring in Warsaw, chief?”
Nikita nodded, tapping a leather pouch at his girdle.
“He is not wearing it,” whispered Henri to his chum.
“We are on time then,” said Billy, with a sigh of relief.
“Of what concern of yours is this bauble?” Nikita was asking. He had taken the jewel from the pouch, and the glittering circlet was exposed in the open palm of his gauntlet.
“It is beautiful enough for a courtier to offer to his emperor,” murmured Marovitch.
“Save the thought!” exclaimed Salisky. “There is death in it!”
Nikita, holding the ring between thumb and forefinger, as if admiring its brilliancy, awaited further speech from Salisky.
“Of what concern, I say,” he repeated, “is it of yours that I paid my roubles for this shining thing?”
“Of this concern, chief,” impressively declared the scout addressed, “that with it on your finger you would be pointing your way to the grave; that with it on your finger in a few days the wolves might be snarling over your swollen corpse.”
The Cossack shook his head, and turned to his comrades, with a significant shrug of the shoulders, as much as to say that somebody’s mind was wandering.
“Tell him that the man of whom he bought the ring,” urged Billy, “had sworn revenge for a blow inflicted.”
Salisky put the information in form of understanding to the Cossack.
Nikita dropped his manner of incredulity like a shot.
“A blow. Now I remember; it was in the place where led the trail of these spies.”
“Drop that last, chief,” angrily challenged Salisky. “These boys, as I told you, have sought you day and night to save your life. Were they what you claim, is it likely that they would so desperately attempt to overturn that which would quietly remove one who hungered to lay them low? Have a thought, chief.”
Nikita was thinking, the savage in him was receding. He looked attentively at the death ring poised in his finger.
Then he cast the jewel downward to the ice-encrusted surface at his feet, and ground its shimmering facets under the pointed heel of his cavalry boot.
The Cossack had accepted as the whole truth the story of the ancient ring, and as fully realized the stated intent of these strange boys, who had raced with death that he, their deadly enemy, might retain the boon of life.
He spoke rapidly to his comrades, queer phrases that even the scouts did not comprehend.
That some sort of ceremony was under way was demonstrated by the next move of the tribesmen, when Billy and Henri became centerpieces in the parti-colored cluster of lance bearers.
The scouts, showing no disposition to interfere, the boys were convinced that the attentions paid to them were now wholly of a friendly nature.
But a severe test of such belief was furnished by Nikita, as the latter drew near to the lads, carrying in his right hand a dagger, with the point turned forward.
Only a reassuring glance from Salisky kept the young aviators from giving ground before the threatening advance.
Nikita, pausing before Billy, reached for the latter’s wrist, lifted it, made a tiny puncture near a smaller artery, and with the same dagger point slightly scarified his own wrist.
With Henri identically the same transfer of blood corpuscles passed from himself to the Cossack.
Upon each of the boys the Cossack then bestowed an amulet—lance points of flint, curiously marked, and with holes in the center, through which thongs had been drawn.
Translating the words of presentation, Salisky with due solemnity advised the young friends that “now and thereafter they were protected from anything that cuts or points, knives or daggers, carbines, long or short rifles, lances, against all kinds of metal, be it iron or steel, brass or lead, ore or wood, when in the hands of the Don Cossacks. This day and forever they were the adopted of the tribesmen of Southern Russia.”
“All the degrees at once,” said Billy, in undertone to Henri, while the latter was alternating a wondering eye between the thonged charm he was holding and the stern-visaged giver thereof.
“You never can tell but what these things might prove useful in a pinch around here,” was the side remark of the French boy, who had taken the ceremony more seriously than his chum.
He had occasion later on to remind Billy of this observation.
“How do you suppose he resisted the temptation of decorating his fist with that showy band?” was a new query that just occurred to the irrepressible one. “Put it across, Salisky.”
The scout, in his own way, made the inquiry.
“To one of our great, far away, had I planned to give it—and woe to me if I had.”
Salisky satisfied Billy’s curiosity by rewording the answer.
“There is one thing I am sorry about, now that the deck is cleared,” said Henri, “and that is the forced implication of Hamar—he’s a gone gosling, I fear.”
“Don’t worry about that,” replied Billy; “from the way things looked when we skipped the shop, I am pretty sure that the whole outfit has disappeared by this time. We could not help it, anyhow.”
While the boys were exchanging confidences, the Cossacks had mounted their ponies, preparatory to resuming their interrupted journey. As a last reminder of their new relations, the red riders, headed by the chief, rode in single file past the initiated brethren, giving each the sign of the lifted lance—the “high sign,” as Billy put it.
“Good-by, old top,” sang out the boy from Bangor; “glad everything is on the square now.”
The scouts looked reproof at this manner of address, but as the Cossack did not understand a word of it, no harm was done.
“Farewell, brothers,” called Henri, with more decorum.
“It is our turn now,” briskly broke in Salisky, “and I want some speeding to make our faces good at headquarters.”
“You will get it,” was Billy’s comeback when the young aviators started the buzz in the biplanes.
“It will take a week to get the water out of my eyes,” laughed Marovitch, when the machines dipped that evening into the camp at Brest Litovsk.
Expected orders for the dash back to Warsaw were not forthcoming.
The aviators were destined to view the river Vistula at an entirely different point—to see it again tumbling down from the snow-dad Carpathians, where the titanic war struggle raged with unabated vigor.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AVIATORS’ PLEDGE.
For several days, from behind the lines, the Boy Aviators had watched the Russian attack upon the heights on the north declivities of the Carpathians, in desperate endeavor to open a path to the highest ridges commanding the mountain wall.
Their own inaction on the edge of terrific combat, pouring in and out of Uzsok, Lupkow, and Dukla passes, had been nerve-racking. The roar of battle never ceased, day or night, and among all the Slav contenders swarming in the camp there were but two with whom they could commune, the familiar scouts, Salisky and Marovitch.
A welcome word then from the latter was the word “move.”
The flight of the aeroplanes from this point, where Lupkow pass pierced the Carpathians, followed the Vistula River in that part of its course which forms the boundary between Austria and Russia.
It was in the little town of Sandomir that the aviators rested after a continuous flight of 200 miles, and where the pilots met an old friend of the Przemysl time, none other than Stanislaws, in the guarded procession north of the defenders of the late Austrian fortress.
Billy and Henri did not hesitate in making a rush to greet this former comrade of the aerial profession, and eager to hear of the last days in the surrendered stronghold.
“Here you are again, Stanny,” cried the U. S. A. boy, “and, though the luck has run tough against you, we can’t help being glad of the chance to see you.”
The Austrian airman for the moment had a look askance at the green garb of the lads, indicating Russian service, but he could not long withhold hearty response to the advances of his young friends.
“I did not know you first, you gay turncoats,” he jovially quizzed, “but it’s a happy break in the gloom for me, I assure you.”
“As for that,” said Billy, touching the green sleeve of his coat, “we have simply been tossed about from one to the other of you until the Joseph we read about could scarcely have worn more colors on his back. But how did they get to you, Stanny? I thought the old fort didn’t have a hole in it.”
“There was an opening, though, my boy, and wide enough for famine and fever to crawl through. That was the combination that got to us first and there was nothing else to do but to give up. The rank and file did not know how near the rations were gone until Breckens, you remember him, was starting in his aeroplane with distress messages for Vienna. The Russians shot him down, and he fell within our line. The situation was then revealed. Well, my young friends, it is all over, and we have only one glow ahead—they have promised not to send us to Siberia.”
“But how was it that the aeroplanes could not bring in enough concentrated foodstuff to keep you ahead of hunger?”
Henri had recalled the many expeditions in which Billy and himself had participated to serve that purpose.
“An impossible task,” asserted Stanislaws. “With the rations entirely exhausted, there were one hundred and twenty thousand mouths to feed in the garrison alone, and civilian inhabitants, too, clamoring for food.”
“It must have been awful,” was Henri’s sympathetic comment.
Stanislaws passed a hand before his eyes, as if to shut out the terrible memory.
“Is there anything we can possibly do for you, Stanny?” earnestly asked Billy.
The haggard soldier in faded blue at first gave the negative by shaking his head. Then he suddenly asked:
“By any chance, do you suppose that you will visit Przemysl in your present routing?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Billy, “though it is evident that our scouts started here to get in touch with the Russian forces whose strength may be diverted elsewhere, now that the fortress has surrendered.”
“If it be so, and you are again privileged to move at will within the enclosure, there is a favor that you may safely, I believe, do for me.”
“Name it,” urged Billy.
“In the bastion at the extreme right of the west rampart of the inner fort is a loose stone, rough-faced, and marked by powder burn, cross shape. The stone can be moved with knife blade. Behind it you will find a moleskin belt, containing a decoration of great value to me and mine; a ruby-set sword hilt of far more value to a jeweler; a packet of letters, and several roleaux of gold. I would that you could accept the gold without danger, owing to its place of minting, but otherwise I pledge you to deliver this belt to the man, Fritz, at the Steiber Coffee House. Say to him, ‘It is for Eitel,’ and you will have fulfilled your promise.”
“What if there are no ‘Fritz’ and no ‘Coffee House’?”
Billy spoke like the critic of a contract.
“In that case,” wearily stated Stanislaws, “return the belt to the place I left it. In no event must you assume any further risk.”
“I don’t see why you didn’t get away in your aeroplane when you saw the jig was up. You could have done it with honor.”
Henri could not suppress his regret over this lost chance on the part of the Austrian.
“That was officially suggested to me more than once in the fort just before the storm broke,” said Stanislaws, “but the idea did not appeal to me. My duty was to sink or swim with the balance.”
It was not remarkable that the boys should be permitted to hold such lengthy converse with the prisoner, for as the companions of the noted scouts from headquarters they roved without hindrance, and, besides, had not the Muscovite troops themselves, but a short time previous, cheered the unarmed Austrians after their parade out of Przemysl?
That Salisky and Marovitch finally interrupted the interview was not a move of official interference, but due only to the emergency of their travel plan. The scouts attributed the interest taken by the lads in the trooper under guard solely to the fellowship of airmen.
“All aboard,” hailed Salisky, at sight of the young pilots; “we must be pushing on.”
“Where away?” called Billy.
“‘Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,’” quoted the scout. “But,” he instantly added, good-naturedly, “we expect to visit some new birds in an old nest.”
The inference was plain enough that the aeroplanes would be headed for the Przemysl fortress, and the direction taken by order speedily proved it.
Billy and Henri did not realize what a shake-up there had been in and about the stronghold since their leaving with Roque, until the machines they were driving hovered over the once familiar ground.
Heaps upon heaps of débris marked all that remained of the strongest of the outlying forts, which the Austrians had blown up preparatory to surrender.
Only the inner sections and the town itself, the boys observed, were intact.
Over all now the black double-headed Eagle of Russia—gone the long-resisting garrison of von Kusmanek.
Clearing the trenches and the barbed-wire entanglements, the pilots volplaned to the old landing place, where they had first met Stanislaws, the friend to whom they had just pledged their services for the only favor they could grant.
“Some changes here, pard,” remarked Billy, as they looked out and around from the rampart to which they had climbed.
“I should say,” commented Henri; “I see that all the bridges are gone, and that pontoon one leading out of the town, I suppose, was set up by the Russians immediately after the surrender.”
“Speaking of the town,” said Billy, “reminds me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go over and see if the Coffee House is yet standing, and if Fritz is still on his pins.”
“I expect Fritz has many times tightened his belt since the picking grew thin, let alone feeding the public as he used to do.”
“Well, old top, and what of it?” laughed Billy. “Fritz could buckle up a foot or two and then would never be mistaken for a fairy.”
The Steiber Coffee house, the boys soon discovered, was no longer a center of good cheer, bright fires and sanded floors, but an improvised hospital, crowded with the sick and wounded. Fritz, however, was there as large as life, and apparently none the worse for the horse-meat diet during the weeks of want and woe in the town.
Like Stanislaws, he had an extra look at the transformed aviators before he began to thaw into former genial address, a warning process instantly and wholly completed when Billy sounded in his ear the words, “It is for Eitel.”
This friend of many travelers, credited with speaking knowledge of seven different languages, probably used a little of all of them in the greeting inspired by the magic sentence.
“The same flying boys you are that sat at my fireside with the Herr Georges” (Roque) “and the red giant” (Schneider) “on that first dark night when the great guns were roaring across the river and you came in with the wind. Ah, how different now,” sighed the heavyweight host; “the good days are no more. And,” he concluded, “what of Eitel; what word of him?”
Henri told of the trust imposed in them by Stanislaws, and of the charge that they deliver to him (Fritz) the belt and the valuables therein.
“He knows, he knows,” murmured the innkeeper, with eyes moist and a tremor in his voice, “that old Fritz will find a way to reach his loved ones at home.”
“The next thing,” asserted the practical Billy, “is to pass you the trinkets, for we never know when the call will come to pull out for another station. Keep a happy thought, old man, until we see you again.”
With these parting words the lads sauntered back toward the fort, with a studied air of careless unconcern.
All the time they were figuring on the quickest way to get to the earthwork where Stanislaws’ treasure was concealed.
CHAPTER IX.
AN UNEXPECTED ORDER.
Within the fortress enclosure the boys took their bearings from memory and soon stood in the shadow of the west wall, in the location described by Stanislaws. They could see a sentry moving with measured tread on the narrow walk above them, and waited until he passed beyond the turret in the first turn of the circular parapet.
Billy led the way in setting foot on the elevation, with Henri close at his heels. In quick step they were within the angles of the bastion, and Billy took a peep along the wall to see if the sentinel had commenced his backward beat. But the guard was taking it leisurely, for no armed foe was known to be lurking without, and the duty of patrol this evening was a matter of military form.
Henri in the meantime had been casting about for the loose stone marked by the cross-shaped powder burn.
He had evidently found it, for Billy heard a whispered request for the loan of his knife.
Inserting the blade in the thin line where the mortar had crumbled, Henri dexterously twisted the stone out of its socket.
“It is here all right,” he said, holding up the belt for the inspection of his chum.
Billy, as a matter of precaution, replaced the stone and smoothed away with his foot the earth particles which had fallen with the knife chiseling.
When the guard finally approached, the belt was safely tucked away in Henri’s blouse, and both of the innocents were idly leaning over the parapet, apparently viewing the activity in the Russ encampment, across the San river.
The Slav soldier challenged the intruders in his own language, but in answer the boys simply shook their heads, indicating lack of understanding.
Looking downward, the guard hailed a number of Cossacks engaged in some lance-tilting game in the stone square.
The Dons surrounded the boys the minute they descended to the level, and failing to get satisfaction in their jerky string of questions, began to pull and haul the captives in a roughly sportive way.
The boys vigorously protested, but to no avail, and Billy even resorted to a real kick or two at savage shins. In the scuffle it so happened that the amulet which Nikita had given Henri fell out of the torn front of his blouse and under the feet of the tormentors.
The sight of the thonged lance-point had magic effect. The Cossacks ceased their badgering as one man quitting. The Don in authority had lifted a hand high above his head.
As Henri stooped to recover the flint talisman, the chief anticipated him, presenting it with a grave salutation to the bewildered lad.
It dawned then upon the aviators that they had been recognized as “brothers of the blood.”
Henri turned an “I told you so” glance at his chum. That “useful in a pinch” prediction had been verified in most opportune manner.
Salisky and Marovitch had no honor as a rescue party when they later arrived in the enclosure, completing a hurried search for their pilots, who had failed to report for the evening distribution of rations.
But the scouts could have exacted the credit of being a surprise, or, rather, surprised party when they plumped upon the seated group of Cossacks dividing the contents of their knapsacks with two youthful recruits occupying the center space at the feast.
“By my sainted ancestors,” exclaimed Salisky, “look at the lion tamers!”
He was careful, however, to say it in other than the native tongue.
“Been looking for us?” asked Billy in the most innocent way imaginable.
“No, we are just trotting about for our health,” ironically replied Marovitch.
“Better come along, however,” advised Salisky, suppressing an inclination to laugh, owing to the presence of the seriously gazing tribesmen.
“All ready,” cheerfully announced Billy, after Henri and himself had made a handshaking round of the circle.
Marching away with the scouts, it had been made up between the chums that the details of their adventure were strictly private business.
While particularly anxious to get Stanislaws’ belt to Fritz that very night, Henri concluded that the early morning would do, especially in view of the fact that Salisky had made no mention of any move immediately contemplated.
It developed, however, that the boy missed his reckoning, and proving the old saying that “delays are dangerous.” Hardly an hour of sleep, it seemed to the boys, had been granted them when the hand of Salisky dragged the pilots out of slumberland. In reality, it was cold, gray dawn which accompanied the awakening process.
“Orders to backtrack,” was the brief statement of the scout, himself already attired for flight, and with dispatch case swung over his shoulder.
“You don’t mean right away?” Henri sat up in his cot to put the question.
“Just as soon as you can get outside of some rations,” replied Salisky, “so there is no time for napping. It is a long ways to Warsaw and only two stations for food and fuel in between.”
“But you didn’t say a thing to us about it last night,” argued Henri, greatly disturbed by the prospect of failure to fulfill their pledge to Stanislaws.
“Come out of your dream, boys; it is not like you to question orders.”
The scout stood by while the boys prepared for the journey, and they were never alone again in this last hour in Przemysl.
Stanislaws’ belt weighed like a chunk of lead against the heart of Henri.
As Salisky had stated, the aviators had but two brief rest periods in the flight to Warsaw, and they traveled at lightning speed.
At the end of this air voyage, the aviation chief peremptorily ordered them off duty for at least two weeks. “No use of killing these birds,” he said to Salisky, with a chuckle, “when you have taken all the fat off their bones.”
In their old quarters that first night of their return to Warsaw from the Galician fortress, Henri looked about for a safe place to hide Stanislaws’ belt, which not only produced worry of mind but a positive irritation in the several days’ wearing. The chums lay awake long after the other aviators in the dormitory were deep in slumber, and cudgeled their brains to invent a way of shifting their new responsibility to some likely cache for the time being.
Billy happened to think of the rusty, dusty portrait of some long departed inmate of the house, hanging just outside the door which opened on the stair landing.
He transferred the thought into Henri’s ear, and the pair cautiously tiptoed across the room, taking advantage of the intermittent shafts of light sifting through the tall windows nearest the lamppost at the street corner.
“Gee whiz!” muttered Billy, halting in momentary anguish, after stubbing his toe against a chair leg.
“Ssh!” sibilantly warned Henri; “you’ll wake the dead with your clatter.”
Noiselessly drawing back the door, the boys stood under the iron-framed likeness of the early day representative of the household, Henri holding the moleskin girdle in the crook of his arm.
Billy did the squirrel act in mounting the newel post, and could easily reach behind the picture. His chum passed up the belt, and the climber hooked the brass buckle over the wooden peg from which the portrait was suspended.
“Safe enough now,” he whispered, sliding down from his perch, getting a helping arm from Henri.
Five minutes later the young aviators were sleeping the sleep of the satisfied.
