WHAT NEXT?

"An elegant day—for ducks," said Joe McGlory, turning from the window against which a torrent of rain was splashing. "I'd about got my nerve screwed up to the place where I was going to take a fly with you in the Comet, pard."

"Well," laughed Matt, "perhaps it will be a clear, still day to-morrow, Joe."

"The day may be all right, but whether I have the necessary amount of nerve is a question. It takes sand to sit on a couple of wings and let a gasoline engine push you through the clouds. Sufferin' jack rabbits! Why, Ping, that little, slant-eyed chink, has got more sand than me when it comes to slidin' around through the firmament on a couple o' squares of canvas. I'm disgusted with myself, and that's honest."

"It's as easy as falling off a log," remarked Lieutenant Cameron, of the Signal Corps. "I've been up with Matt, and I know. He does all the work, McGlory. You won't have to do anything but sit tight and hang on."

"'Sit tight and hang on!'" echoed the cowboy. "Sounds easy, don't it? At the same time, Cameron, you know that if your hair ain't parted in the middle, the overweight on one side is liable to make the Comet turn turtle."

"Hardly as bad as that," grinned Matt.

The three—Lieutenant Cameron, Motor Matt, and Joe McGlory—were in Cameron's quarters in officers' row at the post.

One window of the room overlooked the parade ground and, if the weather had not been so thick, would have given a view of the old barracks, beyond. Another window commanded a prospect of the lake, just now surging high and lashing its waters against the foot of the bluff on which the fort stood.

The post was practically abandoned, and no more than a handful of soldiers were in possession. Most of these comprised a detail of the Signal Corps sent there for the try-out of the Traquair aËroplane with which Matt had acquitted himself so creditably.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and all day long Matt and McGlory had been housed up at the post on account of the storm.

Ping Pong, the Chinese boy, was watching the aËroplane, which was in a big shelter tent not far from the post trader's store.

The cowboy, grumbling over the cheerless prospect from each window of the room, finally returned to his rocking-chair and sat down.

"What next, Matt?" inquired Cameron. "You don't remain long in any one place, and I've been wondering when you'd leave here and where you'd go."

"We're liable to break out in any old place on the map," said McGlory. "That's what I like about trailing around with Pard Matt. You never know, from one week to the next, whether you're going to hang up your hat in Alaska or Panama. It's the uncertainty and the vast possibilities that hooked me."

"I haven't laid any plans," remarked the king of the motor boys. "The failure of the government to buy that aËroplane, after Joe and I had put up a lot of money and time building it, leaves me with the machine on my hands. It's something of a white elephant."

"It needn't be a white elephant," returned Cameron. "You can crate the Comet and leave it here at the post until you find a use for it. The other aËroplane which you and Mrs. Traquair sold the war department is going to prove such a success that I am sure the government will be after this one. It will take a little time. There's a certain amount of red tape connected with the matter, you know."

"I'm hoping the government will buy the machine, but I don't feel like leaving it in storage while we're waiting for the war department to make up its mind."

"Why don't you go hunting for Murgatroyd?" inquired Cameron. "The government has offered a reward of one thousand dollars for his capture."

Murgatroyd had not only tried to wreck the first Traquair aËroplane at the time of the government trials at Fort Totten, but he had also resorted to crime in an attempt to secure, from Mrs. Traquair, a quarter section of land in Wells County, which, for some mysterious reason of his own, he was eager to get hold of. A deserter from the army, Cant Phillips by name, had assisted Murgatroyd in his nefarious work; and, for that, Phillips was now on his way to Fort Leavenworth to serve out a long sentence in a government prison, and Amos Murgatroyd was a fugitive.

Matt and his friends had been drawn into these lawless plots of the broker's, and Cameron supposed that, apart from the reward offered for the broker's capture, the young motorist would be eager to see him brought to book.

"I've lost interest in Murgatroyd," said Matt. "He's a scoundrel, and the government is dealing with him. What I want to do is to put the aËroplane to some profitable use. It was damaged considerably, when Murgatroyd brought it down with that rifle shot, and Joe and I have had to put up about three hundred more good dollars for repairs. Now that it's all shipshape and ready to fly once more, I feel as though we ought to make it earn something for us, instead of leaving it here at Fort Totten in storage."

"AËroplanes are built to sell, aren't they?" asked the lieutenant quizzically. "How can you make any profit off them if you don't sell them?"

"Well, for one thing," replied Matt, "aËro clubs, in different parts of the world, are offering prizes for flights in flying machines. This machine of Traquair's, as you know, Cameron, is the best one yet invented. It can go farther and do more than any other aËroplane on the market."

"I guess that's right," agreed Cameron.

"However, I'm not thinking of flying for a prize. We'd have to go to Europe in order to get busy with a project of that sort, and I don't want to leave the United States—at least, not for a while yet."

"I wouldn't go out of the country, Matt," said Cameron earnestly. "You're under contract, you know, not to dispose of any of the Traquair patents to foreign governments."

"I wasn't thinking of such a thing as that, Cameron. What I was thinking of is this: Yesterday I received a letter from a show—— one of these 'tented aggregations,' as they're called in the bills—offering five hundred dollars a week if we would travel with the outfit and give two short flights each day from the show grounds——"

McGlory was on his feet in an instant, waving his hand above his head and hurrahing.

"That hits me plump!" he cried. "I've always wanted to do something in a show. Whoop-ya! Matt, you old sphinx, why didn't you say something about this before?"

"I've been turning the proposition over in my mind," answered Matt. "Frankly, I don't like the idea of traveling with a show so much as I do the prospect of earning five hundred a week. I'll have to find out, too, whether the manager of the show is good for the money before I'll talk with him."

"Are we going to St. Paul for an interview?"

"No, to Fargo. The show will make that town in about a week, and I wired the manager that we would meet him there. The Comet will carry two light-weight passengers in addition to the operator, so you and Ping, Joe, will have to fly with me to Fargo. We can save railroad fare by going in the aËroplane, and that's why I want to get you accustomed to being in the air with the machine."

Cameron listened to Matt with an air that showed plainly his disapproval.

"You won't like the show business, Matt," he declared.

"I understand that," was the response, "but it's the salary that appeals to me."

"Furthermore," continued Cameron, "the manager of the show will probably dock your salary every time you fail to pull off a flight. You know how hard it is to bank on the weather. At least half of each week, I should say at a guess, you will find it too windy to go up."

"We'll have to have an understanding with the manager about that. It will have to be a pretty stiff wind, though, to keep me from flying. I've got the knack of handling the aËroplane, now, and a moderate breeze won't bother me at all."

"The show's the thing!" jubilated McGlory. "Speak to me about that, will you? The king of the motor boys and the Comet will be top-liners. And draw? Well, I should say! Why, they'll draw the people like a house afire."

The first Traquair aËroplane—the one sold to the government after the Fort Totten trials had been christened the June Bug by McGlory; but this one, built by Matt after the Traquair model, he had himself named the Comet. This name was to perpetuate the memory of a motorcycle which Matt had owned and had used with telling effect in far-away Arizona.

"I'm sure I wish you all the luck in the world, Matt," said Cameron heartily, "although I tell you flat that this show project of yours doesn't commend itself to me worth a cent. However, you know your own business best. You have demonstrated, beyond all doubt, that the Traquair aËroplane can travel across country equally as well as around a prescribed course. This makes it possible for you to take your friends aboard and fly to Fargo, or to New York, if you want to—providing the wind isn't too strong and nothing goes wrong with the machinery, but——"

Cameron did not finish. Just at that moment a rap fell on the door, and he turned in his chair to ask who was outside.

"O'Hara, sor," came the response from the hall.

"What is it, O'Hara?"

"There's a little old man wid me, sor, who has just rained in from Minnewaukon. He's as damp as a fish and about all in, sor, an' he's afther wantin' t' spake wid Motor Matt."

"Bring him in, at once."

The door opened and Sergeant O'Hara entered the room, half dragging and half carrying a water-soaked individual who dropped feebly into a chair.

"Prebbles!" exclaimed the king of the motor boys, starting back in amazement.