A SHOT ACROSS THE BOWS.

The sensation of gliding through the air, entirely cut adrift from solid ground, is as novel as it is pleasant. The body seems suddenly to have acquired an indescribable lightness, and the spirits become equally buoyant. Dizziness, or vertigo, is unheard of among aËronauts. While on the ground a man may not be able to climb a ladder for a distance of ten feet without losing his head and falling, the same man can look downward for thousands of feet from a balloon with his nerves unruffled.

Joe McGlory, now for the first time leaping into the air with a flying machine, was holding his breath and hanging on desperately to keep himself from being shaken off his seat, but, to his astonishment, his fears were rapidly dying away within him.

The cowboy was a lad of pluck and daring; nevertheless, he had viewed his projected flight in a mood akin to panic. Although passionately fond of boats, yet the roll of a launch in a seaway always made him sick; in the same manner, perhaps, he was in love with flying machines, although it had taken a lot of strenuous work to get him to promise to go aloft.

The necessity, on account of wet ground, of juggling for a start, had thrown something of a wet blanket over McGlory's ardor. Once in the air, however, his enthusiasm arose as his fears went down.

Matt sat on the left side of the broad seat, firmly planted with his feet on the footrest and his body bent forward, one hand on the mechanism that expanded or contracted the great wings, and the other manipulating the rudder that gave the craft a vertical course.

On Matt's quickness of judgment and lightning-like celerity in shifting the levers, the lives of all three of the boys depended. Every change in the centre of air pressure—and this was shifting every second—had to be met with an expansion or contraction of the wings in order to make the centre of air pressure and the centre of gravity coincide at all times.

Upon Matt, therefore, fell all the labor and responsibility. He had no time to give to the scenery passing below, and what talking he indulged in was mechanical and of secondary importance to his work. But this is not to say that he missed all the pleasures of flying. A greater delight than that offered by the zest of danger and responsibility in the air would be hard to imagine. Every second his nerves were strung to tightest tension.

Ping sat between Matt and McGlory, his yellow hands clutching the rim of the seat between his knees. He was purring with happiness, like some overgrown cat, while a grin of heavenly joy parted his face as his eyes marked the muddy roads over which they were passing without hindrance.

Up and up Matt forced the machine until they reached a height of five hundred feet. Here the air was crisp and cool, and much steadier than the currents closer to the surface.

"Great!" shouted the cowboy. "I haven't the least fear that we're going to drop, and I'd just as lieve go out on the end of one of the wings and stand on my head."

"Don't do it," laughed Matt, keeping his eyes straight ahead, while his hand trawled constantly back and forth with the lever controlling the wing ends.

"Him plenty fine!" cooed Ping.

"Fine ain't the name for it," said McGlory. "I'm so plumb tickled I can't sit still. And to think that I shied and side-stepped, when I might have been having this fun right along! Well, we can't be so wise all the time as we are just some of the time, and that's a fact. How far do you make it, Matt, to where we're going?"

"A little over a hundred miles, as the crow flies."

"As the Comet flies, you mean. How fast are we going?"

"Fifty miles an hour."

"That clip will drop us near Burnt Creek in two hours. Whoop-ya!"

The cowboy let out a yell from pure exhilaration. Not a thought regarding possible accident ran through his head. The engine was working as sweetly as any motor had ever worked, the propeller was whirling at a speed that made it look like a solid disk, and the great wings were plunging through the air with the steady, swooping motion of a hawk in full flight.

A huddle of houses rushed toward the Comet, far below, and vanished behind.

"What was that, pard?" cried the cowboy.

"Minnewaukon," answered Matt.

At that moment the young motorist shifted the rudder behind, which was the one giving the craft her right and left course, and they made a half turn. As the Comet came around and pointed her nose toward the southwest, she careened, throwing the right-hand wings sharply upward.

McGlory gave vent to a hair-raising yell. He was hurled against Ping, and Ping, in turn, was thrown against Matt.

"Right yourselves, pards," called Matt. "That was nothing. When we swing around a turn we're bound to roll a little. You can't expect more of an air ship, you know, than you can of a boat in the water. You keep track of the time, Ping. Joe, follow our course on the map. You can hang on with one hand and hold the map open with the other. We can't sail without a chart."

Matt had secured his open-face watch to a bracket directly above Ping's head. The boy could see the time-piece without shifting his position.

The map McGlory had in his pocket. Removing the map from his coat with one hand, the cowboy opened it upon his knee.

With a ruler, Matt had drawn a line from Minnewaukon straight to the point where Burnt Creek emptied into the Missouri. This line ran directly southwest, crossing four lines of railroad, and as many towns.

"How are we going to know we're keeping the course, pard?" inquired McGlory. "We ought to have a compass."

"A compass wouldn't have been a bad thing to bring along," returned Matt, "but we'll be able to keep the course, all right, by watching for the towns we're due to pass. The first town is Flora, on the branch road running northwest from Oberon. If I'm not mistaken, there it is to the right of us. Hang on, both of you! I'm going to drop down close, Joe, while you hail one of the citizens and ask him if I've got the name of the place right."

There was plenty of excitement in the little prairie village. Men, women, and children could be seen rushing out of their houses and gazing upward at the strange monster in the sky. Everybody in that section had heard of Motor Matt and his aËroplanes, so the curiosity and surprise were tempered with a certain amount of knowledge.

"Hello, neighbor!" roared McGlory, as the air ship swept downward to within fifty feet of the ground, "what town is this?"

"Flora," came the reply. "Light, strangers, an' roost in our front yard. Ma and the children would like to get a good look at your machine, and——"

The voice faded to rearward, and "ma and the children" had to be disappointed.

Having assured himself that he was right, Matt headed the aËroplane toward the skies, once more.

Settlers' shacks, and more pretentious farmhouses, raced along under them, and in every place where there were any human beings, intense excitement was manifested as the Comet winged its way onward.

In less than fifteen minutes after passing Flora, they caught sight of another railroad track and another huddle of buildings. It was the "Soo" road, and the town was Manfred.

"How long have we been in the air, Ping?" asked Matt.

"Fitty-fi' minutes," replied the Chinaman.

"Manfred ain't many miles from Sykestown, pard," said Joe, "and we must be within gunshot of that place where we had our troubles, a few days back."

"I'm glad we're giving the spot a wide berth," returned Matt, with a wry face. "We've got to make better time," he added, opening the throttle; "we're not doing as well as I thought."

The Comet hurled herself onward at faster speed. The air of their flight whistled and sang in the boys' ears, and hills underneath leaped at them and then vanished rearward with dizzying swiftness.

"I'd like to travel in an aËroplane all the time," remarked McGlory. "Sufferin' skyrockets! What's the use of hoofin' it, or ridin' in railroad cars, when you can pick up a pair of wings and a motor and go gallywhooping through the air?"

The machine was well over the coteaus, now, and the rough country would hold, with only now and then an occasional break, clear to the Missouri.

Another railroad, and a cluster of dwellings known as "Goodrich," were passed, and the aËroplane slid along over the corner of McLean County and into Burleigh.

They were drawing close to Burnt Creek, and everything was going swimmingly. Matt, notwithstanding the severe strain upon him, was not in the least tired. In a little less than two hours after leaving Fort Totten they crossed their last railroad—a branch running northward from Bismarck. The town, near where they winged over the steel rails, was down on the map as "Arnold."

"Speak to me about this!" cried McGlory. "There's a creek under us, Matt, and I'll bet it's the one we're looking for."

"We're finding something else we were not looking for," answered the king of the motor boys grimly.

"What's that?" queried McGlory.

"Look straight ahead at the top of the next hill."

McGlory turned his eyes in the direction indicated. A number of rough-looking horsemen, evidently cowboys, were scattered over the hill. They were armed with rifles, and were spurring back and forth in an apparent desire to get directly in front of the Comet.

"Why, pard," shouted McGlory, "they're punchers, same as me. Punchers are a friendly lot, and that outfit wouldn't no more think of cutting up rough with us than——"

The words were taken out of the cowboy's mouth by the sharp crack of a rifle. One of the horsemen had fired, his bullet singing through the air in front of the Comet.

"That's across our bows," said Matt, "and it's an invitation to come down."

The "invitation" was seconded by a yell the import of which there was no mistaking.

"Hit the airth, you, up thar, or we'll bring ye down wrong-side up!"

"Nice outfit they are!" grunted McGlory. "Get into the sky a couple of miles, Matt, and—— Sufferin' terrors! What are you about?"

Motor Matt had pointed the air ship earthward, and was gliding toward the hilltop.

"No use, Joe," Matt answered. "They could hit us with their bullets and wreck us before we got out of range. They want to talk with us, and we might as well humor them."

"Mighty peculiar way for a lot of cowboys to act," muttered McGlory.

"No likee," said Ping.