“Barney.”

If the boy had known under what strange conditions this particular jazz performance would be given, he might have felt queer sensations creeping up his spinal column.

“I say!” exclaimed Bruce suddenly, “who’s this Major chap, anyway?  I’ve a notion he’s something rather big, maybe the biggest—­”

“You don’t mean?—­”

“I’m not saying anything,” protested Bruce, “but this other man I’m thinking of left a toe or two in the Arctic, and his face has freeze scars on it.  His name’s—­well, you know it as well as I do.”

“Shucks!  It couldn’t be,” exclaimed Barney.  “He wouldn’t be up here alone this way.”

“No, I guess not,” sighed Bruce.  “But it would be great sport if it were he, after all.”

Ten days later, a girl in her late teens stood shading her eyes watching a tiny object against the sky.  It might have been a hawk, but it was not; it was an airplane—­the Handley-Page, with the two young pilots and the Major on board.  The girl was La Vaune.  She stood there watching till the plane had dwindled to a dot, and the dot had disappeared.  Holding her apron to her eyes to hide her tears, she walked blindly into the house.

The adventurers were well on their way.

CHAPTER II

THE STRANGE LANDING

“I don’t like the way the Rolls-Royce is acting,” Bruce grumbled through his telephone to Barney, for, though they were not four feet apart, not a word could they hear, so great was the din of their two powerful engines.

“Same here,” answered Barney.  “Old Major ought to have given us more time to try ’em out.  Brand new.”

“Barren Lands far away.  Forced to land in tree-tops.  Good-night!”

After that there came only the monotonous roar of the engines.  The Major’s orders had been “Due north by west,” and now, though they had put fully two hundred miles between themselves and the last sign of civilization, they were still holding to their course.  They also had been directed to fly as low as was safe.  Three times the Major had barked an order into the receiver; always to circle some spot, while he swept the earth with a binocular as powerful as could be used in an airplane.  Three times he had given a second order to resume their course.

“He seems to be looking for something,” Barney said to himself, and at once he began wondering what it could be.  Mines of fabulous wealth were said to be hidden away in the hills and forests over which they were passing—­rich outcroppings of gold, silver and copper.  Perhaps the Major was trying to locate them from the air.  Here and there they passed over broad stretches of prairie, the grass of which would feed numberless herds of cattle.  Perhaps, too, the Major was examining these with an eye to future gain.  Then, again Barney thought of the illegal wireless station and he idly speculated on how it could be so important