CHAPTER VIII

UNCLE SAM’S FLYING SQUADRON

“How—–­oo—–­ooo!”

Ralph gave the long-drawn cry of the timber wolf as he hurried in the direction of Bud’s shouts.  Hugh speedily joined him, coming from some side quarter, and the pair were soon closing in on the other scout.

They found Bud clinging to a shattered sapling and staring down into a gaping aperture that looked big enough for the excavation of a church cellar.  All around were evidences of a most tremendous explosion or upheaval, some trees being actually shattered and others leaning over as though ready to fall.

“Talk to me about your meteors,” burst out the wondering Bud as he saw the others coming along, “I hope to goodness one of them never drops down on our roof at home.  Just looky here what it did to the poor old earth!  That sky traveler’s as big as the parsonage, I should think.”

Hugh turned to Ralph.

“No doubt about what happened now, is there?” he asked.

“Well, I should say not,” came the answer, as Ralph stared down into the hole.

“Must be some new sort of explosive they’re experimenting with,” added the patrol leader seriously; “and to look at that gap you’d believe it beats dynamite all hollow.  Drop a bomb made of that stuff on a fort, and goodby to the whole business.”

“W—–­what’s that?” exclaimed the wondering Bud.  “Do you mean to tell me that it wasn’t a meteor that made all that racket the last two nights?”

“So far as I know,” Hugh told him, “when a meteor drops down, it buries itself in the earth and gradually cools off, for it’s been made almost red-hot by passing so swiftly through space.  But it doesn’t, as a rule, burst and tear a horrible slash in the ground like this.”

“Then what made it, Hugh?” asked the other, evidently puzzled.

“A dropped bomb!”

“A bomb, you say?  Oh, Hugh, that was why the old aeroplane kept circling all around, wasn’t it?  They were picking out some place to make a big hole!  Whee!  No wonder then they came up here to this lonely place to try things out.  A farmer’d be apt to kick like a steer if he waked up some fine morning and found holes like this in his garden or field.  It’s good we didn’t happen to be standing here when they dropped the bomb, as you call it.”

“I had an idea of something like this last night,” Hugh said; “but thought best not to mention it until I could see my way clearer.  But now the last doubt has gone, and I know the truth.”

“But Hugh, who could it be trying out this awful explosive, and wanting to do it where no curious eyes could watch the operation?”

“I don’t know that, Bud, but we can guess.  It must be either some company in the market with explosives, or else the Government itself trying to see how the Flying Squadron, as they call their aerial arm of the service, could work in time of actual war.”