Part 7 (1/2)
One thing pleased them, and this was the fact that for the most part the return journey would be down-grade. In consequence they expected to make the distance separating them from the road in about half the time it had taken in coming.
Bud hurried through the morning meal. Indeed, Ralph even joked him on his seeming lack of appet.i.te; for as a rule Bud was a good feeder and came second only to Billy Worth, long recognized as champion in the troop.
”Well, you see,” Bud explained, ”there are a whole lot of important things I mean to do to-day, and the sooner I get busy the better chance I'll have to go through the list. First thing of all is to take a little tramp around toward the west of the camp, to see if I can stumble on the place where that last old shooting star struck us.
I'm going to look sharp for a hole, because it seems to me such a big lump of iron and other ore would smash into our earth at a pretty lively clip.”
”Hold on a minute and let's start fair!” called out Ralph. ”We're just as anxious as you are to make some sort of discovery, eh, Hugh?”
”Some sort, yes,” the patrol leader admitted, with a queer little smile that Bud noticed, but could not understand just then.
So the three boys started to comb the immediate vicinity of the shack, spreading out in something like a fan formation. They took to the west, because all of them seemed to be of one opinion: that the dreadful crash had come from that particular quarter.
Now and then one of them would call out or give the Wolf signal, just to inform the others where he happened to be. In this manner some ten minutes went by and Hugh was thinking that the explosion must have been much further away than any of them had suspected at the time, when Bud was heard giving tongue.
Bud, when excited, always broke loose and allowed himself free rein.
”Come this way, boys!” he was shouting gleefully. ”I've run the old meteor to earth. My stars! what a terrible hole she did make!
Must be as big as a house!”
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 pa.s.sing so swiftly through s.p.a.ce. 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.”