“I reckin that’s jus’ more dum’ lyin’.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’ get sassy, young feller, it won’t do you no good.  But I’ll come with you.  Come on, boys, we’ll take a look at this flyin’ thing.  I reckon that even if it is a trap there’s enough of us to take care of a pack of them.”

“That’s right, Jeb,” agreed the men.

Some of them, who had been hanging back in the bushes, now came forward.  They were all as wild-looking as their leader, Jeb.  The old woman mumbled and talked to herself as they strode off behind Roy and Peggy.

It was one of the strangest adventures of their lives and neither one of them could hit on any explanation of the hillmen’s conduct.

It did not take long to reach the aeroplane, and Roy turned triumphantly to Jeb.

“Well,” he said, “what do you think now?”

“Wa’al, it ain’t flyin’, is it?”

“Of course not, but I can make it.”

“You kin?”

“Certainly.”

“Flap its wings and all that like a burd?”

“No, it doesn’t flap its wings.”

“Then how kin it fly?” propounded Jeb.

A murmur of approval ran through the throng.  Jeb’s logic appealed to their primitive intellects.

“Nothing can’t fly that don’t flap its wings,” said one of them.

“But if it didn’t fly, how in tarnation did it git here?” asked an old man with a grizzled beard and blackened stumps of teeth projecting from shrunken gums.

This appeared to be a poser for even Jeb.  He had nothing to say.

“If you like I’ll give you a ride in it,” proffered Roy to Jeb.

“All right; only no monkey tricks now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wa’al, in course I know it won’t fly, but if it does you’ll hev to let me out.”

With this sage remark Jeb stepped gingerly into the chassis of the aeroplane.  He sat down where he was told and Roy took the wheel.  Jeb’s companions gazed on in awed silence.

“Look out, Jeb,” cried one.

“Don’t hit the sky,” yelled another.

“Bring me back a star,” howled the facetious old man.

“Me a bit of the moon,” called another.

Jeb said nothing to this raillery.  Instead, he looked uneasily about him and held his rifle, which he had insisted on bringing with him, between his knees.

“All right?” asked Roy, looking back at him.

“As right as I ever will be,” rejoined Jeb, with a rather sickly grin.

“You must hold tight,” warned Peggy.

“I’m doing that,” said Jeb.

And then with the same sickly grin: 

“Say, miss, does it really fly?”

“Of course it does.  As that old man said, how could it have got here if it didn’t.”

“I guess I’d better go home and git my coat,” said Jeb, trying to climb out.

His demeanor had completely changed since he had climbed into the chassis.  Something in its well-cushioned seats and the sight of the powerful engine and propeller seemed to have changed his mind about the capabilities of the Golden Butterfly.