“Tex, call Trent Burton to come here at once,” he said, a glad ring to his voice. “Red, I’ll bet your old red head, that’s my friend Roy Purvis the aviator, from New York.” The airplane came down in graceful spirals and made a landing a short distance from the corral. Mason rushed over and the aviator offered him a languid hand which Mason shook heartily. “Roy, you’re just the man I want to see,” he cried, “you dropped out of the sky just in time.” “I’ll say I did, I was all out of gasoline, you know,” the aviator answered, leaning languidly back in his seat gazing interestedly at the cowboys who stood looking him and the airplane over in open-mouthed wonder. “Am I welcome?” Roy questioned, turning his attention again to Mason. “Certainly you’re welcome. What makes you think you wouldn’t be welcome to Bar X ranch?” Mason demanded. “Well, be a good fellow and help unstrap me from this confounded seat, and when we get to the house I’ll tell you,” he answered whimsically. Mason called one of the cowboys over to assist him. In a small compartment back of the aviator’s seat was his luggage. It consisted of four suitcases and a black object resembling a tank about the size of a suitcase. Roy took especial charge of this black tank. “Why all these warlike preparations?” he queried, noticing the bristling guns of the cowboys. “Looks like I had dropped into a fighting man’s country for fair.” “I’ll explain the whole business to you when we get to the house and you have had some refreshments,” Mason answered. “Hang the refreshments,” Roy growled, with another puzzled look at the cowboys with their revolvers and saddle guns. At the house, after having been introduced all around, he surprised Mason by asking him if there was a dark room in the house. “No,” the latter answered with a blank look, “but I think we could rig you up one.” “Friends,” the aviator said with a look into their anxious faces, “I can see that you are in some kind of trouble, and from a hint that my friend Mason dropped, I think I can help you out. Just rig me up that dark room, Jack, and I will show you something that will surprise you.” “There is a small closet in my room and you can use it,” Mason said quickly. Taking the mysterious black tank with him the aviator left them and was in the room for a half hour. When he came out he held a number of films in his hands. “Before I join these films together,” he said to his mystified audience, “I want to tell you of a little incident that happened to me this morning. Starting from a town about a hundred miles from here, and depending entirely on my compass, for I had no idea where the Bar X ranch lay, I crossed the railroad track at a point fifty miles below here.