THE CROSS-COUNTRY FLIGHT
“How do you go from here?” inquired Louise the next morning at
breakfast, which had been arranged for seven o’clock so that the girls
could make an early start. The skies were still dark, and it was
raining, but the wind had died down, and with it the worst of the storm.
“From here to Wichita, and then on to Albuquerque by tonight, I hope,”
replied Linda. “We’ll be following the regular air-line. I think that is
really the safest and best way. By tomorrow night I expect to land at
Los Angeles.”
“Do you have to cross Death Valley?” asked Louise.
“Fly over it—not cross it,” corrected Linda. “But that has no terrors
for me. And we shall miss the worst of the Rockies, following such a
southern course.”
“Take plenty of water and gas, in case you come down in the desert!”
“That reminds me, Ted,” said Linda, turning to the big, red-haired young
man at the head of the table. “Did you fill my Ladybug up?”
“Yes, and gave her a hasty inspection, too,” he replied. “She looks O.K.
to me.”
“Then I’m not expecting any trouble,” returned Linda, for she had great
confidence in Ted Mackay’s judgment and knowledge of airplanes.
While Linda took time to call Miss Carlton on the long distance
telephone, Louise insisted upon packing a lunch, and filling the thermos
bottles with water and coffee. For she had never forgotten Linda’s first
long flight when they had been stranded on a lonely prairie, far from
food and civilization, and how grateful they had been then for the
elaborate picnic lunch with which their hostess had supplied them.
“You’re a brick, Lou!” Linda cried, as she kissed her good-bye.
“Don’t forget to stop next week, on your way home!” Louise reminded her.
The Ladybug’s engine roared, and she taxied a short distance, soaring
soon into the skies. To her joy Linda found that flying conditions had
considerably improved since the previous day. The storm was clearing,
and up above the clouds, the sun was shining. Linda’s way lay straight
before her, and she flew on and on, keeping a sharp watch all the time
for other planes, until the clouds beneath her had completely dispersed.
Passing over Kansas, she left Wichita behind long before noon time, and
pressed on through the northern part of Oklahoma—into Texas, the state
in which her father’s ranch had been located, when she took that daring
night-flight for the surgeon who saved his life. At last, by consulting
her map, she felt certain she had reached New Mexico.
Both girls had been so thrilled in watching the country beneath them—so
strangely different from the East—that they had not realized how late it
was growing. Hunger finally drove Dot to consult her watch. To her
surprise she found that it was after three o’clock.
“Let’s eat!” she said to Linda, through the tube. “I’m starved!”
“Where?” shouted Linda, surveying dubiously the ground beneath them,
covered with dry bushes. There wasn’t a sign of civilization or
cultivation anywhere about, and she had no desire to land.
“Right here in the plane,” returned Dot. “You haven’t forgotten the
lunch Lou packed for us?”
“Good idea! And we’ll get to Albuquerque all the sooner. Something tells
me that we’re not far off—if my calculations are correct.”
“Well, we can’t be lost,” replied Dot. “For we’ve been following the
beacon lights straight along the way. O. K., then. I’ll unpack. Thank
goodness Lou fixed a lunch.”
The sandwiches and coffee were delicious, and all the while Linda kept
right on flying. But it was still light when the spires and buildings of
Albuquerque loomed up in the distance.
They landed at the airport and went to a hotel for the night, thankful
that the day, though uneventful, had passed so pleasantly, and hopeful
for clear weather to continue for the rest of their journey.
The sun was shining brightly and the day was already hot when the girls
took off from Albuquerque the following morning. For hours they flew
over this hot, dry plateau region, where the water supply was scanty,
and where they could see, even from their height in the air, the bare
earth shining between the scattered clumps of grasses and shrubs.
“We have to miss the Grand Canyon,” Linda told Dot as they came down at
a small airport town in Arizona, to rest and get their lunch. “It lies
up in the north-western part of the state, you know, and if we follow
the most direct course to Los Angeles, we miss it.”
“Maybe we can fly over it on our way back,” suggested her companion.
“We’ll have more time to enjoy the scenery when we have settled with
this impostor.”
“Yes, that’s just what I think. So long as we get home before the first
of October, I’m a free woman.”
They continued their flight without any interruptions or disasters all
that afternoon. They left Arizona behind and crossed into the great
state of California, over the San Bernardino Mountains, where the
climate was lovely. Orange groves blossomed everywhere, the air was
sweet and delicious; they felt a great envy of the people who could
always live in this beautiful region. At last they reached the city of
Los Angeles, and spotted the new white city hall, as it rose in its
majestic splendor, gleaming in the brilliancy of its electric lights.
“Good old Ladybug!” exclaimed Dot, as the autogiro came to the ground at
the airport, and she stiffly climbed out of the cockpit. “Never lets us
down!”
“Always lets us down—when we want her to,” corrected Linda, laughingly.
“You’re going to leave her here at the airport while we go on to
Hollywood?” asked Dot.
“Yes, I think so. I’ll have the mechanics give her a thorough inspection
in the meanwhile. But I don’t want to go tonight. Let’s have a good
dinner and get some sleep and start out fresh tomorrow morning. We’ll
have our box taken with us this time, and dress for the occasion. We
don’t want to look like hicks from a small town.”
While Linda turned to give her instructions to an attendant, a strange
young man strolled up to the girls and stopped, evidently waiting for an
opportunity to speak to them. It was growing dark, but the beacon
searchlight at the airport was bright enough for them to see him
perfectly. He looked at the autogiro, and then peered almost rudely into
the faces of the two girls. Linda ignored him, but Dot was furious.
“Pardon me, ladies,” he said finally, “but aren’t you the two girls who
landed on the top of that newspaper building in Kansas City?—Miss Slocum
and Miss Manton, I believe the names were?”
Dot giggled. She couldn’t deny the fact.
“So you’ve been taking a cross-country flight in this boat,” he
continued. “I have a friend who is a reporter—he’s around here
somewhere, for he stops here every day at the airport for news—and he’d
like that story, if you’d give me a few facts.”
“We don’t want publicity,” Dot said, immediately. “So please don’t let
him print anything at all about us.”
“Besides,” added Linda, “there’s nothing new in what we’ve done. Girls
fly all over the country every day alone. It really doesn’t mean much
more than driving a motor-car now-a-days.”
“You’re right about that,” agreed the attendant. “It was a stunt to fly
the Atlantic once, but now it seems rather common-place. The first
person to go from here to Australia by plane will sure get a head-line.”
“We don’t expect to try that!” returned Dot, laughingly. “That’s a
little too far.”
“By the way,” remarked the stranger who had looked so keenly at the
girls, “did you girls know that Linda Carlton is here at Los Angeles—or
rather, at Hollywood? You remember her—the first girl to fly from New
York to Paris alone?... She has a contract with the Apex Film
Corporation.”
Linda and Dot looked at each other in distress. This was a fine
situation indeed. What could they say?
“My name is Linda Carlton,” the aviatrix finally announced, quietly.
“Go on! Your name’s Sallie Slocum!” insisted the young man.
“As you please,” shrugged Linda, turning to the attendant.
“Nevertheless, I want this autogiro registered here as belonging to
Linda Carlton, of Spring City, Ohio.”
“O. K., Miss,” agreed the attendant, making note of the fact.
Summoning a taxi, the girls stepped into it and closed the door without
even so much as good-bye to the young man who had forced a conversation
with them.
“What gets me,” observed Dot, “is the way reporters seem to bob up
anywhere and everywhere—just when they’re not wanted.”
“True, but they have to get news, I suppose. And it was really my fault
in the first place, for landing on a newspaper building. I would have to
pick that out!”
“Oh, well, who cares?” returned Dot. “It’ll blow over, and be
forgotten.... What hotel are we going to?”
“The Ambassador. I’ve heard so much about their ‘Cocoanut Grove’ that I
want to see it.”
A few minutes later the taxi stopped at the luxurious hotel, and the
girls secured a room. They engaged it for only a couple of days, little
thinking that they would have to remain in Los Angeles for a longer
period of time.
It was lots of fun to dress in evening gowns and sweep into the
dining-room as if they were actresses. Even Linda admitted that she
enjoyed taking off her flier’s suit at times, and just being a “regular
girl.”
“For tonight we’ll be absolutely care-free,” she said. “As if we hadn’t
a thing to worry about!”
“Which we really haven’t,” added Dot.
They ordered an elaborate dinner and ate slowly, watching the people in
the dining-room, hoping to catch a glimpse of a famous star or a
celebrated flier. But if there were actors and actresses there, neither
Linda nor Dot recognized them.
“I wish there were a ‘first-night’ performance that we could attend,”
remarked Dot, when, after dinner, they summoned a taxi to go to a
moving-picture show.
“Yes, it would be nice. But then, we probably couldn’t get in, anyhow.
Unless I pretended to be the Linda Carlton who is in ‘Bride of the
Air’.”
Dot laughed.
“That would be a mix-up. The other girl doubling for you—and then your
pretending to be the other girl!”
“Sounds kind of like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to me.”
In spite of the fact, however, that nothing unusual happened, the girls
spent a pleasant evening, and were glad of the chance to get to bed
early.
“For,” remarked Linda, as she undressed in the charming bedroom, “I am
tired, even though we didn’t break any records crossing the country.”
“It was fast enough for me,” agreed Dot. “I’d rather rest now and then,
than dash off like Frank Hawks. And when you compare it to the way they
used to cross the United States, it’s no less than miraculous.”
“I know,” yawned Linda. “What was it that that movie said—twenty-four
days in 1850?”
“Yes, that was it, I think. Only I’m too sleepy to remember much now....
Wake me up early tomorrow, Linda. For it’s HOLLYWOOD!”