_Vicki Searches_
The next morning Vicki went to Novato airport, in Marin County, forty
minutes from San Francisco. Having been out there late yesterday
afternoon, she was briefed for her flight. Placerville, her first stop,
was about a hundred and twenty-five miles away. Joe and Ed Foster,
the men from whom she was renting a Cessna 150, had marked on her air
map the routes, landmarks, and sites of small airports in and near
Placerville and surrounding villages.
The trim little Cessna 150 was a single-engine, two-place airplane,
with landing lights, wing lights for navigation, and a two-way radio.
Vicki carefully went over the plane, making a line check. It was in A-1
condition and fully fueled. She climbed in, with a lift up from Joe
Foster.
“All okay?” he asked. Vicki smiled and nodded. “Now remember, this
plane has a fast rate of climb. Watch it.”
“I’ll remember.” Yesterday afternoon she had taxied the Cessna around
a little, to see how the plane handled, and had fallen in love with the
instantly responsive aircraft. Vicki said:
“I’ll bring her back late this afternoon, Mr. Foster.” She would rather
not do night flying in an unfamiliar airplane over country which was
new to her.
Foster waved. “Happy landings.”
“Thanks. See you.”
Vicki closed the door, put her feet on the pedals, cracked the throttle
forward slightly, released the brakes, and pressed the starter button.
The plane went skimming along the airstrip. As the Cessna left the
ground, Vicki felt she was simply floating up into the air. While
she was figuring how rapidly to reach the altitude and air speed she
wanted, the Cessna reached these and almost flew off by itself.
“Whoa, there!” Vicki exclaimed aloud. This was exhilarating! She put
the nose down a little, leveled off, and turned northeast.
Once across the comparatively low Coast Range mountains, Vicki looked
down on the Sacramento River flowing through rich farms and cattle
prairie. Vicki bypassed the city of Sacramento, capital of California,
and went sailing along over the Great Valley. Her cockpit was full
of sunshine, and the plane flew quietly, smoothly. She was making
sixty miles an hour. The plane could do eighty or more, but Vicki had
landmarks to watch for.
Another hour passed. Vicki saw the towns below grow smaller and
farther apart, and the land begin to roll slightly. Blue outlines of
hills appeared on the horizon. Vicki climbed to a higher altitude.
The temperature grew much cooler. Vicki buttoned her jacket. A few
minutes later she saw much higher outlines on the horizon--the immense,
distant peaks of the Sierra Nevadas loomed up like a great wall. Vicki
consulted her air chart, and looked down to locate Placerville. It was
the first of the villages, nestled low on this side of the distant
mountains.
Vicki found the local airstrip and made a neat landing. A mechanic at
work in the hangar told her it was ten minutes’ walk into town.
“Or you can hitch a ride, miss.”
“Thanks, I’ll walk.” She was wary of driving with strangers; and
besides, the countryside of nut and fruit ranches offered a beautiful
walk.
In the village Vicki inquired first at the small hotel. The owner put
down his newspaper and obligingly looked through the register. It had
just a few guests listed; Lucy and Mrs. Heath were not among them.
“Did you see _any_ older woman with a young, brown-haired woman?” Vicki
asked the hotel owner.
“No, miss. Why don’t you ask at the Pines Motel? You can ’phone from
here.”
Vicki telephoned. The motel had no record, no recall of the two women.
She went to the Placerville restaurants, garage, police office, and
asked. No news.
Vicki flew on to the next town, Auburn. She talked with friendly
tradesmen and local people at a roadside stand heaped with cherries,
almonds, grapes, walnuts, and apples. No one, not even the motel
keeper or the gas-station owner, had seen the woman and the girl Vicki
described. Neither had Auburn’s police officers.
In the next town, Marysville, Vicki inquired again, with no results.
In each village--a few of them were almost ghost towns of gold-rush
fame--she got the same story. No one had seen the two women. By
midafternoon Vicki felt badly discouraged.
“Well, shall I give up?”
Vicki thought it over. So far she had tried only the villages. The
minister and the painter had mentioned the possibility that Mrs. Heath
might rent a house in the Sierra foothills. “A house off by itself in
the hills--that’s the next thing to look for and ask about.”
Vicki took the Cessna up again, thinking hard about the best way to
locate such a house. She had been aloft fifteen minutes when she
decided it would be a wise precaution to replenish her gas supply. The
air chart showed a small airport off to the northeast. Vicki hoped she
could buy gas there. She turned, reduced speed, and watched for an
airport.
Just off the highway, she spotted a meadow with airstrips mowed in the
grass. Three or four planes and cars were parked outside a barn, which
must be the hangar.
She circled low over the meadow twice, to let the people below know
she wanted to land. Two men in coveralls came out of the hangar. They
motioned to her how to come down, pointing to the windsock atop the
barn. Vicki waggled the plane wings in reply, flew into their air
pattern, and coasted in for a landing. By this time, three other men
wearing coveralls had come out to watch her. They gave Vicki friendly
smiles as she stepped out of the plane.
“Hello, anything we can do for you?” one asked her. They were all
young men, deeply tanned, with sun squint lines around their eyes, and
immediately interested in Vicki’s Cessna 150.
“Thanks, I’d like to buy some gas here,” Vicki said. “And maybe you’ll
advise me how to find a place I’m looking for.”
“Glad to do both,” said one young man. “I’m Wes Clark.”
He introduced the four others--the two McKee brothers, a redhead called
Red Jones, and the tall man who had spoken first, Jack Whiting. Vicki
told them her name, and said her home was in Fairview, Illinois.
They all said hello, and invited Vicki to see their airplane. She was
interested in their heavy plane and special equipment, and asked what
they were doing.
“We’re prospecting from the sky,” Wes Foster said. “We search for ore
buried in the ground. Mostly for mineral pockets. Want to see how we
aerial miners work?”
“I certainly want to know what that long torpedolike thing tied to the
back of your plane is,” Vicki admitted.
The McKee brothers said, “That’s ours.” They were electronic experts,
and at work they sat inside the big instrument to watch for the
telltale jump of dial needles, as the “snooper” plane flew over
mountains, lakes, and valleys. The young men explained to Vicki that a
strong radioactive source--such as uranium--showed on the detectors.
“Do you need maps?” Vicki asked. She was thinking of her own search for
a secluded house in the hills.
“Sure, we use maps. Whiting here is our aerial photographer. He makes
an aerial survey with a movie camera that’s co-ordinated with the
electronic needles. Then he pieces the photographs together into one
big map, and that gives us and our geologist an over-all picture of the
region we’re exploring.”
Red Jones, stammering slightly, told Vicki he was the geologist of the
team. She asked if she might see the map he used.
“We were just looking at it in the hangar. Come on in, Miss Barr.”
They all went into the hangar where equipment and a large photographic
map were spread out on a table. Jack Whiting and Wes Clark started to
explain the map to Vicki. They said it showed the contours of the dips
and peaks of the rugged terrain around there. The photo-map resembled a
complicated diagram; it was not easy for Vicki to read.
“Well, are you looking for anything in particular?” Whiting, the aerial
photographer, asked her.
“Yes. An isolated house,” said Vicki.
“Hmm. That’s a tall order. There are several houses and buildings off
by themselves, way up in the hills.”
Wes Clark suggested that they start by locating such houses on the
photo-map. They located several small marks on the map which were
houses. However, Whiting remembered that two of the buildings were
power stations, one a sportsman’s hunting lodge, one a house they knew
to be boarded up.
“What’s this?” Vicki put her finger on a blurred spot on the photo-map.
It was the size of a pinhead.
“That’s half a dozen houses and a general store, too small even to be a
village,” the younger McKee brother said. “No post office or anything.
The ranchers around there call the place Pine Top.”
“No, I don’t mean the cluster of houses,” Vicki insisted, “I mean this
tiny dark spot. Could it be a hidden house?”
The young man peered at the blur. “Could be,” the aerial photographer
finally said. “Lots of forest and high, winding roads at that point. If
it’s a house, it’s hidden, all right. The camera doesn’t tell _what_
that blur is, I’m afraid.”
Vicki looked searchingly at the map. She could not see any other mark
which suggested a private house. Only the one above Pine Top.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I’ll gamble on it and fly to Pine Top.”
“Maintain enough altitude,” Wes Clark advised her. “You can get gas
from someone at Pine Top, if necessary.”
“Gas!” Vicki remembered. “I need some right now, if you can spare it.”
The airfield had a commercial, self-service gas pump. Wes Clark said
with a grin, “Our advice is free, but you have to pay for the gas.”
“I’m glad to have both,” said Vicki.
The young men helped her to refuel her plane, and watched her climb in.
Wes Clark looked at his wrist watch and said:
“It’s pretty late in the afternoon to head for Pine Top. I wouldn’t try
it for the first time at dusk, if I were you.”
They were right. To explore half-mountainous terrain, by air, in fading
light would be foolhardy. Besides, she was growing tired, and there was
still the return flight to San Francisco to make.
“All right, I’ll try for Pine Top tomorrow,” she said. She smiled and
waved at the five young men.
“Thanks a lot for everything. I hope to see you all again sometime.”
“See you,” they repeated. “Get home safely. Happy landings.”
* * * * *
That night Vicki dreamed of Pine Top and of a dark, fantastic house
clinging to a wooded mountainside. Those troubled pictures were the
reflection of her worry about Lucy.
Actually, when she was wide awake on Saturday noon, and looking down
from the Cessna 150 in the bright sky, Pine Top turned out to be a
cheerful place. There wasn’t much of Pine Top, just a few houses
clustered together in the refreshing green of forests and hilly grazing
lands.
She looked down and circled, losing altitude, searching for an area to
land. The one level place she could see was a back road--a wide, empty,
dirt road. Vicki came down bumpily, then staked down the plane at the
side of the road, and hiked toward the houses.
No one was in sight, only a yellow hound-dog. The general store
seemed the likeliest place to make inquiries. Going in, Vicki found
it deserted. She looked around at the shelves, counters, boxes, and
barrels piled with provisions for living deep in the country. She
noticed a bell on the counter, rang it, then waited.
Presently a man and woman came in, carrying baskets of garden produce.
They said good morning to Vicki, and looked at her curiously.
“Was that you flying around here a while ago?” the man asked. Vicki
smiled and nodded.
“Well! What’re you doing in these parts, young lady?”
“We don’t often see strangers,” the woman put in. She said their names
were Carl and Angie Potter. “My, that’s a handsome jacket you’re
wearing.”
“Thank you,” said Vicki. “I wonder if you’d give me some advice?” The
couple were eager to help. “I wonder if you’ve seen an elderly lady and
a brown-haired girl about my age with her?”
“Why, sure enough, we have,” the man said. Vicki’s hopes leaped up.
“They came here in a car about two weeks ago.”
“The lady’s name is Mrs. Elizabeth Heath,” the woman said importantly.
“I saw her name on an identification tag tied on her suitcase--I
noticed it when I carried some of the groceries out to her car. I can’t
figure out whether the girl is her daughter or niece or exactly what.
They bought a whole carload of groceries from us, same day they got
here, and went on up to the old Glidden place.”
“The house up in the hills?” Vicki asked.
“Uh-huh. Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of them since,” said the man.
“Bill Jenkins from the telephone company strung up a wire to their
house, so we know Mrs. Heath has the phone working again. But except
for phoning me to bring more groceries, she hasn’t called up nobody
here.”
The woman sniffed. “That Mrs. Heath was uppity when she bought her
groceries from us. The girl seemed real nice, though.”
“It’s the girl I want to see.” Vicki felt a great sense of relief at
actually having located Mrs. Heath and Lucy. “How far is the Glidden
place from here?” she asked.
“Oh, about twenty minutes up an awfully curvy, narrow piece of road. We
could drive you up there.”
They all piled into the couple’s jalopy. The narrow road up to the
house climbed and wound. “On a wet day,” said Mr. Potter, “anyone who
drives on this road’ll break his neck.”
At the top of the road the land leveled off, and they reached a high
stone wall. Behind it, Vicki could see only treetops and the second
floor of a house. The Potters said the wall completely enclosed the
Glidden place.
Mr. Potter stopped the car before a large wooden door in the wall.
“We’ll have to honk,” he said. When there was no answer, he tried the
door. “Locked,” he said.
Angie Potter raised her voice. “Oh, Mrs. Heath! Mrs. Hea-ea-eath!”
Still no answer. “Maybe nobody’s home.”
Vicki said, “The upstairs windows are open, and the curtains are open,
too. Someone’s probably at home.”
Mr. Potter honked, Mrs. Potter called, Vicki knocked on the wooden door
in the wall. They made so much noise that a flock of birds swooped out
of a nearby tree, and flew away.
“Not very neighborly,” Mrs. Potter grumbled.
Vicki felt discomfited. Granted that Mrs. Heath wanted an isolated
place in which to write her book; still, did the two women have to
isolate themselves so rigidly?
“Well, we might as well go,” said Mrs. Potter.
They made a cautious descent down the narrow, steep road. The Potters
drove Vicki back to the spot where she had parked the plane. They would
not hear of accepting the payment she offered, and said good-by.
She waited until the Potters drove safely off the back road. Then she
got into the Cessna, taxied as far as the road permitted, and took off.
In the air she figured out a route which would take her clear of the
jutting hillside, yet bring her over the house.
Within sight of the wall and the house, the fast plane rolled a little
when Vicki overcontrolled it to fly more slowly. First she followed the
wall, to get her bearings in relation to the house and road, and to
look for a possible place to land.
She was surprised to see that the property covered quite a bit of
acreage. The far end of it was hilly woods, but this led into a long,
fairly level stretch of meadow which would afford a landing area. The
meadow led up to the house.
Before she knew it, Vicki had flown over the house, which was not very
large. She had to circle around and fly back for a better look. The
house was rather rustic and long and low. It was not far from the road
behind the wall. A garden surrounded it in front and on both sides.
But the most interesting thing she saw below was two women working
in the garden on the sunny south side of the house. One woman was
gray-haired. The other figure was a girl’s, with brown hair; she had
thrown around her shoulders a bulky green woolen scarf like the scarf
in the portrait.
“Lucy!” Vicki thought in excitement. “There’s Lucy Rowe! I’ve found
her.”
In the instant that Vicki flew over them, they looked up at the
plane which had now flown past twice. Vicki thought, “Won’t they be
astonished when I land inside their wall!”
She headed over the meadow, thinking about wind direction and landing
speeds. Then she remembered to glance at her wrist watch--and was
alarmed at the time. There simply wasn’t time today to land and talk to
Lucy and Mrs. Heath. Her free time had nearly run out.
Vicki was obliged to fly past the meadow, beyond the wooded hillside,
and out over Pine Top country in the direction of the coast and San
Francisco. She was exceedingly disappointed.
“Well, I’ll have ample time off next week,” Vicki consoled herself.
“I’ll come back.”