Sand hills and plains, plains and sand hills, stretching out
indefinitely and interminably. There was only one bit of color in all
the monotonous landscape. A flash of red on the desert.
Six weary travelers, brown as Indians, hot and thirsty, their clothes,
their hair, their eyes and nostrils filled with a fine dust. But a good
traveler never complains and not one voice was lifted in protest.
Bang! went a tire--the second that day. Billie wearily stopped the motor
and climbed out followed by the others.
"I feel as if we had come out of the nowhere into the here," observed
Nancy in a sad, thin voice.
"I don't think there is any here," replied Elinor, endeavoring to wash
the dust from her face with her handkerchief and some eau de cologne.
"This is just as much nowhere as where we came from."
"Do you know, Elinor," said Nancy after a pause, in which the two girls
looked about them hopelessly, "I believe we are lost. I have been
thinking so for the last hour. Billie is afraid to tell us, and so is
Mary, but I have suspected it ever since we lost sight of the railroad."
"And this could hardly be called a road. It's nothing but a trail
through sage brush."
"It would be a pity to leave our bones to whiten on the desert,"
observed Nancy cheerfully.
"I shall make tea," exclaimed Elinor with sudden inspiration. "If you
are lost in the desert on the seventh of July, drink a cup of tea. It
will keep your veins from swelling and bring wisdom and comfort."
By the time Billie and Mary had put on a new tire the tea was ready, and
seated on the sand in a circle, the thirsty travelers sipped the
delicious beverage. Billie was very quiet and black care sat upon her
brow. Mary also was silent. The truth is there was no trail at all. They
had lost it a mile back.
Now a trail is a very subtle and illusive thing, once it's lost, and
one's imagination plays many strange tricks in a desert of sage brush. A
dozen times Mary had whispered to Billie: "There's the trail," and
Billie had replied, "That looks a good deal more like it to the right."
No matter which way they looked they saw the lines which marked the
trail. And when they looked again, the lines had shifted into a new
direction.
At last Billie rose up and faced the company.
"I have to report to you that we are lost," she said. "We are completely
and utterly lost and have been for two hours. It's a quarter to five
o'clock and we can't decide whether to turn back Eastward or go on
toward the West. I leave it to the company."
"Go on, go on," they cried in one voice.
Why go back when there was no more trail behind than there was in front?
Back into the Comet they climbed and on they went but progress was slow
and the way was heavy. Sage brush impeded them greatly and at six
o'clock they appeared to be just as deep in it as ever. They were very
low in their minds and very tired. In all the long journey things had
never seemed at such a low ebb.
At last Nancy leaned out of the car, for what reason she could not have
told, but suddenly there came to her that inexplicable feeling that
comes to us all occasionally. She felt she was about to enact a scene
which somewhere, somehow she had before. Her eyes swept the deep
blueness of the skies unseeingly and then fixed themselves on--what was
it--an enormous crane or was it--?
"Billie, Billie," she cried. "It's the race. It's the flying
machines--look, there are two, one just behind the other!"
The Comet stopped mechanically in response to the excitement of his
mistress, and out they all jumped for a better view. The aeroplanes were
coming toward them swift as birds on the wing. The larger one, like a
great eagle was well in advance of a smaller one, following as a little
bird chases a big one. They were so high up they might really have been
taken for birds by one who had never seen a flying machine. Then that
thing which had once happened was now re-enacted before their astonished
eyes. The small bird advanced no farther, but swiftly and surely began
to drop. And as the machine neared the earth back they jumped into the
car and hastened to the spot where they had seen it fall. But this time
there was no crumpled broken mass of débris. The aeroplane had swooped
down neatly and quietly and a young man stood over it working at the
machinery with feverish haste.
"It's Peter Van Vechten," cried Mary, the first to recognize him.
He looked up astonished to find human beings about in that desert spot,
and still more amazed to find his former rescuers.
"We started from San Francisco on July 4," he explained, "and I was
making good progress until this beastly engine broke down. I've been
keeping right behind all the time, much to his disgust. A train goes
with us. You'll hear it go by presently. What I wanted to do was to fly
all night to-night and get over the Rockies ahead of him. My engine
broke half an hour ago and I had to come down and fix it and now I see
it's beyond fixing."
He smiled ruefully as they gathered around him.
"If we could only do something," exclaimed Billie. "We can never forgive
ourselves for having taken you for a thief. I hope you will accept our
apologies."
"Don't ever let it trouble you any more," he replied. "I had almost
forgotten it really. When one flies very high in the air, one forgets
lots of things that happen on the earth beneath."
He turned again to his machine.
"It's a beastly break," he exclaimed, exasperated.
All this time, Nancy's mind was very busy, trying to recall something.
"If only you could remember, you could help him," an inner voice kept
saying to her.
"I know," she cried suddenly. "I have it," and she rushed from the
circle of sympathizing ladies and began rummaging in an interior
compartment of the Comet.
"What is the child doing?" exclaimed Miss Campbell, the only one to
notice her remarkable behavior.
And then the strangest thing happened.
"Mr. Van Vechten, will this help you any?" she asked, returning with
that small piece of machinery she had kept as a souvenir all those weeks
ago, which seemed a century past.
The young man very nearly embraced Nancy in his joy, and, Nancy would
not have minded it very much, perhaps, at that agitating moment.
"Oh, wonder of wonders," he cried. "It's the very piece I was breaking
my heart for a moment ago, and here it is like a gift from heaven."
"I've been saving it for you all this time," laughed Nancy, and her
friends joined in her merriment, for Nancy had really quite forgotten
the souvenir until this moment.
They learned from Peter Van Vechten that the road was some two hundred
yards away. They had been running parallel to it all this time and
furthermore, a few miles on, he had caught glimpses of a village where
they might spend the night.
"And where will you get your supper, Mr. Van Vechten?" demanded Miss
Campbell.
"I don't think I'll get any from present prospects," he answered. "I
keep chocolates in my pocket all the time and a flask of beef tea. One
needs lots of food up there," he added pointing to the skies. "It's
bitter cold."
"Why can't we have supper out here?" suggested Billie. "We can get it
ready while Mr. Van Vechten mends his machine and it will be so much
jollier for everyone than going supperless or eating canned things at
the hotel."
This was a most welcome suggestion and the invitation was eagerly
accepted by the young aeroplanist. They brought out all their best
stores and prepared a real feast in his honor, with hot coffee and their
breakfast fruit as a finishing touch.
The Motor Maids learned many interesting things from the young man. The
real thief, who, it was believed, had flown away in one of the flying
machines at Chicago, had been caught the very next day on the exhibition
grounds and had, as it turned out, no more knowledge of flying than a
wingless insect.
Hawkeseye, the Indian halfbreed, had been caught, and was at present
doing a term in the penitentiary.
"How do you fly in the right direction at night?" they asked him, and he
showed them a little compass lighted with electricity.
"I go due East by this," he said. "Slightly to the North until after the
Rockies, and then straight as an arrow to Chicago. It will be a rough
sail over the Rocky Mountains. All those canyons and crevices and
valleys are so many suction holes to the aeroplanist. But the air over
the prairie country is as smooth as a lake in the summer time."
There was no lingering over the supper, good as it tasted, and before
twilight deepened into misty gray, Peter Van Vechten had said good-by to
the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell.
He seated himself in his aeroplane. The motor began whirring busily, and
presently the machine rolled on the ground for a brief instant and began
rising slowly and easily. He waved his hand and smiled to them as he
mounted the air. Then away he flew and in three minutes was a speck in
the distance.
Miss Campbell's eyes filled with tears.
"I do hope and pray he'll get there safely," she said.
"He is one of those people who always make one feel lonesome after he
goes away," observed Mary still watching the horizon.
The young aeroplanist was indeed one of those rare persons the charm of
whose presence still lingers after he has departed, like the vibrations
after a chord of music.
But the adventure was over. He was flying East and their path was due
West, and they must be getting on their way before night set in.