CHAPTER XXI.--A MEETING IN THE DESERT.
Sand hills and plains, plains and sand hills, stretching outindefinitely and interminably. There was only one bit of color in allthe 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 goodtraveler never complains and not one voice was lifted in protest.
Bang! went a tire--the second that day. Billie wearily stopped the motorand climbed out followed by the others.
"I feel as if we had come out of the nowhere into the here," observedNancy in a sad, thin voice.
"I don't think there is any here," replied Elinor, endeavoring to washthe 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 girlslooked about them hopelessly, "I believe we are lost. I have beenthinking so for the last hour. Billie is afraid to tell us, and so isMary, 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 trailthrough 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 youare lost in the desert on the seventh of July, drink a cup of tea. Itwill 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, andseated on the sand in a circle, the thirsty travelers sipped thedelicious beverage. Billie was very quiet and black care sat upon herbrow. Mary also was silent. The truth is there was no trail at all. Theyhad lost it a mile back.
Now a trail is a very subtle and illusive thing, once it's lost, andone's imagination plays many strange tricks in a desert of sage brush. Adozen times Mary had whispered to Billie: "There's the trail," andBillie 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 thetrail. And when they looked again, the lines had shifted into a newdirection.
At last Billie rose up and faced the company.
"I have to report to you that we are lost," she said. "We are completelyand utterly lost and have been for two hours. It's a quarter to fiveo'clock and we can't decide whether to turn back Eastward or go ontoward 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 slowand the way was heavy. Sage brush impeded them greatly and at sixo'clock they appeared to be just as deep in it as ever. They were verylow in their minds and very tired. In all the long journey things hadnever seemed at such a low ebb.
At last Nancy leaned out of the car, for what reason she could not havetold, but suddenly there came to her that inexplicable feeling thatcomes to us all occasionally. She felt she was about to enact a scenewhich somewhere, somehow she had before. Her eyes swept the deepblueness of the skies unseeingly and then fixed themselves on--what wasit--an enormous crane or was it--?
"Billie, Billie," she cried. "It's the race. It's the flyingmachines--look, there are two, one just behind the other!"
The Comet stopped mechanically in response to the excitement of hismistress, and out they all jumped for a better view. The aeroplanes werecoming toward them swift as birds on the wing. The larger one, like agreat eagle was well in advance of a smaller one, following as a littlebird chases a big one. They were so high up they might really have beentaken for birds by one who had never seen a flying machine. Then thatthing which had once happened was now re-enacted before their astonishedeyes. The small bird advanced no farther, but swiftly and surely beganto drop. And as the machine neared the earth back they jumped into thecar and hastened to the spot where they had seen it fall. But this timethere was no crumpled broken mass of debris. The aeroplane had swoopeddown neatly and quietly and a young man stood over it working at themachinery 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 wasmaking good progress until this beastly engine broke down. I've beenkeeping right behind all the time, much to his disgust. A train goeswith us. You'll hear it go by presently. What I wanted to do was to flyall night to-night and get over the Rockies ahead of him. My enginebroke half an hour ago and I had to come down and fix it and now I seeit's beyond fixing."
He smiled ruefully as they gathered around him.
"If we could only do something," exclaimed Billie. "We can never forgiveourselves for having taken you for a thief. I hope you will accept ourapologies."
"Don't ever let it trouble you any more," he replied. "I had almostforgotten it really. When one flies very high in the air, one forgetslots 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 keptsaying to her.
"I know," she cried suddenly. "I have it," and she rushed from thecircle of sympathizing ladies and began rummaging in an interiorcompartment of the Comet.
"What is the child doing?" exclaimed Miss Campbell, the only one tonotice her remarkable behavior.
And then the strangest thing happened.
"Mr. Van Vechten, will this help you any?" she asked, returning withthat small piece of machinery she had kept as a souvenir all those weeksago, which seemed a century past.
The young man very nearly embraced Nancy in his joy, and, Nancy wouldnot have minded it very much, perhaps, at that agitating moment.
"Oh, wonder of wonders," he cried. "It's the very piece I was breakingmy 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 herfriends joined in her merriment, for Nancy had really quite forgottenthe souvenir until this moment.
They learned from Peter Van Vechten that the road was some two hundredyards away. They had been running parallel to it all this time andfurthermore, a few miles on, he had caught glimpses of a village wherethey might spend the night.
"And where will you get your supper, Mr. Van Vechten?" demanded MissCampbell.
"I don't think I'll get any from present prospects," he answered. "Ikeep chocolates in my pocket all the time and a flask of beef tea. Oneneeds lots of food up there," he added pointing to the skies. "It'sbitter cold."
"Why can't we have supper out here?" suggested Billie. "We can get itready while Mr. Van Vechten mends his machine and it will be so muchjollier for everyone than going supperless or eating canned things atthe hotel."
This was a most welcome suggestion and the invitation was eagerlyaccepted by the young aeroplanist. They brought out all their beststores and prepared a real feast in his honor, with hot coffee and theirbreakfast fruit as a finishing touch.
The Motor Maids learned many interesting things from the young man. Thereal thief, who, it was believed, had flown away in one of the flyingmachines at Chicago, had been caught the very next day on the exhibitiongrounds and had, as it turned out, no more knowledge of flying than awingless insect.
Hawkeseye, the Indian halfbreed, had been caught, and was at presentdoing a term in the penitentiary.
"How do you fly in the right direction at night?" they asked him, and heshowed them a little compass lighted with electricity.
"I go due East by this," he said. "Slightly to the North until after theRockies, and then straight as an arrow to Chicago. It will be a roughsail over the Rocky Mountains. All those canyons and
crevices andvalleys are so many suction holes to the aeroplanist. But the air overthe prairie country is as smooth as a lake in the summer time."
There was no lingering over the supper, good as it tasted, and beforetwilight deepened into misty gray, Peter Van Vechten had said good-by tothe Motor Maids and Miss Campbell.
He seated himself in his aeroplane. The motor began whirring busily, andpresently the machine rolled on the ground for a brief instant and beganrising slowly and easily. He waved his hand and smiled to them as hemounted the air. Then away he flew and in three minutes was a speck inthe 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 hegoes away," observed Mary still watching the horizon.
The young aeroplanist was indeed one of those rare persons the charm ofwhose presence still lingers after he has departed, like the vibrationsafter a chord of music.
But the adventure was over. He was flying East and their path was dueWest, and they must be getting on their way before night set in.