Once more did Jack bend all his energies to figuring out what the smoke could mean; he disliked telling her it did not offer any real hope, for he could see that it was the end of a forest fire, such as may have been tailing up the long ravine for many days, and feeding on all manner of trash falling from the scraggy pinon trees that managed to cling to the otherwise bare walls.
The poor forlorn girl broke down and cried bitterly when once more her hopes were dashed to the ground. Perk shook his head, and gritted his teeth, for it greatly disturbed him to hear her weeping; Jack tried to comfort her as best he could, in a man’s clumsy way. Soon the fit wore away, and Suzanne was her own brave little self again, the look of sublime confidence once more coming into her face. And so the weary hunt went on as the sun slanted down the western heavens, with a cruel night ahead of the searchers.
XXII
AN AIR-MAIL WAY STATION
Once they sighted an isolated town in a valley, but this failed to arouse any particular enthusiasm. If anything had been seen by those who lived in such a remote place, the glad tidings would have long since been sent out to the world, since it must be understood how the entire country was alive with eagerness for a satisfactory solution to the mysterious disappearance of the young air-mail pilot.
Jack rather imagined that this might be the place where Buddy Warner turned up missing—where at a certain hour his schedule was to have brought him down from his sky trail to leave and pick up the mail—but alas! he had failed to come to time, and day after day an increasing number of scurrying planes continued to scour the surrounding country in the endeavor to pick up a clue.
Jack could make out the landing field with his naked eyes but when Suzanne pressed the glasses on him without saying a word, he proceeded to make good use of them.
A plane had just landed, possibly in the mail service, for there was more or less bustle in its vicinity and he could see a small Ford car starting off, as if with a bag or two of letters.
Apparently their passing over failed to excite the people, for while they were staring up and displaying a certain amount of interest, they made no signals, showing there was no good news, as possibly the girl had been hoping.
“They have been seeing any number of ships passing over during the last few days, I reckon,” he told her, just to have something to say, and perhaps also relieve her evident distress a little, “so understand that nothing has been found, or the joyful news would be transmitted by radio or wire.”
Taking it for granted that he had figured correctly, Jack altered his plans. If Buddy had never made his goal and delivered the mail at this station, the chances seemed to be that he could hardly have gone past—that whatever happened to him must have occurred before he came to this place.