Chapter XVI
THE TUNNEL
Dorothy walked slowly back to Will-o’-the-Wisp and climbed into the cockpit. From the pilot’s seat she had an unobstructed view of the field and the two other airplanes. Overhead, fluffy wind clouds began to appear from out of the northwest. Near the stone wall, three small rabbits sported in the sunshine; and presently a groundhog waddled across the field.
She glanced at her watch. The hands marked five past five. Bill had been gone twenty minutes.
“And he told me not to get nervous,” she thought indignantly. “This waiting around is enough to set anybody off—I’ll give him just ten minutes more!”
Dorothy counted those ten minutes quite the longest she had ever experienced. Fifteen minutes past five and still no Bill. He had told her to wait half an hour and then to fly home for help! But she was not the sort of girl who permits herself to be quietly wiped off the picture by an order from a boy friend! She just wasn’t made that way. Bill might be worried about the safety of the planes; it was his safety that worried her.
Determinedly she transferred the small revolver from its holster to a pocket of the jodhpurs she was wearing. Should she pack a flash light, too? No need of that, she decided. Figuring on daylight saving time, it wouldn’t be dark until after eight o’clock. Without more ado, she got out of the plane and crossed the field toward the wood.
After she had climbed the wall at the spot where she had seen Bill disappear on the trail of the bearded aviator, she came upon a path. Narrow it was, and overgrown, yet certainly a path, leading through the trees at a diagonal from the stone fence. Without hesitation, Dorothy followed it.
She was soon certain that her idea of the wood from the air was correct, and that it covered no great acreage. Hurrying along the winding footpath, she began to catch glimpses of blue sky between the tree trunks, and less than three hundred yards from the wall she came into the open.
The trees ended at the edge of a broad gully, apparently the bed of a shallow stream in the spring or after a shower; but now, except for a puddle or two, it was dry. On the farther side, cows were grazing in a meadow.
“Nice pastoral landscape,” she said aloud. “Doesn’t look like much of a spot for mischief—”