“You’ll make it all right, Tim,” said Carson, “But look out for ice if you go too high.”
“I had a taste of that coming back from the valley,” said the flying reporter. “No more of that for me if I can help myself.”
Enough gas for a four hour flight had been placed in the tanks of the Good News.
The engine, still warm, caught on the first turn and roared into action.
Tim adjusted the pack parachute Carson had brought from the office, settled himself on his seat, and motioned “all clear.”
Water and mud sprayed from the wheels as the Good News picked up speed. Then it lifted off the heavy field, shook itself free of the mud, and climbed the low-hanging clouds.
The ceiling was less than five hundred and by this time the afternoon was grey and a sharp breeze was zipping down out of the north. It would be a nasty night for flying over an unmarked and unlighted course.
Tim followed the air mail trail for half an hour and then turned to his left. Fort Armstrong was now almost straight south on an air line. With prairie country the flight would have been easy but Tim knew that 200 miles out of Atkinson he would run into the Flint hills, a branch of the Great Smoky Mountains which wandered out into the prairie at a most inconvenient angle. If the ceiling was low over the Flint hills, he would be in for a nasty half hour of flying.
The first hour slid away as Tim roared southward at nearly 200 miles an hour. The thunder of his motor roused prairie villages from their winter lethargy and stampeded cattle on lonely farms. Occasionally some farmer, surprised at his chores, shook his fist angrily as Tim sailed over the chimney tops.
The ceiling was still six hundred when Tim sighted the first low ridge of hills that marked the Flint range. He had flown over the territory only once before and that time when he was returning the year before from Old Mexico with exclusive pictures of a rebel leader.