The Sky Trail

by Graham M. Dean

Ralph was speculating on how long his fuel would last when he saw an irregular gash in the tops of the trees ahead. He swung the plane lower. Something had taken off the tops of half a dozen tall, scraggly pines. It looked as though some giant of the sky had paused a moment, swung a mighty sickle, and then gone on.

A quarter of a mile further Ralph saw a repetition of the broken tree tops. Then he caught sight of the missing mail plane. The tail of the ship was sticking straight up in the air; the nose was buried in a deep drift at the base of a mighty pine. The propeller was splintered and the undercarriage gone but otherwise the plane did not appear to have been badly damaged.

Ralph gunned his motor hard and watched for some sign of the pilot near the wrecked plane. For ten minutes he circled the spot before looking for a landing place for his own ship. In one of the valleys between the foothills he found a small meadow that looked as though it would serve as an emergency landing field. He took careful note of the position of the wrecked plane and then drifted down to attempt the landing.

The meadow was bordered by pines that stuck their spires into the sky and Ralph thought for a time that it would be impossible to avoid their scraggly tops and get into the meadow. He finally found a break in the pines and sideslipped through. Then he straightened out and fishtailed down into the meadow. The pines had protected the meadow from the driving north wind of the night before and the snow had not drifted.

Ralph taxied the mail plane up under the shelter of the trees, lashed it securely, and then prepared for his trip to the wrecked plane.

The young reporter took his package of food he had had prepared at Rubio, ropes and a hand axe and started the climb up the foothills. The snow had drifted but little and he made good progress. In little more than half an hour he reached the scene of the wreck of the air mail.

Ralph shouted lustily, but there was no response. The tail of the big ship was pointing straight into the sky. Ralph could see that Mitchell was not in the pilot’s cockpit.

Then he gasped with astonishment. The door of the mail compartment was open.

Ralph ran across the small clearing and hastily climbed the wings and on up to the mail compartment. One glance was sufficient.

The sack of registered mail was missing!