“All we’ve got to do,” explained Frank to Lord Pelton, “is to go west now for thirty-five miles. When we’ve covered that distance we’ll be near two mountains, Norboe and Osborne. Then we turn north again and ‘Baldy’s Bench’ is forty-five miles away, a little east of north. Hosmer says we’ll know it because it stands all alone in a valley of jack-pines.”
“And you’re goin’ to land on top of it?” asked Lord Pelton.
“If we can.”
“Then what?”
“Then?” repeated Phil, “we’ll have to get off. It may be much easier to stop than to start.”
In a half hour the two mountain peaks were below the Loon, which was now nearly two thousand feet in the air. Then, as the ship was headed north again, Phil brought it rapidly down. The smaller mountains that flanked the Elk River now gave way to rougher and loftier ranges in the west. In the far northwest, snow clad peaks were already in sight. No streams cut the region beneath the flying airship, but jumbled hills—like the Hog Back Range—pressed into each other or opened in dark, rocky chasms and passes.
At eight o’clock, with eyes only for their rough chart or the horizon ahead, Phil shouted:
“Over there! ‘Grizzly’ told the truth. See! To the right.”
And, while his companions leaned forward eagerly, the Loon was brought into a direct course for a rocky point ahead about fifteen miles away. As it grew larger the hills below dwindled into a flat plain and then the pine wilderness basin took their place. It was “Baldy’s Bench” in its setting of green—a barren island of whitish brown rock in a sea of verdure.