The Sky Wagon lost altitude in a long slip toward the valley floor. Rick and the others kept an eye on the point where the road vanished, and in a few moments the mystery was solved. The road reached a cliff approximately a mile long and a half mile high. The road was about two thirds of the way up. To get past the cliff it had been necessary to cut a shelf into the cliff itself.
"Wow! Notching that cliff must have been some job!" Scotty exclaimed. "No wonder we couldn't see the road from the air."
Rick flew parallel to the cliff until he had to climb to get over a ridge. Below, the road emerged from the overhang and was clearly visible again. He gained altitude.
"Just had a happy thought," he said. "Wouldn't it be nice if the weather closed in? Here we are flying visual contact through some of the trickiest mountains I've ever seen. I'm going to keep an eye on the compass. You two concentrate on the road. If we do get weather, I want to be able to fly a reasonable course back to Baguio."
"Didn't you get a weather briefing at the airport?" Scotty asked.
"Yes. Such as it was. Mostly it was local Baguio conditions and a brief report on Manila."
"Something ahead," Angel called.
"I see it," Scotty answered. "A truck of some kind. Take a look, Rick."
Rick surveyed the landscape ahead, saw that he would not get into difficulty by losing altitude, and went down for a look. He couldn't get closer than a thousand feet, but that was ample. It was a load of lumber, although the truck was much like theirs.
"What color is it?" Scotty asked.