Imagination! Was it imagination?
All in a quiver of excitement, Hal Dane silenced his own engine and cocked a listening ear towards the skies.
There it was again—faint hum of a motor high in the air. An airplane was winging its way across the forest-covered hills that lay between Interborough and the railroad gap at Morris Crossing. No air mail route lay that way. This must be something out of ordinary; an important message to be dropped at the railroad crossing, perhaps.
“Gosh!” ejaculated Hal to himself. “Speaking of dreaming things till you really see ’em! Listen at her coming in!”
The plane was swooping nearer; was now practically above him. Staring upward, Hal caught a glimpse of the spotlight focused on the hills below. It was turning from side to side. The boy looked on with anguish beginning to clutch at his heart. The motor of the plane was missing in an alarming manner. It sputtered and coughed—ran smoothly for a few seconds, then sputtered again.
“Trouble!” muttered Hal. “In trouble and looking for a place to land. There’s no place—unless—”
Above him the plane slid crazily on its way. Now it seemed to hang in the air at a mere crawl, now it shot onward. At a spot which Hal judged was a couple of miles distant, the light became stationary for an instant, then tipped sharply downward and was swallowed up by the pine forests on the hills.
“A crash!” whispered Hal Dane. He shut his eyes, then opened them quickly, staring hard at the moonlit landscape to impress location on his memory. That jagged pine, that spur of the hill—it was somewhere between these that the plane had crashed.
Next moment the boy was on the ground and cranking up his old truck like one possessed. As it roared into life, he swung aboard and let her out for all she was worth. In the case of a human pinned under wreckage in horrible certainty of fire or suffocation, speed of rescue must mean the saving of life. So down the woods road shot Hal, his ancient truck gallantly riding roots and ruts and snorting to the charge with a backfire like gattling guns. A tire blew out and nearly careened Hal, truck and all into a bank. But the boy held to the wheel, wrenched her nose straight to the road and bumped onward. A second tire burst, and the bumping went on more evenly.
Then the headlights showed an opening through the trees where great white wings lay flattened to the earth.