Ahead was the Gap, flanked by its towering peaks, with their silvery rock elbows, framing, as in a miniature, a glimpse of still loftier peaks, beyond; of rich, green bottom lands between—and over all the glory of a lamb’s wool sky, in mid-July.
“Oh! now—now, all the words have got patches on them, indeed. One can’t find any to fill the Gap with!” Una laughed. “But there! Oh! look there.” She rose in her saddle so suddenly, so wildly, that even Revel resented it, shook her fair head protestingly.
“Above—above the Gap! Right over it! Against—the sky!” she cried. “That—silver—speck, tumbling speck, what is it?” And now the thong of her riding crop, frantically waving, seemed, from afar, to loop the speck.
“I believe—I believe it’s an aëroplane! Aëroplane doing stunts up there! A—a thousand feet above the Gap!” Pemrose’s heart was stunt-flying too. “Oh-h! now. See there! Turning somersaults! Flying upside down. Maybe it’s Treff! He’s dare-devil—enough.”
Just as the “zooming” bats had wheeled and turned somersaults against the black and blue night-sky, on the girls’ first night out, so this jolly air king was having his free frolic in the sun’s eye, cutting all sorts of festive capers, or flitting, a radiant dragon fly, from peak to peak, above the hills.
It gave the crowning touch to the landscape—and skyscape. For it was Life: Life joyous, dominant—devil-may-care.
“Look! Look, girls! Oh, look!” Una pointed him out to those behind. “Stunt-flying—an aviator! Isn’t that gr-reat?... I guess it is Treff—that ‘nickum’ cousin of mine—and his new ‘bus.’ Oh, I hope he isn’t going to have any more fiery ‘notes’ to-day!”
“I’ll engage that’s who—it is.” The color was flooding Pemrose’s cheek. “When I got his ‘radio’ a few nights ago—radio message—he said something about ‘hopping’ over here for your birthday the day after to-morrow—and the Flower Fuss, as he calls the party. Ha! There he goes now, dropping down—dropping down, a few hundred feet!”
“He’s flying in our direction—no, down towards the horse-farm,” said Una. “Probably he means to stay there, for a few days. Hear—his purr! Whew!” She turned suddenly a little pale. “If he comes nearer the horses won’t like it.”
The familiar buzz of the aëroplane was, now, only five hundred feet above the trail. The solitary air king was flying southward, along the route by which the girls had come—but down in the direction of the farm.