While the lads are taking a rest, it may be as well to turn back to the lone farm at which the Despatch party had decided to stop for breakfast. So engrossed had they been over the meal, and so busy had the farm folks been serving them, that none of the party had noticed the boys’ aeroplane fly over, and they made very merry at the thought that they were miles ahead of them. Fred Reade was sure they had broken down, and his confidence that they had met with an accident was shared by Luther Barr, Slade and the red-bearded man, whose name was Ethan Aram, and who was Slade’s substitute driver.
“I feel like lying down for a nap,” said Luther Barr, after breakfast, but his desire was overruled by the others. It was pointed out that he could take a nap in his auto just as well.
“We want to beat those cubs good while we are at it,” said Reade, and this stroke of diplomacy won over old Barr. Taking turns at snoozing, therefore, the party pressed on at a leisurely rate, little dreaming that the Boy Aviators were far ahead and nearing Pittsburg. There was another reason for their decreased speed, also. They wished to take advantage of what they considered a great stroke of good luck to let their engine cool off thoroughly.
As the aeroplane flashed above Lockhaven, Pa., the wires began to get red-hot with news of their close approach to Pittsburg. In the Smoky City huge crowds gathered and awaited patiently for hours the coming of the air racers. Every park and open space held its quota of excited people, and flags were run up on every building.
Frank and Harry had both had a sleep before. Pointing to the southwest of their course Harry indicated a heavy dark pall that hung against the sky.
“That must be the Smoky City,” he exclaimed, and, sure enough it was. Soon the junction of the Alleghany, Monongahela and Ohio rivers in their Y-shaped formation became visible. Then the dark factory buildings, belching out their clouds of black smoke to make perpetual the city’s inky pall. Then the occasional gushes of flame from foundry chimneys, and the long processions of funereal ore and coal barges on the gloomy rivers.
The boys landed in Schenley Park, a fine expanse of wooded and lawned landscape, one of the few beauty spots in the city of gloom. Here it seemed as if at least a quarter of Pittsburg’s population was out to greet them. The police had formed hasty lines as soon as it became evident that the boys meant to land on an open stretch of grass, but they had a hard struggle to keep back the crowds. They were speedily re-enforced by reserves from all parts of the city, however, and soon had the crowd in order.
It had been arranged by telegraph that in case of the contestants landing in a public park that the city would allow them to keep the machine there as long as they wanted, so that after the boys had arranged for a guard to be kept over the Golden Eagle and the shelter tent carried in the auto—which came chug-chugging up half an hour after the boys had landed—had been rigged, there was nothing to do but to go to the hotel for a wash-up and what Billy Barnes called “a real feed.”
Of course the first question the boys had asked when they landed was:
“Anything been seen of the other racers?”