“Go on, go on,” they cried in one voice.
Why go back when there was no more trail behind than there was in front? Back into the Comet they climbed and on they went but progress was slow and the way was heavy. Sage brush impeded them greatly and at six o’clock they appeared to be just as deep in it as ever. They were very low in their minds and very tired. In all the long journey things had never seemed at such a low ebb.
At last Nancy leaned out of the car, for what reason she could not have told, but suddenly there came to her that inexplicable feeling that comes to us all occasionally. She felt she was about to enact a scene which somewhere, somehow she had before. Her eyes swept the deep blueness of the skies unseeingly and then fixed themselves on—what was it—an enormous crane or was it—?
“Billie, Billie,” she cried. “It’s the race. It’s the flying machines—look, there are two, one just behind the other!”
The Comet stopped mechanically in response to the excitement of his mistress, and out they all jumped for a better view. The aeroplanes were coming toward them swift as birds on the wing. The larger one, like a great eagle was well in advance of a smaller one, following as a little bird chases a big one. They were so high up they might really have been taken for birds by one who had never seen a flying machine. Then that thing which had once happened was now re-enacted before their astonished eyes. The small bird advanced no farther, but swiftly and surely began to drop. And as the machine neared the earth back they jumped into the car and hastened to the spot where they had seen it fall. But this time there was no crumpled broken mass of débris. The aeroplane had swooped down neatly and quietly and a young man stood over it working at the machinery with feverish haste.
“It’s Peter Van Vechten,” cried Mary, the first to recognize him.
He looked up astonished to find human beings about in that desert spot, and still more amazed to find his former rescuers.
“We started from San Francisco on July 4,” he explained, “and I was making good progress until this beastly engine broke down. I’ve been keeping right behind all the time, much to his disgust. A train goes with us. You’ll hear it go by presently. What I wanted to do was to fly all night to-night and get over the Rockies ahead of him. My engine broke half an hour ago and I had to come down and fix it and now I see it’s beyond fixing.”
He smiled ruefully as they gathered around him.
“If we could only do something,” exclaimed Billie. “We can never forgive ourselves for having taken you for a thief. I hope you will accept our apologies.”