“I’ve been saving it for you all this time,” laughed Nancy, and her friends joined in her merriment, for Nancy had really quite forgotten the souvenir until this moment.
They learned from Peter Van Vechten that the road was some two hundred yards away. They had been running parallel to it all this time and furthermore, a few miles on, he had caught glimpses of a village where they might spend the night.
“And where will you get your supper, Mr. Van Vechten?” demanded Miss Campbell.
“I don’t think I’ll get any from present prospects,” he answered. “I keep chocolates in my pocket all the time and a flask of beef tea. One needs lots of food up there,” he added pointing to the skies. “It’s bitter cold.”
“Why can’t we have supper out here?” suggested Billie. “We can get it ready while Mr. Van Vechten mends his machine and it will be so much jollier for everyone than going supperless or eating canned things at the hotel.”
This was a most welcome suggestion and the invitation was eagerly accepted by the young aeroplanist. They brought out all their best stores and prepared a real feast in his honor, with hot coffee and their breakfast fruit as a finishing touch.
The Motor Maids learned many interesting things from the young man. The real thief, who, it was believed, had flown away in one of the flying machines at Chicago, had been caught the very next day on the exhibition grounds and had, as it turned out, no more knowledge of flying than a wingless insect.
Hawkeseye, the Indian halfbreed, had been caught, and was at present doing a term in the penitentiary.
“How do you fly in the right direction at night?” they asked him, and he showed them a little compass lighted with electricity.
“I go due East by this,” he said. “Slightly to the North until after the Rockies, and then straight as an arrow to Chicago. It will be a rough sail over the Rocky Mountains. All those canyons and crevices and valleys are so many suction holes to the aeroplanist. But the air over the prairie country is as smooth as a lake in the summer time.”