Dave didn't bother to answer. As a matter of fact he couldn't have said a single word at that moment even though it would have gained him a million dollars. His heart was stuck halfway between his chest and his throat, and refused to go up or down. It was the same with Freddy Farmer, too. The English youth sat stiff and straight in his seat, working his lips but making no sound. Eventually, though, he did manage to get control of his tongue and of his frozen muscles. He reached across and pressed Dave's arm.
"Top-hole, Dave!" he got out in a husky voice. "A bit of the very, very best, and I mean it, really. As a pilot bloke myself, I know how good you have to be to get away with that sort of thing. It was absolutely perfect."
"What else?" Dave cracked back with a shaky laugh. "Look who did it! But skip it. Is my hair grey, Freddy? Do I look very much older? I know doggone well I gained forty years in those last couple of seconds. Jeepers! Take a look at that drop-off ahead. Another ten feet and you wouldn't be thinking I was so hot. And I'm not, really. If Lady Luck ever landed a plane, she did it that time, and I'm not kidding."
"Well, we're down, anyway," said Freddy. Then, getting practical: "What do we do now? Do you know this area very well, sir? Have we got far to go to the next village?"
Both Dave and the Colonel laughed in spite of the seriousness of the situation. And Freddy made angry sounds in his throat.
"What's so blasted funny about that?" he demanded. "Do you plan to stay here all night?"
"Sorry, Freddy," Dave said, and patted his pal's knee. "But this isn't England, where you can throw a rock from one town and have it land in the next one. This is our wild and woolly west. I don't know exactly where we are, but I'd make a rough guess that we're a good two hundred miles from the nearest town. And that's as the crow flies. Going over and down these mountains and hills, you could add another two hundred miles. What do you think, Colonel?"
"Well, not quite that far, Dawson," the senior officer said with a laugh that was just a little too tight. "You're stretching it a little, I'd say. Call it a hundred by air and two-fifty by foot, I guess. We're just over the Arizona line and south of Holbrook. I'm afraid, though, Farmer, that we will have to sit here for the rest of the night, worse luck. To try and get out of here in the dark is just about like deciding to step off some cliff and smash yourself to bits on the bottom of a ravine. No. We've got to sit here until they find us."
"Hey!" Dave cried. "Aren't you forgetting something, Colonel? I mean, who knows we're on our way? We—Oh, I see! You planned to send word back to your office, eh? When they don't hear, they'll send planes hunting for us, huh?"
The Colonel groaned heavily and clapped a hand to his forehead.