“Can’t you see I’m all tired out?” she cried. “Please let me alone.”
She buried her head in her arms and her body shook with the sobs of nervous exhaustion for the strain of the long flight and caring for the wealthy passenger had been more than Jane had realized.
“She’s a plucky kid,” she heard one reporter say as the newspaper people trooped out of the room.
In a few minutes Jane felt more composed and she went into the operations office.
“What time do I start west?” she asked the chief dispatcher.
“All of the space is taken until the 8:18 west in the morning. You’d better take a cab to a hotel and get some sleep.”
Then Jane remembered that she was without funds. It was their first pay day in Cheyenne, but she was hundreds of miles from there.
“I guess I’ll just wait here until the plane goes,” she said.
The dispatcher was busy and failed to notice Jane’s fatigue or he might have guessed that she was in an embarrassing situation. Jane washed her face and hands and walked outside to watch the sun go down behind the Jersey hills.
She was hungry, but the tri-motor she had come in on had been trundled away to a distant hangar and there was little chance that she could find it and rummage through the pantry for anything to eat.