Still with her head throbbing wildly, Janet managed to get out. There was a bad scratch on her left leg that had bled rather freely.
To her anxious questions, the flyer gave only the same answer, “You’ll find out later, maybe.”
Janet was forced to allow her hands to be tied behind her and then was led to a small shelter tent. There was a blanket on the ground and the flyer tossed another over her.
“Don’t make any attempt to escape,” he warned.
The portable electric light which had guided the autogiro down into the basin was snapped off and Janet passed the remainder of the night in desperate anxiety, wondering what was happening back at camp and the meaning of her abduction.
With the coming of dawn she hoped to learn more about the camp, but she was doomed to disappointment for her captor appeared and dropped the canvas fly which covered the front of the tiny tent.
It was well after daylight when she heard another plane approaching. It landed nearby and a few minutes later she heard men’s voices, one of whom she recognized as that of the flyer who had brought her there. Then the plane which had just landed roared away and it was shortly after that when Janet heard a series of booming explosions.
Suddenly her tent flap was jerked roughly aside and her captor, a stocky, heavy-set man with a mass of black hair, ordered her to her feet. Janet struggled to get up, but she was numb from being in one position so long. The man half cuffed her upright and then hurried her toward the autogiro.
The motor of the queer looking plane responded instantly and they rose almost straight out of the valley, which Janet judged must be some distance from Sagebrush. As they gained altitude she looked across the desert. Although it was several miles away, it seemed almost a stone’s throw to Sagebrush, hardly recognizable now with the flames still consuming the few structures left in the village. Janet saw that the set for the desert airport had been destroyed. But what was more important was the swarm of planes which were climbing off the desert floor.
Like angry hornets they were buzzing around. Suddenly one of them shot toward the autogiro and the rest followed. Janet heard her own pilot shouting in anger, but the autogiro was slow and the movie planes were around it almost instantly.