“Or coal-shovels,” grinned Hinkley.
“How’s Hayden?”
“Came to once and I put him out again and tied him up,” replied Graves calmly. “Let’s flag this car coming down the road and see where we are. I’d like to get the first train I can get to.”
“We’re not far from either Lexington or Richmond. I saw the lights of a big town a few miles north,” said Broughton as all three men climbed out.
They lifted Hayden out of the back seat. His head was bandaged, and he was still unconscious.
“I bandaged him up—he was bleeding pretty badly,” remarked Graves, lighting a new cigar with a steady hand. “Let’s get over to the road—there’s a regular parade of autos coming.”
A string of headlights extending so far that some were mere points of light were coming down the road. The noise of a Martin, plus the parachute flare, had aroused the whole country.
Broughton lingered behind to use an electric-flashlight on the ship. The ground was soft, and there was a ditch they had hit, besides. That was the reason for the nose-over. It was better so, he reflected. They would have run into the fence and then the trees at the further end of the field, and some one would probably have been hurt.
Within fifteen minutes there were a hundred marveling people around. The flyers hired a guard for the ship, and then accepted the invitation of a man who drove a luxurious touring car to spend the night at his home. Hayden, whose identity was not revealed, spent the night in the town jail of Ellis, Virginia, guarded by the tireless Graves in addition to the regular warden, and accompanied that gentleman to Washington by train early the next moving. He was handcuffed, and rode in a baggage car to avoid publicity.
As he was leaving Graves shook hands with the flyers in a matter-of-fact way.