The great man made a low, ceremonious bow and departed from the room.
Then, what did General Helen Eustace Campbell do but have a genuine case of hysterics and require to be supported to her apartment by five highly excited young women!
CHAPTER XXI.-A MEETING IN THE DESERT.
Sand hills and plains, plains and sand hills, stretching out indefinitely and interminably. There was only one bit of color in all the monotonous landscape. A flash of red on the desert.
Six weary travelers, brown as Indians, hot and thirsty, their clothes, their hair, their eyes and nostrils filled with a fine dust. But a good traveler never complains and not one voice was lifted in protest.
Bang! went a tire-the second that day. Billie wearily stopped the motor and climbed out followed by the others.
"I feel as if we had come out of the nowhere into the here," observed Nancy in a sad, thin voice.
"I don"t think there is any here," replied Elinor, endeavoring to wash the dust from her face with her handkerchief and some eau de cologne.
"This is just as much nowhere as where we came from."
"Do you know, Elinor," said Nancy after a pause, in which the two girls looked about them hopelessly, "I believe we are lost. I have been thinking so for the last hour. Billie is afraid to tell us, and so is Mary, but I have suspected it ever since we lost sight of the railroad."
"And this could hardly be called a road. It"s nothing but a trail through sage brush."
"It would be a pity to leave our bones to whiten on the desert,"
observed Nancy cheerfully.
"I shall make tea," exclaimed Elinor with sudden inspiration. "If you are lost in the desert on the seventh of July, drink a cup of tea. It will keep your veins from swelling and bring wisdom and comfort."
By the time Billie and Mary had put on a new tire the tea was ready, and seated on the sand in a circle, the thirsty travelers sipped the delicious beverage. Billie was very quiet and black care sat upon her brow. Mary also was silent. The truth is there was no trail at all. They had lost it a mile back.
Now a trail is a very subtle and illusive thing, once it"s lost, and one"s imagination plays many strange tricks in a desert of sage brush. A dozen times Mary had whispered to Billie: "There"s the trail," and Billie had replied, "That looks a good deal more like it to the right."
No matter which way they looked they saw the lines which marked the trail. And when they looked again, the lines had shifted into a new direction.
At last Billie rose up and faced the company.
"I have to report to you that we are lost," she said. "We are completely and utterly lost and have been for two hours. It"s a quarter to five o"clock and we can"t decide whether to turn back Eastward or go on toward the West. I leave it to the company."
"Go on, go on," they cried in one voice.
Why go back when there was no more trail behind than there was in front?
Back into the Comet they climbed and on they went but progress was slow and the way was heavy. Sage brush impeded them greatly and at six o"clock they appeared to be just as deep in it as ever. They were very low in their minds and very tired. In all the long journey things had never seemed at such a low ebb.
At last Nancy leaned out of the car, for what reason she could not have told, but suddenly there came to her that inexplicable feeling that comes to us all occasionally. She felt she was about to enact a scene which somewhere, somehow she had before. Her eyes swept the deep blueness of the skies unseeingly and then fixed themselves on-what was it-an enormous crane or was it-?
"Billie, Billie," she cried. "It"s the race. It"s the flying machines-look, there are two, one just behind the other!"
The Comet stopped mechanically in response to the excitement of his mistress, and out they all jumped for a better view. The aeroplanes were coming toward them swift as birds on the wing. The larger one, like a great eagle was well in advance of a smaller one, following as a little bird chases a big one. They were so high up they might really have been taken for birds by one who had never seen a flying machine. Then that thing which had once happened was now re-enacted before their astonished eyes. The small bird advanced no farther, but swiftly and surely began to drop. And as the machine neared the earth back they jumped into the car and hastened to the spot where they had seen it fall. But this time there was no crumpled broken ma.s.s of debris. The aeroplane had swooped down neatly and quietly and a young man stood over it working at the machinery with feverish haste.
"It"s Peter Van Vechten," cried Mary, the first to recognize him.
He looked up astonished to find human beings about in that desert spot, and still more amazed to find his former rescuers.
"We started from San Francisco on July 4," he explained, "and I was making good progress until this beastly engine broke down. I"ve been keeping right behind all the time, much to his disgust. A train goes with us. You"ll hear it go by presently. What I wanted to do was to fly all night to-night and get over the Rockies ahead of him. My engine broke half an hour ago and I had to come down and fix it and now I see it"s beyond fixing."
He smiled ruefully as they gathered around him.
"If we could only do something," exclaimed Billie. "We can never forgive ourselves for having taken you for a thief. I hope you will accept our apologies."
"Don"t ever let it trouble you any more," he replied. "I had almost forgotten it really. When one flies very high in the air, one forgets lots of things that happen on the earth beneath."
He turned again to his machine.
"It"s a beastly break," he exclaimed, exasperated.
All this time, Nancy"s mind was very busy, trying to recall something.
"If only you could remember, you could help him," an inner voice kept saying to her.
"I know," she cried suddenly. "I have it," and she rushed from the circle of sympathizing ladies and began rummaging in an interior compartment of the Comet.
"What is the child doing?" exclaimed Miss Campbell, the only one to notice her remarkable behavior.
And then the strangest thing happened.
"Mr. Van Vechten, will this help you any?" she asked, returning with that small piece of machinery she had kept as a souvenir all those weeks ago, which seemed a century past.
The young man very nearly embraced Nancy in his joy, and, Nancy would not have minded it very much, perhaps, at that agitating moment.
"Oh, wonder of wonders," he cried. "It"s the very piece I was breaking my heart for a moment ago, and here it is like a gift from heaven."
"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 compa.s.s lighted with electricity.