It was not quite dark when the engines throttled back and the aeroplane began to descend. The lights of a town appeared below. Wherever it was that they were going, they had apparently arrived. They circled above the town, while Dipper consulted his map with the aid of an electric torch. He pointed at the ground, and he and Alec exchanged shouts. Down they went again.
The landing was decidedly bumpy, not to say bouncy. Daisy was just grateful to be down in one piece, especially when she realized Alec had landed by the light of a row of paraffin lanterns hung on a fence.
The field was very like their last stop, but with no friendly farmers at hand. Whoever lit the lamps had already left.
“Sioux City, we think,” said Dipper ruefully, helpingDaisy to the ground. “We were aiming for Omaha. Should have turned south when we struck the Missouri River, dash it, as Arrow said. Still, no bones broken, what?”
“Sioux City!” Daisy exclaimed. “As in ‘Little Indian, Sioux or Crow’? We’re in the Wild West, then. It can’t be much farther to Oregon.”
“Awf’ly sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Fletcher, but we’re not even halfway across the country, as near as I can reckon it. The maps I’ve got only go as far as a hundred and five degrees west.”
“This is crazy,” said Alec, stretching wearily. “I don’t suppose you’ve remembered yet, Daisy, where in Oregon Pitt comes from?”
“No, I’m afraid not, darling. Actually, I fell asleep while trying to think of the name of the town. But Iwillremember, I promise.”
He groaned. “I suppose it’s no good walking into the town. The telegraph office will be closed, and anyway Washington will be shut down for the weekend. If only I knew what was going on, whether there’s a general alert out, whether the federal authorities have found out where Pitt’s from and where he’s going.”
“I can’t see Lambert getting close enough to tell them. So it would take cooperation from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Daisy pointed out. “Most unlikely.”
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?” queried Dipper, intrigued.
“It’s a long story,” said Daisy.
“We’ve got time. We can’t take off again until the early hours of the morning unless we want to land at an unknown field in the dark.”
“Always assuming there’s fuel in that shed,” Alec said gloomily.
“If there isn’t, darling, we’re stymied, which ought to please you. Let’s go and see.”
There was fuel. In the last of the twilight, Alec and Dipper refueled the aeroplane. Daisy scavenged the last of the food supplies from inside and, by the light of the torch, arranged a meagre picnic within the petrol-smelling shelter of the shed. The men brought in a couple of the paraffin lanterns, which made things more cheerful and perhaps slightly warmer, though adding to the overall effluvium.
They sat down cross-legged—much easier in aviator’s gear than a skirt, Daisy noted—to curling sandwiches and lukewarm coffee.
“First,” said Daisy, “before I explain everything, would you mind telling me, Sir Roland, why you’re called Dipper? And also why you call Alec ‘Arrow,’ unless it’s just because he’s Fletcher?”
“That’s part of it, of course. But it’s largely because he was the best navigator of all the observer pilots in the RFC.”
“Spare my blushes!” said Alec.
“By George, it’s true, though,” Sir Roland insisted. “Always flew straight as an arrow to his target. Some of the chaps used to ramble over half of France and come back never having set eyes on whatever they’d been sent to take a dekko at. Arrow always got the goods. Comes of being a copper, I dare say. Always get your man, do you, old man?”
“Not quite always.”
“Jolly nearly,” said Daisy. “What about ‘Dipper’?”
Sir Roland laughed heartily. “That’s another story!Thing is, I was shot down two or three times, and ran out of fuel now and then, and then there were mechanical problems—nothing out of the ordinary, by George, nothing that didn’t happen to most of the chaps, sooner or later. But somehow I always came down in the water, the Channel, a river, a reservoir …”
“A duck pond,” Alec put in.
“Dash it, that one I prefer to forget, old man! Ever taken a dip in a duck pond, Mrs. Fletcher? I can’t advise it.”
“At least you didn’t drown,” said Daisy, appalled by his list of mishaps.
“True enough. I was lucky.”
“We both were,” said Alec.
“True,” Dipper said soberly. “We came through. Most of the chaps didn’t. I say, is that the last of the sandwiches?”
