They were forced ever higher by the narrowing valley. Snowy peaks rose about them and ahead, and then the road reached the snow level. Someone had driven it since the snow fell, though. Daisy saw the double track black against the white as they curled around the mountainside.
Down went the road into a valley wide enough for what looked like a farm and a few fields. But ahead rose a great ridge and more, higher peaks. The road climbed again, and they climbed with it, until it disappeared into the shadow of a sheer cliff.
This time there didn’t seem to be much choice about where to go. A few minutes later the road reappeared, still with those tyre tracks without which it would have been invisible. To follow it between the rocky buttresses and near vertical slopes, Bessie flew at an angle, one wing up and one wing down. Only a stunt pilot could have done it, Daisy was sure.
At intervals the road vanished, but somehow they always found it after a minute or two. Daisy’s heart was beating nineteen to the dozen, and breathing was difficult. She didn’t know if it was the altitude or sheer terror.
She must have been stark raving mad to think catching Wilbur Pitt was worth the risk of crashing in this frozen white wilderness.
22
The snowy peaks seemed to go on forever, yet when Bessie shouted to Daisy that they had passed the worst, the sun had not yet cleared the mountains behind them. As long as the weather remained fine, she said, as predicted by the radio forecast, and no mechanical failure forced a landing in the desert …
“Desert!” Daisy shouted back. “I didn’t know there was desert ahead.”
Bessie nodded. “Most of the way to Salt Lake. Desert and sagebrush.”
Picturing hundreds of miles of rolling sand dunes, Daisy was stunned by the stark beauty of cliffs and canyons and mesas. The colours ranged from almost white through greys, near black, buff and brown, pale pink to brick red. The rock formations were extraordinary. One rust-red massif stretched for miles like a fortified castle, with curtain walls, battlements, bastions, turrets, and buttresses.
There were long miles of dull, flat or rolling sagebrush where the road and railway ran straight as an arrow. Then both would disappear into a wooded gorge carved into theplateau by the Colorado River. There the aeroplane followed the winding gash in the land, with glimpses of the river at the bottom.
Whenever Daisy was not too busy looking out for road, rail, or river, and working out which was best to follow, she and Bessie talked, shouting in abbreviated sentences. She heard about Bessie’s childhood in Texas, her half-Negro, half-Indian father who had left his wife and thirteen children when Bessie was seven.
In spite of helping pick cotton and do the laundry her mother took in, Bessie had finished high school and even gone on to a term of college, though she could not afford more. Determined to better herself, she had then headed north to Chicago. Working as a waitress and manicurist, she had saved every penny and then, her heart set on flying, she applied to aviation schools, only to be turned down.
“Ah want to open a school anyone can attend,” she said. “Ah’m saving up every penny Ah can spare again. And every chance Ah get, Ah talk to people about what a coloured girl can do.”
In return, Daisy described growing up on her father’s country estate, with all the privileges of a viscount’s daughter—and all the restrictions.
“Girls just didn’t go to university,” she explained. “And they didn’t work, either.”
The War had enabled her to avoid finishing school and the social season, but it had also killed her brother, so that when her father died, the estate had gone to a distant cousin.
“No one left to stop me working,” she shouted. “Mother tried! Tried to stop me marrying Alec, too. He’s a policeman, a detective.”
Naturally Bessie wanted to know what had brought them to America and how they found themselves chasing an air pirate across the country. By the time Daisy had satisfied her curiosity, they were both hoarse.
“Sounds like you’re just ’bout as crazy as I am,” Bessie croaked with a grin.
There was another mountain range to cross, but they were able to fly round to the south of the highest peaks. They descended over a vast, flat, fertile plain surrounded by barren mountains. The blue waters of the Great Salt Lake sparkled in the distance. Shortly before noon, they landed in Salt Lake City.
From the air, the great city looked deserted. The airfield was one of the regular stops on the coast-to-coast air mail route, but it too was oddly quiet.
“Sunday,” Bessie said curtly, when Dipper asked where everyone was. “This is the Mormon capital. They’ll all be in church.”
Alec groaned. “I suppose it’s no use trying to find out what’s going on, then, or conversely to tell anyone what wethinkis going on.”
“Let’s refuel as quick as we can and get moving,” said Dipper cheerfully. He claimed to have been unable to close his eyes for fear of his life, but both he and Alec were much restored. He left a bank draft for the petrol, made out to the City Fathers, and they took off again.
Dipper was pilot, with Bessie beside him to navigate, so Daisy and Alec were together. Since his comment about “what wethinkis going on,” all her doubts had returned.
What if Pitt wasn’t heading for Eugene City, and she had dragged everyone across the country for nothing? Wasit really Pitt she had seen in the Flatiron Building? If so, was he the murderer? If not, was it fear of the murderer that had made him run and hide? If so, was it her pursuit that had driven him to steal an aeroplane and kidnap the pilot?
If he reached Eugene City safely, that meant the pilot was unhurt. What harm had been done, apart from a minor disruption of the air mail service? Ought she to persuade Alec and Dipper to give up the chase and let Pitt escape in peace?
But what if hewashis cousin’s murderer?
In normal circumstances, she would have nerved herself to discuss these questions with Alec, whatever he thought of her vacillations. She couldn’t bring herself to shout about it.
