Red Lodge daily news combined with Carbon County news., 1932-06-15
Chapter IS
THE COIN is MATCHED
THE tiny black dot in the air grad.
ually assumed form.

THE tiny black dot in the air grad
ually assumed form.
A single, silvery wing developed
atop a tapering cylindrical fuselage.
Nancy watched it. her heart beating
wildly. Could it be that those flyers
were searching for her ana the other
victims of the k%idnapers?
Back in the house every body,
Ashwood's voice was quiet, unwor-
ried.
From her bedroom window Nancy
watched the %monoplane buzzing on
ward toward the south. For a few
hreathless seconds she thot that he
flyers must have seen the house on
the island, but her hear sank as 1t
drone6 steadily on. Without turning
a hairs breath from it's course, It
passed out of her range of vision. In
a few moments the snarl of it's motor
had dwindled into nothing.
There's your pecan grove, old tim
er, If our luck holds OUT" shouted
Emory triumphantly, as Jerry pointed
There's a house big enough to hold
a regiment, and a hangar, too.
Whoops, sisters, %whoops!"
TN say that's some navigating"
grinned Jerry, watching the island
slide beneath the cleaning wing.
NOW we IL nave 10 Keep EphiB Until
they'll think we haven't seen them.
Then I'll glide down and come back
just over the top Of the water so
they can't see us. Watch for an
island down there that would make
a good landing place."
Make i far enough away SOS
they cant hear the motor suggested
Stevens, making a careful notation
upon a largescale map. Il don't aim
to have them waiting for us with "a
couple dozen machine guns.
His jaws resumed their placid,
rhythmic motion as he turned his at
tention to the machine gun, which he
wiped as carefully as tho 1t had re-
ceived no care for weeks.
Ahead, astern and to the left, the
sea was dotted by thousands of tiny
islands. hard-edged spots of dark
green against the sapphire blue Of the
water. To the right there was nothing
but the endless xpans of the Gulf
Of Mexico, extending to the very edge
of the horizon. Except for the house
and hangar they had just passed,
there was no sign OF a human in all
the tremendous panorama beneath
them. The silent ISLANDS We're, for
the most part, simply clumps Of dense
m~angroves which seemed to have
grown out of the water with no earth
t. give them anchorage or susten-
ance. Far over to the eastward the
iSland became more numerous uHAii
there was more land than water.
Here, as the islands blended one into
another, began the Everglades, which
extended straight across the southern
Florida peninsula to the Atlantic
ocean.
AS Jerry cut the throttle ana noseo
the m%onoplane into a thin glide, flocks
or herons, cranes and penguins flap
ped their wings and flew away from
the strange air monster which hac
Invaded their age-old privacy.
The pilots spirits danced as he re-
allied that they We're at the end o.
their two-thousand mile chase. III
had not the slightest doubt that IL
that low H-shaped house were TO b.
found those who had disappeared s.
mysteriously from the midst of civil,
l~ization, as well as those who hat
spirited them away.
Just ahead and seven or eight mile
from the inhabited island. was a
long, narrow key, bordered on TN
east by a mile-long stretch OF sans
which looked hard enough to sustain
the m~onoplane's weight. Making. on
low flight acoss It's entire length Y
assure himself that the beach held NJ
CONTINUED on page 81