Morgan, the co-pilot, smiled wanly and wished he’d spoken his mind to Mona, the hostess, before they’d started on this flight.
He went back to the control room. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was circling the plane. It had lost five hundred feet. “It doesn’t look so good, Bill!” he said.
Bill Morgan had been a co-pilot of the line for three years. On an average of three times a year he had seen the headlines in the papers: “Air Liner Crashes!” Sometime it’ll be me, he had thought. This was the time.
However, he said, “You’ll make it, Gene!”
They were skimming the tree tops. “Hang on!” said Gene Stallings.
The snow rushed up to meet them. The ship struck, bounced up in the air, seemed to hover there for a full second, then settled again. Gene Stallings cut the ignition switch.
And then he died.
The nose of the plane went through the snow, sheared off a short poplar stump and buried itself in the frozen earth underneath. It quivered there for an instant, straight on end, then went over on to its back.
It was level ground here, the snow was fairly deep, and the fact that the plane had landed on its nose and taken the brunt of the collision saved most of the passengers.
A woman moaned, a man blubbered hysterically. Another swore softly. Everyone was trying to move about, most of them unable to do so because of the safety belts which had really saved them from being seriously injured.
Mona, the air hostess, had a cut on her cheek, a huge bruise on her shoulder and one side of her felt as if a couple of ribs had been caved in. But she crawled among the passengers, helping them. Through the broken windows the passengers crawled out to the whiteness of the snow.
Four of them. Mona came out, dabbing at her cut cheek with the back of her hand. She counted the passengers. “Two more,” she said.
“My ankle!” screamed one of the women. “My ankle, it’s broken!” It couldn’t really be broken for she was hopping about on it. It was probably only bruised. She was a flaxen-haired blonde. Her hair looked as if it had been dipped in molten paraffin. Her face was broad and very Swedish. A short, roly-poly man wobbled to her side.
“Olga!” he babbled. “Oh, no! Not your ankle!”
Mona got down on her knees, started to crawl back into the cabin of the plane, through one of the broken windows. A lean man in a gray topcoat put his hand on her shoulder, said, “Let me!”
Mona turned her head and looked at the man. “All right, Mr. McGregor.”
McGregor scuttled into the hole. After a moment, the bloody face of Bill Morgan showed in the opening. Mona exclaimed softly and dropped down. She gave him a hand out. “Gene, what about Gene?”
Bill Morgan shook his head. He crawled out, but did not get up from the snow. Then McGregor appeared in the opening. He came out, reached back into the hole, tugged at someone. Morgan crawled over and helped him.
It was a man, an unconscious man. McGregor got to his feet. “One more!” cried Mona.
McGregor shook his head. “No, the glass got the one left in there.”
Mona shuddered. Glass from the window had horribly mutilated the last passenger.
There had been eight in the plane. Gene Stallings, the pilot, was dead. So was one passenger. All of the others seemed to have injuries of some sort. How bad they were could not at the moment be determined. On the whole they had been fortunate.
“We’ve got to get doctors, a hospital!” someone cried.
They were all willing to admit that. But they were all hysterical now. Because they had survived an airplane crash.
It was several minutes before Morgan, the co-pilot, could tell them: “As near’s I can determine we’re a hundred and fifty miles from Duluth. There ought to be a town nearby somewhere. The map shows — I’ll get it from the cabin.”
He crawled back into the plane. He was gone a full three minutes. When he came out his face was gray.
Mona looked at him and knew that he had seen something inside. “What is it, Bill?” she asked.
He shook his head and walked to one side a few feet. She followed. “Gene!” he said. “He was killed — with a bullet!”
Mona gasped softly. “Bill! You?”
He shook his head miserably.
There were three inches of snow on the road, packed smooth and hard and very slick. It was cold and evening was coming on. Charlie Boston cursed dispassionately as he fought the wheel of the little car. He gunned the motor until the wheels went into a skid, then yelled and wrestled with the wheel. Regaining control, he put a heavy foot on the gas.
“Next town we come to,” he said savagely to Oliver Quade beside him, “we’ll trade the damn thing for a sled and some dogs.”
“Or a ham sandwich,” said Oliver Quade sardonically. He sprawled in the seat beside Charlie Boston. He did not seem concerned about the skidding. He did not seem concerned about anything. He knew there wasn’t more than a gallon of gas in the car; he knew they were thirty miles or more from the next town, and he knew that even if they reached the town, they didn’t have money enough to buy gas.
They were broke, stony; Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia, and Charlie Boston, his burly friend and assistant. Things had been good in summer, but they weren’t squirrels and had not stored any nuts for a long cold winter. Charlie Boston had pitted his wits against the race-track bookies and had lost. Oliver Quade had squandered his money on expensive hotels and fine living. And now it was mid-December and they were somewhere in northern Wisconsin, broke and cold and hungry and in a battered jalopy that threatened to expire at any skid.
“I’m a human being,” said Charlie Boston. “I eat, drink and I’m fond of the good things in life. I don’t know why I let you talk me into going up to the North Pole in Winter.”
Oliver Quade grinned. “I think the hotel manager in Chicago had something to do with that, Charlie. He didn’t like the idea of you hibernating in his steam-heated room, not without something to help pay for the steam.”
“Oh, we’ve been broke before,” retorted Charlie Boston. “But look, there are people south of Chicago, too. Why did we have to come north?”
“Because they don’t have ice carnivals in Florida. And because they have one in Duluth. Even if you cut their publicity agents’ bunk in half there’ll still be fifty thousand people there. And a lot of those fifty thousand people are going back to their farms with some mighty fine reading matter that we’re going to sell ’em. And you and me, Charlie, we’ll run the bus into a snow bank and grab us some Pullmans and fine living and keep going until we get to Florida and somewhere warm.”
The rear wheels of the car skidded to the left side of the road. Charlie Boston yelped and fought the wheel. It was only by a superhuman effort that he kept the car from going into the high banks of snow alongside the road.
“That was a close one!” he gasped. “Once we hit that deep snow, we’re stuck. You know we ain’t got no chains. Say! That’s the first time I ever saw a black rabbit. Look!”
Quade had already seen it — a small black animal crouched on the ridge of snow, some fifty yards ahead. “Rabbits don’t have long tails,” he said. “Look out, Charlie!”
Boston twisted the wheel and the car went into a terrific skid. There was a sharp yell of an animal in pain and then Boston got control of the car again.
“Stop the car, Charlie!” exclaimed Oliver Quade. His lethargy was suddenly gone.
The car skidded again as Boston put on the brakes. He managed to stop it beyond where the animal lay. Oliver Quade leaped out to the road. He shuddered as the cold wind bit through his thin overcoat. He jammed his hat far down on his head and ran, a lean, tall man, back toward the animal.