thousand, five hundred. Lake Hawthorne passed under the
Cub’s fat little tires, an irregular sapphire set in the pommel
of the mountain. The altimeter crept slowly past five thousand
feet; Martinson was taking no chances on being caught in the
downdraft on the other side of the hill. At six thousand, he
edged the throttle back and leveled out, peering back through
the plexiglas.
But there was no sign of any wreck on that side of the
mountain, either.
Puzzled, McDonough forced up the top cabin flap on the
right side, buttoned it into place against the buffering slip-
stream, and thrust his head out into the tearing gale. There
was nothing to see on the ground. Straight down, the knife-
edge brow of the cliff from which the railroad tracks emerged
again drifted slowly away from the Cub’s tail; just an inch
farther on was the matchbox which was the Otisville siding
shack. A sort of shaking of pepper around the matchbox
meant people, a small crowd of themthough there was no
train due until the Erie’s No. 6, which didn’t stop at Otisville
anyhow.
He thumped Martinson on the shoulder. The adjutant
tilted his head back and shouted, “What?”
“Bank right. Something going on around the Otisville
station. Go down a bit.”
The adjutant jerked out the carburetor-heat toggle and
pulled back the throttle. The plane, idling, went into a long,
whistling glide along the railroad right of way.
“Can’t go too low here,” he said. “If we get caught in the
downdraft, we’ll get slammed right into the mountain.”
“I know that. Go on about four miles and make an airline