They plied Jane with questions about the trip, the encounter with the bandits, and how she had gotten along with Mrs. Van Verity Vanness.

"She's an old dear," said Jane. "I don't care what the newspapers say about her, she certainly treated me splendidly, and just as we got to New York she invited me to accompany her as nurse and companion. She's planning a round-the-world trip as soon as her son recovers."

"And you turned that down?"

"I should say I did. Why, I wouldn't trade this job of mine for almost anything else in the world. You'll feel the same way before you're half way through your first regular flight as stewardess. There's a thrill to flying that can't be found in anything else."

"I'm willing to be shown," said Grace.

The planes from the west came in on time, both of them loaded to capacity. New crews took over the controls at Cheyenne and Grace and Alice stowed the food away in the pantries. They checked their pa.s.senger lists and when the planes were refueled, called their pa.s.sengers aboard.

"Good luck," called Jane and Sue as they stood on the ramp and watched the big ships wheel out of the hangar. Then the planes roared away into a greying sky, which heralded the coming of another dawn.

A field car was available to take them to town and Miss Comstock joined them.

"Are you going to come out and see every ship off?" asked Jane.

"I should say not, but with all of the girls a.s.signed to go out within the next 24 hours, I want to see that they get started right. After that, they'll be on their own."

"What a.s.signment do we get?" asked Sue.

"You will be on the _Night Flyer_ while Jane is to take the _Coast to Coast Limited_. You'll go out tonight, while Jane's first trip is tomorrow morning."

"Then I'll plan to do plenty of sleeping in the next few hours," said Sue. "The _Night Flyer_ means a slow trip to Chicago for it stops at every airport."

Mrs. Murphy heard them come in, and appeared with her hair done up in curl papers and a faded kimono wrapped around her ample bulk. She insisted on going down and fixing a lunch, and over the kitchen table Jane spread out the New York papers. They read the stories, in great detail, and Mrs. Murphy appeared immensely pleased at the great publicity given to Jane's fine work.

"I could tell the minute I laid eyes on you, that you'd be a winner,"

she said proudly. "Now you'd best both be off to bed, for it's circles you'll be having under your eyes if you don't."

They thanked Mrs. Murphy for the lunch and hurried upstairs to undress and crawl between crisp, cool sheets just as the sun came over the horizon.

Mrs. Murphy came in later and adjusted the curtains on the porch, and the girls slept until mid-afternoon.

Sue, about to make her first flight alone, was nervous and excited. She fussed over the way her uniform fitted her trim figure and worried about what she would do if any of the pa.s.sengers became ill.

"Just forget you're in a plane and think about ward duty back in Good Samaritan, then you'll know what to do," advised Jane.

They had supper with Mrs. Murphy and then a car from the field called for them. The _Night Flyer_ was due at ten o'clock, but Sue had at least an hour's work in the commissary and she wanted to have plenty of time.

Miss Comstock, looking rather worn and tired, was still on duty and Mattie Clark was also at the field, looking very neat and business-like in her uniform.

"There's two sections tonight on the _Flyer_," Mattie informed Sue.

"I'm going out on the first section and you'll take the second."

"Sue is a.s.signed on the first section," said Miss Comstock, who resented Mattie's infringement of her authority. "You take No. 2."

"But I want to be in Chicago early," protested Mattie.

"Both ships will be there within five minutes of each other. Besides, Sue is to be on the _Flyer_ regularly, and she might just as well get acquainted with the regular pilots who are on that run."

Mattie was silent, but it was obvious that she was anything but pleased at Miss Comstock's decision, and Jane knew more than ever, that Mattie was going to cause trouble for everyone else in the ranks of the stewardess corps.

Chapter Sixteen

Through the Fog

The first section of the _Night Flier_ came in from the west three minutes ahead of schedule and with a capacity load. While the pa.s.sengers stretched their legs and visited about the flight over the mountains from Salt Lake, Sue stowed her kit away in the pantry.

With departure time at hand, she forgot the nervousness which had gripped her earlier and became a calm, self-contained nurse.

"The best of luck," whispered Jane as she squeezed her friend's hand.

Sue herded her pa.s.sengers into the cabin and closed the door. The landing stage was wheeled away and the _Night Flyer_ lumbered out of the hangar on the first lap of the long flight to Chicago.

Jane watched the lights of the plane until they were pin-points in the east.

It was Sue's task to make her pa.s.sengers comfortable for the night and she went along the aisle, adjusting seats, turning off lights, and bringing out the thick, warm blankets from the supply closet. In half an hour she had the task completed and only one pa.s.senger, an elderly man, had elected to read, selecting a Cheyenne paper with the latest news.

As they sped east, Sue wondered at her own nervousness which had been so evident before the flight. Now everything seemed so matter-of-fact.

She felt as though she had been flying for years.

A woman who had come through from 'Frisco was getting off at North Platte and Sue roused her just before they swooped down on the field.

In ten minutes they were away again, with a radio order to stop at Grand Island to pick up a pa.s.senger for Chicago and another coast pa.s.senger would disembark at Lincoln.

The _Night Flyer_ made most of the local stops, and as a result was anything but popular with the pilots. Most of the new men on the line drew the thankless job of piloting the _Flyer_, and the crew of Sue's ship had been on only a little more than a month.

With a fair tail wind, they kept on time despite all of their stops, and they soared away from Omaha and over the muddy Missouri a few minutes after two a.m. with a new crew of pilots up ahead. The stewardesses made the entire trip from Cheyenne to Chicago, but the pilots changed at Omaha, unless piloting a special.

It was over this stretch of the line that Jane had encountered the thrilling experience which had brought her front page fame in every newspaper in the country and Sue looked out, halfway in the hope that something unusual enough to bring her fame, would happen.

But her hopes were doomed, and they went into Des Moines on time. The only field they missed was at Iowa City, and they sped over that one shortly after sunrise.

East of the Mississippi, they lost the sun in a murk of smoke and fog.

Sue's light flashed, and she went forward to answer the call from the chief pilot.

"Weather around Chicago's bad," he said. "We may not be able to get through, so stall the pa.s.sengers off if they get anxious about the time we're due in Chicago."

"But what will I tell them?" asked Sue.

"That's your job. All I do is run this crate."

Like Jane, Sue was finding out that pilots who on the ground were the pleasantest and most friendly flyers, were more than likely to be martinets when they were at the controls of a big pa.s.senger plane.