He lumbered across the meadow, hoping for a glimpse of Celere’s body smashed on the river rocks. But halfway to the rim of the cliff, he stopped dead, poleaxed by a horrible realization. He had to run before they locked him back in the bughouse.

JOSEPHINE FOUGHT WITH ALL HER SKILL to guide her machine safely to the ground.

Harry had hit it twice. One bullet had nicked the two-gallon gasoline tank behind her. The second was worse. It had jammed the link between her control lever and the wire that twisted the shape of her wings. Unable to warp them to bank the machine into a turn, she was dependent entirely on its rudder. But trying to turn without banking was like flying a glider before the Wright brothers invented wing warping—god-awful awkward and likely to slide her sideways into a deadly flat spin.

Lips tight, she worked the rudder like a surgeon’s scalpel, taking measured slices of the wind. Her mother, a frantic woman unable to cope with the simplest task, used to accuse her of having “ice water in her veins.” But wasn’t ice water handy on a crippled flying machine, Mother? Slowly, she brought the biplane back on course.

When the wind gusted from behind, she smelled gasoline. She looked for the source and saw it dripping from the fuel tank. Harry’s bullet had punctured it.

Which would happen first? she wondered coolly. Would the gasoline all leak out and stop her motor before she could alight on Harry’s lawn? Or would sparks from the engine and chains ignite the gasoline? Fire was deadly on a flying machine. The varnish of nitrate fabric dope that stiffened and sealed the cotton canvas covering her wings was as flammable as flash powder.

The only field nearer was the meadow. But if she alighted there, Harry would kill her. She had no choice. She had to land the machine at the camp, if she had enough gasoline to reach it.

“Come on, Elsie. Take us home.”

The forest inched slowly beneath her. Updrafts buffeted her wings and rolled the airship. Unable to warp them to counteract, she tried to keep the machine on an even keel using her elevators and rudder.

At last she saw the lake beside Harry’s camp.

Just as she got close enough to see the main house and the dairy barns, her motor sputtered on the last fumes of gasoline. The propellers stopped turning. The pusher biplane went silent but for the wind whispering through the wire stays.

She had to volplane—to glide—all the way to the lawn.

But the propellers, which had been pushing her, were dragging in the air. They held her back, reducing her speed. In moments she would be gliding too slowly to stay aloft.