“My expenses are paid for in advance by the owner of the plane,” Pete explained. “So I’ll bunk by myself and you two boys can take a double room if you like.”
“That sounds sensible,” Dave said. “All right with you, Marshmallow?”
The clerk behind the marble desk stared at the stout youth who answered to so strange a name.
“Sure thing,” Marshmallow agreed. “What time is dinner?”
“From six to nine,” the clerk answered.
“Half an hour to wait,” said Marshmallow mournfully.
“That gives you time to bathe and change your clothes,” his mother said.
“I could have had dinner sent up while I was bathing,” Marshmallow grinned. “I’m only fooling. Here, let me sign the register.”
The party was escorted to its rooms on the fifth floor. Their quarters were all in a row on the corridor. Kitty and Doris shared a room that communicated with Mrs. Mallow’s through a joint bath.
Refreshed by shower baths and slightly more formal attire than the traveling costumes they had worn in the plane, the girls joined their three companions in the lobby and amused themselves by watching the traffic and pedestrians until Mrs. Mallow came down. They all entered the dining room for dinner, and enjoyed the repast fully. “And now, what do you say to a movie?”
Marshmallow suggested. “With ice cream sodas after?”
Doris, Kitty and Dave, of course, voted for the suggestion. Pete and Mrs. Mallow preferred sleep.
“I’m going to read a while and then turn in,” the aviator said. “An early start tomorrow?”
“Any time you say,” chorused the four. “Breakfast at seven, then, and in the air before eight-thirty.”
Mrs. Mallow had no objections, and so the party divided according to its choices. Doris and her companions spent a couple of hours watching the antics of a motion picture actor who played the part of a heroic air mail pilot, and obtained more enjoyment from Dave’s whispered criticism than from the picture.
After the show, Marshmallow discovered something new to him, a shop specializing in hot tamales and Mexican tortillas, but the three others contented themselves with sodas.
“You ought to try these,” Marshmallow coaxed, tears trickling down his cheeks from the effects of the hot chile peppers. “There are lots of Mexicans where we are going, and you ought to get the proper atmosphere.”
“I can’t dream of eating anything that would make me feel as bad as that seems to make you feel,” Doris replied.
Marshmallow dashed the tears from his eyes and took another bite of tortilla spread with chile con carne.
“He reminds me of the Walrus in ‘Alice in Wonderland.” Dave laughed. “Don’t you remember? He cried because he had to eat the oysters, but relished them just the same.”
The quartet sauntered back to the hotel and separated with cheery good-nights.
At a few minutes before seven o’clock the next morning the entire party was assembled in the dining room, vacant at that early hour except for a few traveling salesmen.
Breakfast finished and baggage assembled, with Wags brought up from the basement kennels, bills paid and bellboys tipped, the travelers were in taxicabs headed for the airport before eight o’clock had struck.
Pete had telephoned ahead to the flying field, and the airplane was already standing in the runway with a full load of gasoline, while a pair of mechanics tested every part for loose bolts or other weaknesses.
“All’s one hundred per cent, Captain,” the manager of the airport reported, as Pete led the group to the airplane.
The pilot started the motors, which responded to perfection. The propellers blew a gale, almost knocking the substantial Marshmallow off his feet as he stood in the line of the backwash stowing the baggage aboard.
Mrs. Mallow needed no urging to enter the ship this time. She took her seat like a veteran air tourist, and the others went to the chairs they had occupied the previous day.
Louder roared the motors, and Pete taxied the plane across the broad field to head into the wind. Swaying and bumping over the ground the great ship rushed forward, and then soared into the morning air so smoothly that, as Marshmallow expressed it, you could eat soup from a knife without spilling a drop.
“My, what flat country,” Mrs. Mallow observed, as they were winging their way over the famous corn belt on the great prairies.
Doris had purchased an armload of magazines at the hotel stand, and Marshmallow, of course, had seen to it that substantial lunches had been packed into the hamper.
Between reading and watching the checkerboard of farms passing beneath, the morning went by swiftly.
Once Dave turned and gesticulated to the passengers, pointing downward.
“The Mississippi!” Doris exclaimed, catching sight of the broad, silver-edged yellow stream, impressive even at an altitude of three thousand feet.
Lunch was eaten somewhere over Missouri, and some time later attention was diverted from a majestic thunder storm marching across country far to the north, to view the purple mass of the famous Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, to the south.
“And look! Oil wells!” shouted Doris. “We are getting near the end of our trip!”
The skeleton steeples of the oil well “riggings” pointed up at the flyers in clusters all over the landscape.
A great smoky city came into view.
“That must be Tulsa,” Marshmallow called out, consulting his maps. “We’re over Oklahoma now!”
An hour later Oklahoma City was reached, and at the municipal airport Pete brought the aircraft down.
“Don’t stray away, folks,” he said. “I’m just refueling, and then we’ll go on.”
“That will just give me time to get an ice cream cone,” Marshmallow said. “Will you all have one? Name your flavors.”
The air tourists stretched their legs in a brief walk. It was very hot and the air was dry as the breath of a furnace.
“It’s not quite five o’clock,” Pete said. “We have just about three hundred miles to go, so we’ll land in daylight. Let’s go!”
“Here comes Marshmallow,” Kitty exclaimed. “With—bottles of pop! Goody! I’m thirsty.”
“Marshmallow, you are a life saver,” they all hailed the perspiring youth as he panted up, a veritable human refreshment stand.
“We’ll have our ‘tea’ in the air,” Mrs. Mallow said. “I hope the man doesn’t want the bottles back.”
“I gave him two cents deposit on each one, so it’s all right,” Marshmallow said. “He’s out six bottles and I’m out twelve cents.”
Knowing that they were near their destination the travelers abandoned magazines to scan the territory below. The bright red clay soil of Oklahoma made a startling background for the vivid green of the irrigated fields. Odd-shaped hills dotted the landscape, and there was great excitement when an Indian village of real tepees was crossed.
“Although