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Cashman merely nodded Deftly he jockeyed the Tin Goose on a hundredand-eighty-degree turn until it faced into the wind at the far side of the meadow Then he shoved the three throttles forward and sent the lu on its way, ever closer to the fence on the opposite end of the field, no more than three hundred feet away

As they lurched past the front of Golfur Andursson's little house with the plane's tail wheel still glued to the ground, Pitt began to have a vague idea of what Charles Lindbergh's thoughts ed his heavily laden Spirit of St

Louis off the muddy runway of Roosevelt Field back in 1927 It seemed impossible to Pitt that any aircraft short of a helicopter or light two-seater could leave the earth in so small a space He shot a fast look at Cashman and saw only icy calmness and total relaxation Cash a tune, but Pitt couldn't quite make out the ines

There was no doubt, Pitt reflected Cashe of a man who kne to handle a plane, especially this one

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With two-thirds of the one, Cashman eased the control column forward and lifted the tail wheel and then pulled back, floating the plane a few feet above the turf Then to Pitts horror, Cashround no more than fifty feet in front of the fence Pitts horror turned to aainst his chest and literally bounced the old Tin Goose over the fence and threw it into the air

"Where in hell did you learn that little trick?" Pitt said, exhaling a great sigh of relief It was then he recognized the tune Cashnificent Men in Their Flying Machines"

"Used to be a crop duster in Oklahoma," Cashman replied

"How did you wind up as a mechanic in the Air Force?"

"One day the junker ah was flyin' developed a nasty cough Plowed up a farmer's pasture and butchered his champion beef sire years before its time Everybody in the county was out to sue me Ah was flat broke so ah split the scene and enlisted"

Pitt couldn't help sh the windshield at the river two hundred feet below Froe where Andursson had found hi now he didn't expect to find Alainst the landscape that trailed off toward the south He pushed open the little sideand looked again It was there all right: the dark shade of green against the lighter tinted tundra

His footprints, where they had sunk into the soft vegetation, had left a path that was easy to follow as the white line down the center of a highway

Pitt caught Cashman's eye and motioned earthward "To the south Follow that dark trail to the south"

Cashman banked the plane and stared for a moment out the sideThen he cocked his head in acknowledgment and turned the nose of the trimotor southward Fifteentrail Pitt hadhis trek to the river Except for a few occasional deviations around rough or uneven ground, the ht as a plumb line Fifteen minutes, that was all the old antique needed to cover the same distance that had taken Pitt several hours

"I have it now," Pit shouted "There, that cracklike depression where my path ends"