CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                 It seemed as if the time would never pass. I would wait for what I would estimate to be at least half an hour and then flick on the flashlight for a second to look at the clock. Usually, no more than five minutes would have passed since the last time that I had checked.

                 It was around half past three when the activity around the Studebaker place ceased and I began to hear the dogs baying again. I could also see the glare of headlights coming along the road toward the airport. It was obvious that the ploy of sprinkling motor oil on my tracks to throw the dogs off hadn't worked and they had their noses on my trail again.

                 I knew that in order to hold my scent, the dogs would have to follow my trail from the road to the railroad tracks where I went around the roadblock and then back again, all of which would give me more time to plan my strategy. They had proven one thing for certain, those dogs could hang onto my trail no matter what I did to throw them off. I knew that in due time, they would lead the sheriff right to this house. Since it was now a race between their catching up with me and the arrival of enough daylight to see to fly, I needed to buy all of the time that I possibly could.

                 The first thing to do was to make it necessary for the sheriff to have to search every inch of this house before they could go any further. Above the landing of the stairs was a framed opening leading into the attic, so I would make it appear that I was hiding there. I dragged the dresser to a spot beneath the opening and put the chair on top of it. Perhaps this would make them think that I had used it to climb into the attic. I rubbed my hands over the dresser and chair in order to leave as much of my scent as possible.

                 In the closet of one of the downstairs rooms was a trap door which opened into the crawl space beneath the house. I used my pocket knife to pry it open, urinated onto the dirt below it and closed it. The dogs were sure to be attracted to that place also. Now, they would have to search both places before they could leave the house. Judging by the amount of time that they had spent looking for me at the Studebaker place, searching the attic and under floor should take the better part of an hour and bring daylight a lot closer.

                 I went back upstairs to check on the progress of the men and dogs. From my vantage point, I could see that they had trailed me to where I left the road and crossed the ditch to the railroad tracks. They weren't making very good time and I would still have time to create more diversions to keep them busy.

                 From what I remembered about the barn behind the house, it was a huge thing with a hay loft and several doors and windows. I stepped out the back door of the house and, shielding the flashlight so that only a thin slit of light fell on the ground, walked directly to the barn.

                 This particular barn was typical of most such structures found in the Midwest, with a wide aisle through the middle so wagons or trucks could be driven in one end and out the other. Large doors closed the ends of the drive-through for weather protection. The doors at the back end of the barn were closed but one of the front doors had come off its hinges and was laying on the ground. There were stalls and feed rooms along either side of the aisle and near both the front and rear of the barn were ladders leading to the hay loft above. The musty smell of straw and cow manure still hung in the air, along with the aroma of skunks. Smelling skunks around deserted barns is not all that unusual because they are a natural haven for mice which attracts them. The natural aroma of a skunk is so strong that it doesn't have to spray in order for the telltale smell to linger for hours or days after it has gone.

                 It would be useless for me to try to delay the sheriff by going into each stall or feed room because it would take him only a few seconds to let the dogs check them out. Searching the loft would be another matter because the dogs couldn't get up there and it would have to be done by a person. I climbed the ladder closest to the door to find that the loft was stacked high with bales of fresh hay. Even though the farm was deserted, evidently the owner still used the barn to store hay. I had to scramble over the top of the stacks of bales in order to reach the ladder at the other end of the barn. Without the dogs to help sniff me out, doing a complete search of the hay bales in the loft might occupy them long enough for me to escape by air.

                 I climbed down the ladder at the back end of the barn and tried to open the large doors. Evidently, they had not been used in many years and dirt had blown against them, making them impossible to open. I figured that there must be another way out of the back of the barn so I began checking the individual stalls. As I stepped into the second one from the end, I saw the outline of something moving near the opposite wall and I the skunk smell was much stronger. I froze in my tracks and aimed my flashlight toward the movement. A mother skunk with five little ones scampered around in the beam of light, appearing not to be the slightest bit frightened. About the only real enemy that the skunk has is the great horned owl and I suppose that she realized that owls don't carry flashlights.

                 Skunks seldom spray unless they are threatened, but as a warning that I was invading her territory, she rushed a few steps toward me with her tail raised high, stopped and stamped her front feet on the floor. The young skunks seemed to be totally unconcerned about what was going on and continued to dig around in a pile of hay, searching for something edible. There was an open window on the opposite side of the stall which would be an ideal escape route if I could get past the mother skunk guarding her brood.

                 I moved as far away from the mother skunk as I could and worked my way along the side of the stall toward the window, constantly watching for any sign that she was about to become more defensive. She held her ground, waving her tail over her back and stamped her feet. I reached the window and climbed through. Skunks seem to be far more tolerant of humans than they are of dogs and if those bloodhounds follow my scent into that stall, they are in for the surprise of their lives. If they provoke that mother skunk and she gives them a shot of her spray, they probably won't be able to smell me or anything else for a month.

                 I walked about fifty yards from the barn before I came to a barbed wire fence which separated that property from the airport. A shelter belt of trees along the west side of the house blocked my view of the men coming along the road but I could tell from their sound that they were getting rather close. I had to move fast. As one last bit of diversion in the event that they got past the skunk, I walked along the fence back toward the road to a point where I could see the approaching cars. They were still far enough away that they couldn't spot me in the headlights, but they were getting much too close for comfort. I retraced my steps along the fence to a point near where I had first reached it, spread the strands of barbed wire and crawled through. Perhaps they would follow my scent along the fence and miss where I had crawled through. At least I was now on the airport and could see the dark outline of the hangars on the opposite side of the grass runway.

                 It was a hundred yards or more yards from the fence to the hangars and my first thought was to head directly to the hangar where the Cub was located but decided to give myself every advantage possible by leaving my trail of scent to the PT-19 which was tied down well to the south of the hangars. When I arrived at the ship, I walked around the left wingtip and along its trailing edge to the fuselage as if I was going to get into it. I climbed up on the wing, slid over the fuselage in front of the windshield and walked on top the right wing to the tip where I dropped to the ground. Even that short drop sent a stab of pain into my ankle.

                 It was about fifty yards from where the PT-19 was tied down to the hangar where I had put the Cub and if the dogs should follow my trail that far, there was no need for me to attempt to throw them off again. I hurried to the hangar and slid one of the doors open enough for me to slip inside. I turned the flashlight on for a second to be sure that the Cub was still there and ready to go. My note was still on the seat and everything appeared to be just like when I left it.

                 I would probably have to take off in a hurry as soon as it became light enough to see and I needed to get the Cub out of the hangar and into a position for a quick takeoff. Also, I wanted to get the doors of the hangar open before the sheriff and his men came close enough to hear them being moved. I could hear the dogs baying as they trailed me down the road and hoped that all the barking and baying would cover the noise that the doors were bound to make. There is no quiet way to open steel hangar doors, so I shoved them open as quickly as possible in order to reduce the amount of time that they would be making noise. The dogs evidently hadn't heard me open the doors because they were still had their noses to the ground and were going strong. I strapped my backpack under the front seatbelt, rolled the Cub outside and turned it to line up with the runway.

                 This was the first time that I could remember doing a preflight in total darkness but I did my best. It made no difference whether the oil might be low or not because I had none with me, so I didn't bother trying to check it. I felt of the wire sticking out of the front fuel tank cap and it indicated that the tank was full. I ran my hands over the wingtips, moved the ailerons and felt of the rear control surfaces. Movement of the stick felt normal and I could hear the cables and surfaces moving. Satisfied that everything was working as it should, I checked the magneto switches to be sure that they were off, turned the fuel selector to the front tank and pulled the prop through a few compressions to pull a charge of fuel into each cylinder. The little Continental had started on the first pull every time that I had cranked it before and I hoped that it would not fail me when I was going to need it the most. I turned the magneto switches on, cracked the throttle slightly for starting and went around on the opposite side of the ship where I wouldn't be visible from the house in case someone should shine a spotlight in that direction. I figured they wee used to seeing airplanes outside and wouldn't think anything of it. I sat down on the left tire to wait.

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