On the sixteenth of July, the Aeroplane Express was inaugurated. Mr. Blocki spent over a day on his sketch map of the country in which the Utah Mining and Development Company was interested. This extended from Bluff, on the east, to the Sevier Mountains, on the west, and from the south boundary of the state as far north as the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers.

The Company had six gangs of oil and coal prospectors in the field. One of these was opening new territory in the Elk Ridge District. Another had moved east beyond Abaja Peak on Montezuma Creek. To this party, Sink Weston had been assigned. The other four parties had spread out west and north. On Mr. Blocki’s map, their probable location was indicated by pencil crosses with the date when last heard from.

No. 1, Hi. Clark in charge, had crossed the Colorado and was on the banks of Pine Alcove Creek, June second, ready to ascend to the Henry Mountains.

No. 2, Alex. Woodruff in command, was following up the Fremont River toward Castle Ridge, May fifteenth.

No. 3, Fulmer Lowell in charge, was somewhere east of the Cliff Dwellers, on Dark Canyon. He had sent in a courier, June twenty-second.

No. 4, Burnham Stenhouse, a young graduate of the Colorado School of Mines, in charge, had not been heard from since it parted from Woodruff, May twelfth, at the mouth of the Fremont, Dandy Crossing of the Colorado.

“There is no reason to be apprehensive,” explained Mr. Cook. “But Stenhouse should have sent some word before this.”

“Why do you want to keep advised of their movements?” asked Roy.

“It’s business. We’re following the petroleum and coal veins. When they show up in one place, that’s where we’d like to work everybody. Probably not one of these gangs is over one hundred and twenty-five miles from our office, but they might as well be a thousand.”

“I’ll find ’em,” exclaimed Roy. “Here’s the map. I’ll get ’em all. I’m ready.”

Young Stenhouse’s party was selected as the first to be located. But, as a precaution, while Roy made his preparations, the next morning, Mr. Cook wrote letters to all his “oil scouts.” Roy equipped the aeroplane with the entire outfit he had brought from Chicago.

Food was secured from Mr. Cook’s house, and the trading stores. The list was prepared by Sink Weston.

“What I’m apackin’ fur ye,” he explained, “won’t spile. An’ so be it anything puts yur aeroplane express out o’ commission, hyar’s enough fur any keerful man fur five days.”

The list included: 1½ pounds of crackers; ¾ pound of rice; 1¼ pounds salt pork; 1¼ pounds bacon; 2½ pounds ham; 1 pint syrup; 1½ pounds sugar; ¼ pound tea; 1 can condensed cream; ¼ sack salt; 1 jar cheese; 1 bar soap; 2 candles; 2 boxes sardines.

“An’ lastly an’ firstly,” exclaimed Weston, “two boxes o’ matches kept separate.”

There had been no advertising of Roy’s departure, and the event passed off with but a few spectators.

“An’ say,” suggested Weston, who had appointed himself a sort of master of ceremonies, “ef ye git time down thar about Pine Alcove an’ are achin’ fur somepin to do, remember my ole friend Banks, the Mormon, the High Mucky-Muck o’ the Lost Injuns. Ef ever ye git time drop into Parowan.”

Roy laughed and promised. Then he spoke upon the subject that he had been thinking about all morning.

“Mr. Cook,” he asked, with a laugh, “what are you going to name the new express?”

“Name?” repeated the manager—they were all standing about the aeroplane. “Why, ah, why—I haven’t any name.”

Roy opened his “carryall” bag and took out the streamer the painter in Newark had made. A moment later, the red letters Parowan were in place.

“Parowan!” exclaimed Mr. Cook. “What’s that?”

“Mr. Weston’ll tell you,” said Roy, reaching out his hand. “I’m off now. Good bye, all. See you this evening.”

Five minutes later, the Parowan was a bird-like speck in the northwest. Sink Weston, with his pack mule trailing behind him, watched it from the trail along the Cottonwood on his way to join the Abaja Peak party.

“I reckon,” mused the old ranger as he sat cross-legged on his pony and sucked at his pipe, “that’s the last o’ the kid I’ll see and Parowan, too. Back to salt pork an’ alkali water fur me.”

Sink was mistaken; both as to Roy and news of the old Mormon elder. But, for six weeks, the young aeronaut and his friend did not meet again.

In that time, Roy made the name of the Parowan and the Company’s Aeroplane Express famous all over southern Utah.

Within a week Roy had located, although with the greatest difficulty in the cases of the Lowell and Stenhouse parties, all the prospecting sections. That done, carrying out Mr. Cook’s idea, each “boss” was furnished a yard square of bright red cloth. Subsequently, when a “boss” had any advices for the home office or desired to communicate with the express, he kept the red flag flying. The result of this was that when the Parowan in what soon settled into a weekly cruise, made the long, swift flight over mountain and desert, it landed at a camp only in response to the signal. This was when it did not happen to have orders from the manager.

Late in August, Mr. Cook found it necessary to go to Denver. Roy carried him ninety-four miles to Dolores, starting at ten o’clock in the morning, and putting his proud passenger upon the one o’clock train. Five days later, he met him again, started from Dolores at one forty-five in the afternoon and at three thirty-three landed upon the Company corral.

But the only person in Bluff who gave promise of being able to take Roy’s place when he left was the younger clerk Vic. Christian. With a natural mechanical turn, the postmaster’s son soon learned the theory of the airship. But he had not the inborn daring of the natural aviator. However, he did not lack in courage, and after a desperate struggle, he began making flights with Roy.

“He’ll do,” said Roy at last to Mr. Cook. “And, in the end he’ll be better than a daredevil who isn’t afraid.”

Mr. Cook was skeptical. He used every argument to persuade Roy to put off his return. But school time was approaching. And Roy was in the third year of high-school. He had promised his father and mother that even a hundred dollars a week would not make him forget the education ahead of him.

The one event that shadowed the brightness of Roy’s experience as the director of the Aeroplane Express was the tragic fate of poor Burnham Stenhouse, the young engineer. Reaching Camp No. 4 one afternoon about four o’clock, Roy saw the signal and made a landing. He found Stenhouse delirious and in charge of one of the men. Roy attempted, with the aid of his few simple drugs, to give the engineer some relief.

Toward evening, the young man’s temperature fell somewhat, but Roy decided to remain by the sick man all night. About bedtime, the boy noticed a sudden change in his patient. The man’s temperature fell perceptibly and his delirium subsided into such passive weakness that the camp took new alarm. Within a quarter of an hour, Stenhouse’s circulation and pulse were so poor that Roy realized the sick man was beyond possibility of assistance from those about him.

There was not a doctor in the camp. Roy decided that the man must receive professional attention at once or die.

“I’ll try it,” he announced to Stenhouse’s assistants. “It may be too late, but he’ll certainly die here.”

“He’ll die anyway,” argued one of the men, “it’s desert fever. No use to make sure o’ two o’ you kickin’ in.”

“Ain’t no sense uv it in a night like this,” said another. “He’ll git vi’lent afore the end.”

But Roy did not consider the matter of his own safety. He realized that directing an aeroplane almost a hundred miles in black night with an unconscious man in his charge was a perilous venture, but the sight of the boy’s drawn face outweighed this argument. Giving the sick man a hypodermic injection of digitalis and strychnine, he waited only for some slight improvement in the patient’s heart action. Then he made his preparations.

Roy’s operating seat was just back of the engine. Between his feet and the motor, a pallet of blankets was made. Laying the unconscious form of Stenhouse diagonally across the section in front of him, Roy made ready his acetylene gas light, affixed the lamp to his head and with the brilliant shaft shooting out over the dark sands made a start for Bluff.

For an hour, he sat like a man of wood. The whirring propellers and an occasional groan from the sick man were all that marked his flight. His compass route he knew. This instrument he had tied to the section floor where he could throw the search light upon it from time to time.

About the time he calculated that he was half way to Bluff, Stenhouse suddenly made an effort to arise. As Roy’s right hand was controlling the forward and rear rudder, he used his engine hand to gently force the disturbed man back to his cot. At the same time noticing that the engineer’s fever was rising. The delirium had set in again.

Perhaps another quarter of an hour passed. Then the prostrate man again attempted to rise. The strain was telling on Roy, for, with neither light nor landmark to guide him, he was flying at top speed toward an unseen destination. The ceaseless operation of the rudders, the effort to watch the compass and his ears ever open for a possible variation in the hum of the engine and propellers would have unnerved the boy had he not steeled himself to his task. When Stenhouse attempted to get upon his knees, Roy again reached forward with his left hand to calm him.

To his horror, the sick man did not relax. Instead, with sudden and unexpected strength, he continued his effort. The cold perspiration broke out on the boy. He spoke soothingly and then sternly ordered the man to lie down. But there was no response. The next moment, Stenhouse was upon his hands and knees and made renewed efforts to get up.

“Water,” he said huskily.

The situation was not only pitiful, but perilous in the extreme. Roy could not use more than one hand to subdue or control the delirious man—there was no possible way to give him water—and yet, should the man escape the boy’s grasp, it meant certain death by being dashed hundreds of feet to the ground below.

Like an inspiration, the knowledge came to Roy that there was but one thing to be done. Throwing his left arm about Stenhouse’s shoulders and arms, he suddenly drew the man’s body close to his own. The sick man struggled for a few moments. One of his feet came in contact with a cross bar of the section floor and, as it snapped, the engineer’s right leg shot through the hole.

His body would have followed, but Roy, with desperate exertion, drew the weakened man closer to him. Exhausted, the partly revived man sank on his preserver’s arm almost a dead weight. For over thirty minutes the gritty boy held the engineer from certain death. When the lights of Bluff came in sight at last, Roy’s arms were almost immovable. The pain had almost gone, for the circulation in the left arm had stopped and it was as rigid as if cast in metal.

He made no attempt to reach the corral. Back of the town, in some manner, with his free arm, he managed to shut off the engine and make a landing. When the aeroplane came to a pause, Roy was too stiff to move. In time, he attracted attention, and those who came to his rescue carried the engineer to Mr. Cook’s house. Later in the evening, Roy was able to make another ascent and he removed the Parowan to the Company yard.

But his hazardous flight was without avail. Young Stenhouse died two days later.