Vance lay awake all night feeding the fire with manzanita brush. He had landed about half a mile from the edge of the brush nearest the mine, instead of in the center of the patch. With the first ray of dawn Vance struck off toward the nearest edge of the brush, and within an hour had covered the half mile that separated him from freedom. At the mine, the surprised superintendent loaned him two mules, one to ride and the other to carry the 350 pounds of mail. One of the miners volunteered to ride out with him to bring back the mules. It was eighteen miles from the Last Chance mine to Michigan Bluff. This was covered on mule-back. There Vance caught a stage to Colfax, California—forty miles—where he put his mail aboard the eastbound Limited. [Illustration: There are five radio systems to keep track on the air mail pilots as they wing swiftly from one edge of the United States to the other.] * * * * * Returning from San Francisco, I stopped at Salt Lake, where Ellis and Bishop were stationed. Theirs is a story stranger than fiction, and it exemplifies the best traditions of the Air Mail Service. Late in October, 1923, Bishop, one of the oldest pilots, in point of service, was caught in a blizzard forty-five miles south of Rock Springs, Wyoming, and forced down twenty-five miles from the nearest point of civilization and communication. The sky above the Sierra Nevada Mountains was thick and overcast, with the wind blowing at forty miles an hour. The thermometer registered 18°. Snow of the dry and powdery sort was falling heavily. Bishop could see less than a hundred yards, and could make no headway whatever against this typical Utah blizzard. Concluding that it would be best to land on the route between Rock Springs and Salt Lake City, with which he was familiar, rather than to try to find his way through the storm, Bishop finally “sat down” on a comparatively smooth and—at that time—bare plateau, known as Bridger’s Bench. He landed without accident, and for approximately an hour kept his motor turning over slowly, in the hope that the storm would subside. By that time at least a foot of snow had fallen. Realizing that he must get out of his predicament immediately, if he expected to get out at all, Bishop began charging backward and forward with his powerful machine, in an attempt to clear a runway with the “backwash” from the propeller. For an hour he sent his plane at full speed over the top of the plateau, backward and forward for two hundred yards at a time, in an effort to clear a path ten feet wide. But each time he had finished digging a runway long enough, and turned around, the snow had drifted in, and the process had to be repeated all over again. [Illustration: An alarm is sent out by telegraph and radio whenever a plane is missing. Often a man’s life has been saved by this information.]