"Oh, this hick town 's going to be the death of us, all right--and Riverport to-morrow, with a contract nice as pie, if we can only get there," groaned his manager, Dick George, a fat man with much muscle and more diamonds. "Listen to that crowd. Yelling for blood. Sounds like a bunch of lumber-jacks with the circus slow in starting." The head-line feature of the Onamwaska County spring fair was "Hawk Ericson, showing the most marvelous aerial feats of the ages with the scientific marvels of aviation, in his famous French Blériot flying-machine, the first flying-machine ever seen in this state, no balloon or fake, come to Onamwaska by the St. L. & N." The spring fair was usually a small gathering of farmers to witness races and new agricultural implements, but this time every road for thirty-five miles was dust-fogged with buggies and democrat wagons and small motor-cars. Ten thousand people were packed about the race-track. It was Carl's third aviation event. A neat, though not imposing figure, in a snug blue flannel suit, with his cap turned round on his head, he went to the flap of the rickety tent which served as his hangar. A fierce cry of "Fly! Fly! Why don't he fly?" was coming from the long black lines edging the track, and from the mound of people on the small grand stand; the pink blur of their faces turned toward him--him, Carl Ericson; all of them demanding _him_! The five meek police of Onamwaska were trotting back and forth, keeping them behind the barriers. Carl was apprehensive lest this ten-thousandfold demand drag him out, make him fly, despite a wind that was blowing the flags out straight, and whisking up the litter of newspapers and cracker-jack boxes and pink programs. While he stared out, an official crossing the track fairly leaned up against the wind, which seized his hat and sailed it to the end of the track. "Some wind!" Carl grunted, stolidly, and went to the back of the silent tent, to reread the local papers' accounts of his arrival at Onamwaska. It was a picturesque narrative of the cheering mob following him down the street ("Gee! that was _me_ they followed!"), crowding into the office of the Astor House and making him autograph hundreds of cards; of girls throwing roses ("Humph! geraniums is more like it!") from the windows. "A young man," wrote an enthusiastic female reporter, "handsome as a Greek god, but honestly I believe he is still in his twenties; and he is as slim and straight as a soldier, flaxen-haired and rosy-cheeked--the birdman, the god of the air." "Handsome as a Greek----" Carl commented. "I look like a Minnesota Norwegian, and that ain't so bad, but handsome----Urrrrrg!... Sure they love me, all right. Hear 'em yell. Oh, they love me like a dog does a bone.... Saint Jemima! talk about football rooting.... Come on, Greek god, buck up."