Sky Wagon was just above the tops of a series of mountain peaks and
steep ridges. The road clung to the sides of the peaks like a dusty
brown ribbon. Rick turned up the heater a little because it was cold at
eight thousand feet.

Then he lost the road. So did Angel and Scotty. Astonished, Rick
circled. He picked up the road again, followed it, lost it once more.

"Where does it go?" he wondered.

"Let's go see," Scotty suggested.

Rick examined the terrain. Their quarry might be on the lost section of
the road. He had the choice of going down for a look, or finding where
the road emerged and circle for a while. He elected to go down.

The Sky Wagon lost altitude in a long slip toward the valley floor. Rick
and the others kept an eye on the point where the road vanished, and in
a few moments the mystery was solved. The road reached a cliff
approximately a mile long and a half mile high. The road was about two
thirds of the way up. To get past the cliff it had been necessary to cut
a shelf into the cliff itself.

"Wow! Notching that cliff must have been some job!" Scotty exclaimed.
"No wonder we couldn't see the road from the air."

Rick flew parallel to the cliff until he had to climb to get over a
ridge. Below, the road emerged from the overhang and was clearly visible
again. He gained altitude.

"Just had a happy thought," he said. "Wouldn't it be nice if the weather
closed in? Here we are flying visual contact through some of the
trickiest mountains I've ever seen. I'm going to keep an eye on the
compass. You two concentrate on the road. If we do get weather, I want
to be able to fly a reasonable course back to Baguio."

"Didn't you get a weather briefing at the airport?" Scotty asked.

"Yes. Such as it was. Mostly it was local Baguio conditions and a brief
report on Manila."

"Something ahead," Angel called.

"I see it," Scotty answered. "A truck of some kind. Take a look, Rick."

Rick surveyed the landscape ahead, saw that he would not get into
difficulty by losing altitude, and went down for a look. He couldn't get
closer than a thousand feet, but that was ample. It was a load of
lumber, although the truck was much like theirs.

"What color is it?" Scotty asked.

"Hard to tell. Ours was gray. This one looks brown."

"Could be dust," Angel offered. "Dirt road below, plenty dusty. But
there are lumber mills up in this part of the province. Perhaps that is
just one of their trucks. You had no lumbe