hat evening of the 10th.
In Billings we were sixty-five miles north of the Mercutian landing place.
What power for attack and destruction the enemy had, we had no means of
determining. How many of them there were; how they could travel over the
country; what the effective radius of their light-fire was; the nature of
the "bomb" that had destroyed the train on the C., B. and Q. near the town
of Garland--all those were questions that no one could answer.

Billings was, during those next few days, principally a gathering place
and point of departure for refugees. Yet, so curiously is the human mind
constituted, underneath all this turmoil the affairs of Billings went on
as before. The stores did not close; the Billings _Dispatch_ sent out its
reports; the Northern Pacific trains from east and west daily brought
their quota of reporters, picture men and curiosity seekers, and took away
all who had sense enough to go. The C., B. and Q. continued running trains
to Frannie--which was about fifteen miles from the Mercutian landing
place--and many of the newspaper men, most of those, in fact, who did not
have airplanes, went there.

That first evening in Billings, Rolland Mercer--a chap about my own age,
who had brought me from the East in one of the Boston _Observer's_
planes--and I, decided on a short flight about the neighboring country to
look the situation over. We started about midnight, a crisp, cloudless
night with no moon. We had been warned against venturing into the danger
zone; several of the Wyoming patrol and numbers of private planes had been
seen to fall in flames when the light struck them.

We had no idea what the danger zone was--how close we dared go--but
decided to chance it. To fly sufficiently high for safety directly over
the Mercutians appeared difficult, since the light-fire already had proven
effective at a distance of several miles at least. We decided not to
attempt that, but merely to follow the course of the C., B. and Q.
southwest to Cody, then to circle around to the east, and thence back
north to Billings, passing well to the east of the Mercutians.

We started, as I have said, about midnight, rising from the rolling
prairie back of Billings. We climbed five hundred feet and, with our
searchlight playing upon the ground beneath, started directly for Frannie.
We passed over Frannie at about eight hundred feet, and continued on the
C., B. and Q. line toward Garland. We had decided to pass to a