Survival in the Wilderness

by Steven Otfinoski

  Dedication

  To Beverly,

  who I couldn’t survive without

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One: A Fateful Decision

  Chapter Two: A Stormy Night

  Chapter Three: Crash Landing!

  Chapter Four: The First Night

  Chapter Five: Desperate Measures

  Chapter Six: End of the Trail

  Chapter Seven: An Unexpected Meeting

  Chapter Eight: The Trading Post

  Chapter Nine: The Last Leg

  Chapter Ten: A Falling-Out

  Epilogue

  The History and Traditions of the Cree People

  Author’s Note

  Selected Bibliography

  Excerpt from Great Escapes #5: Terror in the Tower of London

  About the Author

  About the Series Editor

  Books in This Series

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  It was now or never. The young man reached for the cord connected to the gas valve. He gave it a sharp tug and listened as the helium in the balloon rushed out with a loud hiss.

  The balloon plunged toward the earth.

  The young man’s cold hands gripped the edge of the basket, holding on for dear life as it crashed into a vast blanket of fir and pine trees.

  The balloon bumped and knocked against branches and trunks, throwing him to the floor of the basket. Pine needles and bits of evergreen sprayed down onto his head and shoulders. As the basket slipped between the trees, the deflated gas bag became caught in a tangle of tree limbs. Finally the basket landed with a loud thud on the hard ground, tilting over and coming to an abrupt stop on its side. His heart pounding and his legs trembling, the young man clambered out. His two traveling companions followed, visibly shaken, but to his great relief, very much alive.

  Together they looked around in bewilderment at a world of white. They stood alone in a desolate land of snow and ice and tall trees as far as the eye could see. All they had were the clothes on their backs and the meager contents of the balloon: a compass, a box of matches, two packs of cigarettes, a penknife, and a cage of cooing carrier pigeons. How had they ended up in the middle of this vast wilderness? The young man knew they were more than a thousand miles from home and felt a chill work its way into his bones.

  How are we going to get out of this alive?

  Chapter One

  A Fateful Decision

  Monday, December 13, 1920

  “Beautiful view from up here,” murmured navy lieutenant Walter Hinton as he looked down from the wicker basket that hung beneath the gas balloon. “But it’s a long way down!”

  Two thousand feet below lay the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The ships just off the coast looked like toys in a bathtub. Hinton gazed in wonder at small buildings, tiny roads, and people the size of ants. The entire world stretched out in miniature beneath him.

  “Don’t lean so far over the side,” cautioned Lieutenant Louis Kloor, only half seriously. “We wouldn’t want to lose you this early in our flight.”

  Kloor, the leader of this training flight across New York state, smiled. At age twenty-two he was ten years younger than Hinton and young enough to be the son of forty-five-year-old Lieutenant Stephen Farrell, the third member of their team. Hinton and Farrell, both good friends of Kloor’s, were on board because the navy wanted all its officers to have some balloon experience. The two older men called blue-eyed, smooth-faced Kloor “the Kid,” but despite his youth, Kloor was a seasoned ballooning veteran.

  * * *

  THREE MEN OF ACTION

  Hinton and Farrell may not have been experienced balloonists, but they were veteran airplane pilots.

  Hinton grew up on a farm in Ohio and joined the navy as a young man. In May 1919, he was one of two pilots in a six-man crew that flew the NC-4, a pioneering four-engine airplane, across the Atlantic Ocean. The NC-4 was the only one of the three airplanes in the flight to succeed. The other two were forced to land in the ocean due to poor visibility. But Hinton’s NC-4 carried on, arriving in Lisbon, Portugal, after a nineteen-day flight. They were the first aviators to cross the Atlantic, eight years before Charles Lindbergh’s celebrated transatlantic solo flight. Hinton was awarded the Navy Cross and a Congressional Gold Medal for his achievement.

  Farrell was born near Oswego, New York, and enlisted in the navy in 1896. In World War I he was an armament officer at a US naval air station in England. In his younger days, Farrell was a first-class boxer and attained the title of heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet, a title he defended for years. Now, at age forty-five, he weighed two hundred pounds and struggled to keep his weight down with exercise and diet.

  Kloor, despite his youth, had his own list of achievements. A native of Louisiana, he was one of the youngest aviators in the US Navy and had already flown ten balloon trips. He’d also seen his share of danger. In July 1920, only five months before his flight with Hinton and Farrell, Kloor had survived a crash over Jamaica Bay, New York, when his navy dirigible, a gas-filled airship, crashed into the sea. Kloor was aware of the risks of flying, but on the morning of December 13 he had no reason to believe the training flight across New York state would be anything but routine.

  * * *

  About two hours into the flight from the Rockaway Naval Air Station at the westward end of Long Island, Kloor took out a sheet of paper and began writing.

  “What are you doing?” Farrell asked.

  “I’m writing down our coordinates for the naval officials back at Rockaway, to let them know our position,” he explained. Then he opened the birdcage attached to the rigging. Carefully he lifted out one of the four carrier pigeons with both hands. He attached the note to the bird’s leg and gently let it go. The pigeon flapped its wings and took off for home.

  “Smart bird,” said Hinton.

  “The smartest,” agreed Kloor. “It’ll get our message back to the station.”

  Lieutenant Farrell looked at the bird as it slowly grew smaller, until it became no more than a dot in the sea of sky. Then he stared down at the earth far below. He was both fascinated by and fearful of the balloon.

  Unlike an airplane, it had no engine and no mechanism to steer. It was the hydrogen gas that allowed it to soar in the skies. The pilot could only control it going up or down. To go up, he had to pour out sand from one of the twenty-one thirty-pound sandbags in the basket, lightening the load. This was the ballast. To descend, the pilot opened a valve to release some of the hydrogen gas.

  * * *

  CARRIER PIGEONS

  For more than three thousand years, carrier pigeons have been able to find their homes over long distances, using “compass sense,” which allows the birds to orient themselves by the sun, allowing them to deliver written messages. The ancient Egyptians were among the first people to keep carrier pigeons.

  In 1860, newsman Paul Reuter, who would go on to start a news wire service, developed a fleet of forty-five pigeons to deliver news and stock reports between Brussels, Belgium, and Aachen, Germany.

  Carrier pigeons were also used in World War I to deliver messages. One particularly heroic French pigeon, named Cher Ami, was awarded the Croix de Guerre (War Cross) for delivering twelve important messages. On his final mission, he survived being shot through the breast and leg.

  The United States Signal Corps also used carrier pigeons to send messages in World War II (1939–45) and in the Korean War (1950–53).

  Today, carrier pigeons, more often called homing pi
geons, are mostly kept for racing. The birds are let go at a release point by each owner. The bird arriving back home in the fastest time is the winner. However, in a remote part of eastern India, police were using pigeons to communicate with victims of natural disasters as late as 2002.

  * * *

  The three men passed a pleasant afternoon in comfortable chairs in the balloon’s basket as they crossed the state of New York in a northerly direction. Although it was cold, they stayed warm in their bulky flight suits, which were lined with silk, insulated with a layer of fleece, and overlaid with a tightly woven, weatherproof cotton.

  “Sorry to be so last-minute in inviting you on the flight,” said Kloor as he bit into one of the eight sandwiches they had packed.

  “It’s all right,” said Farrell, sipping hot coffee from a thermos bottle. “I needed to get away and get my mind off Sis.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” said Hinton.

  “Oh, no,” laughed Farrell. “Sis is what we call my daughter, Emily. She’s ill at home in New Jersey with scarlet fever. But I hope to cheer her up with stories about our balloon adventure when we get back.”

  The night slowly descended like a thick curtain and they gazed up as the stars began to appear in the darkened sky, sparkling like salt crystals.

  “It’s beautiful,” murmured Farrell. “Thanks again for inviting me along.”

  “You would have had to go up sooner or later,” Kloor said to Farrell.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s sooner rather than later,” said Hinton, taking another sip of the hot coffee. It warmed his body as the night air grew colder.

  “What’s that down there?” asked Kloor, scanning the ground below. “Looks like a light coming from a house.”

  “You’ve got a good pair of eyes,” said Farrell, squinting into the darkness. “I never would have spotted it.”

  “Well, gentlemen,” said Kloor, “I think it’s time we found out what our position is.”

  He opened the valve and released some of the gas. The balloon began a slow descent through the deepening darkness. Suddenly, the drag rope trailing outside the balloon pulled tight, getting caught in a tangle of tree branches. The balloon came to a stop about a hundred feet from the ground.

  “Not to worry,” said Kloor calmly. “We can get the rope untangled once we find out where we are.”

  Through the trees, they saw the house again, more clearly now. A man emerged from within.

  “Excuse me, sir!” Kloor yelled down to him. “Can you tell us where we are?”

  The man was startled by the balloon hovering above his home, but soon regained his composure. “You’re near the town of Wells,” he cried. “In the Adirondacks.”

  “And how far are we from Albany?” asked Kloor, referring to the state capital.

  The man raised one arm and pointed to the southeast. “About sixty miles thataway,” he said.

  Kloor thanked him and turned to his two companions. “Well, gentlemen, if you’ve had enough, this could be the end of our voyage. We could land the balloon safely right here, walk into town, and make our way home in the morning,” he told them.

  Farrell and Hinton exchanged looks.

  “Is that normal for a training flight?” Hinton asked.

  “Well, no,” replied Kloor. “They normally last a full twenty-four hours, meaning we would be landing tomorrow.”

  “Then I’m for going on,” said Hinton.

  “I agree,” said Farrell. “I’ve never spent a night in a balloon.”

  “You’ve never spent any time in a balloon,” said Hinton with a laugh. “I haven’t either. And so far this has been a great adventure. So let’s get on with it.”

  Kloor was delighted with their decision. With the assistance of his companions, he untangled the drag rope and pulled it free. The balloon began to rise again into the inky night sky.

  Chapter Two

  A Stormy Night

  As the balloon rose over the treetops of northern New York state, the men settled back to enjoy the cool evening breeze and gaze at the constellation of lights below as they passed over towns and villages. Then Farrell felt the first drop on his head. And another.

  “I think it’s starting to rain,” he said.

  While the balloon tethered above kept most of the rain off them, some of it dripped down into the basket.

  “I didn’t see any rain in the forecast,” Kloor said. “But we’re upstate now and the weather can be changeable here.”

  There was a rumble of thunder and the wind began to pick up, tousling their hair.

  “Looks like we’re in for a storm,” said Farrell, trying to sound calm as the rain began to fall in earnest.

  Hinton grabbed the remaining sandwiches and shoved them under a chair.

  “We’re getting soaked,” said Farrell.

  “That’s not our main worry,” said Kloor, staring up at the gas valve. “It’s the wind. I’m concerned it could throw us off course and—”

  But his words were cut short by a gust of air that almost jolted them off their feet. Hinton grabbed the edge of the basket and looked around. The drag rope was again coming dangerously close to the treetops.

  “We’ve got to land!” cried Hinton above the shrieking sound of the wind.

  “We can’t land here,” Kloor shouted over the wind’s roar. “There’s no town or house in sight. We’d be completely stranded. We’ve got to stay aloft and get rid of the ballast.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Farrell.

  “The sandbags!” cried Kloor. “We’ve got to dump them over the side, so the balloon rises and clears the trees. Hurry!”

  Hinton and Farrell began untying the sandbags, one by one, and dumping them overboard at Kloor’s direction. At first it didn’t seem to make any difference, but then, all at once the balloon began to ascend into the stormy sky.

  “Thank God!” cried Farrell. “I thought we were goners!”

  “We’re not out of danger yet,” cautioned Kloor. “Let’s hope the wind dies down soon and we can stabilize our flight pattern.”

  Hinton looked up at the balloon bag. “Is it my imagination or has the balloon shrunk?” he asked.

  Kloor gazed up and grimaced. The balloon was beginning to descend again. “It’s not your imagination,” he said. “It must be the gas in the bag. It’s at least ten days old and is losing its strength.”

  “Didn’t you know that before we left Rockaway?” asked Farrell in exasperation.

  “I was told that it wouldn’t be a problem for our short flight,” replied Kloor.

  “Well, it’s clear that whoever told you that was wrong. And now we’re in big trouble,” Farrell said.

  “Settle down, Steve,” said Hinton. “Arguing among ourselves isn’t going to solve anything.” Then he turned to Kloor. “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  “Get rid of the rest of the ballast to keep the balloon aloft,” said Kloor. “If we keep descending we’ll crash for sure.”

  “There are only a few sandbags left,” said Farrell.

  “Then we’ll have to throw over the drag rope and anything else that’s weighing us down,” said Kloor.

  While Farrell threw over the last sandbags, Kloor and Hinton hauled in the heavy drag rope, which resembled a thick, long snake. Kloor took Farrell’s penknife and began cutting the rope.

  “What are you doing?” Hinton asked him.

  “Cutting the rope into smaller pieces. We’ll heave them over the side one by one as needed.”

  But even after all ten pieces had been thrown over the side, the balloon still hung dangerously close to the treetops.

  “What do we do now?” cried Farrell.

  “Tear up the carpet,” said Kloor.

  They did, and heaved it over the side, too. The balloon still refused to rise.

  “We’re going down,” said Farrell, his voice trembling. “We won’t get out of this alive.”

  Kloor began ripping out the lining of the basket. “The se
ats! Throw out the seats!”

  Hinton and Farrell tossed the seats into the clouded air. This is it, thought Hinton. There’s nothing more we can do to lighten the balloon except to throw each other overboard.

  But at that very moment the balloon started to lift. It slowly rose above the trees, higher and higher.

  “We’re going up!” cried Farrell. “We’re clearing the trees!”

  “We’re going to make it!” yelled Hinton.

  The men cheered and embraced each other. The Kid had saved them after all!

  The wind eventually let up, and they continued floating above the tree line. But the rain kept pounding down, soaking them to the skin.

  “Look!” cried Farrell, pointing at a glow of bright lights below. “It looks like we’re passing over a city.”

  “Where do you think we are?” Hinton asked Kloor.

  “I’m not sure,” said Kloor, trying to remain calm and in control of a situation he actually had little control over.

  “What difference does it matter what city it is?” reasoned Hinton. “Can’t we land here somewhere?”

  Kloor shook his head. “No. Not while it’s dark and stormy and we can’t see the ground. It’s too dangerous. We’ll have to wait until it’s light.”

  “If you’d thought to bring a map maybe we could figure out where we are,” said Farrell. “You’re supposed to be the expert balloonist, aren’t you?”

  Kloor had no answer. He relied on experience and instinct, and both were failing him now. Hinton stared at him, but said nothing. Somehow, his silence made Kloor feel worse than Farrell’s accusations.

  More time passed and the first rays of dawn broke through the darkness, revealing a thick layer of fog. While the growing light brought new hope to the men, they couldn’t tell what lay below.

  “We can’t land in a fog like this,” admitted Kloor.

  The rain stopped, and Hinton looked at his wristwatch. It was nine a.m. As the men stared anxiously at the sky, the sun began to emerge from behind the clouds. Soon its warmth filled them with a renewed spirit, and it proved to be a double blessing. The sun’s heat caused the gas in the balloon to expand, raising the balloon higher into the sky.