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Updated: May 16, 2025
The Gitchie Manitou was wheeled out of the hangar for a thorough inspection. Then the boys climbed in and the engines were started. With a wave of the hand they were off. For a short time after the yellow-winged monoplane had mounted and turned south and westward over the vapory river, the boys had a new sensation. The rising fog started air currents which for a time they did not understand.
The big river continued its course between the same high hills and, as the last cabin disappeared, the boys headed the Gitchie Manitou directly for the top of the hills, where the plains began that led onward and onward until the sparse forests finally disappeared in the broken land of the Barren Grounds.
But the workmen had not finished the trench when night came and, to the surprise of Colonel Howell and Paul, the Gitchie Manitou had not returned.
"I think the woods are on fire." For ten minutes, through the thinning wind-tossed snowflakes, the Gitchie Manitou groaned its way forward. "I wonder if it ain't a big signal fire for us," suggested Roy at last. "It's a big blaze of some kind," answered Norman. Through the obscuring snow, the nervous aviators had located the light many miles in the distance.
There was no cause for delay and while Norman made a tracing and a scale of the route, Paul and Roy drew the Gitchie Manitou into the open. Colonel Howell and the half-breed cook had been busy in the storehouse, arranging packets of flour and cutting up sides of fat pork. Small packages of tea were also prepared, together with sugar, salt and half a case of evaporated fruit.
This time they packed the snow for a hundred yards in front of the chassis of the car, and then, arranging their few blankets in the cockpit and refreshing themselves with some newly-made hot tea, exhausted and nervous, they climbed aboard. Putting on all their power and holding their runners steadily to the packed snow, they again started the Gitchie Manitou.
"Try it," snapped his father, "and that'll be the last thing you'll have to do with your Gitchie whatever-you-call-it." The next evening, which concluded the big day of the Stampede, twenty thousand people attended the long afternoon's program. When the aeroplane appeared for its fourth flight, an army of people surrounded the starting field.
Having made a safe landing, while he visited the trading post and arranged to have oil delivered at once, nearly everyone in Athabasca Landing seemed to learn of the arrival of the airship. When he came riding back to the monoplane, in the delivery wagon, the Gitchie Manitou was the center of a mob of curious people. The sergeant of police was there, as well as the people from the hotel.
This wonderful machine was only locally known, but when the citizens of Calgary planned their local celebration, known as the "Stampede," there was knowledge among the promoters, of the just completed "Gitchie Manitou."
"Anyway," announced Roy at one time, "while I ain't exactly stuck on being here and it ain't as cheerful as I thought it would be, you got to say this, the Gitchie Manitou ain't falling down any."
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