Lizzie wailed in disappointment when the plane turned north and flew out of sight, but Jed was more taciturn. He recognized that the plane’s appearance and circling overhead meant they had been found, and help was coming. He didn’t think the ice was safe to land on yet. They were going somewhere to land but would be back in a few days. The sound of the engine didn’t totally die out though, and in a few minutes he heard it approaching, and once again it circled around the lodge. When the plane flew directly over them, he saw something silver with a long streamer behind it dropping from the passenger window. It came to rest buried in the snow down by the lake. Fortunately, the streamer was yellow and not white, or they never would have found it. Lizzie started floundering through the snow to get it, but Jed told her to wait.
“I’ve got my snowshoes on, Lizzie. Let me get it.” He trotted until he reached the end of the streamer. Hand over hand, he pulled it in until the flashlight appeared. He knocked the loose snow off and looked at it curiously, trying to decipher why they would drop a flashlight.
Lizzie had gotten there by then anyway. “Maybe there’s something in it.”
Shaking his head at his slow thinking, Jed unscrewed the end to find the note. “It says ‘meadow two miles north’! They are going to land! Let’s get you some snowshoes. You’ll never make it without them.”