about midnight
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 .