MOONLIGHT AND MOONSHINE
by Thomson Burtis
Author of “Texas Steerers,” “Release,” etc.
GEORGE ARLINGTON HEMINGWOOD, OF THE AIR SERVICE, DIDN’T CARE
WHAT THOSE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINEERS DID SO LONG AS THEY DIDN’T
DO IT TO HIM. BUT WHEN A BULLET IN THE ENGINE OF HIS SOARING
PLANE MADE HIM TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO LAND ON TREE-TOPS
AND LIVE, HE CONCLUDED THAT IT WAS TIME TO START SOMETHING
Lieutenant George Arlington Hemingwood, of the Hemingwoods of Boston,
was wrestling with a problem. Having applied soothing lotions to his
freshly shaved and smarting face, and put the last touches to the part
in his black hair, he continued to stare into the small mirror and
wonder whether he ought to do it or not.
He leaned over until his deeply tanned face was within an inch of the
glass and inspected in detail the small, close-cropped black mustache
which adorned his upper lip. It was a fairly luxuriant mustache, as
those hirsute adornments go, but it did not quite satisfy his critical
eye. Was it worthwhile to shave it off in the hope that two hairs would
sprout where but one had grown before?
Let it go as it was, he decided.
Having decided this burning question, Hemingwood proceeded leisurely to
don his tan serge shirt. He had no further interest in his face,
although that, like its principal ornament, was a good enough specimen
of its kind. A bit round, perhaps, and certainly very brown, but lighted
amazingly by a pair of sparkling brown eyes and a wide, good-humored
mouth which was usually curved in either a smile or a grin. If not, it
conveyed the impression that it would stretch into one or the other at
the slightest provocation.
It was the face of a contented and cheery person, both of which George
Arlington Hemingwood was. Being a first lieutenant in the Air Service
satisfied him completely and he had little more to ask from fate. The
future was pleasant to his mind’s eye. He wasted no thought whatever on
his prospects. He could not have told you where he stood on the
promotion list, because he did not care particularly whether he ever
became a captain or not.
Life, as it was and as he lived it, was a good invention of the Lord’s
to his mind. The two rooms he occupied, with walls of beaverboard and a
leak in the ceiling, were comfortable enough to live in and far more
appealing than the shadowed confines of the Hemingwood residence on
Beacon Hill, and, although his father’s bank was a fine big bank and his
father’s son could lead an enviable commercial existence therein, the
cockpit of a De Haviland airplane was infinitely more desirable.
This despite the fact that George Arlington Hemingwood had led a wild,
not to say sensational existence during his five years of flying. From
Long Island to the Philippines, and from Selfridge Field on the Canadian
border to France Field in Panama he was known as the unluckiest flyer
still above the ground instead of under it. He could handle a ship along
with the best; that was conceded. However, there appeared to be a
conspiracy of motors and the elements against him. He had had more
forced landings by half than any other flyer on the list. And almost
invariably they occurred over such choice bits of country as the
Everglades, the wilder sections of the Mexican border, Chesapeake Bay,
the Rockies, and similar traps for unwary airplanes.
He had been rescued thirty miles out at sea during the bombing maneuvers
at Langham Field, Virginia; he had laid amid the wreckage of his ship in
the Big Bend for two days, without food or water, and been found by a
miracle; he had landed in a canyon in Arizona and wandered for a week in
the mountains; he had been shot down three times in France, and a list
of the injuries he had encountered would include mention of a
considerable percentage of the bones of the human body. Always, however,
George Arlington Hemingwood bobbed up serenely, cursing his luck with
fluency and grinning.
His whole-souled enjoyment of life extended to flying, and was not
dampened by the crack-ups thereof.
Having found his big Stetson, he adjusted it on his head at the precise
angle which appealed to his liking in these matters. Even with the aid
of that impressive twenty dollar chapeau he did not look like a man
whose hand had frequently been outstretched to greet St. Peter; who was
on speaking terms, as itt were, with the life hereafter. He was slightly
under medium height, and looked a bit shorter than his five feet seven
and a half because of a pair of powerful shoulders. He was impeccably
arrayed, as always; he was careful about those things. It was
characteristic that the insignia of rank and branch of service on his
collar were placed with exactitude.
He strolled out through his sitting room--the shabbily comfortable and
muchly cluttered domicile of a carefree bachelor--and down the long hall,
emerging into the warm sunlight of a spring afternoon in Kentucky.
Springtime in Kentucky is a savory season, and four of the flyers of
Goddard Field were taking advantage of it by laying at full length on
the grass in front of the barracks.
Directly across the road four corrugated iron hangars squatted in a row,
paralleling the line of buildings of which the officers’ quarters was
one. On the other side of the hangars was Goddard Field, a small, rough
airdrome which sloped down to the great artillery camp which spread out
for two square miles at its foot. Like the buildings of the flying
detachment, Camp Henry’s barracks and stables had never been painted,
and the big cantonment looked aged and infirm, which it was.
“What is the subject of discussion?” enquired Hemingwood as he ignited a
cheroot.
“Snapper is trying to justify the fact that he possesses a new fiancée
by spacious arguments in favor of marriage,” returned big blonde
Morrison.
“Of course, looking at it impartially and without prejudice, marriage is
a sucker game from a man’s viewpoint,” stated Hemingwood weightily.
“What do you mean?” enquired Snapper MacNeil belligerently. The wiry,
redheaded little flyer was a heaven-sent victim for serious persiflage,
and was very much in love.
“Aside from the temporary state of insanity known as love, the state has
no arguments in its favor from a man’s viewpoint,” pursued Hemingwood.
“Look at the expense, for one thing. However, cheer up, Snapper, even
marriage has its points. Don’t think I consider it an unmitigated evil.
You can’t--”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said a voice at Hemingwood’s elbow. “Major
Williamson’s compliments and will the lieutenant report to headquarters
immediately?”
Tall, gaunt Private Rose, perpetual orderly of the officers’ barracks,
stood at rigid attention and spewed these words forth as though in
mortal fear of forgetting one if he stopped.
“Be right over, Rose,” nodded Hemingwood. So saying, he turned on his
heel and left them spellbound.
He strolled toward headquarters, wondering what was up. Some new job,
probably. As photographic officer his duties were by no means onerous,
and consequently he had a great fear that lightning would strike, at any
moment, in the form of an order assigning him to some prosaic task in
addition to his other duties.
However, his fears were groundless. He found Major Williamson enthroned
behind his desk, arguing acrimoniously with Gobel, the sandy-haired and
excitable adjutant. The C. O. fought frequently with Gobel for the
purpose of prodding the adjutant until he started pounding the desk,
which he frequently did.
“Washington has at last discovered that there’s a photographic section
hidden away here,” the major told him. “You’re due for a sojourn in the
back hills of Kentucky, where moonshine grows on bushes and rifle
bullets flow like water.”
The orders were brief and to the point. Hemingwood was to make a mosaic
of the Salters River between the villages of Laport and Herkimer. That
would be about thirty miles, Hemingwood reflected. The mosaic was to
include all the territory for five miles on each side of the river.
Three hundred square miles, which was several days’ work. It was for the
use of the geological survey, according to the order, and was to be
accomplished without delay.
Hemingwood was delighted. He was whistling cheerfully as he made off to
interview Apperson and get things in readiness for a week’s stay in the
wilderness.
He found Sergeant Apperson, his chief non-com, in the photo hut.
Apperson was a gray-haired veteran who was as reliable as a tax
collector and knew more about cameras than the inventors thereof.
Anything from a pocket machine to a motion picture outfit was in his
professional bailiwick. He was a wiry, weather-beaten little Scotchman
who retained a trace of the brogue of his youth.
“We’ll have oor base oot yonder, no doot?” he queried. “We’ll be ready
in the mornin’, sir-r-r!”
The invaluable Apperson was likewise an excellent mechanic in addition
to his other praiseworthy talents, so Hemingwood told him to have the
ship warmed and ready by six in the morning. Whereupon he dismissed
everything from his mind. Apperson never failed.
CHAPTER II
At precisely six-forty-five next morning Hemingwood was commencing to
look for the Salters River, which was his principal landmark to aid in
finding East Point. For a half hour he had been flying over the
mountains. As far as the eye could see, even from the airy perch of
three thousand feet, low rolling, heavily wooded hills rolled away to
the skyline. It was not difficult to believe the bloody history of those
thousands of acres of unkempt wilderness as one looked down on the grim
fastnesses which hid in their depths a strange breed who lived and
fought and died in a shadowed, primitive world of their own. George
himself had had a sample of the suspicious mountain people when he had
been forced to land in the hills a few months before.
Another flyer would have been taut with the strain of flying
continuously over a wilderness which presented no possible landing
field. The failure of two or three cylinders of the twelve-cylinder,
four hundred and fifty horsepower Liberty meant crashing into the trees
at seventy miles an hour. But no worry bothered George Arlington
Hemingwood. His untroubled eyes scanned the glistening instruments, and
he enjoyed the ride. He couldn’t be worried until disaster actually
overtook him. The specially built ship, carrying a hundred and
thirty-five gallons of gas, roared along over the mountains at a hundred
miles an hour. To offset the extra weight of gas, oil, and electric
cameras, it was streamlined to the last possible degree, and it was a
tribute to Apperson’s loving care down to the last turnbuckle glistening
in the morning sun.
Finally the tiny stream came in sight, and he swung southward. It twined
along between the mountains, sometimes in deep gorges and sometimes
level with tiny fields on its banks. Herkimer came in sight, and he
instantly vetoed the one field near it. It was ploughed land and the
furrows were high and soft.
He sped along over the village, and deeper up into the mountains.
Herkimer was lost to sight almost immediately. There was a three-minute
interval when he only picked up one cabin.
Then East Point came in sight, and proved to be a pleasant surprise. It
was larger than Herkimer, despite having no railroad, and the wide main
street was shaded with towering trees. It was set at the base of a
mountain, and for a half mile westward small cleared fields occupied the
tiny valley floor. There were small ploughed fields on the
mountainsides, too, gleaming white against the green of the woods.
Hemingwood, scrutinizing the ground closely, finally found a field,
although it was not as near town as he would have liked. It was a long,
narrow grass clearing just below the crest of the mountain behind East
Point, on the slope opposite the town. Four miles east of the clearing
there was a small settlement which was not on his map.
He throttled the motor to a thousand revolutions a minute and dropped
down for a look. He could see the residents of East Point popping forth
from their houses for a look at the visitor from the sky. There would be
some excitement down there, he soliloquized. He noticed a solitary
horseman toiling up the road from East Point to that settlement,
whatever its name was. The road led past his prospective landing place,
which would make transportation of gas and oil a simple matter.
The field lay north and south, with an eastern slope. It was surrounded
by towering trees on three sides, but to the north, where the road
skirted it, there was a good approach.
He swooped down within ten feet of the ground and flashed across it for
a detailed inspection. It rolled slightly and the grass was four or five
inches long. A few rocks protruded from the vegetation, but the middle
of the clearing seemed to be without obstacles.
He decided immediately to try it. As he zoomed upward and turned
northward to land over the road he looked around at the imperturbable
Apperson. He pointed down at the field, and Apperson removed his pipe
and nodded. Not in approval; merely understanding. Apperson considered
everything in the photo section as his business, except flying. This he
left entirely to Hemingwood. If his chief had indicated the Ohio River
as a landing place, Apperson would have nodded.
Hemingwood came in low over the thin fringe of trees, cutting the motor
gradually. The heavy ship had almost lost speed when it was over the
road, and was mushing downward. Hemingwood stabbed the throttle ahead
for a second as the DeHaviland settled over the fence. The spurt of
power held the nose up a second more, and the stick was back in his lap
when the ship hit on three points in a hard stall landing. It rolled
with slackening speed up a small hump in the field, picked up again as
it rolled down the other side, and stopped at the top of the second
fold, a safe hundred yards from the southern boundary. It was flying as
perfect as it was unconsciously skillful.
Hemingwood gave it the gun and taxied to the fence. He turned off the
gasoline feed, ran the motor out, and clicked off the switches.
“I’ll take a constitutional down to the city, Apperson, and see where we
sleep and eat, if any. Likewise where we get gas and oil, and how. I
guess you’d better stay here. There’ll be the usual mob of people show
up, I suppose.”
“Quite so,” nodded Apperson, raising his yellow tinted goggles
deliberately. “Ye’ll have transportation to get the hags into town, no
doot.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll be back in a couple of hours--by the time the sun gets
right for pictures, anyhow.”
He climbed out, lit a cigaret, and surveyed the cloudless sky with
satisfaction.
The mosaic would be taken from eleven thousand feet, and even a few
cumulous clouds would mean great gaps in the pictures. It looked like a
good working day.
Apperson was busy in the back cockpit, unwiring divers articles he had
packed away there. He could fit anything up to an automobile into the
cockpit of a ship. Article after article materialized from the mystic
depths, until it was a problem where the sergeant himself had ridden.
Hemingwood took off his flying suit and made off without further ado. It
was about three miles over the mountain to East Point, he estimated, and
it would be a phenomenon if he did not meet a procession of cars, one of
which would be delighted to turn around and give him a lift.
He had proceeded up the dusty road for a half mile, and had just reached
the crest of the hill when a horseman hove in sight. The one he had seen
from the air, probably. He did not seem in a hurry, for the horse was
ambling along at pretty much his own gait.
Suddenly Hemingwood’s dark eyes lighted with interest and he became
conscious that his face was undoubtedly spotted with oil. That was a
woman on that horse, riding astride. Furthermore, she was a young woman.
A big, white Panama hat, shaped like a man’s, shaded her face, and her
costume consisted of khaki riding trousers, leather boots, and a white
blouse.
In a few seconds he was able to state with conviction that not only was
the rider a young woman, but that she was also a most remarkably
attractive specimen of her sex. And George Arlington Hemingwood was not
a man who allowed opportunity to knock at his door without an answer. He
stopped a few feet in front of the horse and smiled up at the girl.
“I beg your pardon, but could you tell me the name of the town that
seems to be at the end of this road?”
Her piquant face, framed by the Panama and bobbed hair, dimpled slightly
as she pulled up her horse.
“Which end of the road?” she enquired.
“The one I’m headed for--it seemed to be the biggest.”
“East Point,” she informed him. “Did you have a forced landing?”
“You talk like a flyer!” grinned Hemingwood. “No, I came down on
purpose. I thought I was near East Point, but it’s hard to tell from the
air. Particularly in such thickly settled country,” he added.
She chuckled, a peculiarly infectious performance as she accomplished
it. She was a tiny little thing, Hemingwood thought, and her small, oval
face with its saucily tilted nose and rather wide mouth possessed a
charm which far transcended the mere beauty of more regular features.
She did not look as if a resident of the mountains.
“You know, pretty lady, I’ve read a few flying stories in some of our
magazines, and in every one some beautiful girl always materializes as
soon as an airplane lands,” he remarked. “They just pop out of bushes in
the wilderness or from behind sand hummocks in the desert. But in five
years of flying it’s the first time I’ve seen it happen!”
“Well, this is the first time you’ve ever landed anywhere near me,” she
returned, mirth in her gray eyes.
“My mistake!” laughed Hemingwood.
“I wonder if you could give me some information. I expect to be in your
village, or above it, for a few days, taking pictures of this flock of
mountains. If they rolled Kentucky out flat it would be bigger than
Texas.”
She laughed aloud this time. Her face had an out-of-doors look about it,
just a hint of golden tan and red cheeks with the color underneath the
skin instead of on top of it.
“The main things I want to know are as follows: where can my trusty
sergeant and myself procure beds and boards for ourselves? And is there
any garage in town where we can buy gasoline and oil?”
“That last remark is an insult!” she said severely. “I ought to ride off
and leave you standing here after that insinuation against East Point.
However, you’re a stranger. My uncle has practically the only store in
East Point. He sells gasoline and oil.”
“He must be a good business man, judging by his choice of salesmen,”
commented Hemingwood.
“That’s the secret of his success,” she confided smilingly. “About the
boarding house, I don’t know. We have no regular hotel or even boarding
house, but I guess my uncle could tell you where to go.”
“And your uncle’s name is--”
“Mumford. You can’t miss the store. There’s a big sign on it.”
“Do you think you could stand it if I introduced myself?” enquired
Hemingwood.
“I might.”
“Hemingwood--George Hemingwood, hailing at present from Camp Henry.”
“How do you do, Lieutenant Hemingwood,” she smiled. “Beautiful morning,
isn’t it?”
“Be a nice day if the weather doesn’t change, Miss Blank,” agreed the
flyer.
“I’ll let you substitute ‘Morgan’ in the blank. Are we ordinary people
on the ground to be allowed to look at your airplane?”
“I’ll show you the sights myself.”
She glanced down at the tiny gold watch on her wrist.
“Ten minutes of nine! I’ve got to hurry. I’m a hard working school-marm,
you see. But I do want to see your plane, lieutenant.”
“What time do you get through for the day?”
“Four o’clock.”
“Are you riding to school? Come back this way?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be waiting at the ship for you. I want to be present when you see
it, because it all sounds so much more impressive as I explain things.”
“I will be supposed to worship in silent awe, perhaps?”
“You be interested, and I’ll do the worshipping,” grinned Hemingwood.
“You don’t appear to be of the reverent sort. However, I’ll look forward
to it. Good-by until this afternoon!”
She threw him a smile and urged her fat white horse into a lumbering
gallop.
“She’s no East Point girl; she’s just out of college and getting a
year’s experience or something!” soliloquized Hemingwood. “Must be some
little schoolhouse up at that settlement I saw from the air. Cute kid,
and she knows what it’s all about too.”
He resumed his pilgrimage to East Point, musing contentedly on the
prospect before him. He had not proceeded five hundred yards, however,
before loud clanking and rattling announced the fact that there was a
vehicle approaching. A battered Ford truck bounced into sight and
clattered up to him, slowing gradually. Loose tools in the rear were
responsible for the weird combination of noises given forth by the
flivver. Two men were in the seat. The truck stopped alongside the
flyer, and the fat man at the wheel hailed him.
“Mornin’! Git down all right?”
“Yes, thanks. Nothing the matter. Landed on purpose.”
“I see. Lookin’ fur anything special around hyar?”
The driver’s round, red face was the setting for a pair of small, green
eyes encased in rolls of fat. He was dressed in greasy mechanic clothing
and a battered felt hat. His companion was a gaunt man of middle age,
boasting a drooping mustache and a melancholy look.
“I’m going to town to look for gas and oil and a place to sleep right
now.”
“Climb in hyar, and I’ll take yuh t’ town,” offered the fat man, who
seemed to be making a determined effort to be genial.
Without a word his companion uncoiled his long length and languidly
transferred himself into the rear of the truck. He was dressed in a
black shirt and dirty khaki trousers and his felt hat was in as decrepit
a condition as the driver’s.
The Ford had barely turned around when the vanguard of the sightseers
passed in two flivvers, both loaded to the guards with coatless men of
all ages. They peered at Hemingwood with concentrated attention as they
dashed by.
“I keep the garage hyar an’ I c’n let yuh have all the gas yuh want,”
offered the driver.
“Well, I’ve made arrangements in advance with Mr. Mumford,” lied
Hemingwood.
Just why he had said it he did not know. It was an impulse, but a
sensible one. He intended to buy the gas of Mumford because of the girl,
and he might as well avoid antagonizing anyone in East Point if he
could.
The driver grunted. He was plainly disappointed.
“Gettin’ right out?” he enquired.
“No, I’ll be here several days.”
The man glanced at him quickly, and the flyer felt instinctively that
the man behind him was staring at him steadily and listening closely.
“What fur?”
The forthright question was like a blow.
“I was sent here to take a lot of pictures from the air,” Hemingwood
explained.
He felt the tenseness in the atmosphere, and was well aware of the
attitude of mountaineers regarding any stranger, particularly a
Government man. Consequently he went to some pains to describe his
mission exactly. Apparently he did not satisfy the fat garage man
entirely, though. Hemingwood was somewhat puzzled. It would have been
more explainable if the man had been a mountaineer. Perhaps he was, and
had graduated into a business in town. No reason why a man couldn’t make
moonshine just because he lived in town, either, he reflected.
Several more cars passed them, all filled with passengers. Three men on
horseback and two buckboards were included in the procession. When they
turned into the wide dirt street of East Point there were knots of
people, mostly women, talking on the sidewalks. They were plainly
curious, and Hemingwood was the target for severe inspection and several
pointing fingers.
Most of the houses were small frame buildings, neatly painted, and
interspersed with several tumble-down shacks. The business section was
half-way down the street, and consisted of a tottery wooden shed labeled
“Garage,” a small drug store with fly specked windows, and a big, square
building with a false front, modern show windows, and a big sign
reading:
MUMFORD’S GENERAL STORE
Post Office, East Point, Kentucky.
A bright red gasoline pump stood in front of it, and a rolling oil tank.
Four old men were in conversation in front of the store, and there was a
group of younger men whose meeting place was evidently the garage. A few
wagons were drawn up along the stone sidewalk, the horses tied to
hitching posts. Evidently all the available cars had been driven out to
the field.
As they drew up in front of the store the fat driver offered to wait and
transport Hemingwood back to the field, which offer the Bostonian
accepted with thanks.
He went into the crowded little store and looked around at the counters.
“Mumford sells everything from pills to plows,” he soliloquized, and
then spotted a short, broad, baldheaded man emerging from a cubbyhole in
the rear. It proved to be Mumford.
Hemingwood introduced himself, explained his need of a hundred gallons
of gas delivered at the field every flying day, and learned that Mumford
owned a truck with which it could be delivered. The storekeeper also
opined that he could undoubtedly find a place for the flyers to live if
they would wait for definite information until the afternoon.
The flyer studied his man a bit, and decided to take him into his
confidence to a slight extent. He told him about the casual meeting with
his niece that morning, and went on to say: “I came down here with
Ballardson. He wanted this gas business, so to keep him from being sore
I told him that I had made arrangements in advance with you. I don’t
know anything about East Point, but I figured it might save
unpleasantness. Will you bear me out in my story, if necessary?”
Roundfaced Mr. Mumford chuckled.
“How come you figured Ballardson that way?” he enquired.
“He didn’t seem particularly friendly,” Hemingwood returned.
“If there’s any unpleasantness, prob’ly he’ll have something to do with
it,” stated Mumford. “These mountain people are funny, you know.”
On the way back to the field Ballardson’s questions and something in the
attitude of both men showed plainly that they were not satisfied as to
the precise purpose of the pictures Hemingwood was to take. There were
fifty or sixty people in plain sight near the ship, and as many more
men, women, and children lurking half-screened in the surrounding
forest. They watched the transfer of thirty gallons of gas with
consuming interest.
Knots of roughly dressed men conversed in low tones, while other more
conventionally arrayed, made no mysterious motions. Hemingwood caught a
phrase: “The control wires go through the fuselage hyar, and work these
hyar elevators.” He looked around--he was up on a wing, holding the
funnel over the main tank--to find out who knew so much about airplanes
in that benighted town. It seemed to be a scrawny, red-headed chap
wearing a nondescript felt hat, hickory shirt, and overalls. A moment
later Hemingwood noticed Ballardson in conversation with him.
The slow job of straining the gas through the chamois was about over
when the flyer heard voices raised in anger. He looked around and saw
two men standing close to the tail surfaces of the ’plane, surrounded by
a half dozen others, including Ballardson and the airplane expert.
“I say you’re a liar!” shouted a gaunt, rawboned mountaineer who was one
of the pair. The other, short and powerfully built, retaliated with a
resounding slap. The next second they were locked in each other’s arms.
Hemingwood leaped to the ground while the onlookers watched
breathlessly. Those men were perilously close to the ship. If one of
them put a foot through the frail linen of the elevators or rudder--
As he ran toward them, followed by Apperson, he saw the taller man
deliberately kick his foot toward the drooping elevators. In a flash
Hemingwood took in the details. Their faces were not those of two
fighting men temporarily hating each other. And that kick had looked
deliberated, even if it had missed. As he got within a foot of them they
were poised directly over the tail assembly, straining mightily. Another
second and they would have crashed together over the ship and would have
put one De Haviland airplane totally out of flying condition for several
days.
It was a frame-up, Hemingwood thought as he hurled himself at the
contestants. He hit them like a human cannon ball. And, for the moment,
he was one. Characteristically, he was totally unimpressed by the odds
against him. With fists and feet he drove the astounded battlers back.
After they had recovered, they commenced to retaliate. No one else took
a hand, for a moment, and Hemingwood fought entirely alone. He seemed to
be a dynamic ball, bristling with feet and fists from every angle. He
was in a cold rage at the unwarranted interference of the mountaineers,
and he gloried in the opportunity to vent some of it on them. He fought
furiously, and for a few seconds actually had the best of it. A sweeping
kick sent the stocky man to the ground, and George took a clumsy swing
on the side of the head in order to sink his fist in the taller man’s
belly. That put that personage out for a second or two, so he was able
to meet the rising gladiator with a wild flurry of fists that cracked
home to the jaw and sent him down again.
But he knew it could not last. He leaped back, and jerked out his Colt.
“Stand still, you!” he snapped, and his glinting eyes were hard and keen
and his smile had more than a touch of grimness about it. Subconsciously
he noticed Ballardson’s amazed, slightly scared face, and the taut
expectancy, half fear and half enjoyment, of the spectators. Apperson
was at his elbow, his gun also out.
“Listen, all of you!” Hemingwood shouted. There was utter silence.
“There’s at least one man here that knows airplanes. This framed-up
fight was for the purpose of putting this ship out of commission. If
another soul gets anywhere near it he’s going to be filled so full of
lead it’ll take a block and tackle to lift him into the hearse.
“You’re fooling with the United States Army if you knock me off. And you
won’t get away with it. I’m here to take pictures, and nothing else. I
don’t give a damn who or what you are, but by God if you two birds or
anyone else looks crosseyed in my direction or starts anything else as
funny as this, I’ll commence to get damn interested! Now get the hell
out of here, you two, and the rest of you get back and stay back!”
Which they did. They were thoroughly awed, and well satisfied to remain
at a distance. It was significant that not a soul seemed to take
Hemingwood’s part. Evidently the mountaineers had the village business
men somewhat under their thumbs.
“Nice start I’ve got,” soliloquized the untroubled flyer.