A short time after Reveille the following morning, Panama’s plane taxied
along the ground and was met by a group of curious ground men.
When the ship came to a stop, the flying sergeant crawled out of the
cockpit with much difficulty, stiff and sore from his all-night flight,
the purpose of which had since proved to be a futile escapade.
“Didn’t see a camp fire all night,” he announced to the group of men
gathered about the plane.
“Gee, that must have been tough,” one of the Marines sympathized,
“hopin’ around this trick country all night and then not seein’ what you
went after.”
“You said it,” another chirped. “The least that Sandino guy might have
done was to be a little obligin’ and light up a couple of fires so you’d
discover where he was!”
Panama shook his head and laughed heartily. “Maybe if we’d ’a’ sent him
a telegram sayin’ I was comin’, he might have been considerate enough to
help me out. Then we could send a squadron of planes over his camp
to-day and blow ’em all to hell.”
Just then, Lefty came sauntering along, still carrying a pretty bad
hang-over from the night before. When he saw the ground men grouped
around Panama’s plane, he joined them.
“Say, Pete!” the sergeant called to the chief mechanic at the base,
“just after sunrise this morning, one of them plugs started missin’.
Will you get after it?”
“Right after breakfast,” the man announced, “I’ll put a couple of boys
on to overhaul the whole motor anyway.”
Panama looked up and saw Lefty for the first time and beckoned to him.
“Come on over to the tent, kid. I think I’ve got it!”
Williams waved to the others and started across the field, followed by
Lefty.
Once inside of their tent, Panama threw his helmet on his cot and pulled
off his windjammer as the boy sat on a box, silent and indifferent,
rolling himself a cigarette. Free of his flying togs at last, the
sergeant turned and confronted his friend with a familiar eagerness and
suppressed excitement lighting his face that was still dirty from smoke,
wind and oil.
“I’ve got the whole thing solved,” he announced with enthusiasm. “All
night long, while I flew over those mountains and across valleys,
searching for a sign of them greaser bandits, the idea preyed upon my
mind!”
Lefty moved about on the narrow box impatiently as he reached for a
match and lighted his cigarette.
“What’s been on your mind besides your helmet?”
Williams completely ignored the question and walked to the front of the
tent, closing the flaps and tying them together as a means of insuring
privacy.
“You’ve got to help me, kid!” he began again, turning and sitting down
on the edge of the cot opposite Lefty. “Take off that jumper!”
“What for?”
“Oh, boy, why didn’t I think of this back in Pensacola,” he mused aloud,
still ignoring Phelps’ questions. “Everything would have been hunky dory
now, all right!”
“What would have been?” Lefty asked as he began to show signs of
annoyance over the other man’s continued secrecy.
The sergeant smiled sheepishly, kicking the toe of his hobnailed boot
into the ground. “Aw, go on, you know what I mean!”
Lefty rose to his feet and threw the half-smoked cigarette to the floor
of the tent, crunching its remains beneath the heel of his shoe. “No, I
don’t know what you mean, and if you don’t hurry up and tell me, I going
to walk out on you!”
“Why, you’re goin’ to ask her for me! I’ve been thinkin’ about it all
night. Don’t you see the idea?”
“No, I don’t see,” the boy protested, “I’m going to ask who, what?”
“Her!”
Lefty dropped on top of the box and gazed at Panama with a look of
miscomprehension. “What are you talking about? You don’t mean that—not
Elinor?”
Panama nodded his head with enthusiasm, smiling with self-satisfaction
over the idea he had perfected.
“Sure—Elinor! Last night, when I went over to ask her, I lost my nerve
again. There we were, by the old Mission gate, alone in the moonlight
with no one within a mile of us and I couldn’t work up enough guts to
say the word!”
“Why not?” the boy asked in a cool manner of indifference.
“I was helpless, licked! Don’t you see, kid? I can’t talk! But you and
your college learnin’! Say, that’s how I got the idea! It’ll be a
cinch——”
Panama’s proposition completely stunned the other man and he sat gazing
blankly at his friend with wide, uncomprehending eyes, certain that his
very ears were deceiving him.
“You—you want me to ask her for you?”
“Sure! Why not? You’re the only guy in the world that I’d let do that
for me!”
Lefty walked to the front of the tent, unloosened one of the flaps and
threw it back to allow the air to come in. “You’re crazy, man!” he said,
completely dismissing the entire wild idea from his mind.
“Crazy?” Panama repeated, laughing cruelly. “Listen, picture yourself
out in that moonlight in the shadow of the old Mission with a lot of
greasers singin’ lovesick ballads and the big, silver moon shinin’ down
on you with Elinor by your side and you——”
“For God’s sake, will you shut up?” the nerve-wracked boy screamed, no
longer able to control his burning emotions.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway?” Panama asked, not aware of his
friend’s reason for refusing his request.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Lefty announced. “It’s you and your
half-baked ideas! You’re out of your mind!”
The sergeant’s face darkened as a cloud of disappointment overshadowed
his confident smile. “You mean, you won’t?”
“I can’t!” Phelps interrupted, striving to hide his true feelings. “I
can’t do it and I won’t! If you want the girl, go ask her yourself!”
Panama rose and pulled at the boy’s jumper in a determined fashion,
completely deaf to his protestations. “Aw, come on. Get them clothes
off. You’ll know what to say. I ain’t ever had no education or dealin’s
with decent women!”
Lefty swung about and faced his friend. His eyes were filled with a
mingled look of fear and anxiety. “I can’t ask her that! Don’t you see,
I can’t?”
“But you gotta, kid! You’ll know what to say! Your book learnin’ will
help. Don’t flop me, will ya?”
“I tell you, you’re crazy!” the boy bellowed, angrily. “What do you
think I am, anyway—your dog?”
A look of pain crept over Panama’s face. He saw all of his plans and
dream castles crumble to earth with Lefty’s refusal to act as his proxy.
“Aw, no, I don’t think nothin’ like that. I ain’t tellin’ you to ask
her, I’m beggin’ you as a pal!”
Lefty turned and walked to the rear of the tent, oblivious to the man’s
entreaties. “Just because you saved me from being transferred to a ship,
you expect me to jump every time you snap your fingers!”
The sergeant’s attitude changed now from one of meek pleading to
definite aggressiveness, a role so perfectly suited to him.
“O-o-oh—so I’m askin’ you too much, huh? You won’t do it, eh? You won’t
go over to that girl and say a couple of simple words for me when you
know I can’t talk? Well, that’s Okay with me, brother! I certainly am
glad to find out what kind of a pal you’ve turned out to be!”
Lefty completely weakened at the other man’s implication of his
unfaithful devotion, and dropped to the cot behind him, suffering untold
tortures caused by his being torn between the love of this man and his
adoration for Elinor.
“I can’t do it, Panama! Honest, I can’t! It would be harder for me than
it is for you!” The sergeant, not understanding the truth behind the
boy’s ambiguous confession, walked over to where he rested and sitting
down beside him, placed his arm about Lefty’s shoulders, once more
resorting to his soft, pleading tone. “What are you talking about? Why,
it’ll be a cinch for you, the way you sling words around! Say, if I had
your gift for gab, you don’t think I’d be askin’ you to propose for me,
do you?”
[Illustration: “If I had your gift for gab, you don’t think I’d be
askin’ you to propose for me, do you?”]
Panama remained silent for a moment, waiting for some comment from
Phelps but there was none forthcoming. He merely lolled on the edge of
the cot, resting his weary head in his hands.
“Come on, now; you will do it, won’t you?” Williams urged.
The boy sat up straight, trying to set his befuddled brain in order
again. He looked up at his friend as a shadow of helplessness crossed
his face.
“I’d do anything in the world for you, anything,” he strove to make
Panama believe, “but when you ask me to speak to Elinor about a thing
like—like—well, if you wanted me to cut my heart right out of my body
and hand it to you, that would be easier!”
Panama smiled generously and patted the boy upon the back. “I know it
must be hard to do another feller’s work for him, but if I told you that
what I’m askin’ means my life’s happiness; if I said that I’ve lived
every moment since the time I first saw her for the day when she’d say,
‘yes’; that every hour I’m awake, I think of us together in a cottage
some place with flowers and kids, and when I’m asleep, I just dream of
her an’ me married, what would you say?”
Without answering, Lefty rose, proceeding to remove his work jumper as
Panama, watching him eagerly, caught the significance of this gesture
and jumped to his feet, bearing a triumphant and enthusiastic smile as
his prospects once more grew brighter.
“Atta boy!” he shouted jubilantly. “I knew you wouldn’t fail me!”
“When you put it the way you did, about it meaning everything in the
world to you, I couldn’t turn you down,” the boy explained, moving about
the tent in a daze.
He walked to the little stand that held the washbasin and cleaned the
oil and grease off of his hands and then brushed his hair.
As he gazed into the small mirror just above the washbasin, his eyes
rested upon a snapshot of Elinor that Panama had stuck there. Confronted
by the magnetic features of the girl, everything within him revolted
against the unfairness of it all. He swung about, ready to announce his
definite refusal to participate in the scheme, only to come face to face
with the sergeant who was standing behind him, watching eagerly.
“Go on, now,” Panama urged. “I’ll be waitin’ right here for her answer.”
His words again changed the boy’s demeanor, breaking down the last
barriers of objection.
“Don’t keep me waitin’ too long, will ya?” Williams begged. “Hurry on
your way now!”
Lefty stopped when he reached the front of the tent, lighting upon a
perfect alibi to defer the painful ordeal he was about to face. “Wait a
minute,” he said. “This is no time to propose to a girl. You can’t ask
her a serious thing like that just when you please. You’ve got to have
things right. You know, moonlight, atmosphere, music and all that bunk.
I’ll ask her to-night. What do you say?”
“There you are! That’s the difference between us,” Panama boasted with
profound admiration for his friend’s mental capacity. “If it was me, I’d
run right over now and she’d probably hand me the bum’s rush! Don’t you
see how much I need your help? That’s what that education stuff does for
a guy!”
“All right, all right, now let’s forget about it until to-night then,”
Lefty said impatiently. “I said I’d do it, so it’s as good as done!”
Panama shrugged his shoulders and walked over to his cot, disappointed
with the boy’s unsympathetic attitude. Suddenly something struck him and
he looked at the other man with a grave expression of doubt. “Say, Lef!”
“Now what’s the matter?”
“Nothin’, only—well, suppose she does say the word,” the sergeant
speculated as he scratched his head, “then what am I supposed to do?”
“Run over, take her in your arms and ask her when the day is to be!”
The simple man’s face became livid white as he moved from one foot to
the other nervously.
“Gee, I can’t do that!” he protested, “I ain’t got nerve enough!
Couldn’t you ask her that too?”
“Whatinell you expect me to do,” Lefty roared, completely losing his
patience. “Marry her for you?”