“There, boys, is about the best stunt pilot you’ll ever look at!”
Shortly afterward the two McCook men left the field in the cars of
their hosts. Finley was to stay with a young lawyer who was plainly
honored to have him as a guest, and by the time several fingers of
mountain dew, collected in the shine of the moon, had done its work, he
was having an excellent time.
The banquet, it appeared, was not restricted to the reserve squadron,
for there were fully five hundred people around the tables when Finley
got up to speak.
He was surprized at their absorbed attention. He did not realize that
the passion for the air which had absorbed him for eighteen years shone
through his slow, almost halting words, and made them live. He was
stunned at the solid applause when he sat down.
The toastmaster was on his feet.
“You know who you’ve been listening to,” he told the enthusiastic
crowd. “One of America’s greatest pilots. Here’s where the program is
supposed to end, and it’s getting late, but I think we all feel like
just a word or two from Lieutenant Forell.”
Kink leaped to his feet, his face flushed and his words tumbling over
themselves as the applause smote him.
“All I can say is that you’ve been listening to a man who can’t fly any
more, so what he says means something. He knows, and he--can’t do any
more to develop the game. That’s what lays ahead of all flyers--either
have to quit, worn out and through, or get killed. But who cares? It’s
the greatest game in the world!”
Finley’s face did not change. Forell had to dramatize himself, of
course.
They took off Monday morning at eight o’clock, but there were fully
five hundred people at the field to bid them good-by. Finley, his hand
itching for the stick, sat tensely while the Kink took off. Forell held
the ship close to the ground, and then zoomed it over the hangar. He
followed the curve of the roof around, the wheels almost touching it,
and dived briefly down the other side.
Finley relaxed. The grandstanding was over now, he hoped.
As the Briston droned swiftly across the rugged mountains Finley’s
flyer’s instinct literally forced him to sweep the ground ceaselessly
with his eyes. Most of the time he had a tiny clearing or a possible
field always in mind in case the motor started missing. That was tough
country down there.
He stiffened as there came a break in the even rhythm of the Liberty.
For a moment the motor spat and missed. Then, for a moment, it fired
steadily.
Finley was ready to sink back thankfully in the rear seat when the four
hundred and fifty horsepower engine coughed again. His eyes leaped to
the tachometer. Only nine hundred revolutions.
Forell did all he could. He jazzed the throttle, dived steeply, and
tried the spark at all positions. The motor was stumbling along, its
r.p.m. only seven hundred now.
Finley’s hand gripped Forell’s shoulder. He pointed down at the one
possible field, three thousand feet below. Forell nodded impatiently,
and turned to his work.
The field was an oblong, and very short on its longest side. Squarely
in the middle of it stood a single tree, which turned the possible
landing space into two strips, scarcely twenty-five yards wide. It was
on a steep slope, and at its lower edge another hill, heavily wooded,
started rising from the very rim of the field. As they spiraled down
over it, Finley saw that in order to land uphill, the ship would be
forced, willy-nilly, into a fairly steep glide down that other slope.
Forell was a master-flyer, but never-the-less it was agony for even the
self-controlled Finley to sit idly by and watch Forell fly. Perfection
in judgment and airmanship was necessary if they were to make that
field in safety. There was not so much as a cabin within five miles,
should they be hurt.
Kink started banking for the field halfway up the slope which faced it.
As the nose swung toward the clearing the pilot stopped the spiral when
the radiator was pointed toward the field at an angle.
While the tense Finley wondered, momentarily, what he was going to do,
Forell sent the Briston into a gradual side-slip. It dropped down the
mountainside with scarcely thirty miles an hour of forward speed, and
he did not swing the nose for the right hand strip until the ship was
at the very end of the towering trees which formed the barrier.
He dropped it over them, fishtailed it with the rudder, and set it down
squarely in the middle of the landing lane. It trundled past the tree
with scarcely ten feet of clearance on each wing, and came to rest
twenty yards from the woods at the upper end.
The landing had been perfection itself.
“Sounded like water in the jets!” yelled Kink as he snapped off the
switches.
Finley nodded as he hit the ground. That had been his diagnosis of the
trouble, exactly.
He measured the field briefly with his eyes, and got the tool-kit out
as Forell climbed out.
“We’ll take a look,” Finley drawled. “Let’s hope it’s just a jet.”
“----, there’s no hurry,” announced Forell, lighting a cigaret. “We’ll
either have to get those trees--some of ’em--cut down, or else tear the
ship down and send it home. We can’t get out.”
“Can’t get out?” repeated the bewildered Finley, jet wrench in hand.
“Why--”
“Of course not!” snapped Forell, his eyes blazing suddenly. “There
isn’t a chance--”
“Well, let’s look at the jets, anyway,” Finley cut in calmly, and went
to work on the carbureter.
Forell paced up and down nervously as Finley worked without saying a
word. Occasionally the big red-head darted a puzzled look at his
stalwart, silent companion. Neither had anything to say until Finley
had the jets out and was peering through the tiny openings.
“There she is!” he said triumphantly. “Look!”
The water bubble in the high speed jet was plain to be seen. Forell
took a quick look through it. As Finley blew it out the Kink said
jerkily:
“As soon as we get her back we’ll make for that town over north and see
about getting some men to cut down some trees. We might be able to
leave by tomorrow.”
His eyes blazed a challenge to Finley, but the older man said
placidly--
“Let’s see whether she works first, anyhow.”
His mind was busy, however, with the implications in the Kink’s words.
With eighteen years of experience behind him, he came close to knowing
what could and what could not be done on a take-off. This one would
have to be perfectly flown, but it could be done.
“Get in, and I’ll swing the prop,” he directed.
“Oh, what the ----’s the use?” Kink started, and then stopped.
He climbed in the front cockpit, his face sullen and his blue eyes
glinting. Finley picked up two sizable rocks for wheelblocks, and then
swung the propeller as Forell handled switches and throttle. The
Liberty, still warm, caught at once, and idled along sweetly.
Forell turned it up a little, and tried it on either switch. He put it
through its paces, with the spark in all positions, and it seemed to
Finley that he was disappointed because it fired without a miss.
Suddenly the motor died, and Forell was on the ground.
“Well, let’s get started for help!” he barked. “I’ll go and you guard
the ship.”
“Go for help, nothing,” Finley told him, putting the tool-kit away.
“We’re going to take off!”
“Are you crazy!” yelled Forell, his face pale and drawn. “Why, ----,
there isn’t a Chinaman’s chance of getting out of here!”
“The ---- there isn’t,” Finley said levelly, his eyes not two feet from
Forell’s. “Listen. We get the ship up in the upper right hand corner
here, swing her around, and block the wheels. Give her the gun, and
right after she’s hopped the blocks she’ll be under full steam. Go
diagonally for the left hand side of the tree, and right there swing
her with right rudder to the lower right hand corner. That’ll give us
several extra yards.”
“----! You must be going blind! Why listen, you superannuated old fool,
we’d crash into those trees just as sure as we’re standing here!”
“We would not,” Finley said slowly.
“I say we would. And I’m the pilot of this ship; I’ve got the say, and
I won’t take her off!”
He seemed to be half-crouched, as if prepared to fight for his very
life.
“Oh, you won’t!” Finley said with deadly calmness. His eyes flickered
over the youngster before him with cold contempt.
“No, I won’t, and by ---- I think you’re going totally crazy! Want to
add another wreck to your--”
“Listen, you puling brat!” blazed Finley, and now all the repression of
months seemed to have been released, and with blazing eyes and a
torrent of speech he fairly threw his words into the younger man’s
face.
“You won’t take off, eh? A ---- of a flyer you are! Got all the nerve
in the world when the motor’s going good and you’ve got a crowd
watching you, haven’t you? But when it comes to getting in there, out
here in the wilderness, and giving her the gun when you’ve only got an
even chance, you haven’t got the guts!”
“Shut up, or I’ll--”
“You’ll do what?”
Finley spat his words at him. His powerful body seemed to grow and
expand until it overshadowed the slim youngster. There was contempt and
hate in his eyes as his tongue played around the alternately shrinking
and then wildly furious Forell, like a whip. He flayed the man he
despised, mercilessly, laying bare the diseased spots within the
outward semblance of the red-headed flyer.
Forell’s fists were clenched, and his eyes had the light of madness in
them as Finley welded iron into his soul by the heat of his wrath. Time
after time, during that stream of deadly insults which poured from the
transfigured Finley’s mouth, it seemed that Forell was going to leap on
him. Finley, giving not a step nor shifting his eyes by so much as an
inch, dared him to come on.
“And as true as ----!” he finished, “if you funk this take-off I’ll
climb in there myself and take her off, and I’ll bring her back to
McCook, and I’ll label you in front of the whole cock-eyed world for
the yellow-bellied, chicken-hearted, gutless ---- that you are!”
For a moment he played with the idea. He pictured himself coming in,
having made the take-off that Kink Forell couldn’t make. That would
show them whether he was through or not.
He put temptation from him. He was dimly aware that he had played his
trump card, as far as Forell was concerned. He hammered on along the
same line--insulting, threatening, daring the snarling, hot-eyed pilot
before him with a tongue tipped in vitriol and eyes that glowed their
hate.
Suddenly Forell drew himself up tensely, and there were tears in his
eyes as he shouted hysterically--
“All right, ---- you, we’ll go to ---- together just to prove that you
can’t bluff me!”
He was trembling as he got into the front cockpit, and started the
motor. Finley walked at the left wingtip as the ship taxied to the
upper right-hand corner of the field, and there he helped swing it
around. The rocks under the wheels, he got in. He was tight-lipped and
grim-faced as he settled himself for his worst ordeal in eighteen years
of flying.
What kind of a pilot would that quivering, hysterical youngster in the
front seat be when he was flying for his life? The Kink was sure he was
going to his death.
The Liberty roared into life, the throttle all the way ahead. The taut
Finley felt the stick jam forward. An instant before the tires jumped
the rocks the tail was in the air. Nose low to the ground, the Briston
sped for the left hand opening between tree and forest.
Finley’s hand was on the stick, his feet on the rudder, lightly. The
right wingtip scraped past the tree with scarcely two feet to spare. At
that instant the right rudder went on, and the ship angled for the
corner of the field. It was headed for the lower right-hand angle of
the field, now, where towering trees were like sentinels, alert to
repel it.
The time had long passed when there was any chance of turning back. It
was all or nothing, now. The ship was off the ground, rushing for those
trees, barely five feet above the ground. It was nosed down slightly,
gathering speed. Now the trees were dancing right in front of his eyes.
There Forell pulled back. The Briston shot upward, losing speed
rapidly. It barely cleared the topmost branches as he leveled it off.
It mushed downward, and there came a drag on the under-carriage.
Suddenly Forell was leaning forward as if to help his ship onward. With
all his natural genius for estimating flying speed and the capabilities
of a plane he fought it--fought to keep it in the air. In his
desperation it seemed to the older man, straining forward against his
belt, that the Kink worked up speed and tore the ship from those
clinging branches by his own strength.
It was free. For a moment, banking ever so slightly, Forell held it
level to gather speed. Then, the Liberty roaring triumphantly, the
Briston winged its way upward like some suddenly liberated bird.
Finley relaxed limply. Somehow he was very weary. He was glad
everything was all right, and that one of the most brilliant young
pilots in the service had got over the hump.
As they spiraled down above McCook he noticed that just about everybody
on the line was looking at them. Forell, who hadn’t turned his head
once, did not seem to notice the attention they were attracting. As the
ship taxied to the line a considerable group of mechanics and flyers
gathered to meet it, which was unusual, to say the least.
Forell did not run out his motor, but snapped the switches off without
delay. He was on the ground almost as quickly as Finley himself.
“Where did you pick the shrubbery?” demanded Dick Redding, pointing at
the wheels.
Finley’s eyes took in the sight. The wire wheels were stuffed with
foliage from the branches that had escaped.
“Where did we get it?” repeated Forell loudly. “On a forced landing,
that’s where!
“We came down in a little tiny field no bigger than a hangar, in
Kentucky. When we fixed her up I took a look. Didn’t seem a chance to
get out--not a chance. But I figured that we might do it by blocking
the wheels and some other stuff, so I said, ‘What the ----? Either we
do or we don’t!’ So I give her the gun, get the tail up, do a
snake-dance down this little pasture lot with trees all around it.”
His flashing eyes met Finley’s tranquil gaze, and he stopped talking as
if a hand had been clapped over his mouth. There was fear in his eyes
as Finley’s held them.
“Yeah,” Finley drawled placidly. “It was a tough spot, but the Kink
made it. Who’s got a cigaret?”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August 15, 1927 issue
of Adventure magazine.]