A FIGHT IN THE SKY
A hundred and fifty miles an hour!
It takes nerve not to slow down when, for hours at a time, the earth
rushes so fast and so far beneath you that hills and towns and fields
all blur together in one brown smear, and you don’t know where you
would land if there were an accident suddenly. It takes nerve to see
a city far off, then suddenly have it spread all about beneath you,
with dangerous currents swirling up between its buildings, and then
have it vanish behind you. But they had to make up time. They were
late. Hike had to keep his grit.
He was getting nervous and tired from his long strain. Each time
he swung the rudder, he jerked at his weary backbone, too. He had
to keep telling himself foolish little things, to remain calm. “He
mustn’t let good ole Poodle get hurt” thought Hike. “This would
soon be over.... Be over.... Another hour, and he’d take a rest....
Bimeby, he’d slow down to a safe easy slow hundred an hour....
Anyway, if anything happened, the _Hustle_ would probably sink
safely to earth.... Besides, there was the stabilisator to depend on.”
The stabilisator is a mechanism which controls the rudder and
elevating planes by means of sliding weights and plates of metal, and
all by itself brings the machine back to an even keel if she tips too
much. Hike took a lot of comfort in thinking about the stabilisator.
He did not worry, but kept the _Hustle_ whirling on, at a hundred and
fifty an hour.
It was about noon that they were passing over the Tennessee
mountains, toward which the north wind had driven them, out of their
course. About twelve-thirty, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, Hike
decided that the rudder was not answering the lever properly. It
looked as though the fastening of the rudder-control-wire was working
loose under the terrific twitches he had been giving it.
Far ahead, there was a broad hill, among the wild, wooded mountains.
He slowed down, dipped toward the hill, circled it, and made out a
broad bare space, on which he finally landed. Slowly, he crawled out
of his seat, and reached the ground. He found himself so dizzy and
stiff that he promptly sat down on the grass and stared dumbly at the
tetrahedral, rubbing his tired wrists, slowly.
Poodle, waked up by the stopping of the machine, yawned till it
looked as though the top of his head would come off, scratched his
left ear, and grunted:
“Gee, you’re lazy. Ain’t I been teaching you in-dus-try and habits of
work? And what d’you do? Here I get to thinking, kinda deep, about
how I can improve your character, and then you go and sneak in a
sleep on me. It’s orful.”
“Yuh,” said Hike meekly. “Well, I’ll try to do better.”
“That’s wery comfortin’, Geerawld, and so I’ll just go to sleep
again.”
“You _will_ not. You’ll help me fix the rudder.”
“Why didn’t you have the brakeman call me at our last stop, and
I’d have fixed it for you. What’s the trouble? Is the doodingers
cross-circuited with the bezingelum? Well, just switch on the other
gallywoggs, and that will make it all right.”
“No, the trouble is,” stated Hike, very seriously, “that the
bezingelum is getting charged by contact with the ornithigulus.”
“Oh, I see. Then I suppose I’ll have to stop that deep _thinking_ I
was telling you about, and show you how to fix it.”
Poodle crawled out, and sat down beside Hike. They said nothing, but
stretched themselves out on the dry grass. Soon, there was a sound of
deep, slow breathing. In half an hour, Hike awoke—to find that they
had been asleep!
Dragging the unfortunate Poodle to the _Hustle_, he made him hold
wires and pliers, while he tightened the fastening of the rudder.
While he worked, he glanced at the valleys and mountains about them.
He exclaimed, “Gee! Say, Poodle, get your gun ready again. There’s a
guy—”
“A _what_?”
“Hush! Quick. Man’s crawling up the hillside, with a long rifle that
looks like business. I wonder what—”
From the nearest clump of bushes suddenly came a harsh loud voice:
“Well, you young fellers won’t wonder long! You-all better come with
me.”
A tall man in home-spun, tall, gaunt, fierce as a wild beast, was
covering them with his rifle. From the other bushes rose a dozen men,
young and old, all savage as the first mountaineer.
Hike started to explain that the tetrahedral was not an anarchist
machine or anything like that, but the first man bade him to “Shut
up!”
The hill where the _Hustle_ had landed was the center of a camp of
moonshiners, who had been driven from their stills by a big raid by
revenue officers. They had fled here, with rifles, bags of corn-meal,
bacon and whiskey, and were waiting for the revenue officers to try
to creep in on them from the mountains about. When they had seen
the tetrahedral swoop down, they had immediately thought it a new
method of the “revenuers,” and they believed the boys—too young to be
officers—treacherous spies.
So much Hike gathered from their threats and sneers. He saw that
Poodle and he must either escape or be lynched. Poodle, who was
looking around in a scared way at the scowling ring of men with ready
rifles, was not too scared to whisper, “We’d better beat it. We’ll be
late in getting to Washington you know, if we get lynched.”
Hike had a plan. Addressing the leader, he explained that they had
nothing to do with the revenue officers, and that he would prove it
if the leader would step into the machine and examine their papers.
Very suspicious, the leader refused to do more than approach. He
demanded to see the papers outside. Hike leaned over a storage
battery, and suddenly the leader stood as stiff as though he had been
turned to marble.
For the first time, Hike had used the Paralyzing Wave!
It was an invention of Priest’s, by which a wave, thrown out from an
electrical device, stiffened the victim at whom the wave was aimed,
for several minutes.
The crowd stared at the leader. Hike walked up and cried, “What is
the matter?” Turning to the other moonshiners, he cried, “Help me.
Your leader has been overcome by bedingulus bubulus.”
They looked with suspicious wonder at him. But a boy who could run
a thing like this “flyin’ machine,” and could use such long words
must know something about it; and this sudden disease was certainly
mysterious.
They helped the paralyzed leader into the tetrahedral. Their rifles
were laid aside, and they were much impressed at the manner in which
Hike and Poodle stirred strange liquids in a cup and poured the
mixture down the paralyzed leader’s throat.... If they had known that
the mixture was of lubricating oil and liquid wing-sheathing (for
repairs), they would not have been so respectful.
While apparently working over the leader, Hike suddenly started the
engine, and before the mountaineers could more than reach their
rifles, the great tetrahedral had rushed down the slope, and was off,
sailing through the air, carrying away the insensible leader.
The moonshiners began to fire. Bullets, shot true, pierced the
planes. Hike was protected by the motor, but Poodle, behind him,
suddenly squeaked, as a .44-40 bullet struck his left shoulder, tore
through; and the shoulder smarted as though a terrible red-hot iron
had been bored into it.
Hike had not heard him, did not know he was struck. Turning his back,
Poodle pulled off his coat, and wrapped a handkerchief about the
shoulder, using his teeth and right hand. The wound was not deep,
though it was bleeding, and Poodle was glad that he had not been
“killt entirely.” He pulled on his coat again, and tried to look as
though he had not been hurt at all, watching the stupefied leader,
still lying motionless on the freight-platform.
Hike took the _Hustle_ over the next range of mountains, turned her
somewhat northward, through a broad valley where the air-currents
were safe, and beckoned to Poodle. “Here—take her through this
valley. About time for Mr. Man to wake up, and there’ll be a fight.
Be ready to switch the motor off when I kick you in the back. (No, I
won’t kick hard!) Then take her on as long a glide as you can—keep
her up for quite a while.”
Poodle felt the sting of his arm, and the sickening sensation of loss
of blood, too much to make one of his customary answers. He took the
driver’s seat, keeping the injured shoulder away from Hike. Though
it seemed as though he was wrenching his injured left arm out, every
time he moved it, he forced himself to handle the levers and keep the
_Hustle_ at ninety miles an hour.
Hike climbed back to where the leader lay. The man was just
stirring, opening his eyes dully. Hike covered him with the revolver
of the _Hustle’s_ warlike crew, and peacefully waited.
The effects of the electrical current passed quickly away, and the
mountaineer sat up. His grim, set face—the face of a man who had
fought all his life—showed that he was not afraid even of his first
ride in an aeroplane—and certainly not of a revolver in the hands of
a boy.
He shouted, “Lay that gun down, or I’ll throw you off this
flyin’-machine. Then make that fat boy there take me down and let me
off.”
Hike answered, smiling, “Louder, my dear man, motor makes so much
noise.”
“Hear me?” cried the man. “I’ll take that gun away from you. You
couldn’t get in more’n one shot before I grabbed you—and you couldn’t
get in that. I know you-all’s sort. You’d try to shoot, but you ain’t
got the grit to shoot down a man, this near, in cold blood. If I have
to take that gun away from you, I’ll throw you off. Better let me
down peaceful, and save your life.”
Hike knew that the man was right in saying that he would not care to
shoot a man two feet from him. But even so, he was not going to lay
down the revolver.
It was a test of nerves. They argued back and forth, Hike merely
throwing in a few words, never taking his calm cold gray eyes from
the steely, snake-like eyes of the moonshiner. The latter’s nerves
were getting a little shaky, especially at having to yell and listen
in this infernal racket made by the motor. He was used to the quiet
mountains.
Hike watched him get ready to spring, then he touched Poodle’s back
with his toe, and a sudden great silence was about them, as the motor
was shut off. At the same time, Hike touched a strut, quickly.
The mountaineer, surprised, shrank back and grabbed at the sides of
the freight-platform, fearing that an accident had happened.
Hike spoke, clearly and quickly:
“My dear sir, you’re perfectly correct in thinking I am bluffing,
with this revolver. Don’t care to shoot you. But also, you’re
bluffing. You know if you threw me overboard you’d never get to earth
alive. Look down there. If you make one single move, I’ll kick this
dynamite-exploder, and the whole machine will go to pot. You noticed
that when I touched this wooden rod, here, I stopped the engine. You
notice we’re falling through the air, now. We’ll all be killed unless
I turn on the power—and I’m the only one that knows how.”
[Illustration: “LAY THAT GUN DOWN OR I’LL THROW YOU OFF THIS MACHINE”
_Page 78_
]
With all this confusion of “dynamite-exploder” (which was really only
a harmless timer) and “stopping engines” and “falling through the
air,” the mountaineer, seeing the earth rapidly swooping up at them,
as Poodle made her glide over a hill, lost his steely nerve, and
begged for mercy. Never had he met a boy of sixteen who played thus
with life and death.
Smiling quietly, Hike slouched to the engine and switched her on,
from the auxiliary connection.
As the machine resumed her regular course again, the man made several
attempts to regain his nerve, but each time he moved Hike made as
though to kick the timer, and the frightened leader subsided.
They had been sailing for half an hour, when Hike yelled forward to
Poodle, “Take her down.”
The _Hustle_ landed in a hill-pasture, and, with a very courtly
gesture, Hike motioned the mountaineer to step out. With his revolver
covering him all the time, Hike bade him good-by.
The man crawled out and ran, never looking back.
Watching him, Hike said, “Well, I’m ashamed of myself, now it’s
over—taking that poor duffer fifty miles away from home just to get
even. And making you take the levers, Poodle. Regular kid way, ain’t
it—”
He turned toward the machine, and then cried out with sorrow and
amazement. For Poodle did not hear him. As soon as they had landed,
Poodle had fainted, and the blood from his wound was turning all his
left shoulder red.