“Well, why the woebegone look in your port eye and the stricken stare in
the other?” I asked spaciously.
I didn’t want to seem too serious about it. He got to his feet and put one
foot on a chair.
“Shirley’s fallen right into his trap,” he barked. “He’s got her hooked
tighter than Grant had Richmond; and he’s got to lay off!”
“Peewee! Where’s the boy?”
Penoch’s eyes darted to mine, and his face froze.
“Stick around, and you’ll see some fun,” he barked raucously, and then his
voice reverberated thunderously from the rafters.
“In the dining hall! Come in!”
In came Kennedy, resplendent in a uniform as new as the label on a bottle
of bootleg whisky. He was washed, polished and highly perfumed, and he
looked well.
“’Lo, Slim! Welcome home! Say, Peewee, can you slip me twenty? I’m as flat
as near-beer. Until pay-day?”
“No, I can’t. I’m broke myself.”
Penoch was on his feet, legs wide apart, planted solidly. His barrel-like,
little body seemed to stretch, until his clothes were drawn tightly over
it, and his mustache was bristling fiercely. His eyes were bright and
cold.
“I’m a stranger, almost; how about borrowing it for me?”
“No!”
“What’s the matter, kid? Ain’t sore, are you?”
Kennedy seemed really hurt and surprized. As a matter of fact, it was as
plain to me as anything could be that Kennedy thought as much of Penoch as
he did of any living human. He never missed a chance to slide in a
statement that Penoch was a great little guy; and the number of tales he
recounted that first evening, to prove what a fighter, thinker and
all-round champion Penoch was, were numberless.
“Not exactly. But I’ve got something to say to you, Ralph, and now’s the
time. First off, Slim, here, and Slim alone, knows the works. Understand?”
“Who told him?”
Kennedy’s face was a mask, now, and the eyes of a snake looked into mine,
then shifted to Penoch.
“I did.”
“Give yourself the best of it?”
There was venom dripping from his tongue when he said that. He backed away
slightly, as if fearful of a physical assault.
“What a fine pal you are!” he spat.
“Be that as it may, you listen. You lay off Shirley, Ralph, or I’ll have
your history published in the paper! I’ve hinted at it before. Now I tell
you!”
Penoch’s were blazing into Kennedy’s, and his right fist was stabbing the
air. He was set for the battle, be the result what it might.
“Just where do you think you’d end up in that case? And where do you come
in to criticize anybody else?” sneered Kennedy.
His eyes seemed rat-like then, somehow, as if they were flickering about
for an opening for escape.
“For the sake of argument, we’ll say nowhere!” Penoch fairly roared. “I’ve
paid your bills and hauled you around, and introduced a man I wasn’t sure
wouldn’t steal family jewelry, to plenty of people. So far, I haven’t had
anything but worry over it. But this is different.”
“So you’re pulling the big blackjack, are you? Rough-stuff, huh? Well, I’m
pretty good at that myself, Peewee. So you mind your own damn’
business--or else--”
Kennedy’s eyes were flat and green and cold, his lips drawn back in the
suspicion of a smile, and he looked as close to cruelty incarnate as I
care to gaze upon. And hard--gosh!
“I’ll do no such thing. And you get just exactly three days to wind up
your little affair with Shirley, or I start talking. You can start at the
same time, and be damned to you! But we’ll both go down together, big boy.
You’ll go down farthest. My resignation’ll be in before I start shooting
off my mouth; I figure on that.”
For a long ten seconds Kennedy’s unwinking eyes bored into blazing
Penoch’s. The indomitable little flyer, as if carved out of granite, stood
there and waited. Kennedy threw his cap on the table. His voice softened,
and in a wheedling tone he said:
“What’s all this about, Penoch? Good lord, boy, don’t go off half-cocked.
I ain’t done nothin’ to Shirley or her old man.”
“Not yet, maybe! Why she ever fell for you, I don’t know; but she has. And
if you’ve got any intentions at all, they’re rotten, and I know it. You
couldn’t marry her if you wanted to, and if you could and did, she’d break
her heart in six months. You’re a natural born crook and you know it.
You’re a great guy in some ways; but there isn’t one gram of honesty in
your whole body. You’ll end up broke or in jail, as sure as there’s a jail
left. You never gave a woman in love with you a square break in your life,
or hesitated at getting everything you could out of any man or woman who
got in your power.
“And if you think I’m going to be responsible for getting a kid like
Shirley into any mess with you, you’re crazy! If you get her she’ll know
what she’s getting, and I don’t mean maybe. You’re no more eligible to
wear that uniform or to mix socially with Shirley than I am to be the
Grand Gazabo of Guam. Now, by God, you make up your mind. You’re going to
do one decent thing in your life, and you’re going to do it within three
days, by wiping Shirley off the slate and staying where you belong. If you
don’t, you know what I’ll do. That goes just exactly as it lays!”
Penoch had been talking in low, deep tones, but every word was like a
muffled bullet. When he had finished, a dangerous human being was
crouched, figuratively speaking, with his back to the wall. I put in my
horn then, having been stricken with an idea.
“Penoch’s right, big boy,” I told him. “As a matter of fact, why the
hesitation? Shirley means nothing to you except a time-passer--a kid like
that.”
“Is that so? How do you know so much?” he snarled.
His eyes flashed to Penoch’s.
“Gone back on me, have you? All right, you lousy little double-crosser.
Watch yourself, and plenty! I’ll--”
“You’ll what?”
O’Reilly had covered the space between them in one bound, like a bounced
ball. Suddenly sheer hatred burned from two pairs of eyes. Kennedy licked
his lips, and his smile was mirthless and his eyes indescribable.
“I said to watch yourself,” he said softly. “I don’t like people that talk
too much.”
“I guess,” I interrupted slowly, “that it may be time for me to do some
talking.”
“Talk all you want to; but you stand the gaff, and don’t forget that,
Peewee!”
The look he threw over his shoulder, as he walked out, left no doubt about
what he meant. O’Reilly’s body relaxed slightly, but his face remained set
and strained.
“I’ve always thought,” he said slowly, “that there weren’t many bozos in
the world I’d hate to have as an enemy as much as I would Ralph. And now
the wad is shot, Slim. I guess I’m in for it. But what the hell? The fact
that I’ve talked to you will be the last straw, as far as he’s concerned.
Shirley or no Shirley, he’s doing a lot of low and lofty thinking right
now. And he’ll have a way figured to get even with me, if it takes a year,
without hurting himself. Three days from now should be interesting, what?
Ho-ho-ho! The skeletons’ll be out doing a song and dance for all McMullen
to watch, eh?”
Now that the die was cast, Penoch was himself again, daring the world to
do its worst. Indomitable, hard-boiled, soft-hearted, he flung his loud,
raucous laughter in Kennedy’s face, so to speak, challenging him and the
universe in general to get him down.
“Why couldn’t you have talked quietly to Shirley,” I asked him.
“Tried to,” he boomed absently. “She wouldn’t even listen. She’s nuts, I
tell you, and the old man likes him. He’s given them a long song and dance
about his automobile business in Los Angeles, and all that stuff. If I
went to the old man and told him, there’d be hell to pay; the truth would
come out that I had peached on him, and then my neck would be chopped
neatly. Whichever way it’s done, there’ll be the same result when I expose
him. I’m sunk myself.”
“Right now,” I ruminated, “he may not be satisfied with just smearing your
reputation and having you tried for that mine salting business, at that.
Struck me he’d love to throttle you.”
“I guess he would,” Penoch said calmly. “He served five years for
manslaughter in Virginia once.”
* * * * *
I went to bed early. I hadn’t had much sleep for three days, so at ten
o’clock in the morning I was still pounding my ear commodiously. I was
awakened by long, lean, drawling Tex MacDowell.
“Take a peek at the paper and then arise and shine,” he told me. “We start
for the Gulf of Mexico in exactly one hour.”
One peer at the headlines, that took up half the front page, awakened me
as thoroughly as a pail of ice water would have.
“Laguna In Ruins!” the paper screamed in letters big enough to put on a
signboard.
Within a moment I had the details. One of those tidal waves, estimated as
at least a hundred feet high and two miles in width, had swept in from the
Gulf. Doubtless the result of a volcanic eruption on the sea floor.
According to the meager reports available, every house, structure and
living thing existing in the portion of Laguna, within a half mile of the
beach, had been doomed by that vast crush of water. The remainder of the
town, back farther from the beach, had been inundated; but houses were
standing, and many of the people had escaped alive. The low
country--marshy ground, a lot of it, anyway--was under three feet of
water, and Laguna, as well as small settlements along the beach, which had
likewise been demolished, was a marooned and ruined little city. Telegraph
lines down, railroads washed out, telephones useless, and at least one
thousand people dead or washed out to sea.
“We go over to patrol the Gulf for survivors,” Tex said tersely. “Donovan
Field ships will ferry food and water and medical supplies down. We leave
in an hour. Get a move on!”
All I could think of, as I made passes at my whiskers and leaped into my
clothes and gulped some food was this--how must it feel to look up and see
millions of tons of water about to fall on you? A ten foot wave in a storm
makes me feel like an ant bucking a steam roller.
Four men were to be left at the field for patrol. Six ships were warming
up, as I ran out on the field. The roar of the half-dozen four hundred and
fifty horsepower Libertys fairly shook the earth, and their propellers
send clouds of dust swirling upward. As I approached the line, a car tore
into the airdrome. There was Shirley, her hair blowing in the wind, as she
streaked down the road toward the ships.
As I got closer, I saw her fling herself out of the roadster and make a
beeline for none other than Kennedy. Penoch O’Reilly was standing near by,
his face a study.
“Kennedy going down?” I asked him, noting meanwhile that Shirley and
Kennedy were holding hands.
“Begged to,” boomed O’Reilly. “He’s got guts, all right, and a craving for
excitement.”
“How’s he acting--toward you, I mean?”
“Doesn’t speak. Hardly speaks to anybody. I think he’s afraid some of the
rest are wise to him.”
Just then I saw Shirley lean forward, as if to kiss him good-by. He looked
around almost furtively and held her off. Mr. Ralph Kennedy, for the
moment, was very unsure of his ground. As Penoch and I passed him on our
way to our ships, his eyes rested on us for just a moment. They were
passionless, but when his face was serious the meanness in it seemed to be
intensified. Funny what an effect eyes too close together can give. Add
that mouth--and my imagination--and perhaps you can see what I mean.
Somehow, I shivered.
A moment later I was in my ship, giving her the last look-over, as she
strained against the wheel-blocks. Oil pressure, air pressure, rotations
per minute, battery-charging rate, temperature--all were O. K. Captain
Kennard was already swinging out on the field; I being Number Two followed
him, and the others took up the parade in their proper positions. One by
one we took off, circling the field for altitude in single file. At a
thousand feet the C. O. zoomed, and I slid in, twenty-five feet behind
him, twenty-five feet to one side, and ten feet higher than he. Tex
MacDowell came in on the left, and the others followed, until a V of
ships, three on one side and four on the other, turned eastward and
thundered their way toward the Gulf.
* * * * *
Formation is tricky stuff. You hold your position by throttle-handling
alone. There are no brakes on airplanes, as you may have heard. It’s no
time to commence mooning upon the whichness of the what, nor the why of
the how. You ’tend to your knitting, if you don’t want a collision, and I
’tended to mine plenty. Subsconsciously I noted that Kennedy, at the rear
of the left side, was holding his position well. Pretty fair flyer, he
was. Penoch was behind me.
In an hour we were on the outskirts of the flood district. Ten minutes
later I was stealing looks at the ground. We seemed to be flying over a
shallow lake, from which houses and barns and cattle protruded. About two
feet of water, I should say, covered the ground, and dozens of people were
gathered on each knoll. Houses were down here and there, but not until we
reached the outskirts of Laguna itself, did the real devastation become
apparent.
As we circled that town, it seemed as if I couldn’t move. It looked like
some gigantic canvas, whereon some artist had painted his idea of a
shambles. The back part of the town still had buildings; the streets,
clogged with small débris and overturned automobiles, was the sole
evidence, save for broken chimneys, of the water. The beach section was
nothing but one gigantic rubbish pile. Ten-story buildings had toppled and
fallen in ruins, and for a space of at least a square mile, it seemed,
there was not even a lane through the wreckage. Try to picture a heap of
rubbish, so gigantic that a hundred automobiles, or more, flung upon it
looked like so many flies. Dozens of boats, ranging from oil-tankers to
canoes, had been flung hundreds of feet inland, like so many children’s
toys flung on a dump.
The Gulf itself held a scum of débris of all kinds, and its shore, as far
as we could see, was a rim of ruins.
I had not seen a single spot where a landing was possible. Kennard had
wigwagged his ship, and one by one we fell into single file. Down below,
thousands of people--the survivors--had their heads turned upward. Down in
the ruins I could see bodies, now, and out in the bay unnumbered corpses
were floating.
Suddenly Kennard started down, and then I saw what had been done. There
had been other disasters and floods in Texas, when the airplanes had saved
lives. Laguna had prepared. A force of hundreds of men was just finishing
the job of clearing a hundred-foot runway down the hard-packed beach on
the outskirts of the town; and it was there, one by one, that we landed,
to face haggard, hollow-eyed men, steeped in tragedy.
* * * * *
Much happened during our days at Laguna; but that has nothing to do with
Penoch O’Reilly and Ralph Kennedy. Anyway, twenty minutes later we were
all back in the air, carrying packages of food and water, put up to float.
Each of us had a sector assigned. We went roaring out over the open Gulf,
spotting survivors who were floating on improvised rafts or clinging to
planks. Kennard’s ship, with Jack Beaman at the radio key, was flashing
information to San Antonio. Soon the Donovan ships would be coming in,
carrying supplies.
As we got out over the water, I turned to look at George Hickman, pointing
downward. He’s big and blond and nerveless; but his face was strained, and
there was the closest thing to fear, that I’ve ever seen in his eyes.
As for me, I was one jump ahead of a fit. Down below, flashing along
between carcasses of human beings and animals, were what seemed like
untold hundreds of fins, cutting the water and feeding on their prey. Six
times we swooped low to drop food and water to those poor wretches down
below us. We could almost look into sharks’ eyes, and time after time the
flash of a white belly announced another mouthful.
Remember this, too. If we came down in the water, we could float two
hours. There was not a single serviceable boat to rescue a soul.
I flew six solid hours that day, as did every one of the others. It was
just before the last patrol, and getting dusk, when I ran into Kennedy for
the first time. Our landings hadn’t synchronized before.
“God!” I heard him mumble in an unutterably tired voice. “This’ll drive me
nuts! I can’t even swim, if I come down.”
“No difference, my boy,” Jimmy Jennings told him with an attempt at
jauntiness. “None of us could swim over a mile. Who thinks he could make
five hundred feet through that forest of fins?”
And he was right. It seemed as if every shark in the Atlantic ocean had
come to the picnic. But there were still unexplored sections, little towns
along the shore which needed help, and on we went. Twenty Donovan ships
were ferrying supplies; one came in almost every ten minutes. God knows we
were willing to fly until we dropped. Those poor devils down in the water
will haunt me to my dying day, I guess.
* * * * *
The sun was setting, when I turned around from a spot ten miles out in the
Gulf, my last package dropped and my patrol over. My twelve-cylinder
Liberty had never missed a lick, and I remembered saying over and over to
the rhythm of the motors:
“If you’ll only keep it up--if you’ll only keep it up--”
My ears were ringing from a day’s bombardment; my face was so sun-burnt
with sun and wind that it was sore as a boil, and I was more tired than
I’ve ever been in my life. Two other D.H.’s, one a mile to my right and
the other on beyond, were coming home across the vile, befouled water.
I was two thousand feet high, and land was six or seven miles ahead, when
Hickman grabbed me with a grip like a vise. My heart did a backflip, and I
turned as if I’d been shot. He was pointing to the right. In a second I
had swung my ship and was flying wide-open toward that middle D.H.
It was coming down in a shallow dive. The propeller was turning as slowly
as a water-wheel. One look was enough to tell me that the motor was dead,
and that only the air-stream was moving the stick.
Two of the boys were going to the sharks.
I was diving now, motor full on. I don’t know why. I guess I had some wild
idea that I could help them out. The other ship was heading for the
falling D.H., too. We ranged alongside it almost together. The pilot in
the crippled plane was Ralph Kennedy. The man in the third ship was Penoch
O’Reilly.
Everyone was flying alone, except me, for two reasons. One was to leave
more room for supplies to drop; the other was to conserve manpower as much
as possible. I had George along to work the radio. We’d reconnoitered some
outlying towns on the trip.
It seemed a year before the ship hit, and I was thinking at top speed,
searching for some possible method of saving Kennedy. He could float for
two hours; then he’d be sunk--
Just before the ship hit the water I let out a wild yell, which I myself
couldn’t hear. Right ahead of Kennedy was a huge, partially submerged
thing floating. It looked like a bunch of logs tied together. I guess he
never saw it.
The ship crashed into it with its undercarriage. Just what happened I
don’t know, because the water rose in a geyser, and I couldn’t see for a
moment. But what I saw, when the water subsided, was plenty.
It seemed that the ship had been crumpled completely. It had turned on its
back. Kennedy was invisible. The fuselage had broken in half, the wings
crumpled back, and the motor, of course, was under water. That little heap
of wreckage would become water-soaked in a few minutes. It would sink in a
quarter of an hour, instead of in two hours.
I guess I was shaking a little. I remember Penoch, circling and circling.
Kennedy had not come to the surface.
“Knocked out and drowning--maybe a mercy,” I was thinking, and four fins,
circling, sent cold chills up and down my back.
Then he came to the surface. He struggled weakly to climb up out of the
water, but it took him a full two minutes. Even then he was partly
submerged. Suddenly the sight of those fins set me crazy, I guess.
“I’ll give him a chance to drown, at least!” I fairly shouted at them; and
the next second I was pouring machine-gun bullets into the shadowy green
monsters, and they were floating, dead, on the surface of the water.
There was not one single, solitary thing that could be done to save him.
Two minutes more, and his frail life-raft would be sunk. There was no time
to fly back and get something to which he could cling and drop it to him.
He couldn’t swim.
I fairly froze in my seat, as a great mass of water rose from the sea. As
it cleared, I saw the tail of Penoch’s DeHaviland, high in the air, less
than ten feet from Kennedy. The next second Penoch was clambering up on
the wreckage of his own ship. A few seconds later he was stripped to his
underwear, and swimming toward the crippled Kennedy.
As the little devil was towing his enemy I came to myself. I circled
watchfully above the water, and machine-gunned an approaching shark. As I
did that my stunned brain got working. I don’t think I’m either better or
worse than the average. I’m franker, that’s all. If I had been sitting in
my ship, while my deadly enemy was dying a sure death, I would have been
conscious of a sense of relief.
Penoch O’Reilly had landed to give him two hours more of life; it seemed a
certainty that at the end of two hours, Penoch, too, would go down to the
sharks, with the man who had almost ruined his life.
Then and there that squat, little figure, ho-ho-ho-ing at life, grew into
a giant, towering above ordinary mortals, as far as I was concerned.
“There must be some way,” I kept telling myself over and over as I circled
them. Maybe I hypnotized myself into an idea. I gave a war-whoop of
relief. Anything was better than one hundred per cent. hopelessness.
Kennedy was hurt. That was apparent. Penoch had to drag him up on the
fuselage, and then the reserve man lay there as if he were completely out.
I made wild motions to Penoch; he nodded. He was standing up, a small
white figure, his feet far apart to brace himself against what fate had in
store. As I sped for land, I almost thought I could hear him laughing that
deep-toned, Rabelaisian laugh, flinging his challenge to the gods, a small
white speck in the dusk.
A moment after I had landed, I’d told my story. Tex MacDowell and Sleepy
Spears were in their ships in two seconds less than nothing, and we were
off. When we arrived, Penoch had the upper left wing detached, and Kennedy
was on it.
From there O’Reilly started his heartbreaking journey, a full mile,
pushing that wing slowly through the water, his legs kicking tirelessly.
Kennedy, partially recovered, was using the vertical fin as a paddle to
help. Three airplanes cruised round and round over the ugly water, and not
a shark got within our lines. Every second was a strain, for the sharks
could come up from below and get Penoch, but they did not. With so much
dead meat in the sea, I guess our outfit was entirely too suspicious for
them to bother with.
It was ten minutes after dark when Penoch and Kennedy staggered up on the
beach. Kennedy collapsed. When I got out of my plane, I was swaying like a
rubber lamp-post, and before Penoch had been taken care of and got back, I
had eaten and fallen on a cot, fully dressed, but dead to the world.
* * * * *
Strange as it may seem, I didn’t see either of them next day. Our flyings
came at different hours, and when one was on the ground the others were in
the air. And at three in the afternoon, when I landed, I found that Penoch
and Kennedy and Pete Miller had started back for McMullen. Kennard, Sleepy
and Tex and I started home at five o’clock. There were Donovan ships
available, and there’d been another bandit raid in our territory. The
patrol was needed on the river.
I saw Penoch in the mess-hall, at dinner, and sat next to him. We were all
ready to drop, and hadn’t even washed. Kennard went to sleep over his
soup. Sleepy Spears gave up after the meat course, and stumbled out to
bed.
“Where’s Kennedy?” I asked Penoch.
“In at Shirley’s--for dinner,” he said tersely and, as our eyes met, I
guess our thoughts were the same.
“Then what you did for him had no effect, eh?” I finally asked him. “How’d
he act?”
“Avoids me.”
“I see. Come clean, Penoch. It must have been a temptation to leave him
down there, even if you figured you’d have a good chance of saving him.”
Penoch buttered some bread thoughtfully.
“I just couldn’t; and I’d never thought of that wing gag. Just had an idea
that there ought to be some way out--”
“So you tossed a few sharks right out of your mind, eh?” I interrupted.
“Oh, hell, I didn’t think of anything, except how nice it would be if he
was dead. Well, old-timer, he’s sure slapped me in the face tonight by
going back there. Shows what he is. Hell, I’ve been doing things for him
all my life, and he’s willing to blackmail me. Guess I was a damn’ fool
back over the Gulf, eh? Well, there’ll be excitement about in a few days,
I guess. Better get some sleep tonight. Ho-ho-ho!”
I knew then that he had fully made up his mind, that he’d considered
everything, and was ready to go. And when that crisis was passed with
Penoch O’Reilly, he feared not man, devil or circumstances. Right at that
moment he figured that the Army was a thing of the past and that the world
was waiting to be bucked by a man in disgrace. The tougher it was, the
louder he’d laugh.
The next day we both saw Kennedy at breakfast. He greeted us with a
straight stare, said, “Hello,” in his customary breezy manner, ate with
relish, and was absolutely himself. His eyes were as cold a green as ever,
except for that surface shine that came when he laughed. He told a good
story about Noah and the Johnstown flood, indulged in his reminiscences of
the Columbus raid and likewise the Galveston flood, in all of which he had
participated with considerable gusto.
I just sat there and watched him. That clear-cut, hard face and those
fishy eyes made as impenetrable a mask as I’ve ever seen.
“The hell it’s a mask!” I finally told myself. “He just hasn’t any
feelings that can’t be expressed in a grin or a laugh or a snarl. He
couldn’t hate anybody real hard any more than he could like anybody very
much. Except himself.”
At lunch he came breezing in with:
“Well, well, the good old feedbag’ll be fastened round my snoot _pronto_.
The meal ain’t been cooked that I can’t clean up by myself.”
He shook out his napkin, grasped his fork firmly and started in at the
salad. His eating was not a pronouncedly delicate proceeding. It was
audible for miles around when he wasn’t trying to act unnaturally elegant;
and I believe that in a straight contest Kennedy’s eating anything could
drown out my snoring.
“By the way, Peewee, my lad, how about a bit of poker at Shirley’s Old
Man’s house tonight? I was given instructions to ask you and Slim to come
out. Sheriff Trowbridge’ll be there, too. Come, and bring your checkbook,
because it’s my night to howl!”
Penoch just looked at him. Kennedy stared back with a mirthless smile.
“Risk a few nickels!” he gibed. “I ain’t seen your game for years. How
about it? Shirley’ll be glad to see you both, she said. She ain’t had much
time--”
“Yes, I’ll go.”
Simple, those words. But I knew as surely as I knew that I was at the
table that Penoch’s deliberate interruption was a threat. He stared
straight at Kennedy, and the implication in his statement was plain for me
to see. That poker game that night was to include some unscheduled
fireworks. Shirley and her father were to hear some hitherto unknown
episodes in the lives of Ralph Kennedy and Percival Enoch O’Reilly.
“Fine! A good time’ll be had by all,” Kennedy came back. “You act as
though you’d been invited to risk your life, or attend your own funeral.
Heh-heh-heh! Didja hear him say that, boys? Peewee don’t think any more of
a nickel lost at cards than he does his left eye.”
There he sat, gibing at the man who had saved his life. It was apparent to
any one that there was a deadly undercurrent in the conversation between
the two. I saw Kennard and Tex and the others looking at them
speculatively.
Directly after the meal I put it up to Penoch.
“You’re going to lay your information on the line tonight, eh?” I asked
him.
“Right. And my resignation’ll be written. He doesn’t intend to back away
from Shirley. I can see that. Maybe what I say won’t change a thing; but
she’ll go into it with her eyes open.”
“Damn’ funny, at that,” I said in considerable bewilderment. “I don’t see
why a girl--any girl--could mean so much to Kennedy that he’s willing to
run the risk of exposure as a criminal. I--”
“He doesn’t think I’ll go through with it,” rasped Penoch. “Well, I’m
going to take a nap.”
He strode away, his short legs twinkling through the dust, toward his
tent. He didn’t sleep, though, because I peeked in a few times. He wrote
reams of letters, setting his house in order, as it were, before he moved
out. And he didn’t seem so downcast. In fact, the devil-may-careness of
his face had increased, and there was hard recklessness there. He had
taken his hundredth knockout blow from fate; and he was still standing
erect, unbeaten.
It was a long and tough afternoon for me. Kennedy flew a patrol, and then
took a long time dressing for dinner. At the meal he was in excellent
form, holding the floor continuously with ribald tales, which were good.
And Penoch O’Reilly, his eyes bright, seemed strung to a high nervous
pitch. His roaring “Hoho-ho!” rolled forth continuously, and he and his
enemy fought a silent battle of eyes beneath the laughter. I was depressed
and silent, but possessed with such infinite hatred and repulsion when I
thought of Kennedy that I could have stuck the bread-knife in his throat
and enjoyed it.
* * * * *
I felt as if I were riding deliberately into disaster, when we went to the
Curran house. Sheriff Trowbridge, Gargantuan old-timer, who had been
friend and aid to the flight since its inception, was already there. He
was six feet two, with a shock of iron-gray hair, a great mustache, and a
genial old face tanned to mahogany. He and Mr. Curran had been friends for
years and, as we came up on the porch, Mr. Curran yelled in stentorian
tones--
“Three new customers, sugar!”
He was tall and thin and bald, with piercing eyes and an aquiline nose,
all of which gave him the appearance of a soft-hearted old eagle.
In a moment Shirley came out, bearing three long, cold drinks. Her eyes
were on Kennedy. When I saw the smile on her lips and the look in those
eyes, I sort of caught my breath. I don’t know much about love, but almost
anybody can recognize it when it stares them right in the face.
She was all in white, her golden hair slicked back, throwing her features
into bold relief. Slim and lithe and tall, she looked every inch a
thoroughbred. Kennedy, as he bent over her, was a good-looking officer,
too. You couldn’t see those mean eyes, in profile.
“And women are supposed to have intuition!” I groaned.
At that, there was a sort of new note in Kennedy’s smile--a trace of real
feeling--when he looked at her; and his eyes were a little less hard,
maybe.
But the adulation was principally on her part. From the time the game
started he seemed to avoid even looking at her. He played quietly, as did
everybody. Every man around that table was a lover of poker and a hater of
conversation when the pasteboards were being wooed. Even Shirley had had
it bred in the bone, I guess, and never said a word. She tended to the ash
receivers, brought us drinks, and finally went out on the porch to throw a
ten-minute sop to a boy friend who had called on her.
The game was twenty-dollar take out, table stakes, and either draw or
stud, to be played at the option of the dealers. Penoch watched Kennedy
like a hawk, and so did I, on general principles. Not that I really
thought he’d try his tricks there.
The most amazing thing to me was his utter nonchalance. He knew what
Penoch was going to do before the evening was over; and he grinned into
the little flyer’s face and dared him with his eyes.
It was close to ten o’clock, and I was about fifty dollars ahead, Penoch
even, and Kennedy sixty dollars winner. We’d been taking the two
old-timers over the jumps, to our great glee and their humorous disgust.
It was Kennedy’s deal. He shuffled them, and I saw him casually put an ace
on the bottom before he started. When he finished, he gave the cards a
rapid double cut--bottom half of the deck placed on top, but a little
forward of the other half of the deck. Then he simply cut again, and that
little shelf between the two halves of the deck enabled him to replace the
cards exactly. That is, after two cuts, the cards lay exactly as they had
before he’d cut them, the first time.
It was my cut, and he did not offer it, but started dealing.
My eyes were busy from that moment on. My heart was pounding as I
visualized the possibilities. Maybe I could get Penoch out of the mess.
Card after card fell. Kennedy was high, with a king showing, and held the
bet until the fourth card had dropped, when Sheriff Trowbridge drew an
ace. I stayed, and Kennedy raised ten dollars. That dropped Penoch and Mr.
Curran. The sheriff came back with a thirty-dollar re-raise, and I, with a
pair of fours, dropped and devoted myself to watching. Had that cut been
an accident? If it hadn’t, how had Kennedy stacked them for himself? Or
did his crookedness merely include the placing of one lone ace to use if
necessary?
He came back with a fifty-dollar raise--his stack. The sheriff, who had
bought four times already and had plenty of chips in front of him, saw the
raise.
Every eye was concentrated on Kennedy. I was peering so hard it hurt, and
somehow my mouth felt dry. Shirley came in, her eyes widening at the size
of the pot. She stood back of Kennedy, without saying a word. I knew that
she comprehended the hands perfectly--the sheriff with ace, queen, ten
showing; Kennedy with king, queen, deuce.
Slowly Kennedy flipped the sheriff’s card. A seven. Kennedy studied his
own hand a moment, and his eyes flickered around the table, a curious
light in them. Suddenly he dealt. An ace! And from the bottom of the deck,
so clumsily done that any one in the world could have caught it.
“Pair of aces!” he crowed, showing his hole card.
The silence was like a physical substance, throbbing and heavy and packed
with evil. My eyes rested on Shirley’s face. Her eyes were wide and
horror-stricken, and she looked as if she were about to scream.
Suddenly the silence was shattered by the blow of Curran’s fist on the
table. As if it had set a spring into action, every man around that table,
except Kennedy, was on his feet.
“Out of this house, you thieving, yellow, sneaking crook!” thundered the
old man furiously. “There ain’t a man here didn’t see you take that ace
from the bottom! Git out, I tell you, or I’ll--”
He choked with his own wrath, as he crouched as if to leap across the
table.
Kennedy got up leisurely, his eyes hard enough to make one’s flesh crawl.
They held an expression that I can not describe, but this I was sure of,
crazy as it seemed--there was no rage in them. Perhaps he couldn’t feel
deeply enough to wax furious. It was as if he were dead.
“I guess you caught me,” he said evenly.
He pulled down his blouse and ran his hand through his hair. Penoch was
like a statue. Not one sound broke the stillness.
Then there came a strangled sob from Shirley. She rushed from the room,
and from somewhere in the hall, before she got out of earshot, we heard
her weeping.
I licked my lips with my tongue. I saw Curran’s face twitch, and such
demonaic fury leap into his eyes that I was afraid of murder. I believe
he’d have sprung at Kennedy in another second.
“Sorry. Good night,” Kennedy said slowly, almost as if he were playing a
part.
He walked out without haste, and without a word or a look to any one of
us.
“God! I’m sorry!”
Penoch’s deep bass seemed to reverberate from the walls. As the sheriff
broke into deep curses, Penoch interrupted him.
“Please, Sheriff, let me get this off my chest. Maybe you’ll be through
with me, now, too.”
They sank into their chairs, Mr. Curran wiping his brow with a shaking
hand. As Penoch made a clean breast of his relationship with Kennedy, I
half listened, but I didn’t pay close attention at that. A thousand crazy
ideas were running through my head, and suddenly it seemed as if I
couldn’t wait to get Penoch alone. I had a queer hunch.
Those old-timers understood the little flyer’s position, and the sheriff
summed up the general sentiment, when he put his hand on Penoch’s shoulder
and told him:
“Mike, here, and me, ain’t blamin’ you a bit, son. And you was ready to
prevent any trouble. You couldn’t be blamed, any way you take it, for
givin’ him the benefit of the doubt for a while. Gosh! What a snake in the
grass he is! And I aim to git him in jail. We’ll plaster him for life--”
“And me with him,” barked O’Reilly.
“Not a bit of it. Say, young feller, he can go up for a long time right in
this country for what he done! More’n he deserves for this trick; but
we’ll sort o’ consider his other crimes, see?”
“Listen Sheriff,” I found myself saying. “Some way or another I’ve got a
funny idea. Let me talk it over with Penoch and call you back, eh?”
The leonine old man peered at me through puckered eyes.
“Shore,” he commented. “But what’s the secret?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m sure of it myself,” I told him. “Good night, Mr.
Curran. I sure hope Shirley won’t take it too hard.”
“She will, for awhile. But when I think o’ what might ’a’ happened if he
hadn’t give himself away--say, I ought to be thankful for this night!”
We had no sooner got out the door and into the car than I said:
“Don’t start her for a minute. Penoch, my boy, just how good it was, or
ought to be Kennedy with his fingers and a deck of cards?”
“Used to be a wonder!”
“And he deliberately, before five people, does the clumsiest piece of
cheating a man ever did in the world! If he’d wanted to be caught, he
couldn’t have done it more openly.”
“By God!”
It was almost a prayer from Penoch. Then he faced me, tense and strained,
and his attempted whisper couldn’t have been heard more than a hundred
feet.
“He couldn’t have done it deliberately! I know what you think--that
because of what I did for him at Laguna he decided to give up Shirley and
took that way. But all he had to do was walk out on her, without putting
himself in disgrace.”
“Let’s talk to him,” I suggested, and we started immediately to make a new
speed record between McMullen and the flying field.
It did seem ridiculous. For what possible reason, short of sheer insanity,
would a man brand himself a card-cheat? A man who’d do that would cut off
his head to cure an earache. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but I
was exuding curiosity in corpulent chunks. I aimed to get at the bottom of
things, and quickly.
* * * * *
We found him in his tent, alone, holding communion with a large bottle of
_tequila_.
He stared at us, as we came in, and I’ll swear his eyes brought me up
short. There was suffering in them, and a sort of bewilderment. It changed
the whole aspect of the man. It was his eyes that repelled one,
ordinarily. Now that there was something human in them, the change was
magical.
Penoch O’Reilly planted himself, as per usual, his mustache turned upward
belligerently, and his eyes snapping.
“Regardless of anything else, Ralph, how the ’ell did you happen to cheat
so clumsily? The cheating I can understand; the way it was done I can’t.”
Kennedy took a big drink, gave us one and, as he poured them, said
sardonically:
“You give me credit for knowing better, then? You ought to.”
“If you did it deliberately, why?” I broke in. “If you wanted to do what
Penoch asked, and lay off the girl--”
“We both happened to be in love,” he said calmly, as if laughing up his
sleeve. His eyes, however, were averted.
“Huh?” snorted Penoch scathingly. “You in love?”
“For the first and only time in my life,” Kennedy admitted casually, his
back toward us. “In fact, I’m so nuts about her that I couldn’t let her in
for what she’d be in for with me. Don’t flatter yourself, Peewee. It
wasn’t for you I did it. It was for her.”
“But why that way?” I barked.
“If I just broke off,” he said, eying a new glass of _tequila_ with
narrowed eyes, “she’d have taken a long while to get over it. Might as
well cut everything off clean, show her what I am all at once, and
blackjack her into hating me. Make it easier all around.”
For a moment his eyes met mine, and the mask was off. I don’t get
sentimental as a rule, but I was looking at a man whose whole life had
come up to torture him, and who was going through an accumulation of
suffering.
“By the way, Peewee, I’m resigning, of course, and leaving tomorrow on the
five o’clock. Probably’ll have to borrow some dough. I’d like to take a
last ride, so keep things quiet until I get it, eh?”
Penoch nodded wordlessly. Cocky as he was ordinarily, and sure of himself,
he was nonplussed now. Kennedy had turned into a strange species of animal
to him, and he couldn’t believe it.
“And now,” grinned Kennedy, keeping up his bluff to the last, “will you
two get the hell out of here and let a gentleman and a scholar get drunk
in peace and quiet?”
“Don’t want any company?” Penoch asked him, and there was real pleading in
his tone.
For the first time in our acquaintance I saw actual softness in Kennedy’s
eyes, as he looked at the man he had liked and admired as much as it had
been possible for him to feel those emotions for anybody.
“Nope. Let’s shuck the past, eh what? What the hell? And I’ve got to do a
little high-powered thinking. ’Night.”
We walked thoughtfully out into the starlight. Then I made a profound
remark.
“I’ve heard of the miracles that love is supposed to work, but this is the
first one I’ve seen. I think the combination of you risking your life for
him, and a real unselfish feeling for a girl, has sort of opened up a new
world to Kennedy. He’s got guts, hasn’t he?”
“Never lacked those,” boomed Penoch. “At that, you may be right. I guess
he’s always figured every hand was against him--and now that he’s found
out there’s a little white in the world he doesn’t know what to make of
it. He proved himself, all right, tonight, but if he’d told me that this
afternoon I’d have laughed as hard as I would over a romantic yarn about
the honeymoon of a salmon.”
“’Night. I don’t feel much like talking.”
To tell the truth, I didn’t either. I wandered around the field, smoking a
few reflective cigarets, and finally called up the sheriff. I told him the
whole story, and he was satisfied that everything pointed to the fact that
if he didn’t make a move everything was all right. I figured it was
better, and so did he, that Shirley should never know the inside.
Consequently, the Currans were not called up, and have not had the real
dope to this day.
I finally went to sleep, but in the morning I was, of course, still
thinking about one Ralph Kennedy. And for some funny reason I wasn’t sure
of him--his sincerity, I mean. I was wondering whether there wasn’t some
trick connected with his gesture of the night before. However, I thought
it best, at breakfast--to which meal he did not lend his presence--to tell
the boys the entire yarn, simply to offset the gossip that would run wild
around McMullen. Mr. Curran, of course, would eventually spill the beans,
and I wanted the gang to speak up, knowing the facts, and say whatever
they deemed best. Furthermore, I had a funny idea that when Kennedy left,
I didn’t want him to go in disgrace.
As the day wore on, I came to think more and more of this last flight
stuff. All flyers are more or less superstitious about that. As a matter
of fact, there have been a few, from Hobey Baker down, who’ve met their
Waterloo on the last hop before they kissed the Air Service good-by. I had
a sort of premonition that it shouldn’t be taken.
Consequently, when Kennedy ate bacon and eggs at lunch, with his eyes red,
a hang-over sticking out all over him, I said:
“Listen, big boy, you’ve said you were leaving tonight and likewise that
you were going to take a last jazz flight. You were drunk as a hoot owl
last night, and I don’t think you’ll be in such good shape to fly this
afternoon. Why not douse the idea of a hop?”
“Maybe you’ve got a good idea there,” he said with a grin that didn’t
change the suffering eyes. “In fact, it’s probably the good old logic.
Say, Peewee, how about you taking me for a ride, so nothing’ll happen?”
“Sure. I’ll go with you.”
I just happened to switch my gaze from one to the other, and I saw
something. There were many experiences that they had gone through together
in the past, which, naturally, had generated a certain feeling between
them. But now each of them had discerned something in the other that
transcended anything that they had previously known.
In short, I saw a man’s affection for another man shining from each pair
of eyes.
The rest of the gang, knowing the entire situation, chimed in with a lot
of Air Service kidding, about that last ride, as for instance, Sleepy
Spears’ remark:
“Any hop is foolish, and a last one is suicide. You’ve made it sure death
by letting Penoch fly you.”
“In fact,” Tex MacDowell chimed in, in his soft southern drawl, “I’ve had
a shovel all ready to pick Penoch up with, for a long time. I’d pick a
hang-over in preference to Penoch any time.”
I guess nobody outside of the men who fly understand what air kidding is.
Probably I don’t myself. But in my dumb way I think that it’s like a kid’s
whistling when he passes a graveyard, or, perhaps, laughing at the worst
that could happen, so that, when it does happen, it won’t mean anything.
* * * * *
When lunch was over, and we were all drifting out of the mess-hall, I
suddenly realized that I would like to share, a little bit, those last
hours. I’d been so close to the thing that I wanted to hang around the
outskirts of it, until Kennedy left. In other words, I was sentimental,
and I thought quite a lot of Penoch, at that. So I said casually--“I think
I’ll take a little private hop for myself when you do--a sort of chaser
for the poker game, eh?”
Kennedy, I think, bewildered as he was at the world that had been opened
to him so recently, appreciated the impulse behind my suggestion.
“Sort of be my guard of honor, eh?” he said. But those cold eyes were
soft. “In fact, we’ll be glad to have company, won’t we Peewee?”
And so it happened that a half-hour later the three of us were on the
line. Our two ships were being warmed up, and the mechanics, satisfied,
had brought them down to idling.
“I’ll sit in the back seat, big boy,” Penoch told Kennedy, “but don’t
think that I won’t take the stick away from you any time!”
You know, of course, that De Havilands are dual-control ships, but all the
instruments are in the front cockpit, and that, in a manner of speaking,
is the driver’s seat.
I got into my own plane and, as I taxied out for the take-off, I couldn’t
exactly analyze my reason for being there. I guess it was a sort of vague
tribute to Kennedy, and yet I had a funny feeling that something might
happen--so much so that as I turned the motor full on and pushed the stick
forward I was so absent-minded that I nearly broke the propeller, because
I had the nose of the plane down so far.
Kennedy and Penoch had taken off first, and I just followed them as they
circled the field for altitude. When we got to the tremendous height of
fifteen hundred feet, Kennedy, who was doing the piloting, started due
west for Laredo.
I’ll swear that we were not a thousand yards from the airdrome when it
happened. I was flying possibly a hundred yards back of them, and almost
the same distance to the right. All of a sudden I saw their ship go into a
dive.
That meant something. When Kennedy started turning back toward the field I
knew that the motor had cut out. Then, as I noticed the propeller, I knew
that the motor had not only cut out, but had cut dead. The stick was
revolving slower and slower. There was no motor power behind it.
The next second their ship was blanketed in fire. The motor was a mass of
blue flame. Kennedy had not cocked the ship up into a side-slip soon
enough. That blows the flames upward, away from the pilot. The left wing
was afire before he started slipping, and that second of backward draught,
because they were in a dive when the fire started, had caused the fuselage
to catch fire in a dozen places.
My body and brain were numb. Even so, I subconsciously knew what had
happened. The gas line had broken, and the gas, sprayed over the hot
motor, had ignited.
They had gone into the slip--too late--before I started toward them. I was
diving my ship, motor full on. There was nothing I could do--Penoch and
Kennedy burned to death before my eyes--I was just getting nearer for no
reason.
I suppose that it registered on me at the time, because I remember it so
vividly now. Penoch told me what was said. Anyway, I saw Kennedy, bearing
the brunt of the fire in the front cockpit, turn and gesture. He was
talking. I could see through the smoke and fire his lips moving. Penoch
told me that what he said was:
“Get out on the wing! I’m not leaving the ship-- Let me jump! If Slim sees
you, he’ll get close. God! I can’t last long! It’ll just be two instead of
one--”
What I saw was Penoch getting out of the back cockpit, hanging by his
hands from the cowling. He hauled himself along the side of the ship, his
feet dangling over space. His head was turned backward, to protect his
eyes, and his clothing was charring, because he was out where the
air-stream could reach him, and no flame could get a real start. But
Kennedy, in the cockpit--
I was going through the most horrible nightmare that can be conceived. And
yet, I instinctively sensed the possibility of saving Penoch, as he
reached the right wing and started crawling along it.
Then Ralph brought the burning ship level; that blew the fire right back
on him. I was close, and for that horrible minute I guess I ceased to
think of my own safety. I knew that there was one desperate chance to save
one of the two, and Penoch, of course, was the one, because Kennedy had
willed it so.
Penoch was out of the fire now, at the edge of the right wing. He was
hanging from the edge of it by his hands as I flew my ship up into
position, my left wing underneath the other’s right one. And Kennedy--I
don’t know by what transcendent power he was able to do it, as he burned
to death--kept his ship level. Penoch dropped--his only chance for
life--and he landed on my left wing. He grabbed the cabane strut, the
little metal horn at the edge of the wing to which the control wires for
the ailerons are attached, and passed out.
An instant later, Kennedy, a human bonfire, leaped from his burning ship.
He fell out--blessed surcease from pain. And the ship, like a flaming
coffin, seemed to follow his body down.
Penoch eventually got back into the rear cockpit, of course, and we’re
both here to tell the tale.
Sometime I hope that a burning ship will cease to trace a crimson path
across my dreams. Probably it won’t.
Anyway, if Ralph is a spook in some spiritual village, teaching the Twelve
Apostles how to play poker, I hope he has time to tip his halo in
acknowledgment of the salute of Slim Evans to a crook and a hero, a
scoundrel and a man.