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[Illustration: Battling the Clouds
Aeroplane Boys Series]
[Illustration: "Stop!" cried Ernest. "Stop, Bill! What does this
mean?"]
_AEROPLANE BOYS SERIES VOLUME 1_
BATTLING THE CLOUDS
OR
FOR A COMRADE'S HONOR
BY
CAPTAIN FRANK COBB
[Illustration]
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO AKRON, OHIO NEW YORK
Copyright, 1921, by
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
[Illustration]
AEROPLANE BOYS SERIES
1 BATTLING THE CLOUDS,
OR, FOR A COMRADE'S HONOR
2 AN AVIATOR'S LUCK,
OR, THE CAMP KNOX PLOT
3 DANGEROUS DEEDS,
OR, THE FLIGHT IN THE DIRIGIBLE
BATTLING THE CLOUDS
CHAPTER I
The vast aviation field at Fort Sill quivered in the grilling heat of
mid-July. The beautiful road stretching through the Post looked smooth
as a white silk ribbon in the blazing sun. The row of tall hangars
glistened with fresh white paint. On the screened porches of the
officers' quarters, at the mess, and at the huts men in uniform talked
and laughed as though their profession was the simplest and safest in
the world.
Around the Post as far as the eye could reach the sun-baked prairies
stretched, their sparse grasses burned to a cindery brown. From the
distant ranges came the faint report of guns. The daily practice was
going on. Once in a while against the sky a row of caissons showed up,
small and clear cut.
Overhead sounded the continual droning of airplanes manoeuvering, now
rising, now circling, now reaching the field safely, where they turned
and came gaily hopping along the ground toward the hangars, like huge
dragonflies. And when they finally teetered to a standstill, what
splendid young figures leaped over the sides and stretched their cramped
legs, pushing off the goggles and leather headgear that disguised them!
Laughing, talking, swapping experiences, listening in good-natured
silence to the "balling out" that so often came from the harried and
sweating instructors, splendid young gods were these airmen,
super-heroes in an heroic age and time.
In the shade of one of the hangars sat two boys. They were blind and
deaf to the sights and sounds around and over them. The planes were as
commonplace as mealtime to them, and not nearly so thrilling. All their
attention was centered on a small box on the ground before them. It was
made of screen-wire roughly fastened to a wooden frame. One side was
intended for a door, but it was securely wired shut. The box had an
occupant. Furious, raging with anger, now crouching in the corner, now
springing toward the boys, only to strike the wires, an immense
tarantula faced his jailers with deadly menace in his whole bearing. One
of the boys gently rested a stick against the cage. The great spider
instantly hurled himself upon it.
Involuntarily both boys drew back.
"What you going to do with him now you have got him?" asked the taller
of the two boys.
"Dunno," said the other, shrugging his shoulders. "No use expecting
mother to let me keep him in quarters, and the C. O. won't have 'em
around the hangars. I guess I will have to give him back to Lee and let
him get rid of him."
"What does C. O. mean, and who is Lee?" asked the first boy.
"Gee, you are green!" scoffed the smaller of the two. "Tell you what
I'll do, Bill; I will take a day off and teach you the ropes."
"I will learn them fast enough if I can get a question answered once in
awhile," answered Bill, laughing pleasantly. "You can't expect to learn
_every_thing there is about the Army in a week."
"It is too bad you are in Artillery," said the other boy, whose name was
Frank and whose father was Major Anderson, in the Air service. "There is
a lot more doing over here, but of course as long as I am sort of your
cousin, why, you can get in on things here whenever you want to."
"Much obliged," returned Bill. "And of course whenever you want, I will
take you any place you want to go in my car."
"That car is the dandiest little affair I ever did see," said Frank half
enviously. "Just big enough for two of us." He glanced over to the
boy-size automobile standing in the shade. It was a long, racy looking
toy, closer to the ground than a motorcycle, but evidently equipped with
a good-sized engine. "Where did you get it, anyhow?"
"I have an uncle in the automobile business, and he had it made for
me."
"Some uncle!" commented Frank. "How fast will she go?"
"A pretty good clip, I imagine," said Bill. "I have never tried her
out."
"What's the matter with you? Scared?" asked Frank. "I say we speed her
up some of these days."
"Can't do it," said Bill, shaking his head. "There is a speedometer on
it, and I promised my mother I would never go over fifteen miles an hour
until she gives me leave."
"Fifteen miles; why, that's crawling!" said Frank scornfully. "I tell
you what. I can drive a little, and you can let me take the wheel, and
see what she will do. That won't be breaking your word."
Bill shook his head. "It isn't my way of keeping a promise," he said.
Then to change the conversation before it took a disagreeable turn, he
asked, "You didn't tell me what C. O. means and who Lee is."
"C. O. means Commanding Officer; you had better keep that in your head.
And Lee is the fellow who gave me this tarantula. He takes care of the
quarters across from yours at the School of Fire. I go over there to
play with the Perkins kids a lot. Lee fools with us all he can. He is a
dandy. He is half Indian. His father was a Cherokee."
"I know whom you mean," said Bill. "He is awfully dark, and has squinty
black eyes and coal black hair. He has been transferred to our quarters
now. He is splendid--does everything for mother: brings her flowers and
all that, and a young mocking bird in a cage he made himself."
"I didn't know he had been transferred," said Frank. "I bet he won't be
let to stay long. The Perkins family like him themselves."
"Can they get him sent back?" asked Bill anxiously.
"Sure," said Frank. "Colonel Perkins can get anybody sent where he wants
them. If he was your orderly he would stay with you, of course, but he
isn't; he is working as janitor."
"What's an orderly?" asked Bill.
"You sure have a lot to learn!" sighed the learned Frank. "It is like
this. That new dad of yours is a Major, isn't he? All right. He has the
right to have a special man that he picks out work for him, and take
care of his horse and fuss around the quarters and fix his things. But
the man has to belong to his command, and Lee is attached to the School
of Fire."
"I see," said Bill, thoughtfully. As a matter of fact he did not see so
very clearly, but he knew that it would be clearer after awhile, and he
had the good sense not to press the matter further. Bill had the great
and valuable gift of silence. To say nothing at all, but to let the
other fellow do the talking, Bill had discovered to be a short cut to
knowledge of all sorts.
"Yes," said Frank, "you see now that you can't get Lee for orderly."
Frank was glad of it. He did not know it, but down in his heart, he was
jealous of this Bill boy, who had appeared at the School of Fire with
his quiet good manners and his polite way of speaking, his good clothes
and, above all, his wonderful little automobile scarcely larger than a
toy, yet capable of real work and speed.
He rejoiced that Bill at least was not going to have Lee for an orderly.
He knew what it was to have a fine orderly, and Lee was almost too good
to be true at all. Why, only the week before, Lee had offered to get
Frank a wildcat cub for a pet. Frank's mother, Mrs. Anderson, and his
father, the Major, had refused to have the savage little creature about
and Frank had had to tell Lee so. He had kept teasing Lee for some sort
of pet, however, and as a joke Lee had just presented him with the
biggest tarantula he could capture.
The tarantula, taken as a pet, was not a great success. Frank poked the
stick at the cage and watched the ferocious creature dart for it, and
decided that the wisest thing was to get rid of it at once.
"I will give you this tarantula, Bill," he said with an air of bestowing
a great benefit. "I bet your mother has never seen one, and you can take
it home with you in your car and show it to her. If she has never seen
one, she will be some surprised."
"I suppose she would," said Bill, "but for all I know it might frighten
her, and I couldn't afford to risk that. Mother isn't so very strong,
and dad says it is our best job to keep her well and happy. I don't
believe it will help any to show her something that looks like a bad
nightmare and acts like a demon, so I'm much obliged but I guess I won't
take your little pet away from you, not to-day at any rate." He laughed,
and jumped to his feet.
"Where you going?" demanded Frank.
"Home," said Bill. "It is nearly time for mess. Get that? I said _mess_
and not _dinner_."
"Don't go yet," pleaded Frank. "What if you are a little late?"
"Mother likes me to be punctual, so I'll have to move along," said Bill.
Frank looked at him. "Say," he said, "aren't you just a little tied to
your mother's apron strings?"
"I don't know," replied Bill good-naturedly. "I think it is a pretty
good place to be tied to if anyone should ask me, and if I am, I hope I
am tied so tight she will never lose me off."
He shook himself down and started toward his little car. "So long! Come
see us!" he called over his shoulder.
Frank scrambled to his feet and followed. He stood watching while Bill
settled himself in his seat and started the engine. He stood looking
after him until the speedy little automobile swept out of sight across
the prairie and down the rough road that led to the New Post and from
there on to the School of Fire.
Frank gave a grin. "It's a dandy car, all right," he said, "and he may
be able to swim and ride the way he says he does, but I can beat him out
on one point. I can pilot a plane, and I have been up in an observation
balloon. I wonder what he would look like up in the air. I bet he would
be good and sick!"
Bill, guiding the car with a practiced hand, swept smoothly along,
avoiding the ruts made by the great trucks belonging to the ammunition
trains and the rough wheels of the caissons.
Bill was thinking hard. The years of his life came back to his thoughts
one by one.
When his father died, he was only four years old, and his pretty young
mother had been obliged to go out into the world and support herself and
her little son. They had lived alone together, in the dainty bungalow
that had been saved from the wreck of their fortunes, and had come to be
more than mother and son; they were companions and pals.
So when Major Sherman appeared, and surprised Bill greatly by wanting to
marry his mother, he was not surprised to hear her say that the Major
would have to get the permission of her son before she could say yes.
Bill and his mother had many a long and confidential talk in those days
and Bill learned, through her confidences, a great deal about the
strange thing that grown people call love. Bill's mother talked to her
son as she would have talked to a brother or a father, and the result
was that one day young Bill had a long talk with Major Sherman, a talk
that the Major at least never forgot. After it was over, Bill led the
way to his mother, and taking her hand said gravely:
"Mother, we have been talking things over, and I think you ought to
marry the Major. You are a good deal of a care sometimes, and I have his
promise that he will help me."
Bil's mother laughed, and then she cried a little, while she asked Bill
if he was trying to get rid of his troublesome parent. But Bill knew
that she was trying to joke away the remembrance of her tears, so he
kissed her and went out, wondering if he had lost his darling mother or
had won a new and dandy father.
It proved that he had found a real father after so many years, a father
who understood boys and who was soon as good and true a pal as his
mother was. Bill commenced to whistle when he remembered up to this
part, and then he laughed to himself when he recollected a couple of old
lady aunts who had offered to take him to bring up, because they were
sure that Major Sherman, being a soldier and no doubt unused to boys,
might abuse him!
It was enough to make Bill chuckle. His mother said that the Major
spoiled Bill. And in his secret heart Bill knew that there were times,
off and on, say a few times every week, when the Major gave him treats
that he would never have been able to coax from his mother. The little
car for instance. His mother had declared that it was a crazy thing to
give a boy twelve years old, no matter how tall and well grown he was,
but the Major had prevailed, and she had at last given a reluctant
consent. There had been an endless time of waiting, indeed a matter of
several months while the small but perfect car was assembled, and Bill
could never forget the day it arrived and the Major squeezed his big
frame into the driver's seat and gave it a thorough trying out.
Pets, too. Mother was brought to see that pigeons and white rats and a
tame coon and indeed everything that came his way, was a boy's right to
have. The Major was educating Bill in the knowledge of how to care for
dumb animals: he was learning the secret of self-discipline and
self-control, without which no man or woman or boy or girl is fit to be
the owner of any pet.
The Great War was ended when Bill's mother married the Major, just
returned from foreign service, and immediately they packed their
belongings, putting most of them in a storehouse for the happy day when
the Major should retire and be able to have a home. This is the dream of
every officer who gives his days and strength and brains to the service
of his country. Then they packed the few articles that they felt most
necessary to their comfort, gave away ten guinea pigs, eight white rats,
four pigeons and a kitten, crated Bill's collie and the Major's Airdale,
and started off for their first post, Fort Sill, where the Major was
stationed at the School of Fire as instructor.
Fort Sill rambles all over the prairie. Not the least of its various
branches is the Aviation School. And when the Major arrived with his
wife and son, he found that his cousin, Major Anderson, who was in the
Air service, was stationed at the Aviation School. Major Anderson had
two children: a little girl, and a boy just the age of Bill. Frank
Anderson liked his new cousin, but scorned him for his very natural
ignorance on subjects referring to the Army. He did not stop to discover
that in the way of general information Bill was vastly his superior.
Major and Mrs. Anderson were quick to see a certain clear truthfulness
and good sense in Bill that they knew Frank lacked and they were anxious
to have the boys chum together for that reason.