path: root/68498-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68498 ***

                          The Sky Sheriff

    The Pioneer Spirit Lives Again in the Texas Airplane Patrol

                         By Thomson Burtis


                 Illustrations by B. J. Rosenmeyer


    [Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April
    1923 issue of Blue Book Magazine.]

[Illustration: Sure enough, there was a mounted man crossing a tiny
clearing, two or three miles to the westward]

The blazing sun of a Texas afternoon turned air and drab brown earth
to gold. Not a breath stirred the huge white stocking that served as
a wind-indicator on the airdrome of the McMullen Flight of the Air
Service border patrol.

Seven men were standing in a line south of the airdrome. Six of them
were tanned young chaps with the look of the open in their steady
eyes with tiny sun-crinkles at the corners. The other man wore a
flowing gray mustache, a sombrero that dwarfed the others’ Stetsons,
and ornately embossed cowboy boots. He was known from one end of the
Rio Grande to the other as Sheriff Bill Trowbridge.

A low drone came to the ears of the group, and far in the distance
they glimpsed the tiny form of a ship, diving with motor on for the
airdrome. Hickman looked up at the plane.

“Probably Tex MacDowell and Sleepy Spears.”

“Who’s Spears?” asked Trowbridge.

“New man from the Air Service Mechanics’ School at Donovan Field,”
explained Perkins. “He’s the sleepiest-looking guy in the world.
Yesterday Tex and Sleepy announced they were going to fly to Laredo,
if I’d let ’em, and go over to the ‘Bee’ hangout in Nuevo Laredo,
and either win a fortune or else get entirely broke.”

Captain Perkins’s face was serious.

Sheriff Trowbridge glanced at him sharply. Apparently there was
somewhat of puzzlement, disapproval, in the new commanding officer’s
words.

Trowbridge was grinning widely. “Did yuh ever have any previous
experience handlin’ wildcats?”

Captain Perkins shook his head. “Live and learn, I guess,” said he.

The ship circled northward, banked around toward the field, and the
roaring motor ceased. Then the De Haviland dropped over the low
fence that formed the northern boundary of the field. Waiting
mechanics in front of a hangar seized the wings and helped bring the
ship into the line.

The two flyers climbed out of the cock-pits.

“See that short fellow walking as if every step would be his last?”
said Jennings. “That’s Sleepy.”

Trowbridge smote his thigh.

“I get yuh now,” he stated. “Isn’t Sleepy the hombre that had a
run-in with some would-be bad men up in Barnes City a few months
ago?”

“He’s the one,” said Pop Cravath, wiping the sweat from his bald
spot with a voluminous khaki handkerchief.

Spears’ drooping eyelids were raised to look at the little group. A
slow smile stretched the already wide mouth.

“Meet Sheriff Trowbridge, Sleepy,” said Perkins.

“Delighted. I’ve heard several mouthfuls about you, Sheriff,” said
Sleepy.

“Did you break the ‘Bee’?” inquired Trowbridge solemnly.

“They took advantage of us,” sighed Sleepy. “They fed us Benedictine
and Mescal. The last I remember was shooting two hundred at the
crap-table and then bursting into ribald grief when two sixes turned
up. We woke up in the alley alongside the Laredo House this
morning.”

Captain Perkins’s lean, square-jawed face was crossed with varying
expressions of merriment, wonder, and disapproval. Apparently the
Captain was completely puzzled--unable to understand the facets in
his flyers’ characters.

“I’ve got to meet the four-ten from San Antone,” said the Sheriff,
suddenly. “My old friend George Bilney is comin’ in. Say, I’m going
to bring George out here this evenin’, mebbe. He’s station agent and
storekeeper up here at Willett. He’s only in town to the back train
at ten, but he’s got a daughter you boys ought to meet. She’s the
Queen of Sheba, and likewise the Lily of the Valley.”

“That sure is interesting. You show us a way to meet her, Sheriff,
and we’ll show ourselves grateful,” said Sleepy.

                 *       *       *       *       *

That evening Sleepy Spears drove a dusty roadster down the main
street of McMullen. He saw the train come in and saw the sheriff
meet Pappy George Bilney, a little wisp of a white-bearded man.

Sleepy then drew up to the curb in front of a drug store with a
flourish and shut off the motor. As he turned to climb out, his gaze
fell on the face of a tall, thin, stooping fellow with drooping
brown mustachios. As if by some hypnotic influence, the stranger’s
close-set eyes rose to meet the flyer’s gaze, then dropped. The man
walked on.

“That’s that foreman from Barnes City!” murmured Sleepy. “Must ’ave
just got out of jail, if old man Shaler did what he said he was
going to do after this bird’s scheme to tar and feather poor old
Correll. I wonder what he might be doing here?”

                 *       *       *       *       *

A like mental query regarding Spears was arousing fear in the mind
of the “bird”--Cal Buchanan, as he called himself. For Cal Buchanan,
being a coyote by nature instead of a wolf, had within the last few
hours formulated a wolf’s plan to resuscitate his fallen fortunes,
and when a coyote essays a wolf’s role he is likely to shy at a
shadow.

As he lounged along the lively street, his small eyes roved
constantly, seeing nothing but mental images. Girls and women whose
clothes would not have been out of place on the leading
thoroughfares of the largest cities; trimly dressed men along with
others in cowboy boots and flannel shirts; here a store window that
might have been transplanted from Manhattan next to a display of
ornate saddles and lariats; a five-thousand-dollar limousine passing
a hitching-rack where drooping cow-ponies awaited their owners--all
were vague to him as he remained immersed in his plans.

Sleepy Spears had been farthest from his thoughts until the square,
sunburnt countenance had appeared with all the effect of a sudden
and unwelcome vision.

His thoughts turned back to his experience with Spears six months
before. While drunk, he had visited the Barnes City fair, where
Spears and Al Johnson, from Donovan Field, were giving flying
exhibitions. Then had come that row with Correll, Spears’s mechanic,
and the dream of tar-and-feathering Correll with the help of three
confederates.

In a remote cabin the plan was working well, and the four men were
just ready to strip Correll, when a human tornado in the form of
Spears had burst in the door. From that time on, events were rather
vague in Buchanan’s mind. Later he had learned that Spears, learning
of the plot too late to overtake the hazing party by automobile, had
made a parachute jump at night from Al Johnson’s airplane in order
to reach Correll in time.

Was there any possibility that Spears, recognizing him, could
interfere with the scheme that he had in mind? Nervous as a cat, he
finally arose, leaving his food, paid his check, and walked out.
Spears or no Spears, his mind was made up. There did not seem to be
any reason to believe that the flyer could possibly get on to the
scheme he had in mind. And he was desperate.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Six months in the Barnes City jail had been his sentence for the
attempted tar-and-feather soirée, At the expiration of his term,
three days before, he had been left under no misapprehension as to
whether his room was preferable to his company in Barnes City. He
had drifted aimlessly toward the border, with vague plans of going
into Mexico. A hundred dollars was his capital, and to his craven
heart the future loomed dark--until that spry little old man, Bilney,
who had boarded the train at Willett, made friends with him, and
gave him an opportunity to recuperate his fortunes.

George Bilney had prattled proudly during the whole
seventy-five-mile trip from Willett. He kept a general store at
Willett, though it was only a tiny station and his nearest customers
lived six miles away. His main source of profit, however, was his
ranch business. Six ranches, ranging from six to fifty thousand
acres, did all their business with him, because of the convenience
of having him do the buying, and because he kept a large and
assorted stock from which a hurry call for anything from tools to
feed or worm-salve could always be filled. Warehouses full of feed,
tools, wire, lumber, provisions, and all the other supplies
necessary for the modern ranch testified to the volume of his
business. As a matter of fact, his store and its other buildings
actually formed the so-called town of Willett.

His daughter, home for her college vacation, his dead wife, his
boyhood in New England--the little storekeeper had told it all to the
sympathetic Buchanan, and among all the details one other thing,
which had set that coyote’s heart to thumping as he heard it. For it
appeared that most of the customers of the store paid their bills on
the last day of the month--“It takes quick turnovers for cash to run
my business,” Bilney had said. And the money was not sent to
McMullen until the next morning, on the one daily train that ran
south.

Bilney had said that he was returning on the ten o’clock train that
evening. Buchanan could slip into a berth, ride to the next station
north of Willett, which was twenty-five miles, hire a horse, and
ride back in the evening of the next day. Bilney had given him a
cordial invitation to drop in for a meal at any time.

It would be absurdly simple. If the money was in a safe, he could
force the old man to open it; then bind up him and his daughter, cut
the telephone wires, perhaps leave a note on the front of the store
saying that the owner would not be back until next day, to give him
twelve hours’ respite. In that time, by hard riding on the excellent
saddle-horse that Bilney had bought for his daughter, Buchanan could
make the border. Then for an easy life in Mexico.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Bilney, on the next evening, was reading the San Antonio _Express_
by the light of a big white-shaded kerosene lamp, while Cissy, the
huge negro woman who was his housekeeper, prepared supper. On the
other side of the table a tall girl with a mass of black hair and a
sweet face, was fondling a bull-terrier puppy.

Buchanan paused outside the window and took in the scene. The old
man lived in the rear of his store, which was now closed, so
Buchanan knocked on the back door.

Bilney opened it, and for a moment peered nearsightedly through his
glasses, set half-way down his nose.

“Well, well, come right in, my boy. How did you get up here so
quick?” he said.

“I got me a job at the Blackburne ranch to-day, and I just thought
I’d drop in t’ say howdy,” returned Buchanan, entering hesitantly.

“Glad to see you. Company’s scarce around here. Meet my daughter
Judith--Cal Buchanan, Judith.”

Judith’s voice had the musical slowness of the South. Bilney set out
cigars. Buchanan, ill at ease and in a nervous tremor, refused both
and talked infrequently. He found it hard to meet the tranquil eyes
of the girl; he devoted most of his attention to her father, who
talked enough for all three.

The little sitting-room was cozy and homelike in the soft light of
the lamp. The flat tints of the wall and the selection of prints and
furniture showed a taste that gave subtle individuality to the room.
Without knowing the exact reason for it, his surroundings increased
Buchanan’s discomfort.

Supper--Judith called it dinner--was an ordeal. Bilney wore a coat
over his flannel shirt and black bow-tie, and Judith’s white frock
contrasted with Buchanan’s dirty vest and flannel shirt, open at the
scrawny neck. A snowy table-cloth, simple silverware--all were
foreign to his usual surroundings. Finally Judith succeeded in
drawing some halting conversation from him on the subject of horses.
She was a typical Texas girl in her love of riding. Occasionally he
felt her large eyes resting on him, and felt the goose-flesh start
on his body. Somehow or other, she seemed a bigger obstacle to him
than her spry little father. The negress added to the complications
somewhat, but not too greatly. He strove to steady himself by
thinking of what the successful culmination of his enterprise would
mean to him.

The meal over, he sat in the sitting-room hour after hour, unable to
launch his offensive. When Bilney insisted on his spending the night
with them, he accepted like a drowning man grasping at a plank. He
forgot the value of time as he convinced himself that with the
household asleep he would have greater chances for success.

                 *       *       *       *       *

At ten-thirty Buchanan huskily announced his desire for sleep. His
host showed him his room, which opened off the sitting-room, as did
his own room and Judith’s. The store was reached through a passage
from the living-room, which skirted the store office and opened
directly into the passageway between two counters. His last mental
picture was that of Judith kissing her father good night.

Without undressing, he threw himself across the spotless white
spread and stared at the ceiling. Through the open window came the
drone of myriad insects, and the almost inaudible scratch of
hundreds of them up and down the screen. The slight gulf breeze
ruffled the mesquit trees outside, and occasionally the yelp of a
coyote came to his ears.

How long he had waited he did not know; but when he finally removed
his boots and stole out into the dark living-room, lamp in hand, it
seemed as if an eternity had passed. He meant to reconnoiter a bit.
With all the yellow heart of him he hoped that he might get the
money and go without the necessity of binding Bilney and the two
women, or of compelling the old man to tell him where the money was.

With a hand that shook so that the chimney rattled, he set the lamp
down on the battered table in the office.

He drew a pair of cutters from his shirt and quickly snipped the
telephone wires. The snap of a board beneath his feet nearly caused
him to drop the tool.

This accomplished, his small eyes darted around swiftly. The table,
a closed roll-top desk with a battered swivel-chair, and a heap of
old pasteboard boxes and circulars in a corner of the tiny room
represented the only furnishings. Apparently there was no safe.

He tiptoed to the window and pulled the wrinkled green shade to the
bottom. He tried the top of the desk, and it rolled up obediently.
Within was a small metal box, locked with a hasp and a small
padlock.

He gasped with relief. His first impulse was to grab the strong-box
and run. With an effort he resisted the temptation. He must make
sure that the money was there.

He wiped his moist palms on his overalls, and vainly tried to
control the tremors that shook him. He took out the heavy cutters,
with the idea of using them as a lever in an attempt to break the
box. He was just starting to insert them below the hasp when padding
footsteps came to his ears.

An exclamation that was like a sob burst from his ashen lips as he
turned, his fingers gripped around the instrument in his hands. Dim
against the blackness of the open door, because of the lamp between,
he saw the scraggly white hair and peering eyes of Bilney. A
trembling revolver flashed close to the door-jamb.

Blindly, unthinkingly, Buchanan leaped forward and swung. He was in
an ecstasy of terror. The report of the wild shot echoed like
thunder an instant before his weapon sank in the skull of the
trembling old man. He dropped, limply horrible. The revolver crashed
to the floor.

“Daddy!”

Swiftly flying footsteps up the passage came to his ears like the
approach of some avenging fate. He met the girl as she burst through
the doorway. His hand closed over her mouth. Her anguished eyes
blazed into his.

[Illustration: He met the girl as she burst through the doorway, her
anguished eyes blazed into his and for a moment she seemed petrified
with terror.]

He was conscious, through his trance of fear and horror, of screams
rising eerily through the night. He took his hand from her mouth
long enough to rip out her silken sleeve, stuff it into her mouth,
and bind it there with his bandana.

She came to herself then, and fought like a wildcat as he tried to
bind her hands and feet. It was half a minute before he succeeded.

He did not wait to bind her feet, but hurried back toward those
screams, careless of the blackness of the passageway. He ran into
the table in the dining-room, and blundered toward the kitchen. The
screams rose in a crescendo of utter terror as he approached.

Moonlight filtered through the windows of the tiny bedroom, and by
its dim illumination he could see the whites of staring eyes in the
corner behind the bed. He jerked the gibbering old negro to her feet
and his fist crashed to her jaw. He ripped and tore at the
bed-sheets like a wild man, finally securing strips that answered
for a gag and strands to secure arms and legs.

He ran back to the office, to fall over the prone body of the old
man. He rolled away from it as if from some living menace. He
scrambled to his feet, his breath coming in labored gasps, and
turned toward Judith, whom he had flung in the chair before the
desk. She was limp, her face still set in lines that seemed frozen
in agony. He finished his task of binding her.

With the cash-box in his arms, Buchanan fled. It was the work of a
moment to enter the small corral, fling the saddle that hung in the
shed on the back of Judith’s saddle-horse, and mount.

The whispering mesquit was the voice of phantom pursuers, the
solitude terrible.

He galloped to the little shack depot, and let himself in by
smashing a window. The moon-rays through a window gave enough light
to enable him to smash the telegraph instruments and the telephone.

Then, without food or water, he set off at a wild gallop southward.
His convulsed face was twisted backward over his shoulder as if he
expected the blurred buildings behind him to give forth some avenger
to follow him through the shadows reaching for him from every side.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Captain Perkins was sprawled in the swinging hammock on the porch of
the recreation building, puffing deliberately at a short pipe. It
was a little after ten o’clock in the evening. Presently the sheriff
happened along.

The lean-faced, square-jawed commanding officer was wrestling with
some of the problems that his new detail had brought him.
Transferred from the engineers a few months before, he had found
that flyers bore little resemblance to the correct young West
Pointers he had known in the infantry and the engineers. And his
first detail as a commanding officer, he admitted frankly to
himself, had him guessing.

“I ain’t been around the border cavalry since Washington crossed the
Delaware for nothin’,” the Sheriff advised him. “Cap’n, in my
judgment, you got to figger this here Air Service as different from
any other. Course, I may be jest a foolish old-timer which ought to
o’ passed out quiet and decent a matter o’ ten years ago, but this
here bunch o’ yours, and the other boys from down Laredo and Marfa
way that I run into, have kinda sneaked under my hide. By and large,
the idee o’ these planes spannin’ the border from California to the
Gulf o’ Mexico, risin’ out o’ little cleared spots in the Big Bend
and out there in Arizona, and these boys flyin’ ’em over them El
Paso mountains and the deserts and this Godforsaken strip of
mesquit, riskin’ their lives every minute they’re in the air--it’s
kind o’ doggone romantic to even an old sand-rat like me.

“And rememberin’ the times when fellers like Sam Edwards, which is
now fat and a mayor and washes his neck regular, was r’arin’
youngsters ridin’ down main streets drunk and shootin’, and
rememberin’ what true-blue buddies and real hombres they was, makes
me judge your boys in the same class.

“And listen, son: the old days in this country meant that a man had
to have guts or go under. Because they was men ridin’ the range and
maintainin’ their necks as good as new by their own gun-play, the
same red blood which showed in them things was responsible for
what’s known now as the old ‘wild West’ stuff.

“I reckon your boys are pioneers, Cap’n. To my notion, any man that
picks this here flyin’ as a profession ain’t ever goin’ to get no
kick out of a ten-cent-limit poker game. Where would yore Air
Service be if the men in it was playin’ things safe?”

He raised his voice at the last words, for the brooding silence of
the night was shattered by the rolling explosions of a motor.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Spear’s battered roadster shot down the road, its huge headlights
probing the darkness. It swooped around the sharp corner with
breath-taking speed, stopped with startling celerity, and died into
silence. The flyer strolled toward the porch, peering briefly at the
two occupants thereof.

“Hello,” he greeted them briefly, as he sank on the steps. “I want
to inquire about the ringleader of that Barnes City tar-and-feather
party I saw get off the train yesterday afternoon. Tall,
hungry-looking guy with a long mustache.”

“Name o’ Buchanan?” asked Trowbridge interestedly.

“I don’t remember his name, but it wasn’t Buchanan then--at least,
not in his home town. He must have just got out of the lock-up.”

“I met the individual referred to yesterday--Pappy George Bilney
introduced him to me. They ’peared to have struck up considerable of
a friendship on the way down,” the Sheriff said slowly. “I ain’t
seen this feller around the town to-day, neither. Prob’ly George
told him all his secrets, too, on the way down. He never has learnt
that there’s bad men runnin’ around the border. I’ve often thought
of what a good chance fer a robbery George’s emporium was, ’way off
by itself thataway. By Godfrey, to-day’s the first o’ the month,
too. I believe I’ll mosey up to see George and Judy t’morrer.” The
Sheriff turned to Captain Perkins. “Cap’n, how about one o’ the boys
flyin’ me up to Willett t’morrer? I shore am anxious to git up that
way.”

The commanding officer readily assented.

“Thanks, Cap’n,” returned Trowbridge. “Sleepy, I ain’t noticed you
rushin’ forward to offer yore services as chauffeur--”

“Oh, I’ll be tickled pink,” yawned Sleepy.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Helmet and goggles in hand, Sleepy, the next morning, made his way
to the line, where a huge figure interestedly watched the efforts of
the mechanics.

“Mornin’!” came the jovial hail of Trowbridge.

Sleepy nodded. The big twelve-cylinder Liberty increased its roar as
the sergeant shoved the throttle wide open. The men, holding each
wing and the tail, buckled to their work as the whirring propeller
pulled the wheels against the blocks with seemingly irresistible
force.

Slowly the drum of the mighty cylinders tapered off as the mechanics
drew back the throttle. Spears adjusted helmet and goggles, and then
helped in the Sheriff, who looked like an old eagle.

One of the mechanics saw to it that the belt was safely snapped
around him while Sleepy took a look at his instruments from beneath
drooping eyelids. The air-pressure was two and a half and the
oil-pressure a safe thirty. Quick trials of each switch proved that
both sets of plugs were working perfectly. Temperature 70
Centigrade, voltmeter charging, gasoline pet-cocks switched on the
main tank, horizontal stabilizer at neutral--the maze of wheels and
instruments and pet-cocks and pumps that filled the cock-pit made a
connected story which his drowsy eyes read effortlessly.

He glanced back at the Sheriff, who filled the rear cock-pit to
overflowing. The Sheriff waved a puffy arm to signify his readiness
to depart.

At Sleepy’s nod, the mechanics pulled the blocks from the wheels,
and then swarmed at the edge of the left wing, holding it back while
Sleepy turned the De Haviland around with full gun and left rudder
on as far as it would go. Without stopping for a moment, he
neutralized his rudder, shoved the stick forward, and in a moment
was scudding across the field with accelerating speed. The pilot sat
carelessly, his right arm draped restfully on the padded cowling
that rimmed the cock-pit.

                 *       *       *       *       *

Without any reason at all, he gave the ship right rudder, and it
swerved to the right; then left rudder, and a quick left turn was
the result. In a moment the ground sank below them; then Sleepy
banked carelessly, his lower wing barely three feet above the
ground. Then a left bank, combined with a mild zoom, and the
thirty-four-hundred-pound ship lifted over the hangars on the
western edge of the field in a climbing turn, seeming literally to
graze the sides, so close was it.

The pilot looked back with a slow grin, to see Sheriff Trowbridge
holding to the cowling as if the force of his grip might make some
difference.

“He flies too casual-like,” was Trowbridge’s judgment, before he
lost himself in the joy of the rushing air. The flat, misty earth
was now five hundred feet below them as they circled the airdrome.

Sleepy pulled back the throttle until the tachometer showed fifteen
hundred revolutions a minute, and wheeled the stabilizer forward a
trifle until the ship rode level. By means of the stabilizer a ship
can be made nose or tail heavy by changing the angle of the two flat
surfaces on the tail.

A quick glance at the many little glass-covered gauges before him
showed that everything was all right. The ship rode the smooth, cool
morning air buoyantly, and by the time it had made one circle of the
field had reached a thousand feet. Sleepy threw it into a vertical
bank, and in a moment the railroad was in sight, leading northward
through the mesquit.

He hunched down farther in the seat, until the great motor ahead of
him shut off all forward vision. His right arm rested limply on the
cowling, and his feet were propped comfortably on the rudder-bar.
The car-shattering roar of the Liberty was as soothing as a lullaby
to his accustomed ears. He did not vouchsafe a glance at the
receding ground below. He settled down for the forty-minute trip as
if in an automobile.

Sheriff Trowbridge was in the seventh heaven. The billowing mesquit,
fading into dim nothingness twenty miles away, the rush of the air,
the speed with which familiar landmarks were picked up and left
behind, all represented the greatest thrill the veteran had ever
experienced in his variegated career.

The southeast wind blowing from the Gulf of Mexico was slightly
stronger than usual, and in thirty-five minutes the Sheriff glimpsed
the clearing that represented Willett. The sun had burned away the
ground-mist, and each tiny tree and weather-stained railroad-tie
stood out plainly in the clear golden air. He shook the stick in the
back seat--the usual signal from cock-pit to cock-pit. Sleepy, who
had been sitting as motionless as an image, did not immediately take
cognizance of the signal. Not until the Sheriff had actually caused
the ship to wabble with the force of his hand on the stick did the
pilot turn his heavy-lidded eyes backward. Trowbridge unthinkingly
threw out an arm to point. The combined force of the propeller blast
and a hundred and twenty miles an hour of speed knocked it backward
with painful suddenness; but Sleepy understood.

The tiny station and the store warehouses and corral, with the
barely discernible road leading past the store and to the station,
labeled their destination plainly. The clearing skirted the road on
the south side, and appeared to be about four hundred yards long and
a hundred yards wide.

Sleepy cut the motor to thirteen hundred and fifty revolutions, and
as he nosed down, the speedometer jumped to a hundred and
thirty-five miles an hour. In a shallow spiral he circled the field,
dropping down to twenty-five hundred. Then he nosed upward and
banked smoothly to the left, jamming on full right rudder as the big
ship tilted. It shot downward on the tip of the left wing in a
wicked side-slip. Trowbridge grabbed his goggles to keep them from
blowing sideways, and strove to get his breath and conquer that
sinking sensation in his stomach. In a moment the nose dropped, and
in a smooth wing-turn the ship zoomed upward again and banked to the
right. Another side-slip to the right, and they were down to fifteen
hundred feet.

With a somewhat strained smile twisting his lips, the Sheriff
watched Sleepy handle his ship. The flyer’s eyes rested steadily on
the field below, and he seemed to fly instinctively. Alternately to
the right and left, the roaring ship dropped downward. At five
hundred feet Sleepy gave it full gun and flashed across the field
for a last look. It appeared to be a close-cut hayfield, with no
particular obstacle except a shallow ditch cutting diagonally across
the northeast corner.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The ship swept out of the slip barely a foot above the ground, and
sped across the ground with quickly decreasing speed. For a
split-second it seemed to hover, and at the instant Sleepy jerked
the stick back. Came the crunch of the tail skid and the rumble of
the wheels on the ground in a perfect three-point landing. Most
people do not know that alongside a perfect landing most of the
thrilling acrobatic flying they “oh” and “ah” is child’s play.

The big plane stopped rolling a hundred yards short of the end of
the field, and Sleepy promptly turned off the gas pet-cock, to allow
the motor to run itself out of gas. By this method damaging backfire
in the expensive, fragile motor would be impossible. In a moment the
Liberty sputtered and died, and the seven-foot propeller came to
rest. He clicked off the switches and released the air-pressure.

“You use these things right careless-like,” came the Sheriff’s
voice, vague because ear-drums were still humming from the roar of
the motor.

The pilot unstrapped himself, climbed out, and leaned restfully
against the trailing edge of a wing while he set fire to a cigarette
and watched the Sheriff release himself from his belt and climb out.

“Funny there ain’t nobody out to greet us,” remarked Trowbridge.
“Let’s mosey over to the emporium.” The front door was closed; and
there was not a sign of life. They went to the back door, and the
Sheriff knocked without result. He tried the door experimentally,
and it opened.

“I don’t quite get the lay,” said Trowbridge, as he led Spears into
the sitting-room. “O George! You lazy old counter-jumper, where be
yuh?”

A muffled cry came to them from the store. Without a word,
Trowbridge lumbered swiftly up the passageway that led to the store,
Spears behind him.

“Great God!” breathed the Sheriff, as he reached the office door.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Sleepy was peering
over his shoulder at the gruesome tableau.

The body of Bilney he almost forgot for the moment, as he met the
tearless, burning eyes of the girl, eery above the gag-bandage that
covered her face. Trowbridge dropped to his knees beside the body of
his friend. With a catlike leap, Spears hurdled the body and ripped
at the girl’s bonds. Her large eyes gave him the creeps--they seemed
like the only part of her alive.

“He’s still alive,” said Trowbridge, with ominous calmness, as he
arose. “Judy girl, what happened?”

                 *       *       *       *       *

For a moment the girl neither moved nor spoke. Sleepy stood quietly
beside her, his narrowed eyes watching the girl unwinkingly, as cold
as the glint of sunlight on ice.

Then, in lifeless tones, the girl told the story while Trowbridge
gently wiped her father’s wound with his bandana. As her story
unfolded, her low-pitched voice grew louder. Suddenly the barriers
of her artificial repression gave way. With a heart-rending cry, she
threw herself on the body of her father. Her hands caressed his
thin, blood-stained gray hair, and her lips were pressed to his
withered cheek.

“I’m gittin’ some water,” said Trowbridge slowly, and disappeared.

Without speaking, Sleepy went into the store and caught up a
blanket. He returned, and wrapped it round the girl in her torn
nightgown. Then he put one arm under her and gently raised her to
her feet as the Sheriff returned with a basin of water. Spears led
the sobbing girl to a chair.

In silence broken only by the girl’s weeping, Trowbridge washed and
bound the wound. Then he slowly got to his feet, his mahogany face a
mask from which two thin slits flashed wrath that was terrible in
its all-consuming force.

“I’d die happy the minute after I’d shot the skunk that did this,”
he rasped, his face working suddenly.

“If you’ll shoot as you never shot before, maybe you can get him,”
said Spears, the timbre of his voice subtly different. “Listen. This
Buchanan would make for the border, wouldn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If it wasn’t for leaving Miss Judith and her father here alone--”

The Sheriff comprehended the generalities of Spears’s plan
immediately. He whirled on Judith.

“Where’s Cissy, Judy?” he asked.

“I--I don’t know. She----”

Trowbridge plunged down the passageway. In a moment he returned,
leading the half-dead old negress.

“Listen, Judy; you say you heard Buchanan take your horse?”

The girl nodded, her face hidden in her arms.

“Cissy, you take care o’ Mr. Bilney. Judy girl, get yoreself
together and ride Buchanan’s horse to the nearest telephone. ’Phone
the airdrome at McMullen, and tell ’em to send Doc Spurgin up here
by ship to tend to yore daddy--I believe the doc can save him. Spears
and I’ll take after this coyote, and mebbe we can find him.”

He looked at Spears, and for the first time noticed the change in
him. Glowing eyes, body like a coiled spring--he gave an impression
of leashed power waiting eagerly to be unbound.

“Let’s be about it,” he said briefly.

Together, as gently as possible, they lifted Mr. Bilney’s
unconscious form and carried it to his room.

“Git dressed and start, Judy; we’ll see that the horse is ready,”
said the Sheriff. “We’re on our way.”

“Oh, I hope you get him!” the girl said passionately. She seemed
ablaze as she stood there, a statue of vengeance personified.

                 *       *       *       *       *

The horse was in the corral, unsaddled. It was the work of a moment
for the Sheriff to saddle him. Meanwhile Sleepy made for the ship
with long strides.

He climbed into the cock-pit, and without a single lost motion
turned on the gas, set the air-pump, and rapidly pumped up the air
to three pounds. This done, he adjusted the priming pet-cock and
sent three stiff shots of gasoline into the cylinders. As Trowbridge
came lumbering across the field, Sleepy was twirling the propeller.
The effortless ease with which he overcame the compression of the
big motor and the weight of the heavy stick would have been an
eye-opener to some of Spears’s best friends.

“Ready, son?” bellowed Trowbridge.

“Just about. Here’s the scheme. He’ll probably stay pretty close to
the railroad in order to keep a straight course for the border,
won’t he?”

The puffing representative of the law nodded.

“Keep a close watch. If we spot him, I’ll go low and stall the ship.
When it hovers for a minute, shoot. I believe you can hit. It’ll be
ticklish work, Sheriff. I may not be able to catch the ship again
after the stall.”

“What do I care?” Trowbridge burst forth.

“I didn’t think you would. How can we make sure when we’ve found our
man?” asked Spears.

“I’d know Judy’s pony anywhere,” declared the old man truculently.

Without another word, Sleepy went back to the cock-pit and snapped
on the switches.

“I’ll pull you--I’m more used to this cranking than you are.”

                 *       *       *       *       *

As the Sheriff set himself with one hand on the prop, Spears grasped
his other wrist with both of his hands. In time to the count, the
two men swung backward and forward, without moving the propeller
until “Three!”

With all his strength, Spears jerked the Sheriff away from the
stick. The huge body actually left the ground under the power of the
pilot’s pull. The Liberty caught, and Spears leaped for the cock-pit
to advance the spark and throttle until there was no danger of the
motor dying.

Trowbridge removed his cover-alls, literally tearing them off in his
haste. His inseparable companions, the two big six-shooters, came
into view, their pearl butts protruding from the swinging holsters.
By the time Spears had strapped himself in and had begun to run the
motor up in a quick warm-up, his passenger was ready.

When the temperature-gauge showed 60 Centigrade, the flyer glanced
back. The Sheriff was standing up, peering at the instruments over
his shoulder. For a second two pairs of gleaming eyes met in
wordless appraisal. To the old man the devil that danced behind the
cold sheen of the pilot’s eyes meant many things. In that moment was
born an understanding which went deeper than mutual participation in
the coming venture--it was a revealment of the fundamentals in the
younger man’s make-up.

Without a word Spears turned and gave the De Haviland the gun. It
skidded around in a close circle, and then with the ever-increasing
roar of the Liberty sped across the field on its mission.

                 *       *       *       *       *

At two thousand feet they had a clear radius of vision of ten miles.
The tachometer showed seventeen hundred revolutions a minute as with
wide-open motor the ship drove toward the border at a hundred and
twenty miles an hour. Ceaselessly two pairs of eyes searched the
far-flung desert of mesquit below, striving to spot the figure of a
horseman.

Spears figured that, provided Judith’s estimate of time was correct,
Buchanan would have covered about forty miles. She thought that the
crime had been committed about one o’clock. He was flying a few
miles west of the railroad, in the belief that his prey would strike
a straight course for the border. With all his heart the grim-faced
pilot hoped that they might find him. Time after time the tableau in
the barren little office arose before his eyes, momentarily blotting
out the flat green panorama below. With every fiber of him he craved
personal vengeance--the opportunity to wreak punishment on the man
who had left a girl bound and gagged to watch over her all but dead
father.

Twenty minutes out, both men redoubled the minute care with which
they searched the ground, which was like a painted curtain half a
mile below. It was Trowbridge who suddenly grasped the stick and
rocked the ship back and forth exultantly.

Spears turned and his eyes followed the Sheriff’s pointing finger.
Sure enough, there was a mounted man crossing a tiny clearing, two
or three miles to the westward. Without cutting his motor, Spears
nosed down.

Struts vibrated madly, and wires shrilled to the terrific speed of
the ship as it darted earthward. Little by little, Spears shot
downward in a tight spiral, the pivot point of which was the now
galloping figure below. Like some prehistoric monster circling for a
kill, the De Haviland roared earthward.

[Illustration: Little by little, Spears shot downward toward the
galloping figure below]

As he reduced the motor revolutions to a thousand, Spears frequently
jazzed the throttle to keep the spark-plugs from fouling with oil.
In a moment he would need every bit of the Liberty’s four hundred
and fifty horsepower--and need it without a second’s delay on the
motor’s part.

At two hundred feet, half a mile back of Buchanan, who was now
invisible, Spears shoved the throttle wide open. The motor sputtered
a moment, and then caught. The ship hurtled across the mesquit like
a drab brown comet. The sensation of speed so close to the ground
was tremendous. In a few seconds they flashed across a wildly
galloping horse carrying a man whose upturned face was a smudge of
white.

Spears, hunched down behind the wind shield, turned his head and
glanced inquiringly at his passenger. Trowbridge nodded violently.

Spears banked so suddenly that it threw the Sheriff against the side
of his cock-pit. The De Haviland swept around to the left, mushing
slightly because of its terrific speed. Sleepy kept it nosed down
until it was scraping the tops of the mesquit trees as he
straightened out once more.

                 *       *       *       *       *

A hundred yards back of the fleeing Buchanan, he cut the gun. The
ship swept on with decreasing speed. A few yards behind the man on
the ground, its speed was seventy-five miles an hour. Trowbridge,
fighting the wind-blast, was standing up, both guns in his hands.

Then Sleepy took his chance. He nosed up, banking to the right at
the same time. For a second the airplane hovered, right wing down,
above its prey. Each of Trowbridge’s guns spoke twice. Like a flash,
Sleepy rammed the throttle full on, glimpsing the fall of the horse
below out of the corner of his eyes.

The fouled plugs did not catch immediately, and the infinitesimal
delay was fatal. The ship, being so low and having lost flying
speed, could not stay in the air any longer, and there was not
altitude enough to pull out. In that split-second Sleepy had an
opportunity, however, to do what he had planned all along if he did
not win his gamble--for he had never planned that the grizzled
old-timer in the back seat should take his full share of the flying
chances.

Banked as it was, full top rudder would have dashed the ship into
the ground on its side, and the Sheriff would have borne the brunt
of the crash. Instead, Sleepy shoved the stick forward as far as it
would go. With his arm thrown in front of his face, he rammed the
ship into the ground. Wings sheered off on trees, and then came a
stupendous crash that marked the cessation of consciousness for the
pilot.

Trowbridge, stunned as his head was dashed against the front cowling
of the cock-pit, found himself lying on his side in the middle of a
twisted mass that represented the broken fuselage. He struggled
weakly, and then sank back with a groan. Apparently his collar-bone
was broken, and his right arm for some reason would not function.

                 *       *       *       *       *

He fumbled at the belt dazedly, and succeeded in freeing himself.
Bit by bit, he crawled out of the débris, looking around for Spears.
As he dragged himself out, the spat of a revolver sounded, and the
whine of a bullet past his head made him duck so suddenly that he
nearly fainted with the pain.

He peered toward the place where the shot had apparently come from,
shielded from sight by the wreckage. Fifty yards away was the
carcass of the dead horse, and even as he looked a man’s head lifted
itself above the body. Trowbridge snaked his way the few inches to
the remains of the cock-pit, and was rewarded with a shot that
drilled through the débris just beside him. He found one of his
guns, jammed between two twisted longerons. As his groping hand
grasped it, a searing pain in his left leg seemed to come
simultaneously with the crack of another shot.

It was a moment before his will proved superior to the physical
weakness that all but overpowered him. Then he started to crawl,
with infinite pains, the foot necessary to reach a point of vantage.
Through the twisted wreckage he peered with bloodshot eyes, his
sixshooter in his left hand.

[Illustration: Trowbridge’s right arm was wounded. With infinite
pains, he crawled out, his revolver in his left hand.]

In two minutes he was rewarded. Once again Buchanan’s head protruded
slightly from his barricade. Trowbridge sighted, this time, his gun
resting on a piece of shattered ash. With all the remnants of his
strength, he forced himself to be careful. When the gun spoke,
Buchanan’s head dropped limply on the horse.

It took the Sheriff two hours to bind the flesh wound in his leg and
release Spears. The pilot was lying half under the motor, which had
been jammed part way through the fuselage, leaving barely a foot of
clearance between itself and the back of the pilot’s seat. One of
Spears’s legs was caught under it, and an unnaturally bent arm told
its own story. Trowbridge did not succeed in bringing him back to
consciousness before he himself tumbled over in the blazing heat of
the Texas sun. Above, three vultures hovered curiously.

                 *       *       *       *       *

At ten-thirty in the morning, when no word had come of the ship’s
safe arrival at Willett, every plane at McMullen, except the two on
patrol, was ordered out on the search. Jimmy Jennings found the
wreck. From that time on, a ship was constantly hovering over the
spot to guide the ground party. It was ten o’clock at night when Tex
MacDowell’s De Haviland, equipped with wing-lights, brought the
rescue expedition to the crash. The men were brought back to
McMullen on a special engine and caboose furnished by the little
jerkwater railroad.

Spears came to briefly at the start of the trip, and did not wake up
again until the next afternoon, when he found himself in the
McMullen hospital, with Sheriff Trowbridge--none of whose bones had
been broken--sitting beside his bed, and Captain Perkins standing at
the foot. In a moment Major Searles, the flight surgeon, came in
with the hospital physician.

“Welcome back,” grinned the Sheriff.

“Glad to be here,” returned Sleepy weakly. “Doc, what’s ailing me?”

“Three broken ribs, a broken leg, and compound fracture of the right
arm,” replied the hospital man briskly. “We can fix you up as good
as new.”

“Outside of that, I’m all right, eh?” yawned the pilot “Did you get
Buchanan, Sheriff?”

“In two parts,” stated the Sheriff. “Polished off the job after we
landed. Bilney is comin’ along O.K. He and Judith are over to my
house. She says she’s aimin’ to be an assistant nurse for you soon’s
her daddy gets better.”

Sleepy’s square face lightened with a slow smile.

“What’s a few broken arms and legs compared to that prospect?” he
queried gently. His eyelids dropped farther, and in a moment he was
asleep again. The four men tiptoed out. Trowbridge stopped at the
door and looked back on the tousled hair and tranquil face of the
flyer.

“I think I’ll get to understand a lot of things better down here if
the border continues like this,” said the commanding officer.

The Sheriff closed the door gently.

“Well,” he drawled, “it is a fine place to git a valuation on real
hombres.”

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68498 ***