CHAPTER I

NIGHT HAWK

"Oh, how I wish I was up there!" muttered Hal Dane to himself as he cocked an eye upward into the far heights of the moonlit sky.

In mind, Hal Dane was already just below the stars, riding the clouds in a winged ship; before him, on imaginary instrument board, ticked the latest thing in indicator, controller, tachometer. And all the while, like the other half of a dual personality, his hands and feet mechanically guided his rattletrap old truck along the ruts of the lonesome country road. On the downgrades Hal's left hand with skill of long practice chocked a brakeless wheel with a wooden block, and on the upgrades his right foot judiciously kicked a wire that let on extra "juice" for the pull.

In Hillton, Hal's home village, folks laughed considerably over the Western Flyer, which a green daub of paint on the sideboards flaunted to the world as the ancient truck's title. But folks didn't laugh at the boy who persistently patched up the rattletrap and drove it. Anyone knew that it took genius of sorts even to hold the contraption to the straight road.

For all its decrepitude, Hal had to hang on to the old truck. It furnished his living--and a living for his mother and his great-uncle Telemachus, who was "stove-up with rheumatism." The weeks when hauling was brisk, the truck even earned a few strange luxuries such as queer Hal Dane would want--bottles of odd-smelling glue, old wire springs and bits of metal from Kerrigan's junk pile, and now and then a precious book full of diagrams of aeronautical engines.

Usually Hal got a chance to make at least one trip a day, hauling garden truck over the thirty-mile route from Hillton to Interborough, the nearest city. On the return trip he'd bring supplies for the little stores in his home village and other villages beyond Hillton.

Sometimes he had the luck to land a second sixty-mile round of hauling in one day--like the present occasion that was bringing him rattling homeward in the night.

Night hauling was wearisome work, and if it hadn't been for Hal's lively imagination he would have been tempted to doze on his job. But Hal Dane's air-minded brain was seething with spirals and Immelmanns and three-point landings. One of the great events of his life, the State Air Meet at Interborough, had been over for a week, but every flight and entry was still fresh in the boy's mind. He lived them over again. By twist of the imagination old man Herman's two milk cans rhythmically banging against Grocer Kane's crate of lard buckets seemed almost the roar of a stunt plane warming up for action. Hal could almost think himself into seeing in that empty stretch of sky above the host of planes that had formed the "flying circus" of last week. There had been Rex Raynor, famous pilot who stunted upside-down; there had been aerial rope-swingers and ladder-climbers. There had been--

"Bang--bong--scre-e-eak!"

With a snort of dismay at the clattering outspilling of his load and the scrape of his truck as it careened sideways, Hal chocked his wheel and leaped for the ground.

"Jumping catfish!" moaned the lanky, long-legged blond young trucker as he raced madly down the road he had just rattled up. "Ought to have looked back once in a while 'stead of always up at the sky--wouldn't have happened then!" And onward he sped, chasing a runaway wheel.

This, though, was no unheard-of performance. The Western Flyer flung some piece of its anatomy to the winds on at least every other trip.

With a grunt of satisfaction young Dane fell upon his miscreant wheel as it thumped to a standstill in a ditch. Methodically he trundled it back along the road, jacked up the ancient truck on the side where its protruding axle had ploughed the ground for some forty yards, and set to work repairing damages.

An hour later the boy had his wheel cotter-pinned and hub-capped back into place. As he slid under the steering gear, he determined to keep his eyes and his mind out of the sky, and to concentrate all energies on navigating the Western Flyer safe into her garage by dawning.

But farther along the road his imagination began playing him false again. Rhythmic thump of his load of cans seemed to simulate whir and zoom of an air engine.

Imagination! Was it imagination?

All in a quiver of excitement, Hal Dane silenced his own engine and cocked a listening ear towards the skies.

There it was again--faint hum of a motor high in the air. An airplane was winging its way across the forest-covered hills that lay between Interborough and the railroad gap at Morris Crossing. No air mail route lay that way. This must be something out of ordinary; an important message to be dropped at the railroad crossing, perhaps.

"Gosh!" ejaculated Hal to himself. "Speaking of dreaming things till you really see 'em! Listen at her coming in!"

The plane was swooping nearer; was now practically above him. Staring upward, Hal caught a glimpse of the spotlight focused on the hills below. It was turning from side to side. The boy looked on with anguish beginning to clutch at his heart. The motor of the plane was missing in an alarming manner. It sputtered and coughed--ran smoothly for a few seconds, then sputtered again.

"Trouble!" muttered Hal. "In trouble and looking for a place to land. There's no place--unless--"

Above him the plane slid crazily on its way. Now it seemed to hang in the air at a mere crawl, now it shot onward. At a spot which Hal judged was a couple of miles distant, the light became stationary for an instant, then tipped sharply downward and was swallowed up by the pine forests on the hills.

"A crash!" whispered Hal Dane. He shut his eyes, then opened them quickly, staring hard at the moonlit landscape to impress location on his memory. That jagged pine, that spur of the hill--it was somewhere between these that the plane had crashed.

Next moment the boy was on the ground and cranking up his old truck like one possessed. As it roared into life, he swung aboard and let her out for all she was worth. In the case of a human pinned under wreckage in horrible certainty of fire or suffocation, speed of rescue must mean the saving of life. So down the woods road shot Hal, his ancient truck gallantly riding roots and ruts and snorting to the charge with a backfire like gattling guns. A tire blew out and nearly careened Hal, truck and all into a bank. But the boy held to the wheel, wrenched her nose straight to the road and bumped onward. A second tire burst, and the bumping went on more evenly.

Then the headlights showed an opening through the trees where great white wings lay flattened to the earth.

"He made it down--in the only landing place for miles!" jubilated Hal as he leaped from the truck and raced toward the grounded plane.

As he reached the scene of the crash he saw that the plane really had made a marvelous landing, merely slightly down-tipped as to nose, and frame intact save where a sapling stub had torn a jagged hole through one wing.

Minor injuries to the plane--but the man! The aviator hung limp against the supporting belt. As the boy loosed buckles and lifted the pilot out, he felt blood dampen his hands.

Hal raced to a stream he remembered crossing. With his hat full of water, he was back and kneeling beside the aviator, splashing water in his face.

It was like a ghost rising from the dead when the prostrate man flicked open his eyes, then suddenly--as though some valiant pull of power within urged him--staggered to his feet, made a few steps and leaned heavily against his plane.

"Why--" Hal Dane's mouth dropped open in amazement as he stared at the figure picked out whitely in the moonlight, "it's--it's Rex Raynor, famous--"

"Yes--yes! Don't waste time gawking at me. Need help--got to get this--this packet on the train--at crossing!" He touched the bulge of the packet beneath his coat. His eyes were wild with pain, but somehow he forced his voice to be steady, even as he forced his body to stay upright. "Can you help--patch things--get me off--"

"Yes," Hal Dane answered, "yes!" At first he had thought to offer the truck, but two tires were down and the back axle had steered in a strangely crooked fashion towards the end of that wild dash over stumps and boulders. It might take hours, days, to get the truck back into running order. The plane--maybe there was a chance there!

First, though, Hal slit open the bloody sleeve of Raynor's coat and shirt. From torn strips of clothing he made bandages over a bullet wound in the lower left arm, and tightened a tourniquet above to stop further bleeding.

With iron grit Raynor held on to himself--sheer will power must have kept him from fainting a dozen times. In his harsh, steady voice he barked out his orders.

The impaling sapling was cut away below the plane wing. Then the upper length of wood was worked gently out of the jagged hole it had torn in the fabric. With quick, deft fingers Hal Dane whittled repair sticks out of pieces of pine. Wire from his tool chest slid in tight coils over wood, under wood, binding breaks together. Except for his overalls, Hal had very little clothing left. What hadn't gone for tourniquet was now masquerading as wing fabric. Tire glue had to do duty as "dope" to lacquer smooth the patched wing.

Rex Raynor, flyer, was too pain-dazed for his mind to give even passing thought to the strangeness of his finding, out here in the pine woods, a long-legged youth whose nimble fingers seemed expert at splicing framework and patching wing fabric. The trouble he was in tensed his nerves to breaking point. His one idea was, "The packet must go on--the packet must reach the safety of railroad officials at Morris Crossing."

In between directions for repair work and frantic urgings for haste, Raynor muttered broken details of the disaster that had befallen him.

Blue prints--aerial engine designs for the Nevo-Avilly contest--finished too late to submit even by air mail--rushing to get packet aboard mail car at crossing. Nobody supposed to know of his engine designs. As Raynor crossed level by forest ranger's hut, a red rocket, distress signal, had shot into the sky, signaling him to a landing. Knowing that the ranger, a former flying pal, had been disabled by illness, Raynor had answered the silent call by gliding to earth to render aid in some emergency. Instead of the ranger, a masked bandit had leaped upon the aviator, demanding the packet, even before switch could be cut or motor throttled. In the ensuing fight Raynor had got winged in the arm by a close range bullet, but had managed to shake off his assailant, and had risen to the safety of the airways in his plane.

Knowing that one such daredevil attack would likely mean further pursuit, Raynor fought off bodily pain and strove to keep his mind fixed to one purpose--getting the packet aboard the U. S. mail train.

The flyer completed examination by electric torch of landing-gear, engine, wings, Hal's last improvised piece of patchwork that was hardening miraculously under its spread of tire glue.

"You have done well--it is good!" exulted Raynor, as with the boy's help he trundled the plane backwards to get room for the take-off. "We have twenty minutes--we will make it." He motioned Hal to climb into the front cockpit.

For a breath Hal Dane stood rigid. At last it had come--his chance to ride in a real plane! But he stood motionless. This man Raynor--fever burned like delirium in his eyes, he fairly staggered from weakness. A risky pilot to ride with! And yet the courage in that iron set of jaw, the determination that drove a pain-weakened body to serve the will! Raynor had come this far--Raynor would carry on to the end. And Hal Dane would be in at that ending.

A thrill shot through the boy as he made his lightning-quick decision and climbed breathlessly aboard.

Raynor cranked the motor with his one good hand, kicked aside a wood chunk that had blocked the wheels, and scrambled heavily into the rear cockpit. With a roar the plane moved across the clearing, gathered speed, lifted within two hundred yards of the tree line. They were up and off, a thousand feet above earth!

Hal Dane's blood pounded, he gasped for breath. Then he relaxed into a feeling of keen delight.

Hal Dane actually flying! The boy knew instinctively that from now on flying was to be his real life. He had managed this one time to skim the clouds. Somehow he would manage it again and again.

Raynor had ascended rapidly. Two thousand feet below them the pine forests lay like flat dark carpets. Little rivers and streams were like silver threads reflecting the moonlight. In the distance a row of small, swift-moving lights must be the east-bound mail train they were racing.

Looking earthward from the heights stirred no qualm, no dizziness in the boy. He felt at ease, in his own peculiar element. Turning his mind backward, it seemed that every event in his life had culminated in this engine-powered flight with wings.

Even as Hal's serene gaze sought the pinpoints of trees and the silver dots of water on the earth below, the great plane shot higher, looped downward, aimed her nose at the stars again. After that came a sensation of falling, then a careening, tipping of wings from side to side.

Rise, fall, dip--all consumed mere space of a breath.

Hal Dane whirled around from his earth gazing, to steal a glance at the pilot behind him.

There was reason for those wing-dips. Rex Raynor hung in a fainting huddle across his strap. Almost at the glorious end of his race for time, the flyer's iron will had lost its fight against pain.

Raynor's ship was a teaching boat, outfitted with dual controls. Between Hal's knees rose a stick, mate to the control from which the pilot's hand had fallen.

Instinctively Hal Dane's hand shot out to grasp this lever. His one desire was to shove with all his power on the gear,--forward--back--anywhere, to steady this awful tipping, skidding roll that was hurling the boat downward. But even as Hal's hand touched the knob of the stick, reason surged through his brain like a shout of "Wait, wait! Death lies that way!"

Reason was right. Hal's fingers clenched into palm to keep from seizing the gear. He must think it out, know what he must do before he ever shoved that lever a hair's breadth. With cold sweat bursting out to drench him, and his brain prickling to the terror of falling, falling,--yet Hal Dane held himself rigid, eyes closed, while in his mind's eye he made himself see again the paper diagram of a Wright motor's control board. In his own cluttered old workshop at home he had memorized every movement of manipulating ailerons, elevators, rudder. Memory must save his and another's life now.

When Hal opened his eyes again, his stiff lips were muttering, "Stick pushed forward, manipulates elevators--plane descends; pulled back, plane rises; pushed to right, operates ailerons for right wing bank; left, for left bank--"

To the boy mere moments had seemed hours of hurling earthward. He felt that the very tree tops must soon be dragging at the landing gear, crippling the plane for its crash. He longed desperately to look, to see just what space lay between him and death.

Instead, for two dreadful seconds, he forced calm eyes to study the control board, forced his hand to hold the fat knob of the stick in a firm grip, to pull back--gently, gently.

And gently the ship lifted. Descent changed to ascent.

A sob of relief tore through the boy's throat. They were going up, up! The waving octopus arms of the tree tops could not snare them to death now.

It seemed he could never get enough of going up. He was above the clouds now. The ship answered beautifully to every touch on the controls. A slight pressure on the stick to the right operated ailerons and the right wing dropped to form a right bank that drifted the ship in a wide, lazy circle.

The response of the mechanism was wonderful. It was like a living thing that moved at a touch. Hal Dane felt lifted on wings of his own.

Then he passed beyond the bank of clouds. Two thousand feet below him on the earth crawled a tiny earthworm thing strung with lights--the mail train, the crossing!

Elation ebbed from young Dane's mind.

In the sky heights was safety. On the ground below lurked death, awaiting the slightest mischance in landing.

And yet Hal Dane must come down to a forced landing--now--immediately. He was not here to skim the clouds for exhilarating joy. He must rush a wounded man and an important packet to the train crossing.

Slowly young Dane circled earthward. And each downdrift laid a chill of terror on his heart. Now that he was coming to earth, earth looked most unnatural. Morris Crossing should be familiar ground; yet viewed in the white moonlight from over a plane edge, all things took on monstrously strange proportions. In his terror Hal began to feel that he could not distinguish a field from a forest, a road from a river. He might smash across housetops, might hurl himself, plane and all, into the moving train before he could stop. No, he could not do this thing, could not! If gasoline held out, he could drift in mid-air till morning.

In answer to his sudden tense pressure, the elevator was pulled so hard that the machine all but stalled, then fortunately cleared off and zoomed upward at intense speed.

High air--safety again!

But Hal Dane was no coward. Up in the heights, his brain seemed to cool. The train was coming in. It was a matter of seconds. And he must meet that train with the packet.

Coolly he began to map in his mind the lay of the ground close to Morris Crossing. There was the group of small houses, the improvised box-car waiting-room, a storehouse, behind that an empty, rolling stretch of field. That was his chance. He must somehow land in that field.

A week ago, at the Air Meet in Interborough, Hal had watched innumerable airplanes cut motors and circle down. He had studied and read everything on aviation he could lay hands on--he knew exactly what he ought to do. But actually to do it! A terror chill quivered up the boy's spine.

Then he set teeth, coolly stopped the motor, pressed into a bank that began to drop the plane in great circles. Dane tried to remember everything at once--best to volplane down in spirals of a certain size--must flatten off to save a nose dive--must--

Then the black earth came up to meet Hal Dane.