CHAPTER IV

WINDS OF CHANCE

Caught in a swirl of air currents, Hal Dane and his craft were hurled this way and that like some toy shot from a giant's hand. Watchers below held their breath.

Although a hundred feet and more intervened between them, those on the ground could see that the boy in the air was exerting every ounce of craftsmanship in his battle with the wind. He banked to the right, now dipped and rose, as though striving to ride the twist of air currents flowing about him, instead of drifting helplessly in their battering clutch. At times the wind ship seemed to whirl completely around, yet mostly it was held to an even keel.

Then the heavens opened and the rain came down in torrents; preluded by lightning and thunder, a cold blast swept down the valley with something of the fury of a small cyclone. Caught in this tempest, the crude plane bucked and went rearing upward like an affrighted horse.

"There goes the last of Grandma Harrison's sheets," roared Uncle Tel, hardly conscious of what he was saying and charging through the crowd as though he, on his rheumatic old limbs, would keep up with that flying white in the sky above.

"There goes my boy!" thought Mary Dane. It was a silent prayer.

Higher than it had ever gone before surged the wind bird. Storm, darkness, and rain seemed to cut it off from men's sight.

The crowd began to run down the valley, letting the push of the wind guide them in the direction the aircraft must surely be following also. Clinging wet garments and the rain torrent made progress heartbreakingly slow.

Fuz McGinnis turned and began a stumbling progress against the wind back towards the starting point at Hogback. After a while he reappeared, charging along over the roadless, stony valley in his grotesquely inadequate looking Yellow Spider. Into it he somehow crowded Mrs. Dane and Uncle Tel. Others turned back and went for their cars. Raynor caught a ride with someone. Quite a procession went skidding and lumbering through the rain-washed valley.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the summer storm cleared. The sun even came out.

Something white showed up, flapping dismally in a distant tree top. It must be the remains of the wind bird. It--it couldn't be anything else.

Fuz let out the yellow cut-down, speeding by stumps, dodging boulders. From the car behind him he could hear Raynor's voice urging on the driver.

These two cars were by far and away the lead of practically the entire population of Hillton that surged running, walking, riding down the valley.

Mary Dane, and Raynor not far behind her were the first to reach that tree with its flaunting ragged streamers of the wrecked windcraft. Hal was not lying at its foot, battered and crashed. Instead, with blood on his face, and his clothes half torn off, he was gingerly lowering himself from branch to branch. He shinned on down the trunk, dropped beside his mother, and fair picked her up in a great boyish bear hug.

Above him, half of the wind bird hung in streaming tatters from a couple of tree branches. The other half had already descended and lay like a vast white splotch on the ground.

"Reckon I'd better go get the truck and haul this in," said Hal, using his fist to mop blood out of his eye from a cut on the forehead. "I'm sort of used to hauling in the remains and patching up things after every flight. I--"

As man to man, Raynor clapped him on the shoulder and thrust out a hand. "Put her there!" he said.

"I--er--had the luck to land in the soft part of a tree. I--I got down anyway," said Hal gruffly to hide the emotion that was stirring him.

"You got down--but you did more! Man, man! Without any engine, on some sheets strung on sticks, you flew to the clouds, banked, dipped, soared with the best of them, till that whirlwind caught you. Prettiest thing I've seen in years."

"If only that wrong wind hadn't got me," moaned Hal.

"If!" said Raynor, narrowing his eyes. "Aviation's full of ifs, boy--don't let 'em--"

"I won't," said Hal, grinning in spite of the fact that half of his best wind bird was dangling from a branch in a tree top.

* * * * *

The next day Rex Raynor was leaving. Pilot Osburn had come down to fly him off in the now fully repaired airplane. After a warm handclasp for all the friends into whose kindness he had dropped, Raynor started to climb up into the cockpit of the R.H.3. Then he stepped back to ground, drew out a notebook and wrote a few lines. He turned to Hal.

"I expected to write you a letter about this. But," with a grin, "aviation's too full of ifs, so--thought I might as well attend to it now while we're together. You saved my life. And you're not the kind of a chap I can get a reward off on. But there's something I want to do for you, and this note will tell you what." He slid the piece of paper into Hal's pocket, then climbed up into his plane.

The pilot removed the blocks, the motor roared, and the R.H.3 taxied forward and zoomed into the air. The boy stared upward until the great plane grew small, became a mere speck, disappeared beyond the horizon. Then he silently turned away from the crowd and headed towards home, walking fast. He rather wanted to get into the privacy of his own old workshop before he opened Raynor's note.