CHAPTER V

CHALLENGING THE AIR

Once within the quiet silence of the old workshop Hal plumped down on a sawhorse and pulled the note out of his pocket.

Quickly he unfolded the paper, and gave a gasp at the contents. It was a note scribbled to the head of the Rand-Elwin Flying School, saying: "Here's a real air-minded boy who risked his life for a flyer. He wants to become one of us, and all he'll need is work to pay for lessons. I think you could use such a boy."

Hal Dane's head was in a whirl as he read and re-read the few scribbled lines. Hal had every right to feel dizzy. Raynor's words were suddenly opening up and making real to him certain vague, misty dreams he had desperately believed would somehow materialize in a far, far distant future.

Instead, they were materializing now--right now--immediately. The boy sitting rigid on the old sawhorse suddenly shut his eyes, as if the realized dreams were too dazzlingly bright. Flying school--actual training! He'd live with planes--eat, sleep, dream with planes--till he knew every inch of the real machinery of aeromotors. Then a pilot's license! That would open the world for him.

Hal Dane would fly a real plane--make real money. His vision traveled fast. Mother should have everything. No more bending over "taken-in" sewing with weariness pains lacing her bent back and lines deepening in her face. Uncle Tel should have all the pipes, all the books he wanted. They'd do over the old house, renovate it back to its former two-storied elegance, paint, flowers--he'd--the dream circled back on itself and began all over again at airships, Hal Dane aviator!

Hal slid down off the saw bench. He'd write the letter to Rand-Elwin--now.

That same day's mail carried Hal's letter to the Flying School, a fervid boyish epistle stating how enthusiastically hard he'd work if they would only give him the chance. Pinned to it was Raynor's all-important scribble.

A week's space brought the answer. It was a business-like typed sheet signed by the Mr. Rand of the Rand-Elwin.

Crowded as they were with pay students, it was out of the ordinary, he wrote, for them to take one to work out his tuition expenses. But the written recommendation from Mr. Raynor (one of their former men), also a personal visit from him pertaining to this matter in hand, had inclined the school to change its policy in this case. Work would be found for him in the hangars or in the corps of mechanicians. He could expect no money pay for this, of course, but instead would receive the much greater pay of free tuition, board and lodging at the barracks. From Raynor's recommendation, they were expecting great work from him, an interesting flying future--

Hal's eyes traveled back from the pleasant prophecy that closed the communication,--traveled back and riveted upon "no money pay."

It had been foolish of him, of course, but somehow he had never figured at all that there would be "no money pay." He had rosily visioned himself as pulling down some neat sum for his probable labors at sweeping hangars, trundling grease cans, blocking and unblocking plane wheels. Half of this money would have gone to pay flying-tuition, most of the other half would have gone to the folks back home. In his visioning he had slept in some corner of a hangar, had eaten any old fare.

But now, no money coming in at all, that was different! The vision seemed closing up, drifting away. Mother and Uncle Tel had to eat. He hadn't earned much, but he had earned something, enough to keep their little household going, anyway.

He'd have to stick at this truck job that paid even a pittance of real money--give up this flying vision, this Rand-Elwin offer.

Oh, but how could he? This, his first real chance! In reality it was a full generous thing the Rand-Elwin people were willing to do. They were offering lodging, board and something like a thousand dollars in tuition in exchange for the part-time work of an unknown boy. Only the recommendation of a valuable man like Raynor could have secured him this.

His mother, eyes flashing, head held high, insisted stoutly that of course he must go--his chance--he must take it. Why, she'd manage!

Hal knew exactly how Mary Dane would manage. Sewing, and more sewing, and a pain in the side most of the time. She had put him through high school that way. Mothers were like that, always insisting that they could do the impossible--and doing it.

Well, his mother had sacrificed herself enough for him. Hal shut his lips fiercely.

The next day his answer went back to the Rand-Elwin Flying School, a letter very different from that first boyishly exuberant communication. This ran: "Sorry--circumstances make it impossible for me to accept your splendid, kindly offer--hope at some future date--"

The clumsy old sliding doors to his barn-hangar were rammed shut, and left shut. Within were the remains of his greatest wind bird. The torn cloth and tangled wires were left undisturbed in their huddled dump. Hal didn't even bother to see what parts were good enough to be rejuvenated into some other variety of gliding apparatus. He just ceased to experiment.

He repaired the old truck instead. He went after hauling business. Several times a week he made double trips to Interborough. Once he made three trips--a haul that worked him twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four. He wanted to work, so that he would be too tired even to think.

Summer passed into autumn.

One day when Hal rattled into the paved streets of Interborough with a towering combination load of cowhides, lightwood bundles and great blackened sacks of country-burned charcoal, he found himself in the midst of carnival.

Autumn was a period of street fairs. One had strung its booths of shooting galleries, side shows and outdoor aerial trapezes along a roped-off concession on one of the city's side streets. Even this early in the morning, flags and banners flaunted themselves in a chipper gayness. Small dark-skinned people, with a gypsyish, foreign look, busied themselves with settling tent-pins, tautening ropes, setting out their tinsel wares,--calling out now and then in soft, slurring accent.

They might be a travel-grimed lot, these gaudy-costumed traders in tinseled junk and these bandy-legged acrobats. But they had been somewhere, were going somewhere. They caught Hal's imagination, stirred it out of its long, dull dormancy. After he had halted some minutes, while his eyes caught the glint of sunlight on tent tops and fluttering little banners, he shot the juice to the old truck and, stiffening his backbone behind the wheel, rattled off down the street actually whistling. Out across town in an old field behind the warehouse, where he went to deliver the roll of cowhides, Hal's eye glimpsed something roped down to fence posts and a couple of stakes. A something that sent his heart blood pounding suffocatingly up to his very ears,--an airplane! A battered affair, with the look of having ridden the winds full many a time! But an airplane, for all that.

All the air hunger that Hal had been crushing out of his soul for months surged up, took possession of him overwhelmingly. Leaving his truck standing in the sandy street, he slid down, was over the fence, stood near this air thing roped down against any chance windstorm. For all its lack of paint, the old bus had good points. It was shaped for speed, its wings gave a sense of balance, proportion too.

Hal walked round and round it, hands thrust down into his pockets. He made no attempt to touch it. He knew from his own experience how one hated having outsiders mauling and prodding at one's contrivances. But just standing close, merely looking gave him more pleasure than he had known for most of the past summer. He was so absorbed in contemplation of wires and struts and curve-twist of propeller that he was hardly aware of a knot of men coming down the field towards him. They came in a close-packed group, talking loudly, gesticulating--evidently in heated argument over something. Words shot up like explosives. Snatches of sentences beat into Hal's consciousness.

"But man, you got to--in the contract, flying--stunting--parachuting--everything--" A fat man waved his arms in windmill accompaniment to his argument.

"I know--I know all that," a slender dark fellow with black eyes and a boldly aquiline nose above a square chin interrupted quietly. "I'm willing to fly, I'm willing to stunt. But I gotter have help. I can't sail a bus and parachute drop from it all at the same time--not without crashing my bus, and I ain't going to do that for any fifty dollars a day. Ain't my fault. How'd I know old Boff was going to get sick and quit on me for keeps?" The speaker rammed a hand into his pocket. "Say, wait, I'll do the right thing. You can cancel the whole thing. I'll hand you back the dough you paid for yesterday's work--that'll even up--"

"No, keep the money," a heavy-set fellow said. "It's not the money that's worrying us. It's the advertisement business. The city's paying for the stunts--Trade-in-Interborough Campaign and all that, you know--got posters plastered over the county, newspapers been tooting it up--if we don't give 'em the thrills we been promising, our country customers pouring in here have got a right to be sore at us. Say, don't you know anybody round about you can pick up to stunt?"

"No-o," the dark fellow shook his head and walked restlessly around the plane, laying a hand affectionately on it here and there. "Boff and I've been out west mostly, don't know any outfits down this way. Sa-a-ay, you get me a man! In a pinch like this, I'll do well by him, give him half the dough."

Half the dough, half of fifty dollars--that would be twenty-five dollars! A madness, evoked perhaps by his sudden contact once more with airmen and airplanes, stirred Hal Dane clear out of himself. Hardly conscious that it was he, Hal Dane, who was doing this fantastic thing, he walked straight into the group.

"I'll take him up on that," he said firmly. "I'll stunt with him!"

"Umph--eh! You've got the nerve, you sound sporting," the flyer whirled and looked him straight up and down. "But no, you're just a youngster. What would folks say if I let you go up and something happened to us--no, no!"

"I'm six feet of man, and make my own living--and I can't help being young," said Hal whimsically. Then his grin faded and his face set. Now that this fantastic chance was slipping away, he wanted it desperately. "Give me the chance," he pleaded. "There's not a dizzy bone in me, and I've got some idea of balance--"

"Look who it is! That's right what he's telling you, he's got--what you call it--wing sense." Like a small chipper tornado, Harry Nevin, newspaperman, ploughed up from the rear of the group. "Hey, don't you folks remember? This is the kid that got his picture in the Star! Went up with Raynor and brought down Raynor's machine for him, and all that!"

"Oh, so you know about flying, and running sky busses," stated the aviator with relief.

"I know about flying--but, well, not so much about real planes," admitted Hal, honestly.

"He's sailed all over the country on a glider he made himself," broke in the reporter. "He knows more about balance in a minute than most--"

"Have it your own way," burst out the aviator irritably. "Since you're all so set on letting this kid do your stunting, I'll take him up. But the responsibility's on your heads, not mine. And say, you all better clear out and let us get to work. He ain't got but an hour to be taught all there is to this here stunting business."

While the crowd was departing, some over, some crawling under the three-strand wire fence, the aviator busied himself with peering into the vitals of his ship. Soon though, he raised up, and stalked over to the boy.

"I'm Maben, Max Maben," he said.

"I'm Hal Dane." The boy stuck out his hand and the older man grasped it in a quick strong motion.

"Say, what makes you willing to go up in a strange plane, with a strange flyer, and tackle a lot of stuff you don't know anything about?"

"Got it in the blood, I reckon, this being crazy about wanting to get mixed up in anything that'll keep me near an airship," mumbled Hal. "Anyway, I'd been studying your plane. It looked right to me; I liked its jib," Hal grinned. "Then you came along, and I--well, I reckon I liked your jib, too."

"Guess we're going to get on." And Maben grinned back.