Battling the clouds

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 blazin...

Bill, driving the little car which he had named the Swallow, reached the quarters at the School of Fire in a rising cloud of dust. The wind had risen suddenly and the fine sand...

Frank Anderson found no time to invent a scheme that would put the Swallow into his hands because two days later on a bright Saturday morning, Frank heard a silvery little siren...

"It isn't that," said Bill, frowning. "He is just plain _foolish_ to smoke. Why, he is undersized and underweight now for his age, and every time he smokes he checks his growth....

About a week later, Bill, accompanied by Lee, drove the Swallow over to the Aviation Field. They found Horace Jardin staying there at Frank's quarters, as the houses are called...

Jardin left the following week and the two boys tried to settle down into the old groove. Bill spent a great deal of time with Frank, watching the manoeuvers on the Field. Frank...

With a bitter feeling of disappointment and shame, Frank took the proffered twenty-five dollars, after a long wrangle had convinced him that there was positively no more to be w...

The day passed rapidly. The boys were the first in the dining-car when a meal was announced, and be it said they were almost the last to leave. They had been provided with plent...

Setting the flash so it would not go out, Bill laid it down on the floor, cried "Oh, you robber!" and beginning to laugh continued until he had to lie on the floor and roll arou...

The first week of school, full of adjustments and experiments, passed with the greatest swiftness. The boys were soon accustomed to their surroundings and threw themselves with...

"No use talkin' Mr. Jardin," one of the men blurted out as Bill came up. "There is some monkey work going on here. Somebody is foolin' with your plane. We lock the hangar every...

"Let me up!" cried Frank, the veins standing out on his purple forehead as he struggled vainly under Bill's grasp. "You Injun fighter you, give me a white man's chance and I'll...

As the plane, responding perfectly to Bill's touch, soared upward, it seemed as though they were rising on gossamer wings out of a well of darkness and mists. They actually rose...

Ernest turned to the boy with the rifle who was standing guard over the wonderful, strange thing that had alighted in his father's meadow, and was satisfied. Cool, clear, honest...

"Yes, it was just nine," said Bill with a strange look on his face. "I heard you when you spoke to me, mother, and I think it saved my life, and the lives of the other fellows.