Part 2

With feet and fists flying so fast they must have looked like a spinning pinwheel, I threw him off, and staggered to my feet. I gave him no quarter. He had trouble getting up for a minute. I had one of his eyes closed and his head was none too clear. He hadn’t got across the tool chest before I socked him a beauty, and he went crashing against the shelves.

Staggering and dizzy as I was, I had enough left. His hands dropped helplessly, and I lifted him about two inches off the floor and deposited him four feet away and flat on his back with a roundhouse swing. Between measuring, getting my arm back and smacking him he had time enough to light a cigaret and smoke it, but he was too weak and blind and dazed and whatever else a man is when he’s out on his feet, even to block it. Maybe he didn’t see it. Anyway, he saw stars a minute later.

He lay on the floor, unable to move but not mentally out. I parked myself on a tool chest, and devoted my exclusive attention to inhaling large gobs of air into my laboring lungs. No use of talking, I was getting soft at that period. A little scrap got me gasping like Paul Revere’s horse.

Finally I was able to light a cigaret, and as its soothing flavor was beginning to permeate the stuffy air of the tool room my dear friend Marston rose on his hind legs and peered at me through one good eye which, it appeared to me, needed the ministrations of some good raw steak to save him from becoming temporarily blind.

“Now that I’ve relieved myself, I feel better,” I informed him.

“Didn’t think you had it in you,” he barked, his ordinarily husky voice deeper than usual. “I thought you lacked a punch--in anything.”

“Your opinion of me was low in all particulars,” I grinned. “As for me, I thought that when your bars were gone you had nothing left.”

“Well, you licked me,” he stated, hate peering forth from the one slit in his face which remained of two eyes. “And I s’pose this is just the start of what I’ll go through. You----”

“Shut up,----you!” I snapped. “That’s about the last time you’ll insinuate that I’m as low as you were when you had a commission, or I’ll put you out of your misery _pronto_ and all you’ll have to worry about is whether you fry in ---- or merely stew.”

He said nothing, but applied a dirty handkerchief tenderly to his nose. The wrinkles between his black, bushy brows were deeper than ever, and his face was so sullen it was black.

“One thing more I desire to converse with you about, Marston,” I went on after my temper was in control. “Captain Lawton implied to me that you were a good mechanic.”

“You’re ---- right, I’m a good mechanic.”

“My job is to ferry Martin Bombers from Cleveland to Langham for the next month. Want to be my mechanic? I’m not asking you for the pleasure of your company, you may be sure, but you’re supposed to be the best motor man in the squadron.”

“And being under you or with you isn’t no pleasant prospect for me,” he told me, stubborn and unafraid. “But I go where I’m ordered.”

“You’ll make some extra dough out of your travel allowance, you may enjoy the trip, and there are about two hundred mechanics on the field would give their shirts to go,” I told him. “Likewise, I hate to take you worse than poison. But you’re the best man, and you can just paste it in your hat that you’re having the first illustration of the fact that you’ll get a square deal around here when I say that you’ll be ordered to go along.”

He grunted, squinting up at me balefully.

“Another thing, Marston,” I told him as I got up to go. “We’ve laid aside rank and that stuff for a while. But remember, now that our personal affairs are adjusted, that I’m wearing a commission and you’re a sergeant. Say ‘sir’ to me, Marston, and don’t ever presume to forget that you’re a soldier and I’m an officer.”

He laughed--a raucous series of cachinnations which had often impinged against my eardrums unpleasantly.

“You talkin’ to me about bein’ a soldier. Very well, sir!”

“Our travel orders should be out in a day or two. Be ready.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go over to the hospital, get those shiners fixed up, report back and we’ll go over the tools and other junk of the flight.”

“Yes, sir.”

And that was that. I told Lawton I’d take Marston for mechanic, and next day travel orders for Lieutenants Evans and Fernald, and Sergeants Marston and Bailey arrived in our respective boxes. The evening of the second day following Fernald and I met our non-coms at the Martin factory in Cleveland for a look-see at the ships.

III

You’ve probably heard heard of Les Fernald. He was on the round-the-world flight. He was a powerful, well-built chap of medium height with a pair of steady eyes, a nice smile, and the ability to fly a big ship about as well as it is given to man or beast to do anything. He’d had a lot of experience on Martins, whereas I only had a test flight with Lawton before I left. But I’d had some Caproni flying over in dear old France on some of my days away from Paris, and I’d lumbered through the ozone between Long Island and Texas with a three-motored Tankwing under me.

Out at the factory late that afternoon the two mechanics and ourselves inspected the ships, and then Fernald and I flew them on a test flight. They ticked away like clocks, and were perfectly rigged. I took Marston along on the flight, and he nodded his satisfaction to me at the same time that his rainbow-hued eyes glowed his dislike into my own.

We landed again on the private flying field of the factory and announced that we’d leave early next morning. So saying, we hied ourselves down to a hostelry while the mechanics got the ships gassed, oiled and ready to ramble. They were to be stabled for the night in a canvas hangar at the edge of the factory flying field.

At our early breakfast next morning a headline caught my eye, and as a result a scalding gulp of coffee went down the wrong tunnel. The java ended up in my right lung, I think, and I coughed enough to make the citizens of Cleveland think the lake breeze had become very strong all of a sudden.

“Listen, Les,” I said at length, wiping the tears from my eyes. “‘HANGAR ON MARTIN FLYING FIELD BURNED. Two Martin Bombers, VALUED AT $100,000, COMPLETELY DESTROYED.’”

If you told Les Fernald that the continent of Europe had sunk into the sea, and that North America was expected to follow it into the briny deep, he’d probably say:

“Well, let’s improve the time we’ve got left and see a good show, or have a drink or something.”

So the rise I got out of him was:

“Read on, Slim. You interest me.”

The story, peeled down to the core, was simply that the two ships we were to fly to Langham that day had been burned up, that no one could figure how the fire had started, and that the entire factory had been in great danger of ignition, so to speak. Only herculean efforts had saved it. Three fires, at different points, had been discovered before they got burning merrily enough to be out of control.

We cantered out to the factory without delay, and found a very mystified bunch of men, from the G. M. down. The only possible explanation they had for it was that a group of ten workmen had been fired a few weeks after the discovery that they were grafting, and that possibly they had started the conflagration to get revenge. We wired Washington, and were ordered to stay in Cleveland a few days until the next two Martins were ready. The factory schedule on the army contract was four ships a week.

Marston poked around in his sullen, scowling way, and when I ran across him out at the excited factory I inquired casually:

“Did you happen to see the fire? We were in bed early and never knew it until this morning.”

“No, sir. I was in bed before midnight.”

Which proved to be an unadulterated lie. Fifteen minutes later I overheard Bailey--this was out at the factory--say to Marston--

“Well, did you tear the town loose last night?”

“Nah--nothing doing,” rasped Marston in return.

There was nothing for us to do at the factory--they were all running around ragged out there anyway--so as we left it I herded Bailey to one side. Marston had left by himself, but I wanted the conversation to be private.

“Marston living with you?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir,” said the slim young Bailey.

“He was out late last night, was he?”

“Yes, sir. About three A. M.”

“I see. Just wanted to know. Come in drunk?”

Bailey was troubled. He didn’t want to tell tales, I could see. So I went on:

“Don’t be scared to tell me. I just don’t want Marston to be in bad shape for the trip.”

“He wasn’t, sir. He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk.”

“Thanks. That’s all.”

I wondered why George William had lied about being in bed early. It was a senseless thing to do. Not that I connected him with the fire at all, of course. But I was just curious. He went around with a chip balanced precariously on his shoulder all the time, that was sure, and seemed to crave no company of any kind whatever. The only reason he lived with Bailey at all, I presume, was to save money.

It worried me a little, taking it by and large. Finally, as we reached our palatial suite of two rooms and connecting bath in the most ornate hostelry in Cleveland, I put it up to Fernald. He knew the history of Marston and me.

“Why do you suppose he lied?” I asked him.

“Probably thought it was none of your business where he was last night,” Fernald grinned.

“In which assumption,” I admitted, “he would be entirely correct. But, the question once asked, there was no reason----”

“Except that he is as fond of you as a bull is of a red kimono,” Les reminded me. “Well, let’s step out and see the town.”

IV

During the ensuing three days we saw plenty of it, and finally went through the procedure of inspecting and testing two more Martins. By this time the Martin factory was under heavy guard. The Martins being vitally important--in fact, indispensable--for the conduct of the bombing tests, the company was under a heavy forfeit clause in the contract for twenty thereof, and the mere idea that there was dirty work at the cross-roads struck them with panic.

Detectives were rounding up the discharged and discredited employees little by little and each by each. So far no confession had been third-degreed out of the men. The first lot all had alibis.

Believe me, though, we inspected the ships from stem to stern and from rudder to nose again the next morning before we started on our way. Our route lay over the flat Ohio fields, almost due south to McCook Field at Dayton. There we gassed up, and set sail eastward to Boundville, which is a West Virginia village right on the bank of the Ohio River in that little sliver of West Virginia which hides coyly between Ohio and Pennsylvania. At Boundville the government maintains a little way-station on the Washington-Dayton airway. It’s just a field with a few spare parts and some gas and oil available.

It was a nice trip.

In case you don’t know a Martin, let me elucidate a bit for thee. The ship weighs four tons, and has about seventy feet of wingspread. On each wing, just far enough from the cockpit to allow the propellers to whirl without hitting anything, a Liberty motor is set in a maze of huge, trunklike struts which hold it up and in and down; in fact, keep it safely anchored.

The pilot’s cockpit, with two seats side by side in it, is set a bit forward of the wings, about on a line with the two propellers in front of the motors. Ahead of the pilot’s cockpit, in the very nose of the ship, is an observer’s cockpit, equipped with bomb-sights, glass in the flooring to look down through, bomb releases, and about a thousand other things with technical names as long as your arm, or even as long as mine, which is considerably lengthy.

Directly in back of the pilot’s cockpit, in the fore part of the huge fuselage, is the hollow bomb compartment, with bomb racks which can carry two tons of bombs, ranging from a swarm of little twenty-five pounders up through three hundreds, six hundreds, two one-thousand pounders or one two-thousand baby.

In back of this compartment, about half way to the tail surfaces, there is a cockpit for the mechanic or radio operator. The tail surfaces consist of elevators, vertical fin and stabilizer, each very large, but otherwise the same as in any ship, and it has two big rudders, both worked by the same rudder bar.

Les and I, like fleas on elephants’ backs, set our course from Dayton to a bit south of the airline to make sure. When we sighted the wide, sluggish-looking Ohio we simply flew up the stream until the field at Boundville came in sight.

It’s somewhat of a trick to land a Martin, because you’ve got two motors to handle, the ship is so heavy that it settles rapidly, and the pilot’s cockpit is about ten feet above the ground. That makes leveling off a foot above the ground a bit difficult, at first. I made it the first try by bull luck in that small field, and Les did it with nonchalant ease, of course.

Marston had been riding alongside me the whole trip looking straight ahead and not vouchsafing me so much as a look, either dirty or otherwise. He and I exchanged as few words as the law allowed. The cars from town commenced to arrive immediately, of course, to look over the huge ships which were so awe-inspiring compared to the De Havilands the townspeople were accustomed to. There was one lonesome soldier in charge of the gas and oil.

We were to spend the night there, there being no wild rush. We taxied the ships up to the line in front of the gas shack, turned them around, and climbed out after running out the motors.

“Both of you stay here until the ships are gassed and oiled, and until dark, when the people quit coming,” I told them. “This trip you, Marston, will spend the night out here on guard, and next trip Bailey can take it. That suit you, Les?”

“Sure,” returned that young gentlemen. “At that, Bailey, ’d advise you to stay out here rather than in the one hotel down there. It’s name ought to be the ‘Bedbug’s Roost,’ and it has the first collection of bowls and pitchers and other sanitary brica-brac I’ve seen since the hogs ate my brother.”

Bailey, one of the clean-looking, bright youngsters who came into the army during the war and stayed, grinned and allowed that he’d try it. Les and I accepted a ride into town with our baggage after I’d made arrangements with the soldier on duty to supply Marston with blankets. George William set to work bleakly, not uttering so much as a word. He would be out there all alone, because the field guard’s duty did not include night work.

We saw a wild western movie called “Temptations of the Flesh,” fought off curious questioners the whole length of the one street, and retired early because there was nothing else to do. It was the sort of a town I’d like to come to after a month of ribaldry, to settle down for a week or two and do nothing but drink Pluto and watch the sun go down.

Our start was planned for seven o’clock, and we were out there right on time. We wanted to cross the towering Cumberlands of West Virginia early, before it got hot and the cañons and rivers and woods and rocks made the air too bumpy.

Early as we were, however, a parade of cars followed us out. The residents of Boundville considered eleven A. M. the middle of the night, and four was the fashionable breakfast hour. As our Ford bumped into the field, leading a miscellaneous collection of vehicles, I spotted Marston reclining in his blankets under a wing.

That made me pretty sore. He knew the hour we were to start, and we had sent a man out to him with a vacuum bottle full of coffee and half a dozen buttered rolls for his breakfast. The messenger was standing alongside his car, smoking a cigaret.

I galloped over to George William, followed in order by Les and Bailey. Marston should have had the canvas covers off motors and cockpits, and everything ready for the warmup.

“Sorry to disturb your rest, Marston,” I told him as we came within a few feet of him. “It’s a shame to get you up before noon, but you can get your beauty sleep back at Langham.”

By that time I was right over him, and as I looked down at him I saw that his face was a curious greenish color. His eyes glared up into mine with that non-stop hatred in them. Then, without a word, he staggered to his feet and over to one side of the field, where he had what looked like a paroxysm of coughing; apparently trying to vomit, but couldn’t. Then he walked back to us, and seemed to be all right, temporarily.

“Sick?” I asked him, while curious onlookers gathered close.

“Get back where you belong!” yelled Les, and herded them away.

“I never was sicker in my life,” stated Marston, mumbling his words.

“Any idea what made you so?”

“No, sir. Late last night a couple of fellows came out and gabbed a while, and finally went to town and got some sandwiches and coffee and we ate ’em. They beat it away, and I went to sleep a while and woke up sick as a dog. And I’ve been sick ever since.”

“Haven’t been drinking any of this moonshine?”

“No,” he barked savagely, as if I was inferring that he was responsible for the war or something.

“Well, are you up to the trip?”

“Sure.”

“The ---- he is,” stated Fernald. “He’d better find a doctor and lay up here a few days and meet us in Cleveland again for the next trip. He’s as green as a drafted mountaineer, and----”

He was interrupted by another paroxysm on the part of George William. It was horrible to see his body wracked and wrenched around, without relieving the terrible nausea.

“Climb in one of those cars and get to a doctor as soon as we leave,” I told him. “The next Martins’ll be ready in five days. Meet us in Cleveland then.”

He made no answer, but walked weakly over to the side of the field, and sat there numbly. Bailey primed both motors, and then Les in his ship and I in mine pressed the self-starter buttons, and soon the four great Libertys were roaring a diapason of power. I watched the maze of instruments--just double as many as in a single-motored ship, of course--and then idled my left motor while I gave the right one full gun, tried it on either switch of the double-ignition system, and listened carefully.

Everything was sweet as a nut, and the same procedure was gone through with the other motor. My ship was r’arin’ to go, and so was Fernald’s. The field guard pulled the blocks and tossed them into the rear cockpit, and I turned my ship on a dime by using only the left-hand motor, which pulled the ship around to the right. Then followed Fernald’s huge Martin, like a house on wheels, up the field for the take-off.

* * * * *

The field lay practically east and west, and the western edge went right to the edge of the river. The wind was from the west. There was a screen of trees and undergrowth between the edge and the Ohio, the tops of the trees some fifteen feet above the level of the field. The growth was on the banks of the river, which sloped down from the field to the water.

As I was turning for the take-off Les, with Bailey beside him, gave his ship the guns. It roared away across the field, and in a moment his steady pressure on the wheel had the tail up. I waited, in order to give the air, which would be badly scrambled by the wash of two propellers, a chance to clear a bit. I set my goggles, jazzed each motor a bit, and shoved the two throttles all the way on just as Les left the ground.

In a Martin there is no obstruction to your view, the motors being to each side of you. It took all my strength, pushing against the wheel, to get the tail up. As my big bomber picked up speed Les was circling over the river.

Then two things happened simultaneously. I heard a wild mixture of yells, screams and shrieks from the cars drawn up on the edges of the field at the same moment that the tail of my ship hit the ground again with a terrific crunch and the wheel under my hands suddenly became free, as easily movable as if it was attached to nothing whatever. I took a split-second to look up, and saw Fernald’s Martin, in a half-spin, drop below the edge of the trees. The next second a reversed Niagara of water rose above the foliage.

My brain, none too hardy an instrument at best, was literally as numb as a piece of sausage. But I could not think of Les then. My elevators were no more--that was why the wheel had become free in my hand and the tail back on the ground. I was within a hundred feet of the trees, traveling at more than fifty miles an hour, with no chance of taking off. In a flash my hand dropped to the throttles. By cutting one, the other motor would drag the ship around, probably wrecking a wing, but saving me.

Even as I did so, I knew I could not do it. For those ---- cars had lined each edge of the field, and my ship would probably plow through them, killing every fool spectator in the bunch.

There was nothing to do but let it go straight ahead. It was slowing up, but four tons which has been going close to sixty miles an hour can’t stop as quick as a motorless Ford going up Pike’s Peak when the brakes are applied. As inevitably as fate itself, I was trundling swiftly toward those trees, with only a frail cockpit between myself and them, and two props to hem me in and keep me from jumping.

I cut the switches fifty feet from the trees. Up went my goggles, and off went my belt. I got to my feet on the seat the second before the ship plunged over the embankment. The trees were ten feet ahead. As it crashed over the lip of the field toward them I crouched, and leaped like a kangaroo. And by the seven thousand sweethearts of King Solomon I got my hands around a limb that swayed underneath me, and there I clung, like a monkey by its tail, thirty feet above the base of the tree.

Had I gone down with the ship all that would have remained of Slim Evans would have been an over-sized pancake. The four-ton ship crashed against the sturdy trees, and the observer’s cockpit crumpled like an eggshell. The trees swept half through both wings, and at the finish one great oak was the exclusive occupant of the cockpit which had once been mine. I’d have been wrapped around it in loving embrace, never to leave it until they scraped me off.

I scrambled on this swaying reed of a limb, and worked my way back toward the trunk of the tree. I had no time for the fainting, screaming, yelling and generally hysterical bunch of nitwits on the field, but safe in a crotch of the tree gazed down upon the river. There was Fernald’s Martin, half-submerged, and on the upflung tail was Mr. Fernald himself, accompanied by Mr. Bailey.

I was so relieved I let out a loud yelp. If I could talk as loud as that habitually we wouldn’t have had to wire Washington at all.

Fernald, squatting like a frog on a lily pad, waved airily to me, clinging pensively to my perch in a tree.

“Don’t mind if I leave this here for a while, do you Slim?” he inquired in his placid way. “Hurt?”

“Nope. How about you?”

“Bailey’s got a broken rib, or maybe two or three or four,” yelled Fernald. “Otherwise all present and accounted for. Looks to me as though there was dirty work along the river.”

“I’ll see about a boat for you,” I told him, and started to climb down the tree toward the surging mob beneath me.

I oiled up the mental machinery and had it whirring away at a great rate before I got down. While still ten feet up I gave orders.

“Get back on the field and stay there,” I told the crowd. “And I mean it. Beat it--fast! All but Marston! Wait a minute. Who’s got a boat or knows of one?”

“I--I got one!” stuttered one red-faced man with a gray mustache of the vintage of 1850.

“Get at it quick?”

“Y-Yes.”

“Get it and get out after the two men on the river--quick! Rest of you back on the field.”