Part 1

Medium Boiled

Storm flight with the Border Air Patrol By Thomson Burtis

The big De Haviland bombing plane was a little more than eight thousand feet high, and “Shag” Moran, its pilot, had an excellent view of a considerable portion of south Texas. His big body was hunched deep into the front cockpit to avoid the terrific airblast which swept back from the propeller, and his black eyes alternated the maze of unfamiliar instruments before him and the unending desert of mesquite below. In long, gray-green waves the chaparral billowed away to the horizon on every side, and there was not so much as a wisp of smoke to indicate that a living thing inhabitated that trackless waste, a mile and a half below.

It was a sight calculated to make any pilot concentrate on his motor, for there was no possible landing field below, in case that twelve-cylinder Liberty ahead should start to miss. To Shag Moran, however, the very ugliness and desolation of it was a pleasant thrill--a constant reminder of where he was going, and why. Even the thought of himself, alone in a world of his own, was delightful, for the time being. It was the visible evidence of the fact that he had attained combined objectives for which he had dared not hope, three months before.

“First Lieutenant John Moran, of the McMullen flight of the Border patrol--” He mouthed the words with leaping heart us his eyes swept the wastes below him, which seemed to epitomize all the romance and danger of the job he was on his way to do. He was bound for the border. More than that, he was to be a member of the blue ribbon outfit of the Army Air Service, the Border patrol. And as the last ingredient of what he conceived to be flyer’s paradise, he was to be one of the McMullen flight of that patrol--the flight with the finest record along the Rio Grande.

The miracle--for miracle it was--was still unreal to him. Of course, they were ordering extra men to the patrol. The underground gossip, which was running like wildfire through the Air Service, was that ---- was due to pop along the Border. The smuggling in of aliens had reached tremendous proportions, and the guarded conversation of higher offices was to the effect that one of the largest, nerviest and wealthiest rings which had ever operated in Texas was due for a roundup.

But that Shag Moran had been picked to go to the patrol was purely a mistake. Moran admitted that. Some slip-up in Washington. Why, he’d only got his wings a few short weeks before, and had scarcely two hundred hours in the air. Not enough experience for border service, he reflected. But he’d bluff it through, and cut out his tongue before he let anyone know what an amateur he was. And he’d fly with any of them.

He grinned to himself as he thought:

“Boy, what they’d say if they knew that I never flew a De Haviland in my life before today! But I got this baby off the ground at Donovan and nobody’ll ever dream I never flew one!”

No more than they’d dream how much his wings and flying meant to him. The dogged, heart-breaking fight he had waged to drag himself from the poverty-stricken slime of his boyhood, through school, and then to an officer’s commission. The ambition of terrible years was fulfilled for Shag Moran. And nobody suspected that there had been tears in his eyes when he got his commission. Big, hulking, shambling Shag Moran was supposed to be hard-boiled. That’s what the carelessly competent young fliers thought about him, and he was glad of it. He would have cut off his hand rather than let them know his real love for the air, and of his perfect contentment, now that he was a flyer. Why, if the border men knew how he felt about being one of them, they’d laugh themselves sick. Think he was crazy. They took the job as a matter of course. They hadn’t worked a lifetime for it.

* * * * *

There was McMullen, and he was going to hit it right on the nose. It must be, according to his map. There was a dun pocket-handkerchief of a field, surrounded by buildings, a few miles west of a sizable town. Surely those big, black blotches against the ground were the two iron hangars flanking the field to east and west. And that town was McMullen, all right--it was too big to be an unnoted settlement. Southward a few miles the Rio Grande was a twisting, silver ribbon, glinting in the flooding sunlight.

He’d start down, now. Had he been more familiar with De Havilands, he might have essayed spiraling down closer to the field. He would take no chances now, though.

He eased back on the throttle, until the tachometer was down to nine hundred revolutions a minute, and nosed down slowly. He watched his airspeed meter like a hawk. He kept the speed of his ship at a hundred miles an hour. The wind was making the wires sing, and there was considerable vibration.

In a perfectly straight, conservative dive he flashed earthward, his body tense with the strain. Now he could see tiny figures lounging on the steps of one of the buildings which formed the southern boundary of the sandy airdrome. He was going to have an audience for his landing, which made it worse. With every moment, it seemed, that field was shrinking in size. The northern boundary of it was a fence. He prayed that the wind would be from the south, so that he could land in from the north. It would be impossible for him to bring that big plane down over the obstacles on the other three sides.

The altimeter read a thousand feet when he pulled the ship up and shoved the gun all the way on. He was a half mile back of the field as he flew level toward it. He circled it once, and saw that the wind-sausage on top of one of the corrugated iron hangars indicated a south-east wind. Some one had said that the wind was usually southeast--the Gulf breeze. Yes, there were at least a half dozen men lounging in the shade of a porch. There were several buildings along that southern rim, and two long lines of tents.

He drove northward a half mile, circled warily, and cut the gun to seven hundred revolutions. He fairly felt his way toward the ground, trying to watch the ground, his airspeed and the tachometer all at once. He must barely ease over that fence, at the lowest speed possible.

He got too low. He was only fifty feet high, several hundred yards back of the fence, and the motor barked into sudden life as his hand thrust the throttle forward. He seemed to be going terribly fast, for being so close to the fence, and he cut the motor to idling. Downward, bit by bit, the fence had flashed beneath him. He was going like lightning.

From a height of six feet it seemed that the D.H. dropped out from underneath him. The wheels hit the ground hard, and the big ship bounced high in the air. His hand automatically found the throttle as the plane hung, nose in the air, and jammed it all the way forward.

He’d have to go around again. Cursing himself for a clumsy fool, he raved--

“I thought I was flying a Jenny, ---- it! I ought to be pushing baby carriages.”

Those veterans down there were laughing at him, doubtlessly. Having to go around twice to make a field--an airdrome--with a perfectly good motor. He had looked like a cadet, on his first solo.

Again he shot for the field and this time, with his heart in his mouth, he got to a foot above the ground with the fence only twenty-five feet behind him, and he held the ship there. Again it seemed that he was going at express-train speed, but he caught the drop in time. He jerked the stick back, and although he was a bit late, the ship only bounced once, and scarcely more than a foot. The buildings seemed a safe distance ahead, too.

They were, for a Jenny, but not for a heavy D.H., rolling fast on a hard, sand field as smooth as a floor. Desperately he cut the switches, and finally, panic-stricken, threw his stick to one side and jammed on full rudder. The D.H. ground-looped, one wing-skid dragging the ground. Not enough to cause any damage, though, and as he snapped on the switches again he told himself:

“I got down--but how? This time I was going too ---- fast, after coming in too slow the first time.”

Mechanics were waving him toward the line in front of the eastern hangars, and he taxied toward them, gingerly. He felt that he was handling the D.H. awkwardly. It was infinitely more responsive, even on the ground, than a Jenny. Somehow or other he felt uncertain, now, about his ability to control these bigger ships as he had learned to master the training planes.

He was grateful for the fact that the mechanics came out to meet him, and by pulling on the wingtips helped him, into the line straight. At the same time his quick sensitiveness made him wonder whether they were doing it because they had noticed his uncertainy in handling his ship.

A short, stocky officer was coming toward him, and on the collar of his O.D. shirt were the bars of a captain. That was the famous Captain Kennard--two planes to his credit in France, D.S.C. and Croix De Guerre, recognized as the best squadron commander on the border.

Moran came to attention, and the square-faced captain returned his salute nonchalantly.

“You’re Moran, eh?” he said in a raucous voice, and his face, scarred by innumerable wrecks, split into a genial grin. “Glad to see you. The boys’ll unwire your suitcase. Come on over and meet the gang.”

Moran relaxed a bit. So the C.O. wasn’t going to hop on him about that landing right away, he reflected gratefully. He removed his helmet in the withering heat, baring the coarse, unruly black hair which had given him his nickname. Perhaps his beard had had something to do with it, too. Sometimes he shaved twice a day in an endeavor to control it, but his heavy jaw always looked dark and bristly, nevertheless.

“Sure glad to see you,” repeated Kennard, his bowed legs moving faster than Moran’s unusually long ones. “They’re flying us ragged, and a new man’s welcome.”

“I heard something was up, but no one seemed to know much about it,” ventured Moran.

“We don’t know a ---- of a lot, ourselves,” Kennard told him. “But it’s pretty plain that they’re watching a gang in Mexico who’ve been running chinks and other immigrants over. The runners get around a thousand per man, delivered in San Antone. Army of ’em. Anyway, it’s patrol all day, and be on the alert all night, with a dozen false alarms every hour. Must be good and big and tough, this gang, or Washington wouldn’t be acting as though there was a war on.

“Attention, boys and girls. Here’s the latest victim. Moran, shake hands with Tex MacDowell, Slim Evans, Pop Cravath, George Hickman, and last, but not least, Dumpy Scarth.”

Moran recognized all but the last man from things he’d heard about them. Lean, lounging “Tex” MacDowell; “Slim” Evans, who was nearly six feet six inches tall and as thin as a rail; big, blond Hickman and “Pop” Cravath, who were observers.

“Dumpy” Scarth was a new name to him, and he had thought he knew every member of the flight by name and description. Scarth was a short, fat, little fellow, with a pug nose, a full moon-face, and boyish eyes, which looked the big, new man over with a critical air.

“I know of all of you,” Moran told them slowly. “That is, except Scarth here. I--er--never heard--”

“He just joined the outfit,” Kennard informed him.

“Then you’re new to the border too?” Moran said awkwardly. He was in an agony of self-consciousness, because of the figure he’d cut on that landing.

“What?” squawked Scarth. “New to the border! Why, I’ve been with the Laredo flight for years! Didn’t you ever hear of that Caloras case?”

“No, probably he didn’t,” Slim Evans cut in casually. “There really are a few birds in the world who’ve never heard of you, Dumpy.”

Scarth bridled like a bantam rooster. Now he looked Moran over scornfully, and Shag was suddenly aware that his shoes were wrinkled and unpolished and clumsy looking. Kate, his sister and only surviving relative, cost him a good deal in college. Too much for him to afford forty dollar boots and hundred and fifty dollar uniforms.

“You sure came in in a burst of glory,” Scarth informed him with relish. “Two bounces--I thought sure you were a major.”

“I--er--hit an airpocket the first time,” Moran told him.

He was standing at the foot of the steps, shifting from one foot to another, always conscious of the speculative scrutiny to which he was being subjected by the men who would have to live on intimate terms with him for months.

“Air pocket ----!” yapped Dumpy.

“You were coming in too slow! The second time you looked as though you were trying to break speed records. I suppose the wind shifted on your tail that time.”

It had come. Suddenly Shag was conscious of an overweening desire to close Hearth's mouth for him. The others had said nothing.

“Not exactly,” he said with difficulty, moistening his lips. He felt as if he was on trial. “The throttle stuck a minute, and the motor was turning up pretty fast--”

“Listen to Alibi Ike!” jeered Dumpy. “Had much time on D.H.’s?”

Moran’s eyes were stormy, his heavy face set. ---- this cocky, nasty little runt--

“Why,” he began, moistening his lips, “I--”

“Dry up, Dumpy,” drawled Tex MacDowell easily. “Likewise, lay off. What the ---- are you catechizing about?”

“Hello, here comes Jimmy Jennings, and my ship’s coming out. Come on, Pop!” Dumpy exclaimed, forgetting everything else.

He ran for his helmet and goggles as Moran watched the incoming patrolship enter the field. He knew who Jimmy Jennings was. A border veteran, and an ace.

The big D.H. roared across the airdrome, from the east, circled a hundred feet north of the field, and suddenly tilted on one wing. Down it came in a terrific sideslip, its nose parallel to the fence. Thirty feet above the ground it dived out of the slip, nose coming around toward the field, and as it came across the fence the pilot skidded it sidewise to kill speed.

Starting two hundred feet high, only a few yards back of the fence, the pilot had brought the ship to the ground as lightly as a feather, within twenty-five yards of the fence, and stopped rolling a little more than halfway across the field.

“That’s flying,” Shag thought humbly.

“Don’t mind Dumpy,” Slim Evans advised him spaciously. “Dumpy firmly believes he’s the world’s best flyer, frankly admits it on every provocation, and the ---- of it is that he’s ---- near right!”

“What are you going to do with a man that brags all night, and then goes out and proves the next day that he can live up to his bragging?” grinned Kennard.

“Every new man is a prospective rival to him,” Slim went on, “and he tries to put said rookie in his place. But he’s a great little cuss when you get to know him--”

“Watch him prove something now.”

Moran watched, and held his breath. Dumpy took off from the northern end of the field, cleared the buildings, and then turned back. He swooped low across the ground on his return trip, and then, for a full minute, he showed what could be done with a big bomber in the hands of a master. He chased his own tail like a gargantuan dragon fly, tipping the D.H. up into vertical banks in which the lower wingtip was only inches off the ground. One final rush across the field, another zoom in which the ship stood on its tail and appeared to climb up the side of the recreation building, and he was off.

“That’s him, himself,” grinned Hickman, who was almost as big as Moran. “You gave him an opening by springing those alibies.”

“They weren’t alibies--”

“The ---- they weren’t,” Kennard advised him. “We listen to too many of ’em down here. This field’s tough the first few times, and good flyers’ve ---- near starved to death, they had to go around so many times. And every ---- one with an alibi, instead of admitting it. Like you.”

Hurt, Moran stiffened.

“Well, alibi or no alibi, that little squirt, Scarth, better not buzz around too much, kidding people he don’t know,” he said gruffly. “Captain, can I be shown to my tent to clean up?”

Kennard looked at him curiously for a moment before replying. The others, it seemed, had been taken aback by his rasping ultimatum. Then:

“You may. Orderly! Show Lieutenant Moran to Tent Six.”

* * * * *

Vaguely miserable, Moran followed the orderly to the small, floored tent which was to be his border domicile. By the time he had set his things in order his trunk was brought from the afternoon train, and he was busy until six, straightening his meager effects and washing up in the bathhouse, down at the end of the boardwalk which ran between the two rows of tents. He was tying his tie when Slim Evans poked his long, thin nose into the tent.

“About chow time,” he said cheerily.

“Come on over.”

Moran, though grateful for Slim’s interest, merely nodded, and in a moment joined him.

“By the way,” Slim said casually, “if you like I’ll go up with you tomorrow. There are some tricks about this field in this light air, and--"

“----, does one punk landing put me under instruction again? I’ve landed in worse fields than this one.”

Slim looked at him, and Moran averted his face to hide what he felt was a telltale flush. He had been betrayed by his anxiety to hide the fact that he was a raw amateur who had no business on the border.

“As you please,” the lanky airman said laconically, nor did he speak again until they entered the dining hall.

The others were already at the table, and a Chinaman was removing the soup plates.

“Jerry Sims and Tom Daly got it today-- Just got a radiogram,” barked Kennard from the head of the table.

“What?” yelped Slim. “How?”

“Must have been a forced landing in the fountains within a few miles of El Paso. In a cañon, crashed, burned.”

“God Almighty.”

The table had been quiet, Moran noticed, when they entered. Those tanned faces were set, and the eyes somehow old. Kennard directed his gaze to Moran.

“Know either one of ’em?” he inquired. “Marfa flight. They were great eggs.”

Moran shook his head. The death toll of the border flyers totaled one out of eight, every year, he knew, and that very afternoon two of them had gone. In the mountains of the Big Bend.

He cleared his throat as he helped himself to bread. Because the simply told news affected him, he said bruskly--

“Well, that’s what any man in this business has got to expect, and he can’t kick when he kicks off.”

“The ---- he can’t!”

It was stout, fiery Pop Cravath, his eyes snapping. Daly had been his friend.

“I suppose you look forward to burning to death, eh? Hard-boiled egg we have with us!” he stormed on.

Moran was in his shell, like a turtle. His eyes met Cravath’s squarely as he stumbled on.

“Every man knows what to expect--it’s just an incident--”

“You don’t say! We’ll give a dance in honor of it, I suppose, to let the world know that a few deaths here and there don’t faze our nervy pilots!” Cravath spat bitterly. “I’m ---- if I’m not sick of these guys that shoot off their mouths about how little danger means to them--when hard luck hits somebody else! And how loud they yelp when it hits them--”

“The worst of it is,” Kennard slid in, “that we can’t even go over into Mexico tonight, ---- it!”

The object of his words had been to cut off the hot-tempered Cravath, Moran knew, and to ease the tension which had fallen over the depressed table.

The C.O.’s eyes were very keen and very cold as they rested on his newest flyer. He went on gruffly:

“It’s the custom to go on a howling drunk every time a man gets knocked off and sort of forget it. Now we’ve got to stay on duty.”

“They might have picked a better time to get killed, at that,” Dumpy Scarth remarked.

Moran’s eyes were on his plate. What had he said that they should disapprove of? Maybe he’d been a little rough for a newcomer. He’d just wanted to show them that he belonged. Why should they pick on him? Every move he made was a mistake, as far as they were concerned. Slowly, as he mulled it over in his mind, his misery congealed into resentment.

Always taciturn, he did not say a word during the remainder of the meal. Instinctively he felt that he wanted to be by himself, and he went directly to his tent. He lay there, thinking. Sensitive to the point of mania, he felt that he was off on the wrong foot with such speed that he could never start over again. His own fault, too. Trying to show off.

No, it wasn’t. Why had that fat-headed runt, Scarth, started picking on him right away?

Toward midnight the flyers, who had been playing cards in the recreation room, came to their tents, and devil-may-care laughter died away into quiet. Shag lumbered to his feet, and went out into the starlit night. The mesquite was murmuring, crackling softly, in the Gulf breeze, and the sky was like a purple roof over him. Over at headquarters, guards were at the telephone, and lights gleamed in the radio shack. East and west stretched the border--hundreds of miles. Southward, Mexico was like a brooding desert. Somehow all the romance, all the tradition, all the pregnant possibilities of the Border country seemed to be whispering to him from the velvet darkness, and his big body thrilled to it and his eyes glowed.

His imagination leaped from station to station--Laredo, Del Rio, Sanderson, Marfa--and he could see the ships on the line, looming like crouching monsters in the darkness, ready to spring into the air after their prey. Life could hold nothing to compare with this, and he was a part of it.

No, he wasn’t, he thought as he went to bed with a thousand thoughts rioting in his brain. But he would be.

* * * * *

Two ships were off on the dawn patrol when he ate breakfast next morning--Dumpy Scarth and Tex MacDowell, with their observers. The others greeted him more or less naturally, but he could see that he was already pegged in their minds as a queer egg. He tried to force himself out of his customary taciturnity but it was hard.

At the end of the meal he said to the captain--

“If it’s all right, sir, I’d like to practise a few landings.”

“Sure. Your ship’ll be No. 8.”

Moran dreaded the prospect of learning to land a D.H. on that field, but it had to be done. Why hadn’t he been man enough to admit his ignorance of big ships, and practise landings up at Donovan?

He knew that the bombers were considered too frail to stunt, so he went on with assumed carelessness--

“Do you people down here live up to that ‘no stunt’ stuff on those babies?”

“Of course!” snapped Kennard. “We don’t make a habit of slapping God in the face.”

The others grinned, their eyes on Moran.

“Perhaps you twist ’em around regularly?” inquired Slim Evans, and Moran flushed.

“Just wanted to know,” he said awkwardly, and went out.

Ten minutes later he was in the front cockpit of No. 8, trying out the already warm motor. A mechanic held each wingtip, another sat on the tail and leaned against the airblast as he covered his eyes from the dust which swirled upward in a dense, cone-shaped cloud. The tires strained against the wheelblocks as Moran held the throttle wide open, his eyes sweeping his instruments. Air pressure, three; battery charging rate, two; temperature, eight degrees Centigrade; tachometer showing, 1750; oil pressure, twenty-five--all was as it should be, as far as he knew. He turned off one switch of the double ignition system, and listened. Not a miss. Then a brief tryout of the other switch, and he eased the gun back to idling. He adjusted his goggles and nodded to the crew, with a lump in his throat.

They pulled the wheelblocks, and he taxied to the northern end of the field. He turned safely, and gave it the gun. He knew he could take off all right. Pressing forward on the stick, feet braced against the rudder, he sent his ship roaring across the field, nose low to the ground. It took the air by itself, almost, and he swept across the buildings with twenty-five feet to spare.