Part 4

“’Night. I don’t feel much like talking.”

To tell the truth, I didn’t either. I wandered around the field, smoking a few reflective cigarets, and finally called up the sheriff. I told him the whole story, and he was satisfied that everything pointed to the fact that if he didn’t make a move everything was all right. I figured it was better, and so did he, that Shirley should never know the inside. Consequently, the Currans were not called up, and have not had the real dope to this day.

I finally went to sleep, but in the morning I was, of course, still thinking about one Ralph Kennedy. And for some funny reason I wasn’t sure of him--his sincerity, I mean. I was wondering whether there wasn’t some trick connected with his gesture of the night before. However, I thought it best, at breakfast--to which meal he did not lend his presence--to tell the boys the entire yarn, simply to offset the gossip that would run wild around McMullen. Mr. Curran, of course, would eventually spill the beans, and I wanted the gang to speak up, knowing the facts, and say whatever they deemed best. Furthermore, I had a funny idea that when Kennedy left, I didn’t want him to go in disgrace.

As the day wore on, I came to think more and more of this last flight stuff. All flyers are more or less superstitious about that. As a matter of fact, there have been a few, from Hobey Baker down, who’ve met their Waterloo on the last hop before they kissed the Air Service good-by. I had a sort of premonition that it shouldn’t be taken.

Consequently, when Kennedy ate bacon and eggs at lunch, with his eyes red, a hang-over sticking out all over him, I said:

“Listen, big boy, you’ve said you were leaving tonight and likewise that you were going to take a last jazz flight. You were drunk as a hoot owl last night, and I don’t think you’ll be in such good shape to fly this afternoon. Why not douse the idea of a hop?”

“Maybe you’ve got a good idea there,” he said with a grin that didn’t change the suffering eyes. “In fact, it’s probably the good old logic. Say, Peewee, how about you taking me for a ride, so nothing’ll happen?”

“Sure. I’ll go with you.”

I just happened to switch my gaze from one to the other, and I saw something. There were many experiences that they had gone through together in the past, which, naturally, had generated a certain feeling between them. But now each of them had discerned something in the other that transcended anything that they had previously known.

In short, I saw a man’s affection for another man shining from each pair of eyes.

The rest of the gang, knowing the entire situation, chimed in with a lot of Air Service kidding, about that last ride, as for instance, Sleepy Spears’ remark:

“Any hop is foolish, and a last one is suicide. You’ve made it sure death by letting Penoch fly you.”

“In fact,” Tex MacDowell chimed in, in his soft southern drawl, “I’ve had a shovel all ready to pick Penoch up with, for a long time. I’d pick a hang-over in preference to Penoch any time.”

I guess nobody outside of the men who fly understand what air kidding is. Probably I don’t myself. But in my dumb way I think that it’s like a kid’s whistling when he passes a graveyard, or, perhaps, laughing at the worst that could happen, so that, when it does happen, it won’t mean anything.

* * * * *

When lunch was over, and we were all drifting out of the mess-hall, I suddenly realized that I would like to share, a little bit, those last hours. I’d been so close to the thing that I wanted to hang around the outskirts of it, until Kennedy left. In other words, I was sentimental, and I thought quite a lot of Penoch, at that. So I said casually--“I think I’ll take a little private hop for myself when you do--a sort of chaser for the poker game, eh?”

Kennedy, I think, bewildered as he was at the world that had been opened to him so recently, appreciated the impulse behind my suggestion.

“Sort of be my guard of honor, eh?” he said. But those cold eyes were soft. “In fact, we’ll be glad to have company, won’t we Peewee?”

And so it happened that a half-hour later the three of us were on the line. Our two ships were being warmed up, and the mechanics, satisfied, had brought them down to idling.

“I’ll sit in the back seat, big boy,” Penoch told Kennedy, “but don’t think that I won’t take the stick away from you any time!”

You know, of course, that De Havilands are dual-control ships, but all the instruments are in the front cockpit, and that, in a manner of speaking, is the driver’s seat.

I got into my own plane and, as I taxied out for the take-off, I couldn’t exactly analyze my reason for being there. I guess it was a sort of vague tribute to Kennedy, and yet I had a funny feeling that something might happen--so much so that as I turned the motor full on and pushed the stick forward I was so absent-minded that I nearly broke the propeller, because I had the nose of the plane down so far.

Kennedy and Penoch had taken off first, and I just followed them as they circled the field for altitude. When we got to the tremendous height of fifteen hundred feet, Kennedy, who was doing the piloting, started due west for Laredo.

I’ll swear that we were not a thousand yards from the airdrome when it happened. I was flying possibly a hundred yards back of them, and almost the same distance to the right. All of a sudden I saw their ship go into a dive.

That meant something. When Kennedy started turning back toward the field I knew that the motor had cut out. Then, as I noticed the propeller, I knew that the motor had not only cut out, but had cut dead. The stick was revolving slower and slower. There was no motor power behind it.

The next second their ship was blanketed in fire. The motor was a mass of blue flame. Kennedy had not cocked the ship up into a side-slip soon enough. That blows the flames upward, away from the pilot. The left wing was afire before he started slipping, and that second of backward draught, because they were in a dive when the fire started, had caused the fuselage to catch fire in a dozen places.

My body and brain were numb. Even so, I subconsciously knew what had happened. The gas line had broken, and the gas, sprayed over the hot motor, had ignited.

They had gone into the slip--too late--before I started toward them. I was diving my ship, motor full on. There was nothing I could do--Penoch and Kennedy burned to death before my eyes--I was just getting nearer for no reason.

I suppose that it registered on me at the time, because I remember it so vividly now. Penoch told me what was said. Anyway, I saw Kennedy, bearing the brunt of the fire in the front cockpit, turn and gesture. He was talking. I could see through the smoke and fire his lips moving. Penoch told me that what he said was:

“Get out on the wing! I’m not leaving the ship-- Let me jump! If Slim sees you, he’ll get close. God! I can’t last long! It’ll just be two instead of one--”

What I saw was Penoch getting out of the back cockpit, hanging by his hands from the cowling. He hauled himself along the side of the ship, his feet dangling over space. His head was turned backward, to protect his eyes, and his clothing was charring, because he was out where the air-stream could reach him, and no flame could get a real start. But Kennedy, in the cockpit--

I was going through the most horrible nightmare that can be conceived. And yet, I instinctively sensed the possibility of saving Penoch, as he reached the right wing and started crawling along it.

Then Ralph brought the burning ship level; that blew the fire right back on him. I was close, and for that horrible minute I guess I ceased to think of my own safety. I knew that there was one desperate chance to save one of the two, and Penoch, of course, was the one, because Kennedy had willed it so.

Penoch was out of the fire now, at the edge of the right wing. He was hanging from the edge of it by his hands as I flew my ship up into position, my left wing underneath the other’s right one. And Kennedy--I don’t know by what transcendent power he was able to do it, as he burned to death--kept his ship level. Penoch dropped--his only chance for life--and he landed on my left wing. He grabbed the cabane strut, the little metal horn at the edge of the wing to which the control wires for the ailerons are attached, and passed out.

An instant later, Kennedy, a human bonfire, leaped from his burning ship. He fell out--blessed surcease from pain. And the ship, like a flaming coffin, seemed to follow his body down.

Penoch eventually got back into the rear cockpit, of course, and we’re both here to tell the tale.

Sometime I hope that a burning ship will cease to trace a crimson path across my dreams. Probably it won’t.

Anyway, if Ralph is a spook in some spiritual village, teaching the Twelve Apostles how to play poker, I hope he has time to tip his halo in acknowledgment of the salute of Slim Evans to a crook and a hero, a scoundrel and a man.

THE END

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 1, 1927 issue of Adventure magazine.]