CHAPTER X

A CHARM TO CLIP GHOST WINGS

Landing flares dropped by Garry were still burning as Don cut the ignition of the Dragonfly. From a house adjoining the field they were in, a farmer came running to the airplane.

"Where are we?" Don called eagerly.

"Is there a place near where they can take care of this pilot?" cried Garry. "He's hurt--we don't know how badly."

The farmer came closer.

"Hurt, eh!" He attended to the more important question first. "I don't know of any place for miles where you could take him. But I can telephone old Ti-O-Ga. He's an Indian. Lives a few miles back from the Hudson. Everybody knows him. He's a kind of 'medicine man' and he's a wonder with broken bones."

He turned, informing Don, over his shoulder, that the field was a few miles beyond Catskill, a town in the Hudson River valley.

The pilot, his senses recovered, but suffering, spoke up. "Old Ti-O-Ga? Why, yes. Get him. I've heard of him."[1]

"Go with the gentleman, Garry," Don suggested. "When he has done his telephoning he may let you get the airport and tell Uncle Bruce what has happened to us."

Garry went away while Don remained with the pilot, keeping his flares going for light and on the chance that a passing automobile on the adjacent road might stop and go for a physician. Don was not deeply impressed by the offer of Indian aid.

Garry returned very quickly.

"I got the airport," he told his chum. "They were worried about us, and of course your uncle feels badly because we still have the mail."

"I'm going to signal a passing car," Don said. "If I can get the driver to take me to some place where I can get fuel, I'll fly back."

"I'll stay with the pilot," Garry volunteered. Don had no trouble in inducing a motorist to give him a "lift" to a garage at some distance. Ti-O-Ga came in a car while Don was gone. Old, but straight and sturdy, the Indian surprised Garry: he arrived in a Ford, wore American clothes and, if reticent, spoke to the point.

"Drink!" he ordered the pilot, offering a small cup of liquid taken from the car. The pilot, putting the liquid down his throat, sat in his cockpit quietly for a moment.

"Say!" he exclaimed, "that's great stuff, Big Chief!"

"You feel like walk?"

Helped out, with some muttered exclamations as his limp arm was put to a strain, the man admitted that he felt much stronger.

"I take you to house. Strip! Find what is wrong."

The pilot, assisted by the farmer and by Garry, made slow but steady progress to the farmhouse.

There, while he waited, the Indian gave Garry a steady, and very curious observation.

The youth began to feel uncomfortable. He had a feeling as though those bleak, steady eyes were boring through him. He shifted uneasily.

"I be done soon," Ti-O-Ga remarked, rising at the call of "ready" and moving toward the next room where the pilot had been prepared for an examination, "then you tell me all troubles."

"How did you know I had troubles?" Garry was amazed. "I have--but how did you know that?"

"I be back."

Garry sat quietly in the small, cozy living room, waiting.

In a surprisingly short time the Indian returned with the farmer.

"Chief Ti," the farm owner remarked to Garry, "Chief Ti is a wonder. He's got the man's arm set--not a bad fracture, he says. No internal injuries, and what he gave that chap to take will put him on his feet in short order. Ti's a wizard at doctoring."

"He said I had troubles," Garry exclaimed. "How did he know?"

"Don't ask me," the farmer retorted, smiling. "Old Ti is a queer one and he can read people the way you'd read a book. Can't explain how he does it; but I can see he's taken a liking to you--and just take my advice, buddy, and let him do what he wants, answer all his questions, and don't argue about his ways. He's Indian--but they say he is the closest thing to a real magician this side of the world. He showed me some things, once, like the Hindu fakirs do--creepy, but interesting."

The Indian beckoned to Garry.

"You come," he said, "I give you charm."

"A charm!" Garry repeated. "What for?--" Then, recalling the advice just given him, he rose and followed the tall, dark figure. "I thank you, I mean to say--but I don't see how you know----"

"I know."

That was the end of the conversation. Garry, at the other's sign, climbed into the old Ford beside the driving seat which Ti occupied.

Rapidly, skilfully, he was driven into the back country.

The ride was very short, it seamed. Good speed and clever handling of the wheel on a road free from traffic helped.

"Well," Garry mused, "this is a queer business. First we try to guard the airlanes and see a spook crash in the sky; then we get lost and have to set down at the very best place--from the way that pilot was handled. Now I'm bound for some Indian tepee, I guess--to get a charm. For what? How does he know anything, and what does old Ti know?"

He soon discovered.

"This is my house." The car stopped in front of a small, but neat frame building, a cottage whose windows gave out cheerful light. Garry, accustomed to stories of frontier Indians, gazed in astonishment as he was ushered into a neat, well-furnished living room with a telephone in one corner. At a wave of the slim, gnarled hand he sat down, quiet and mystified. From a rear room a woman, not altogether Indian, and very pretty in a bold, strong-featured way, brought in cold meat, bread and cocoa which she put on a handy table. Invited to eat, Garry realized how ravenous he was and attacked the food with good will.

"You like rest?" the Indian asked when the girl, probably a daughter, removed the dishes and cups.

"I'd rather go back and help my chum."

"He not back yet. Rest! You sleep, huh?"

Garry shook his head; but a drowsiness seemed to be creeping over him; his muscles felt heavy and inert; he struggled with the increasing desire to sleep, feeling some uneasiness as the steady eyes held without blinking, watching him intently.

He relaxed, and began to dream an uneasy, garbled mass of disconnected flashes. He felt as though he drifted above a dark, dismal swamp and he saw again that spectral ship flying toward him. The dream altered. He seemed to be watching Chick, in some dim light, examining a scroll or roll of paper-thin, almost transparent.

Soon he awoke.

"I didn't mean to drop off--excuse me," he mumbled.

Then his faculties asserted themselves. He sat up, alertly. The Indian!--had he put something in the cocoa? Had he used the same methods Garry had seen in stage demonstrations, to get a person into a helpless state in which they did as they were told and answered questions in a dreamy, far-away fashion?

He looked around.

Through an open door he saw the tall, red-skinned man putting some objects into a small, dark-looking little pouch. The strings of its mouth he drew together as he returned to nod pleasantly at Garry.

"Feel all good?" he asked. Garry nodded.

"I----"

The man did not allow him to go on.

"You troubled by ghost in the sky," he said. "You not think right answer about why! You take this."

He held out the small pouch, several inches long, a little more in depth, apparently filled with some unrevealed contents, its string of rawhide tightly knotted to hold the mouth puckered, and a small, very odd wax seal in red, showing a swastika-cross, covering the top.

"Take," he repeated. Garry held out his hand, hesitatingly, lost in wonder that the man knew about the spectral visitations that mystified the Airlane Guard. "Hear, now. Put over head." He gestured. Garry, widening the strings, slipped the pouch over his head. "Keep inside coat. Go home. Put in box for seven day! Not touch! Then--open!"

"Why?" demanded Garry, surprised but suspicious.

"Why! That is good charm, boy! You worry about ghost wings."

He made a clutching motion of fingers and thumb, as though wielding a pair of scissors.

"You see ghost wings! I make charm to clip ghost wing!"

Garry, puzzled, stared; but the man tapped on the table, a slim, dark youth entered. Ti-O-Ga said "Goodbye" and before he could muster any comment, Garry was ushered to the car, the young Indian took the wheel and, fingering his pouch, tucked inside his clothes, Garry rode away.

"A charm," he muttered, "a charm--to clip ghost wings! Hope it works!"

Footnote 1:

While the name is necessarily changed, there lives, in the Hudson River valley an aged Indian "medicine man" whose herbal remedies and other curative methods are famous over a wide area: his "magic" is less widely known, but is in line with the possession of certain secrets of Nature and of mental ability of a high order and amazed the youth by his businesslike and plainly successful methods.