Adventure (magazine)/Volume 56/Number 1/Dumpy Ducks

by Thomson Burtis

 

DUMPY DUCKS
^by Thomson Burtis
A Complete Novelette

Author of "Groody and the Gushers," "Slim Grabs Some Grease," etc.

ALF a dozen of the motion picture company, reinforced by Sheriff Bill Trowbridge and Mayor Sam Edwards of McMullen, were sharing our customary late afternoon rendezvous on the porch of the recreation building. The dozen border patrolmen were stretched out in attitudes of ease and laziness, as usual.

My regular spot had been reserved for me, so I stretched my six feet six of fleshless bone alongside the steps, my back against the building. I'd just landed from the eastern patrol to the Gulf of Mexico, and I was four degrees hotter than the hinges of ——. My coveralls were nearly as grimy with oil as my face, and in contrast to the other khaki-clad flyers who'd shined themselves up for the occasion, I looked even less like one of these so-called airmen than usual.

Incidentally, you have full authority, hereafter, to consider that "I" means me, John Evans. I'm usually called "Slim," for no particular reason except that in addition to my height, I'm so thin my Adam's apple looks like a full orchard. To compensate for the lack of proportion otherwise, my nose is a truly prodigious organ and my dogs are Great Danes. That's that.

The Texas sun was still drawing shimmering heat waves from the little sandy airdrome, and they were so thick and shivery they made my eyes ache. I shut said peepers for a second, and right then the faraway drone of an airplane reached my ears.

I took a squint west, toward Laredo. The last patrol had been completed, so it was a stranger.

"Well," I remarked to all and sundry, "don't say that you had no warning nor that I didn't confess my sins. The second I let it slip out in Marfa that a movie com-pany was here to take some shots for a serial and that the border patrol was to be in some of 'em, I knew Dumpy'd get a leave and try to horn in on a picture. He'd shoot Niagara Falls in a peanut shell for a stickful of type."

"Is he another border patrolman?" queried the vivacious Miss Vivian Darling.

As near as I could figure, she'd started in the movies about the time views of the Civil War filled the newsreels. However, she held her age well, even if she was breaking in a new chin and had a funny look around the eyes. She was a synthetically beautiful woman, decorated artistically.

"He is," Tex MacDowell answered her, "one of the Marfa flight."

"What a pretty ship!" exclaimed Laura Mae Lee, the other girl present, pointing to Dumpy's white and black D. H. "It's—it's so different!"

Her wide eyes held no trace of sparkle or feeling. Those were her first words in some time. Ordinarily she just sort of sat still in her cute, dumb, girlish way.

The ship was over the airdrome now, about three thousand feet high. Dumpy was the only flyer who'd painted his ship to suit himself, so we were all sure it was the flying wonder himself. Likewise, we knew what was coming. He'd spotted the fact that we had guests, and was bound to give them a treat. Gather two people together anywhere, and Dumpy'd try to fly a Caproni through a keyhole.

He decided to loop, today, despite the rule against stunting De Havilands, and he went to it with a will. He did about twenty-five perfect ones, and the dive-out on the last one brought the whole gang up standing. He hadn't cleared the ground more than five feet, and from then on five feet was a whole mess of altitude for him.

In his twelve cylinder Liberty, running wide open and fairly shaking the ground with its roar, Dumpy banked and zoomed and dipped around that airdrome as if the ton-and-a-half bomber was a scout he was flying at five thousand feet. He was never more than a foot from St. Peter's outstretched hand, grazing hangars and drawing lines in the dust with his lower wing.

"Shucks!" grunted Corrigan, pipe in mouth and coarse black hair sticking up truculently. "Any flyer could do that who was crazy enough. Just grandstanding!"

Coming from the big, new man, any element of jealousy for Dumpy's work was distinctly absent. Corrigan, we'd learned, always said exactly what he thought and gave not a single —— for what any one else might think about it. He was a big, ruggedly good looking chap of around thirty, who made considerable money on the side painting covers for the cheaper grade of magazines. He outlined a mean bathing girl. I never knew a chap who hated hypocrisy as thoroughly or spotted it and nailed it as sincerely as he.

Dumpy seemed to be on the trail of a dragon-fly or something. Conversation was impossible with that motor roaring away out there. The movie people were enthralled, and I admired the flying while I cursed the craziness of the man doing it.

I'd taken my eyes from the sight for just a second when a crash jerked them back. The D.H.'s tail was in the air as it bounced over in a cartwheel. Dumpy's wing had hit the ground.

The ship came to rest on its side amid the din of splintering prop, tearing linen, and the crackling of struts and spars. I was on my feet automatically, leaping like a kangaroo toward the wreckage which was now merely a heap of debris in the blazing sun. If the thing only wouldn't catch fire!

I got there four laps ahead of the ambulance, and had more of a margin over the other flyers. As I arrived the heap moved, and from the center of it emerged a fat, perspiring, smiling face, smudged with oil and dripping blood.

With a few more wrenches, heaves and other maneuvers he was standing upright, linen draped over his neck, a piece of wood behind his ear, and his helmet in tatters. Everybody was there now, panting and pale and wondering. Kennard and Corrigan were closest, and I noticed that the big fellow's black eyes were almost red with a fiery glow that seemed literally hot.

Dumpy grinned around the circle, his half shut eyes lingering longest on the girls. Then he saluted from his post in the middle of that debris.

"Pardon me, sir," he said to Kennard. "But may I leave this here a while?"

He stepped out blithely, enjoying every minute of it. He was the center of attention, and his pouter-pigeon chest swelled out until his rotund stomach didn't look so prominent.

"Doggone motor cut out just for a second," he told Kennard. He was always ready with an alibi. "If the air hadn't been so thin I'd have caught her, anyway, and at that—"

"Horse radish!" blared Corrigan, his dark face pale and that red glow flaming hotter in his eyes. "Your motor didn't cut out. Your brain did! You got what was coming to you for being a crazy fool, and the only thing that happened was that you didn't keep your ship off the ground in a vertical bank!"

"The —— I didn't!" retorted Dumpy hotly. "What do you know about it? Who ever told you you were any judge of flying? I've never seen you show anything."

"Oh, dry up!" grunted Corrigan wearily, and the look in his eyes had changed, somehow. It was as though a volcano which had been momentarily in eruption had been ruthlessly bottled up.

For a half minute or so it was an ugly situation, with Dumpy bridling like a bull pup and a nice public fight looming in the offing. Everybody was strained and silent and uncomfortable. Then Cap Kennard broke the tension by introducing Dumpy to the four shaken movie men and the two half hysterical women. He forgot his wrath for the moment.

"Now here," he proclaimed, "are what I call two good looking girls! You're all getting a real introduction to the border, eh? That wreck give you a kick? Should have had a camera here. I'll do some real stuff for you later."

And so on, ad infinitum. As far as flying was concerned, he was always suffering with a mental freeze and a verbal thaw. It was the only thing in the world he was conceited about, but where the air was concerned he was as naïve as a child in his fixed belief that he was the best flyer in the world. And the of it was that he was as good as I've ever seen, and could make good on every boast he made!

HE WAS a good-natured, lovable, fat little youngster of twenty-three that we all laughed at and took for granted, so to speak. But it appeared that Corrigan wasn't accustomed to the grandstand kid. I was walking with the new man while Dumpy strutted his stuff with the movie folks ahead. I noticed that my ordinarily philosophic companion had a dark, moody and thoroughly disgusted look on his rough-hewn face, and usually nothing in the world but his own business made any difference in his life.

"Don't mind Dumpy," I told him. "His only real fault is that he's a publicity hound and is so enthused about his flying ability he won't believe anybody else is in his class or that there's anything he can't do. He's a good egg otherwise. "

"It gives me a pain in the neck. Slim," grunted Corrigan, "making a —— fool of himself and then shooting an alibi!"

"Well, what of it?" I inquired. "It's no skin off your nose, is it?"

"No," admitted Corrigan in his deep, husky voice. "But he's such a simple little squirt he makes me mad."

Which called up a bit of wonderment on my part. Corrigan had spent a few days marooned at Marfa in a rainstorm a while back, and I wondered if his readiness to jump on Dumpy and that gentleman's snappy eagerness to exchange insults was the result of a private feud. Dumpy was ordinarily immune to criticism, and Corrigan wouldn't have walked across the street to see the Johnstown flood. He was, ordinarily, as sufficient unto himself sort of fellow, giving no part of a —— for any one else or their opinions, as I'd ever been around.

Back at the porch Barry, the director, got ready to leave. He was a small chap with a great big head. His brow and eyes were fine, but from there down his face dropped away to a pointed chin. The company was a cheap unit of a big Independent organization, putting out wild west thrillers for the two-for-a-cent stunt star, Art Arthurs. Arthurs was a good egg, and the only one in the lot about whom my sensitive nostrils could not detect an aroma of ham. He wasn't at the field. He was over in Mexico, drunk.

"Then you'll assign a couple of your best flyers for that sham battle tomorrow afternoon, eh?" Barry inquired of Kennard.

Kennard nodded. We had orders from headquarters to cooperate to the fullest with the movie people, because of the publicity the Air Service would get.

"I'll be one of 'em!" announced Dumpy. "I'll put on a real show for you!"

In the second of silence which fell over the gathering at this generous attempt to save Kennard trouble, Dumpy's eyes roved to Corrigan, who was pulling on his pipe with a saturnine grin on his face.

"Inasmuch as Corrigan, here, knows so much about flying, maybe he'd like to be the other one and show me some good tricks!" Dumpy went on, a nasty challenge in his voice and eyes.

His conceit, I thought gleefully, had been punctured for once.

And if Corrigan, plus the wreck, had got under Dumpy's skin, Corrigan's epidermis had been punctured likewise for some unknown reason. He didn't say a word, but that red glow leaped into his eyes and there were streaks of lightning passing between the two of them as their gazes held. Everybody there knew instinctively that Dumpy wanted to show Corrigan up on the morrow.

Kennard broke the tension.

"We'll be ready for you," was all he said as he got to his feet.

As the group scattered to the two cars which had been supplied by the frenzied Chamber of Commerce, I saw Vivian Darling speak to Tex MacDowell and Tex shake his head in apparent regret. When she said good-by to Corrigan her eyes held his for a moment, and she said:

"You'll come to see me, won't you? I'd like to talk to you about your art. I've always been so interested in things of that sort."

"Why—er—certainly," he grunted in his customary brusk fashion.

"Hey, Mr. Barry! Got room for me?" inquired Dumpy loudly. "I'm going to town."

Without waiting for an answer, he ensconced himself in one of the cars alongside the curly-haired dumb belle. There was nothing the matter with his nerve at any time.

"By the way, where do Tex and Bob get off for so much attention from this Darling girl?" enquired Pop Cravath, our bald-headed adjutant, as the calvacade disappeared in dust.

"It may have something to do with the fact that Tex's dad is one of the richest men in Texas," snorted Corrigan, "and that about half McMullen figure I make at least twenty thousand a year."

"Furthermore," grinned Tex, "she's about one jump ahead of mother parts."

That she might, as thus unchivalrously suggested, be receptive to matrimony combined with money didn't seem so unlikely, at that. She was no star, you understand. In fact, the whole company were unknowns as far as I knew.

At supper that night the matter of the combat next day was talked over idly. It was a case of two flyers doubling for actors. Whether or not Corrigan was to fly was not in the foreground of the conversation. I think everybody had the same idea I did—that Dumpy was a whale of a flyer, Corrigan only good, and that he'd tie Corrigan in knots and come down talking longer, louder and more persistently than ever. Fellows like Tex and Jimmy Jennings, who was an ace, and Kennard, who'd all snared themselves a Boche or two, might whip Dumpy, because he'd never been in an actual scrap. Nevertheless, it wasn't precisely easy to give vent to such sentiments.

Or wasn't, until Sleepy Spears came back from town around eleven o'clock and broke into the poker and bridge games with some news.

"Dumpy's telling the whole town about the dog-fight tomorrow and advising everybody to come out to see the most sensational flying ever done," announced Sleepy. "He's a little drunk, and to hear him tell it it's a scrap for the honor of the Marfa flight, the good of the movies, and the final proof that Dumpy Aliwicious Scarth is the greatest flyer on the border. He's trailing the movie people, spending money like water and, in general, raising ——. Old Sheriff Trowbridge is telling all his friends, and it looks like an occasion between the town's curiosity about the movies and one thing and another."

Kennard looked at Corrigan.

"I can cut Dumpy out of it altogether," he mused. "But he sort of challenged you, Bob, and all that stuff. If it don't come off, the little squirt'll be yapping all over the Air Service. What say?"

NOW Corrigan, to be in character, shouldn't have given a single, solitary ——. He didn't give a hoot for publicity or a crowd, and Dumpy's chatter, if broadcast to the world, ordinarily wouldn't have made any more difference to him than the hoot of a bullfrog in a New Jersey marsh. But some way, somehow, Dumpy had got under his skin with the same effect as a burr under a saddle has on a horse.

"Unless somebody else wants a crack at him, I do," he announced grimly. "I'll bid three hearts."

So that was that, and next afternoon we gathered sadly for the slaughter. Four or five hundred cars lined the airdrome on two sides, and easily a couple of thousand McMullenites watched an hour and a half of movie making. They were taking a lot of little shots, like Art Arthurs supposedly taking off with Dumpy a mechanic in the back seat, and all that stuff. I didn't know what the plot of the instalment was, except that both villain and hero had airplanes and Laura Mae Lee, the gal, was in a —— of a fix. This Vivian Darling was the villainess of the piece.

For the scrap they had blank machine gun cartridges that would throw a lot of smoke, and one camera on the ground and another to take stuff from the air. I was to take the fox-faced little cameraman up for those.

Dumpy was in his glory. Right then Paradise was just a summer resort compared to McMullen, with his name on every lip and all that stuff. He swaggered around his ship, acted like one of the company, and ever and anon cast contemptuous looks at Corrigan. Whether or not there'd been anything between them before or not, that little incident of the day before had made enemies of two men who ordinarily were the last specimens in the world you'd figure would be mixed up in anything of the sort.

I went up first, flying the twelve cylinder Liberty wide open to get altitude fast. Dumpy and Corrigan followed. I wasn't enthused at the prospect; Corrigan'd just be licked to a frazzle and Dumpy that much harder to live with. And any tricks Corrigan had up his sleeve—he'd been overseas likewise—wouldn't mean so much. With that crowd down below Dumpy Scarth would be an aerial whirlwind, a flyer who knew not fear, but only craziness. And with the movies to top it off, Dumpy'd have tried to land on his back of it would help any.

They were to come at each other at four thousand feet, head on, and the fight start evenly. Both were flying ton and a half DeHaviland bombers with four hundred and fifty horsepower motors. Which ships are no cinch to maneuver, and too frail to do too much with.

I got in position and drummed up and down above them while they jockeyed for position. Finally they were set, and started on signal from the ground.

Both were flying wide open, I could see that, and the two ships roared toward each other like two monsters of the air intent on a collision. The first man who gave way would be at a disadvantage, and Dumpy's nerve would hold under the circumstances. Smoke was coming from both guns.

Then Corrigan went into a dive at the last minute. If Dumpy'd done that too, they'd have met, head-on. Dumpy banked like a flash to get on Corrigan's tail.

Right there Corrigan caused my eyes to pop out so far they bumped against my goggles. The second he started his dive he banked, and in a moment was diving at right angles to his former course. Two seconds of a full-power dive, and by the time Dumpy was around, looking for the ship below him, Corrigan was coming up in the first half of a loop.

He had so much speed it seemed as if that D.H. arched upward six hundred feet. Dumpy was far below now, but in a second Corrigan would be on his back, and then have to come swooping down out of it.

But he didn't. Just as the D.H. was about to go over on its back on top of the arc, it started to turn. I couldn't hear myself, but I gave a whoop of joy. Corrigan could do the true Immelmann, and I felt as if I was thrusting the stick forward and kicking the rudder myself as the D.H. turned on its fore and aft axis and came level. He'd saved every inch of altitude, was level, and to his left Dumpy was banking again, trying to get pointed at him from at least three hundred feet below.

Corrigan, by that one maneuver which I hadn't dreamed he could perform, had gained the strategic position. Altitude's the most important word in any kind of flying.

Like a flash he went into a full dive, pointed at Dumpy's ship. With his advantage, it didn't take a second to get on Scarth's tail.

But he didn't stay long, for Dumpy, whom I knew was raging, heartbroken, utterly crazy, started to fly. He threw his ship around the sky in twists and turns that came so fast I could hardly follow them. He handled that D.H. as an ordinary flyer might maneuver a little scout. It was impossible for Corrigan to keep riding his tail, but always he was above him and often pointed down at him. That D.H. of Dumpy's was a bucking, rearing, skidding, slipping, stunting outlaw, but Corrigan had the edge because he had the altitude.

Two minutes of this sort of flying, and I knew that Dumpy's ship must be a loose-wired, vibrating, over-strained hulk. DeHavilands aren't built for that. I was relieved when Corrigan zoomed up and started spiraling down toward the brown handkerchief below, with hundreds of smudgy white faces like a border around it.

But Dumpy was not through. He must do something to save at least a remnant of his conceit. So he tried to hornswoggle the laymen below by getting on Corrigan's tail, spiraling down behind him, and acting as if he was riding the McMullen flyer down to the ground.

He did a good job of it too. He got so close my breath wasn't working regularly. Sometimes there was less than two feet between the ships. And flying a ship that close at a hundred miles an hour, with no brakes to help you, in bumpy Texas air is no restful diversion, even to watch. But Dumpy, master flyer that he was, did it.

Corrigan evidently got sick of it and worried. I saw him look back repeatedly and finally level out and motion Dumpy down. Dumpy flew his ship up alongside him. He edged his left wing into the area between Corrigan's fuselage and right wing. Closer and closer he came as they flew over the field, the ships rising and falling in the air currents. It was beautiful formation flying, but too close. A man could have stepped from wing to wing.

What happened I don't know. I think a combination of an upward current of warm air which Corrigan, ahead and a foot or two lower, got into first. His ship started upward, and just then Dumpy must have eased forward a bit on his throttle. Or maybe the motor picked up a few R. P. M. of itself, and his speed increased slightly. Anyway, the two wings locked and I, with my ostrich-like neck craned over the side of my ship, ripped out one curse and bade the two of them farewell.

Dumpy had at last grandstanded to his doom.

The linen on both wings was ripped, and the wind was turning it inside out. Not a hope for them. This was long before these effete days of "seat packs," when all flyers wear parachutes.

Corrigan's ship went into a dive, and then he banked. And he ripped his crippled wing loose. It was buckled back toward the fuselage, as was Dumpy's.

Then, for the first time, I saw Dumpy's location. His ship, it seemed to me, was over the crowd, and only six or seven hundred feet high. It looked as if the greatest tragedy that had ever hit the Air Service was to happen right then when he crashed among the mob.

Corrigan was coming down in a flat spin. How he kept it so flat I don't know, but by some quirk of the ship's rigging plus his own skill, the nose stayed well up from a straight dive, and the big D.H. spun slowly downward. In the other ship Dumpy, his crippled wing down, was sideslipping desperately to get it over the field.

I was diving madly, my Liberty fairly shrieking and the ship shaking itself to pieces. The wires were shrilling so loudly I could hear them above the motors' roar. Corrigan was sitting like a statue as he whirled downward toward the ground, but Dumpy was fighting like mad. His head was twisting and turning to look at the hysterical mob below, and I could see him braced against the stick, his body taut.

BY SOME miracle, Corrigan's ship hovered above the ground and fell, half on the good wing and half on its nose. The wing broke the shock, and when the dust died down I saw him move in the wreckage. And it didn't catch fire. Then Dumpy crashed within fifteen feet of the crowd, but he'd saved twenty-five lives by his flying. His ship just rammed its wing into the ground.

The ground camera was grinding all the time, I noticed.

I had to wait awhile to land, because the mob just overran the field. Corrigan seemed to be all right, but Dumpy was carried out.

After swooping across the field a few times to clear it, I dropped my ship across the fence and landed in a series of graceful leaps and bounds. I taxied to the line and joined the gang just as Dumpy came limping into our circle, which was the center of a group of about seven hundred milling spectators. The sheriff and a few other intimate friends were in the forefront, of course, and everybody was talking it all over. Here and there women were being resuscitated, and Major Searles, our flight surgeon, made up for ten years of loafing in about half an hour.

Dumpy and I sort of collided with the flyers at the same time. And he didn't waste a minute.

"A —— of a flyer you are! he blazed to Corrigan. "Can't even fly your ship straight and level when you're leading a formation! You made me—"

"Shut up!" barked Corrigan as the crowd pressed closer.

"I won't shut up!" yelled Dumpy, his mind full of just one thing. That was to alibi himself in front of the crowd. "You threw your ship in front of mine. Couldn't even fly it level or straight! Of all the flyers ever on the border, you're the worst! You couldn't fly a formation a hundred feet apart! Why, I was sliding along nice as pie—"

Big Corrigan just stepped forward and clamped his hand over fat, little Dumpy's mouth. There was that red glow in his dark eyes again, and his black hair was standing up in an unruly mass. Somehow, though, it did not seem to me he was in such a —— of a temper.

"Now you'll listen to me, you big-headed, crazy young fool! Trying to show off before this crowd, by ——, and flying a close formation when the air's so thin and the bumps so hard you couldn't control a kite in it! And just because I'm still alive doesn't mean that I shouldn't beat you to death and close that mouth of yours forever! Do you understand that? Between bumps and other things you ran into me, and anything else you say is a —— lie and the alibi of a fatheaded little fool that would go to and —— back and carry anybody else with him to get his name in the paper!"

Dumpy was struggling helplessly in the big fellow's grasp. Corrigan went on without passion, and he just undressed Dumpy, showed him naked to the world, and then took him apart and put him together again. Dumpy, humiliated, raging, knowing he was wrong, wriggled furiously with hot tears in his eyes.

"There, by ——, for once in your life somebody's told you the truth," grated Corrigan, and let Dumpy go.

Scarth fairly threw himself on Corrigan, fists doubled and snarling indistinguishable things. We were surging forward to grab him, but we didn't need to. Corrigan's ham-like fists had him helpless in a second.

"Some more grandstand!" he sneered contemptuously. "I could break you in two and you know it. Just acting, that's all. By yourself you'd run from a six-year-old boy!"

Corrigan had every excuse. He'd just escaped death by a gnat's whisker, and Dumpy, under the conditions, was just a fool youngster who was utterly beside himself at his humiliation, the aerial beating he'd taken, his own flying mistake, and a thousand people, including his girl and the movie people, looking on. Nevertheless, I didn't feel comfortable. Corrigan was being unnecessarily cruel, somehow. It was far from a pleasant sight to look at Dumpy—down deeper in the depths than he'd ever been—and Corrigan rubbing it in.

I'd thought Corrigan was too big for that. Besides, while Dumpy'd been worse than ever during his stay, the little chunk of fat was the kind of a good-humored freak that we hadn't taken seriously and couldn't be very mad at.

When Corrigan released him again Dumpy stood quietly, his face red as a beet and his chest heaving. The fat had gathered around his eyes, and they were like vicious little pin points in his fleshy face.

It was an ugly scene there in public. Dumpy's mouth opened twice, but for the first time in my experience no words gushed forth. He was so mad he couldn't talk. In Corrigan's harsh attitude there was a certain contempt, an attitude which seemed to say that Dumpy wasn't worth treating as anything but a child.

"I—I dare you to go up with me again!" raved Dumpy finally. "I'll show you who's the flyer around here."

"That'll be about all of this!" barked Captain Kennard. "Come on, boys—"

"He don't dare go up with me again! I'll bet him a thousand dollars—"

"Pipe down!"

It was like the snap of a whip, and the Captain's mouse-colored, close-clipped hair stood up like a porcupine's quill. He didn't often bite 'em off like that, but when he did, whoever he was talking to felt it. Corrigan sort of snorted a disgusted snort in Dumpy's general direction.

I could see Mr. Ronald Fairman, highly perfumed juvenile, grinning with delight. That was once he showed his teeth without thinking about it, I presume.

We scattered, and in about three minutes Dumpy was whirling off to town alongside Laura Mae Lee, while the jubilant juvenile, not quite so jubilant then, occupied the starboard position.

It left a bad taste in the flight's mouth, and Corrigan had lost considerable of his solid popularity. At dinner the subject was not referred to except in passing, but the demeanor of the flyers told the tale. Corrigan, as usual, was himself, and while he must have known that we figured a full-grown man had taken advantage of a child, he didn't give a ——.

It further deepened the slight tinge of mystery which enveloped the rugged giant, at that. He'd come into the flight unknown, except by the reputation his magazine work had given him, and proceeded to do exactly the right thing. As always, a man who can keep his mouth shut aroused respect. He didn't try to get too genial, joined in when invited, replied intelligently when spoken to, minded his own business and speedily showed himself a mature man who was a good egg and knew, in general, what it was all about. He positively refused to talk about himself in any manner, and kept to himself a good deal. Did an awful lot of reading. While he was friendly, he gave no grounds for thinking that any one in the flight meant much to him. As a social ornament he was as useless as I am, and curtly snipped off all attempts on the part of McMullen people to make a two-for-a-cent lion out of him. When he did enter an argument or announce an opinion it was with a sardonic mockery and accurate knowledge that couldn't be mistaken.

All of which made the fact that Dumpy Scarth had lassoed his nanny and had it bucking all over the place more mysterious than ever, and subtly but unmistakably jerked Corrigan three or four steps down from his former exalted position.

DUMPY didn't show up at the airdrome that night, nor the next day. But around five-thirty Barry came hustling out to the field, Mr. Jason Young, modern mortician, acting as chauffeur and Mr. Gregg Houston, raving realtor, acting as escort for Vivian Darling. Vivian buttonholed Corrigan to one side while Barry, his fine eyes flaming with enthusiasm and his ingrowing chin wobbling nervously, sprung the news.

"We'll have to ask for some more cooperation, Captain!" he sputtered. The squat little director was a human dynamo. "We can use all the shots we took practically. The cameramen got everything—collision, crashes, everything. Building on those accidents as a foundation, we're going to produce the greatest two-reel serial instalment the business ever had, and the most sensational air pictures ever filmed! Changed the whole script of the episode to take 'em in.

"Furthermore, I've been assured over the long distance phone that the Government will sell us an old DeHaviland airplane, and Lieutenant Scarth has offered to deliberately crash it for us, as well as doing some other extraordinary flying feats. Of course we'll pay him liberally. The idea of the story now is that—"

"What did you say?" roared Corrigan, cutting off one of the fair Vivian's verbal gushers before it got well under way. "Dumpy going to crash a DeHaviland?"

"Come down five thousand feet in sensational fashion as if out of control, level out apparently by accident and as though the ship was still out of control, and crash. He says—"

"Nobody cares what he says," Corrigan barked rudely. "Did you offer to put his name in the picture and take a close-up? If you do, he'll be glad to set fire to his ship at ten thousand feet for you and then jump out without a parachute."

"Are you—his guardian?" snapped Barry.

"No. The good Lord has been so far, but it looks as if that was about over."

"Well, it's his own offer, and I presume he's twenty-one," the considerably wrought up director remarked, and then went on to explain the film.

The idea of the finale was that Dumpy, supposed to be the villain in an escaping plane and trying to get across the border with the loot or something, was to be chased by the whole flight, with the hero in the lead ship. Furthermore, the half dozen principal characters were to all fly, and the pictures be taken in such a way that an audience would know that they weren't faked. Shots in the air and from the ground. Barry had the incidents of the day before all worked in.

The finale was the shooting down of Dumpy after another terrific air battle, with shots of his plane falling all the way down and the crash. Barry calmly announced that the crash was to be in the mesquite, right close to the river.

Can you imagine that fool Dumpy offering to crack up a DeHaviland that way?

He was on leave, wasn't in our flight, and it was his own business. Nevertheless, dinner was devoted to a blasphemous discussion of the matter in which Corrigan took no part. He sat silently, his mahogany face savage and his bushy, black eyebrows drawn together in a frown.

"Dumpy right now, added to his natural nuttiness," summed up George Hickman, "is half crazy because he's been shown up publicly in a variety of ways. He's just a lunatic now, ready to kill himself to prove he's good."

He might have added what we all were thinking, but he didn't. Said cogitations were that the open razzing of Mr. Robert Corrigan had led to the present status quo of one Lieutenant Scarth.

If there was any doubt of Dumpy's condition, it was dissipated when he sort of sneaked out to the field next day, got his suitcase and left word that he was going to stay in town from then on at the hotel. Pop Cravath reported that Dumpy was far from himself—in a sort of hysterical and raving condition. He didn't want to talk to any flyers, it seemed, until he regained his proper position at the top of the heap.

A couple of nights later Jimmy Jennings, Sleepy Spears and young Carson, social representatives and official footflingers of the flight, returned from a dance in honor of the company to announce that Vivian Darling and Dumpy were thick as molasses, and that you couldn't have slid a piece of tissue paper between 'em all evening.

"Furthermore," announced Jimmy, "I have it on good authority that said condition has existed for three days now. Apparently the young vacuum has been discarded for the old warhorse. And has she got Dumpy wound around her finger? Gentlemen, hush!"

"He's talking more than ever, but somehow there isn't the real confidence there," Sleepy told us. "He's licked a little, I'm afraid. He still believes in himself, but he isn't sure that everybody else does."

Corrigan, who'd been like a shaggy bear in an evil temper for two days, listened and said nothing. But the next night, shaved, shined, shampooed and thoroughly shellacked, he took off in his knockout roadster for town.

Furthermore, from then on he was away often. And my secret agents, including Sheriff Trowbridge and our thé dansant trio, speedily informed me of the fact that Corrigan was endeavoring earnestly to make Miss Darling forget Dumpy. And, surprizing to state, the estimate of the beauteous lady, formerly uttered by the cynical Corrigan and the irrepressible MacDowell, seemed to be wrong. For Dumpy seemed to have the edge in every direction and Corrigan took the leavings. His car and his money and his flowers and dinners apparently didn't mean so much if the time she spent with each was any criterion.

Dumpy not only had no money to speak of, but in his mad endeavor to hold the spotlight he was going in debt. Reliable reports were that a party he'd swung in Mexico had cost him three hundred berries, and he had a note at the bank for three hundred more. I was one of the signers. His insurance would 'tend to it, I figured.

The only times I saw Corrigan and Dumpy together were when shots were being taken at the field, and the feud sure could have given the mountaineers of Kentucky some points. Corrigan was all over Dumpy all the time. Every time Dumpy started talking flying, Corrigan would set him down. He humiliated the little geezer, taunted him, sneered at him.

"How many consecutive loops did you perform in the hotel lobby last night, or didn't you have an audience?" was a sample greeting.

Dumpy'd rage helplessly, dare Corrigan into the air with him and all that stuff. And to see them maneuver for the favors of this Darling woman was laughable in Dumpy's case and somehow contemptible in Corrigan's. He was about as expert at love making as a shad is at chewing tobacco. It made him look foolish.

I'd never have dreamed that a petty personal spite would turn him into a boorish bully and a simpering cake-eater at the same time, and I felt sorry. I'd liked the man.

THINGS got worse and worse as the time approached when the last strand of red tape would be unwound from that old DeHaviland and said crate be delivered for the slaughter. Not only was Dumpy's nearing attempt to crash the front pages via the suicide route getting so close that we couldn't help but think about it, but he himself was going to —— in a hand basket. His chances of coming out of that wreck unharmed were approximately those of a snail's dashing across Fifth Avenue at five in the afternoon in good health, but it looked as if he'd drink himself to death before he let a crashed DeHaviland catch fire with him.

Corrigan was spending money like water and evidently urging Dumpy on to outdo him. Between showing off to the movie folks and the world in general, trying to outdo Corrigan and squeezing the last drop of publicity out of his coming soiree, Dumpy was boiled to the ears most of the time, getting an unhealthily bright look in his eyes and dropping flesh by the pound. We finally broke a rule, and some of us tried to reason with him, but he was beyond reason. He was totally cuckoo, and one sneer from Corrigan would have outweighed all the flossy verbiage the rest of the flight could have dug up in a month.

All of which finished the job of making Corrigan a pariah. It wasn't too obvious, but all our respect for him was gone. I still held to the hope that there was something behind it all which might excuse the big fellow, somehow, and I had to admire the hard-shelled flyer's total obviousness. Apparently his position didn't bother him at all. If there ever lived a bozo who could have lived happily by himself on a desert island it was him.

Finally Dumpy went to San Antone and got the ship, and when he landed in, he borrowed a hundred bucks from me to sling a last party. He was nervous, fidgety, his eyes bloodshot, and his nerves were jumping like so many grasshoppers. He could scarcely wait to get to town. Every living soul in McMullen, of course, was looking forward to the events of the morrow with all the anticipation they'd have for a hanging or any other social diversion of the sort. Barry felt that he'd wasted too much time as it was, and was anxious to get it over, so it had been broadcast to the world that the morrow was the day.

And of course, from one end of town to another Dumpy would be a marked man. It was his night to howl, and he was not the man to overlook any bets. I'd have taken one to ten that he'd propose at least ten toasts to his last night on earth.

I really expected that Kennard would take some steps to prevent the stunt coming off, but not a thing happened through the hot and humid evening nor the hotter and more humid morning which ushered in the day. And when ten o'clock came and Dumpy showed up, we all resigned ourselves to the fact that all was to happen as scheduled.

He was in pitiful shape. That party must have been a lulu, and hadn't helped him any. In addition, even he had sense enough to know that crashing a D.H. in the mesquite was something for any man to be frightened of. His eyes were bloodshot, his face flabby and white, and his hands quivered all the time.

All was ready just before noon. I was to fly the aerial cameraman again and was to take off first. As I taxied out on the field I saw the other boys crawling in their ships like whipped dogs. As for me, I could have taken Barry, Dumpy and Corrigan up ten thousand feet in a bag and dropped the whole three of 'em overboard.

SOUTHWARD over Mexico and eastward toward the Gulf heavy cloud-banks lay sullenly, and there was a feeling of a storm in the air. However, nobody suggested waiting. The border patrol flies in any weather, like the Air Mail, and besides, we were all anxious to get those movie people through and get them out of town before Dumpy, in case he was still among us, blew up and burst.

The first trip was a formation chasing Dumpy out over the mesquite. After a lot of aerial shots, we'd return, and then Dumpy'd crash in a field on the edge of the river. After cameras were set and all that, of course.

So off we went, northwest, Dumpy out in front about five hundred yards. We had to go about forty miles to get the wildest country, where the camera would show nothing but mesquite as far as the most phenomenal optic could operate. Each flyer had an actor, Corrigan carrying Vivian Darling. I had a cameraman, and when we reached our objective I was very busy with him, maneuvering around so he could get close shots of each ship, taking in the ground at the same time as the faces. All of which was to prove that the picture was on the level.

I've got to say one thing—the actors were game.

It was close, tricky work. Flying formation, fifty feet apart is no job for an amateur, and in addition, I had to sneak close to each ship for the pictures, get high for others taking in Dumpy, and various other matters of import.

I was so busy and so were the rest that we didn't watch the clouds that were rolling up on us. Where we were there were a lot of snowy cumulous clouds, but from south and east tremendous black rain clouds were rolling toward us. One of those quick Texas thunderstorms, so heavy they'd drown a man with one of these retroussé beaks. I knew it was getting close, but figured we'd fly around it.

We were sixty miles from home, over the trackless chaparral, when Kennard, flying Barry, gave the signal to turn back. By some uncanny means the storm had practically surrounded us. There was one opening northward, and we all made for that, flying wide open. My air-speed meter showed a hundred and thirty an hour. I was diving a little, but the Liberty was sure stepping it off at no mean velocity on its own.

The formation had scattered. It was every man for himself. I could see Dumpy's white ship below me and to my right. We all had the same idea—slip through that hole, thence around the storm, to the east and back home.

The wind was getting terrific now, blowing into the storm. And as I looked down I could see the solid mass of rain that was pouring from that pile of dirty, gray mist. It looked black in the middle.

We got out of the middle of it, and I banked eastward. Dirty weather, mates, very dirty weather. For the storm extended from horizon to horizon as far as I could see, billowing in from the east and coming up from the south. There was nothing to it but to dive in and fly through or get forced endlessly northward.

I knew not what course others might take. The storm was coming like a house afire, the clouds piled at least twelve or thirteen thousand feet high. The wind was whipping my ton-and-a-half ship like a feather. But it would only be a few minutes, I figured. A thunderstorm doesn't take long to fly through.

In a second I was on the outskirts of the clouds, hurtling into the dead blackness within. One last look back showed the other boys scattering for the ordeal. The next second drops of rain were stinging my face like so many needles. An instant later everything was blotted out as the D.H., bellowing defiance, shot straight into the maw of the storm.

In less than a minute I knew that I was in the worst storm of my career. The churning mist was opaque. Sometimes I couldn't see the ends of my wings. The water made my goggles as useful as though they'd been made of wood. My face was a constant torture as each drop of rain, due to our speed, became a tiny stiletto stabbing into my skin.

The ground was out of sight—nothing but mist. It was impossible to keep level. At one second the air-speed meter would jump to two hundred miles an hour, and I'd blindly pull up. The goggles were fairly torn from my face as the ship skidded and slipped and bucked in the terrific air currents that were whirling into the vortex of the storm. The D.H. was thrown around like a chip in a whirlpool. Jagged streaks of lightning split the dead blackness every few seconds, and the crash of the thunder was like the voices of the gods of the storm. That D.H. which had seemed so mighty was only a plaything, at the mercy of the elements. The motor's roar was almost indistinguishable.

Blinded, tortured, fighting desperately to keep the ship level with my feet braced against the rudder and the stick in both hands to keep it from being wrested from me, I didn't know where I was going. The electricity in the storm made the compass useless. The altimeter changed a thousand feet in less than a minute, as upward or downward currents caught the ship and threw it as they listed. The ship was vibrating in every strut and spar, and the flying and landing wires were quivering so they looked ten times as wide as they were.

I found myself hurtling downward at more than two hundred miles an hour at one time, and once when I was straining my eyes to see a foot ahead, the ship stalled and fell off into a tail-spin that made me sick and dizzy, due to the clouds, before I could pull out. Without the ground to guide me I was helpless to keep the D.H. anywhere near level except by the speed meter and the feel of the wind on my face. At times we were cocked up on one wing while I fought to get the ship level, and the air currents laughed at me.

And all the time the savage pounding of the rain and the lightning that played around the ship in blinding light. Somewhere in that churning mass of mist, eight other ships were fighting blindly through, too.

I was cursing a steady stream as I thought of it all. Ever since that bunch of actors had arrived, bad luck had dogged our trail, and now it seemed that it was going to overtake us with a vengeance. This was no ordinary storm, but the sort of tempest that leaves ships scattered in its wake. It wasn't humanly possible that we could all get through all right, and down below there was nothing but mesquite to land in.

Then my heart turned three fast loops and I stuck the nose of my ship in the air just in time. Like a ghost-ship, a white DeHaviland, dirty gray now, came spinning down through the heart of the storm. It was whirling with dizzy speed, and missed me by less than fifty feet. Just a flashing second, and it was out of sight again.

It was Dumpy's ship, and all I could do was hope he was spinning it deliberately and thank God that he was alone. I felt in my heart, though, as I saw it disappear, that it was out of control. It was going too fast for a ship that had a man at the stick. Maybe, though, he was bent on trying to get down out of the storm and into the rain as fast as possible.

Optimistic as I tried to be, though, that spinning ship was the last straw for me. The world, as far as I was concerned, was a mess, and there was no merit in it.

IT SEEMED that the tempest was increasing in fury, if that was possible. I was utterly helpless and couldn't even handle my stick against the force of the storm. The rain was chewing the tips of my prop to pieces, and as it got out of balance, the Liberty was vibrating itself and the ship to pieces. Once I found myself in a dive so steep that after bracing myself and pulling with all my strength it took eight hundred feet to pull it out. The thunder was a continuous roll of mighty crashes now, and forked lightning split the blackness incessantly. The motor was indistinguishable, my face a raw, red mass of swollen blotches, the ship a quivering wreck in which something must give before long.

And what was happening to me must be happening to the others.

I thought it over and took my chance. I started diving terrifically, watching the altimeter. I was going to get as close to the ground as I could in case we had to go down out of control. I hoped against hope it would be visible when we got close to it. Nearly a mile high as I was, it seemed that the earth was non-existent, that the universe was nothing but swirling mist in which I was doomed to fight a hopeless battle forever, the puny plaything of a Gargantuan aerial whirlpool.

Then it seemed that the bellowing of the storm was lessening. I pulled level, or as near level as I could, as I sensed that the air currents were less powerful. My face was beyond feeling individual drops now, so I couldn't tell whether the rain was slackening. It was just a living sore. But ahead the dark mist seemed to be lightening, turning from black to gray, then to lighter gray, almost to white.

With a mighty roar of triumph the old DeHaviland hurled itself out of the grasp of the last streamers of mist, and into smiling sunlight that turned the endless soaked mesquite into a panorama of flashing, jewel-hung foliage.

I looked at my passenger. The fox-faced little cameraman, Hopkins, was a wreck, and his eyes were wilder than a loco bronc's when he's bucking. His face was untouched. I guess he'd just slumped down in the cockpit and waited blindly for whatever might happen.

Then, as my eyes swept the air and the ground, I sort of froze in my seat. Down below in the mesquite was a wrecked airplane, and it was white. Dumpy had crashed before he'd planned to.

At that second a soaking DeHaviland sort of fell out of the storm which was hurrying northward. 72—it was Corrigan, and in the back seat Vivian Darling had evidently fainted.

I hurried up to him and pointed downward. As he looked I scrutinized the ground for miles. No sign of life. Dumpy was in the wreck.

I looked over at Corrigan, who was gazing down at the man he had disliked with such venom. Then his helmeted head turned to me—he was about fifty feet away from me—and he pointed to me and then made circles with his finger. Then he pointed to himself, then south and then back to Dumpy.

It meant that I should circle over the spot to identify it in that trackless desert while he went for some kind of help. I had a ruined prop, a strained ship, weak muscles and an excellent chance of a forced landing within half an hour, but I couldn't leave Dumpy down there in the wilderness while I knew he might be alive. I gave Corrigan credit for having a plan, and he had a woman with him, too, who ought to get her feet on the ground. So I waved him on, and he sped south for the river to get his bearings. He, like my elongated self, could have no more idea of where he was than as though he'd landed on the moon by mistake.

It wasn't a pleasant tour for me, with a dive into the mesquite at seventy miles an hour a strong possibility and pitiful, broken Dumpy below. That hour before Corrigan got back was the longest I ever spent.

Pop Cravath, left at the airdrome as O. D., was flying, and a peek at Corrigan in the rear told the tale. He had a parachute strapped to his back. He was going to jump into that mesquite. And brothers, diving from the Washington monument into a wash basin wasn't much worse, in those early parachute days.

I was in sort of a trance as the big flyer got up in his seal, leaning against the propellor blast, his hand on the ripcord. I knew he'd never jumped before. I'd jumped once, voluntarily, to prove to myself I had nerve enough to do it. When I got in the air I actually jumped because I was more scared to flunk it. But leaping into the air with a pack on your back that's supposed to open isn't a holiday. And into that thick mesquite.

I felt for him as he stood there, and Pop stalled the ship. Eyes shut, and doubtless the most complete, thorough and all-inclusive fear a man ever feels in his heart, he jumped into space with his eyes shut.

He fell like a rocket as I followed him down. Then the chute flared white in the air, and he was swinging terrifically beneath it. Close to the ground he began slipping the big umbrella by hauling on the shroud-lines from harness to the umbrella, and he crashed, at fifteen feet a minute, directly into a mesquite tree.

He cut himself loose, and limped toward Dumpy. I saw he had a bag of some kind with him. Maybe he'd learned to be a rough and ready surgeon during some spot in his checkered career. I watched him dig into the wreck and carry Dumpy out. For a long minute he knelt over him, and then with sticks he made a big O. K. in a tiny treeless space.

I followed Cravath back to McMullen, feeling as if I'd just inherited some money and had four stiff drinks.

It was only forty miles, it proved, and already the other ships had returned in safety. Major Searles and Sleepy Spears were on their way to a field fifteen miles due south of where Dumpy had fallen, and other ships with men to carry him were warming up.

THEY got him home early next morning, unconscious from weakness and loss of blood, but he wasn't badly off otherwise. Corrigan had carried him nearly five miles before the others met him. A ship had marked his course to guide the searchers. The big flyer reported that Dumpy had come to long enough to admit that he'd got into a spin and simply went unconscious. That was due to his physical condition, of course.

Corrigan spent the whole day with him in the hospital, and next day, for some obscure reason, he invited me to go along. It was the first tumble he'd given any individual in the flight, except Dumpy.

And it didn't take five minutes with the two to discover that something had happened between them. There seemed to be real affection and a new humility in the weak Scarth's attitude. It was sort of a father and son effect, and Corrigan's usual bruskness held a softer note even in his more or less ferocious kidding. Dumpy was still cocky, irrepressible, and unconquered, but it was a healthier sort of attitude, and he knew just what a fool he'd been making of himself for once.

Finally Corrigan remarked:

"Dumpy, there's one thing I didn't mention. You weren't feeling so good yesterday. I cut in on this Darling woman because I figured she was making a fool of you, causing you to spend too much and maybe other complications—and I was sure I could because she's just a food pup willing to marry money."

Dumpy looked embarrassed, hesitated and finally his face expanded in a shamefaced grin.

"She stuck like a burr, and we had a lot of fun and all that, but it was really Laura Lee I wanted to vamp. Between that ham Fairman and Vivian I had to sneak around to see her. And—and that last party I gave I got pretty tight and got myself engaged, —— it!"

I laughed until my toenails cracked at the wobegone grin on Dumpy's face. And Corrigan, for the first time to my knowledge, let go. He snorted and belched and yelled and strangled. Finally he came to and said breathlessly—

"And me lying to Vivian about how much money I made and had, and her with a thousand dollar ring picked out!"

"How are we going to get out of it?" queried Dumpy lugubriously.

"I'll fix that," Corrigan told him grimly. "But what I want to know is why Vivian picked on you."

"I have the germ of an idea," I announced. "Barry knew we were all trying to tout Dumpy off, crashing that ship. Maybe he wanted to complete his spell over Dumpy and counteract our influence by having an experienced vamp help horse him into it. I noticed they kept Dumpy away from us."

"That's it!" yelped Dumpy, and another pillar of his self-esteem was gone. She was always making a nervy hero out of me and talking about being a high-priced stunt man in the movies."

"Maybe she thought you were a prospect at that," grunted Corrigan.

Soon thereafter we left, and I was just interested enough in the finale of the battle between Corrigan and Dumpy to ask in a very subtle manner—

"You don't happen to want to maybe perhaps loosen up and tell me just what the deadly enmity between you and Dumpy was, and the whys and wherefores of the present brotherly love and affection, do you?" I inquired.

"Oh, nothing much," he returned. "I got to like the little devil in Laredo. He's so —— genuine and cocky and sincere. He couldn't hide his feelings if he wanted to, and his worst boasts he really thinks are well founded. Because I figured his mania for flying—the scientific end as well as the actual air work—would make him a big man in the Air Service some day if he gave himself a chance, I started to try and knock the small time stuff out of him. He's got a good head on him, and he's likable as —— except for his alibi stuff and his jealousy.

"I got under his skin in Laredo, and then here I figured enough public humiliation, added to his mistakes, might give him some needed sense and tone him down a bit.

"I talked it over with Kennard, and I guess it's done him some good. Incidentally, even if he hadn't been hurt, the Cap wasn't going to let him go up. Searles would have declared him unfit to fly, and kiboshed that stunt."

While I chewed that over, I took occasion to ask him what he was going to do about his and Dumpy's affairs of the heart.

"Spread the news, with everybody's cooperation, that Dumpy's crippled for life, for one thing," he grinned. "Something on the same order for me. Busted the painting hand or something. Maybe lost all my supposed money, too."

Apparently it worked. Nobody ever heard from the fair damsels again after they left town, so far as I know.

I got a lot of mental fodder out of the thing, and what tickled me especially was the way Corrigan had carried on in his bull-headed way, without thought or care of what anybody else in the world might think of what he was doing. He'd just taken it into his head to casually mangle and then reconstruct young Dumpy, and that was every bit of it.

Which all goes to show that no matter how hard you boil a good egg, the shell stays just as thin.