Everybody's Magazine/The Air Rangers

The Air
Rangers

The Mexican Border
Dope Smugglers
A Battle in the Clouds

This is the Complete Novelette featured on the Front Cover

I HAD found, in my previous soirées as a member of the border patrol, that it was fairly customary down there for events to eventuate with considerable ease and fluency. Nevertheless, it remained for my last tour of duty to demonstrate that one never knows what's around the corner—in the Air Service. Just how I'd have felt as I came rolling into the frolicsome town of McMullen, Texas, had I known what was in store for me I know not. I anticipated a month or so along the banks of the Rio Grande with the old gang. Instead of that, I was doomed to collide with Mr. Percival Enoch O'Reilly for a considerable period, and to be hurled, as it were, into various matters in rapid succession. Such as the Bell-Farwell circus, for instance, and the flourishing village of Tampico, Mexico, and the huge dirigible hight “America.” To say nothing of Mr. Frederich Von Sternberg, customarily called the Count.

However, that's overreaching myself as far as a candidate trying to be elected by the Prohibition party. The immediate business before the house concerns Percival Enoch O'Reilly—as most of the incidents in my life for the following three months concerned him—with the supporting cast including Dumpy Scarth.

I—I being first Lieutenant John Evans of the Army Air Service—had been stationed on the border, off and on, for nigh upon four years.

You may not know it, but the Army Air Service ran a patrol along the Rio Grande to supplement the efforts of the rangers, the cavalry, and the Customs Service in the unending struggle which goes on down there. Around a hundred picked flyers sent their De Haviland airplanes frolicking up and down that stretch of. country several times a day, and the flights were always on the alert for a hurry call for help. McMullen was the most easterly station for the flyers, and the western end of the patrol was at Rockwell Field, which abuts on the Pacific Ocean. Other flights were at Laredo, Del Rio, Marfa, Sanderson, El Paso, Douglas, Nogales, etc., each consisting of around a dozen flyers and observers and a squad of mechanics.

A FEW months before this particular day, which found me making the last lap back to McMullen, I'd been ordered up north to Cook Field as a test pilot. Now I was on my way back, on temporary duty. Said duty concerned clearing up some army property which had been charged to me on the border, and which my successor, strange to say, could not find. Any army man who's ever had large property responsibility will understand thoroughly why it might be necessary for me to use my legal talents to save myself owing the government approximately ten times as much as my salary for life would amount to.

And I was curiously nervous and fidgety and happy, so to speak, as the dusty branch line train pulled into the well-remembered station. It was great to be home again. And when I slid off the steps, and beheld Captain Kennard, Lieutenants Jimmy Jennings, Sleepy Spears, George Hickman and others of the veterans, there to meet me, I forgot the blasting heat and the inch of dust with which I was covered. Along with them was Sheriff Bill Trowbridge, leading minion of the law for Hidalgo County, and Mayor Sam Edwards, and a few other local lights who'd played poker, chased smugglers, or gone for a ride with the dozen flyers who'd made up the McMullen flight for five years.

Sounds as though I was some conquering hero returning to an ovation. That, brethren, is indeed far from the truth. The simple facts were that McMullen considered the airmen as part of the town. They knew every one of us personally, appreciated having the advertisement which the gang gave the town, and had been mixed up with various of our enterprises in no uncertain manner. Many a thing had happened in five years—and the town knew every one of them. And naturally some of the inhabitants, like the gargantuan old sheriff, for instance, had worked alongside us in a dozen different battles against the scum which infests the border. I was just one of the town boys coming home.

There being but one train a day from San Antone into McMullen, there was always a big crowd out to see that it came to rest properly, and I was busy for some minutes saying hello around. So busy that I didn't really notice, until I climbed into one of the superannuated government cars, that none other than Dumpy Scarth was occupying a seat alongside the Captain.

“Hi, Dumpy,” I greeted the fat, moon-faced little flyer. “No doubt you flew all the way from Laredo just to make the home-coming complete.”

“The hell he did,” grunted Kennard. “Three days ago he transferred from the Laredo flight to McMullen.”

“He's going to polish off our flying,” Sleepy Spears stated gently.

Sleepy's a stocky, somnolent bird who counts any extra effort whatever as so much irretrievable waste of energy. Possibly because of the amount of rest he gets, whenever an emergency comes up he's the fastest, toughest, keenest bird who ever sat at a stick.

Dumpy Scarth chuckled boyishly, his homely round face beaming into mine.

“These birds can kid all they want to!” he proclaimed characteristically, “but believe me I made 'em sit up and take notice when I got a shot at the new S. E. 5 you've got out there! Ask 'em about that upside down roll—”

“God help us,” I interrupted prayerfully. “Listen, Dumpy. I have many matters of import on my mind, such as one of the old tequila cocktails, telling the story of my life, and playing a real band of poker again. The first time you start telling how good you are, I'm going to bind and gag you and ease you into temporary incarceration.”

“Huh!” sniffed Dumpy. “Fat chance anybody'll have to talk about anything, now that you're back!”

FAR be it from me to deny that at times I am loquacious, and easy to urge into speech. However, I received this last shot of Dumpy's in dignified silence, which enables me to make you acquainted with him.

Physically he's short and fat and fleshy-faced with a nice boyish pair of eyes which are easy to make flash and crackle with excited, almost hysterical feeling. And the little squirt was unquestionably the most conceited flyer who ever set his feet against a rudder bar and risked his neck to give some spectator a thrill. Dumpy informed the world at the slightest provocation that he was, without question, the best flyer who ever oozed through the ozone.

And the heck of it was that he came pretty close to being just what he thought he was! There's where the rub came.

Furthermore, flying was the only thing discernible about which he had any illusions. He wasn't over twenty-four or five, had had sort of a tough life in his early days, and being a flying officer was paradise to him. He wouldn't have swapped his job to be a general on the ground. Flying and the army were the ends of existence to him. I think he woke up in the morning and patted himself on the back as he told himself that he was Dumpy Scarth, army pilot. And his waking hours were spent in a continuous endeavor to fly more—and more skillfully. Along with that, to show off so that any lingering doubts the world might have about his ability would be stilled. He'd slap St. Peter in the nose from his ship any day in the week, for applause, and did. There's no doubt at all in my mind that he was, in front of a crowd, the craziest, most daring, and almost as skillful an airman as ever made a landing.

And how he talked, about flying, I mean. Any other flyer who accomplished anything Dumpy became jealous of, belittling the achievement while he mourned the fact that he hadn't had a chance to get that publicity himself. He was perfectly willing to try any stunt, trip, maneuver or test which any man in the world would—and could come as close to being successful. He spent his time thinking up new records to make, stunts to do, grandstand flying to accomplish. If he should be over the Atlantic Ocean, with just precisely enough gas to get him to shore, he'd stop above a rowboat with one man in it and stunt until the gas gave out. One onlooker was a crowd to him—twenty spectators turned him into an aerial demon who'd make a statue quiver like a shimmy dancer.

BUT, as I said, flying was his only vice, unless you include a grandstand tendency in most of his public appearances. Otherwise he was a lovable, impulsive, excitable youngster who could tickle any stringed instrument with skill, warble a million songs—most of them dirty—in a charming barroom tenor, and was good humored and popular despite his complex. He had a hide like an armor plate, and simply couldn't be kidded or shamed out of his free and easy bragging. Insults, suggestions, and razzings rolled off him like spitballs off the sides of a battleship, and as soon as he could get the floor again he'd resume where he left off.

And never forget that before-mentioned fact—he could make good on everything he said! That's what made things so bad.

“How did you happen to come to McMullen, and leave Laredo flat?” I inquired. “Did they get to the point where a field ordinance required you to be muzzled?”

“Nope,” grinned Dumpy serenely. “You lucky stiffs up here always have fallen into more excitement than any other outfit along the river. I wanted to be in on it. Gosh! The newspaper space you've hogged for five years would—”

“Cause Dumpy Scarth to blow up and bust if it continued without him in on it,” Jimmy Jennings interjected.

He's a slim, handsome youngster who was an ace in the war and as good a flyer as they come. In fact, the entire border patrol, if I do say it myself, was selected from the veterans of the service. Getting into the tiny clearings which dot the desert of mesquite we have to fly over is no job for an amateur.

How I got into the patrol I don't know. Just luck, I presume, which was what got a country boll-buster from the wilds of Utah into the Air Service in the first place. My entire stay in college was limited to a two-hour sightseeing tour at the University of Texas.

“Any other new men in the fold?” I asked stocky, scarred-faced Captain Kennard.

Incidentally, that same square, deep-voiced, spike-pompadoured little Captain was the best C. O. along the border. He'd got three planes and a flock of medals with the assorted palms, leaves and pineapples which governments pass out during the war. Having been a civil engineer over half the known world, he had just the right combination to handle a bunch of flying prima donnas—one of the boys most of the time, and a damn good disciplinarian when necessary. I say that in heartfelt sincerity, having been disciplined at one time or another.

SLEEPY SPEARS' heavy eyelids raised a trifle as I asked my question. We had left the crowded main street of McMullen, and were fogging and fanning along through the Mexican quarter, about half-way to the field.

“Didst ever hear of Lieutenant Percival Enoch O'Reilly?” he inquired mildly.

“Don't tell me he's one of us!” was my explosion.

“About to be, this very day. In fact, unless Pete Miller came in cock-eyed from the eastern patrol, the ship that passed over a few minutes ago contained Percival Enoch,” the Captain corroborated. “Know him?”

“No, but I know a lot about him,” I stated.

“That's the fix everybody's in. He's just back from the Philippines,” Jimmy Jennings told me.

“I haven't found any reason why he should be so well-known,” snorted Dumpy Scarth. “What's he ever done? Gosh! You'd think he was a combination of Gueynemer and Fonk and Von Richtofen and Rickenbacker to hear all the chatter! Why, a lot of kid stunts—”

“Oh, dry up, Dumpy,” the Captain told him elegantly. “Strikes me that we've got another playboy around the joint. Thank God you left Tex MacDowell up at Cook Field, Slim.”

“I never shall forget the yarn they tell about Percival's adventures that time martial law was declared in West Virginia and he was sent over with a load of bombs,” chuckled Jennings. “Had a forced landing in a town where the people were hostile, faked martial law to protect himself, and ran that town for thirteen days like it never was run before! They said he had a curfew law, requisitioned the traffic cop's motor-cycle as his private car, and spent half his time with the moonshiners in the mountains.”

“Jim Reade just wrote me a while back from the Islands,” grinned Kennard, “that another of his forced landings got him into the midst of a tribe of unfriendly Moros over there. After everybody thought he was dead, he came back a Chief, Jeffe, President, or whatever it is a Moro ruler is.”

“Well, I personally know that after the war he got out of the army a while, and was in that Kosciusko squadron in Poland and from there got to be something or other in the Lithuanian cavalry,” I told them.

“As a last contribution,” drawled Sleepy Spears, “he was, for the period just preceding his reentry into the Air Service, an instructor in the Mexican Air Service down at Mexico City.”

“What of it?” shrilled Dumpy, unable to hold himself in any longer. “Any guy that wants to go from pillar to post—”

“Nothing, my boy,” rasped the Captain as he avoided a Mexican mutt in the street by an eyelash. “What caused you to sit up and howl whenever his name is mentioned?”

“Oh—all this chatter makes me sick,” growled Dumpy.

Whereat we enjoyed a community grin. Dumpy felt that somebody was arriving who might compete with him for the attention of the Air Service in general, the border and McMullen in particular, and the luscious young ladies thereof individually.

I'll tell you the truth. One Slimuel X. Evans looked forward with considerable relish to setting eyes on this bozo O'Reilly.

HIS career in the Air Service had furnished about as many anecdotes as George Washington's naps have genuine antiques. Some of his escapades were unprintable—all of them funny. Along the western front in France he'd seen active service for exactly six months. In that time he'd never missed a chance to hop any number of Boche. He made five trips across the lines in that six months. Every time he got at least one German official, and each time he got shot up and rested in a hospital. He generated a plan to fly a captured ship over the lines and capture the Kaiser, but that was officially doused. He'd have tried it if they'd let him. And they did whisper the fact about that he'd caught a Kiwi colonel alone one time, said colonel being as popular, deservedly, as the Kaiser himself at the time, and that said colonel didn't appear publicly thereafter for a week. He'd been court-martialed, had Percival, on an average of three times a year during his service, and never convicted because the members of the court martial were too weak from laughing at the testimony to vote.

In a minute the airdrome was in sight, sweltering in the blazing mid-afternoon sun. It was like coming back into my own room. Buildings on the southern side, the little individual tents for the officers beyond them, great black corrugated iron hangars flanking the airdrome to east and west, and the yellow sandy field stretching northward to the low fence which bounded it there. The guards saluted with wide grins, the radio sergeant gestured at me jovially, the mechanics working on the one big De Haviland on the line waved wrenches in greeting, and I felt like a million dollars, except that I was tired. Had I known what the night was to bring forth, I'd have taken a nap.

“Percival is here,” announced Jimmy as we hauled to in front of headquarters with a flourish and a loud backfire. “That's not the patrol ship.”

As we climbed out and went up the steps a man's figure appeared in the doorway.

“Lieutenant O'Reilly reporting for duty, Cap'n!” said a large and hearty voice—and five khaki-clad flyers, including me, turned into statues—if there are any sculped with their mouths open.

So this was Percival Enoch O'Reilly! I remember thinking in total amazement.

For the man in the doorway wasn't an inch over five feet two. In fact, he barely escaped being a dwarf, as far as height went. But what there was of him was sturdy—powerfully sturdy. His short legs, encased in highly polished boots and perfectly fitting breeches, were straight and round and thick. He stood with them well apart, as though planted there for an expected onslaught. Going north, his torso seemed to be poured into his brand new roll-collared blouse. His body was barrel-like, merging into sloping, massive shoulders. Possibly it was because his clothes fitted so tightly that I got the idea that his flesh was hard as rock.

It was his face that turned our goofy looking countenances into grinning masks of welcome, however. Percival Enoch removed his cap after saluting, and shook hands with Kennard as the rest of us inspected him.

His hair, slightly curly and close-clipped, was as red as a burlesque show comedian's nose. Forthright, fiery, flaming red. It was parted exactly in the middle, and slicked down. His eyebrows had faded from much sunlight, and were light streaks across a lineless skin which had been tanned into leather. Red hair and white eyebrows and twinkling blue eyes aren't ordinarily met with in connection with sunburn like that, and it sure was a startling effect.

His short nose, which had been broken, tilted a bit above a tiny little waxed mustache which was also bleached into blondness. His mouth—full of large white teeth—was rather small—almost effeminate. But an angular jaw gave the lie to that.

He seemed to twinkle like an elf, from eyes and mouth and hair. Probably it was the effect of the sunlight on his various hirsute appurtenances, and a certain bristling effect obvious in his eyebrows and that absurd mustache.

“Hello, everybody!” he went on as he shook hands around. He could barely get his short fingers half-way around my own oversized paw, but he purchased enough for a grip which would have done credit to a strong man.

And that deep-booming voice of his! Coming from that toy body, it was as surprising as hearing a fog-horn effect from a tin whistle. He fairly crackled with vitality, joviality and cussedness, if you get what I mean. Satan himself, in convivial mood, peeped out of those sparkling eyes.

“I can pick you out pretty closely,” he stated as he made the rounds. “Been hearing a lot about you boys. You're Jimmy Jennings, eh? And this must be Sleepy Spears, eh? Ho, ho, ho! And according to the dope, the tallest man in the Air Service is Slim Evans, but I thought you were a test pilot at Cook?”

“Just got here on temporary duty,” I told him. “I find I left here short a few thousand tools, and what not.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” he roared. “I was that way trying to clear the Philippines. Had all my sergeants out stealing from the other outfits for two weeks. Then Billy Rider came down and cracked his ship all to pieces in a lake, and according to the survey I put through he had had two hundred wrenches, four typewriters, three dozen flying suits and five Liberty motors in his ship.

“I don't believe I can call your name, at that!” he went on, just the touch of an Irish brogue in his voice as he shook hands with the lowering Scarth.

“My name's Robert Scarth—sometimes called Dumpy,” stated that young gentleman pompously.

His impressive announcement was calculated to recall to the newcomer's mind the many exploits which had made Dumpy famous—he thought.

“Well, glad to know you!” grinned O'Reilly. “Haven't been on the border long, eh?”

“Huh?” exploded Dumpy furiously. “F—four years! Why, I'm the guy that brought down those——”

“My error!” O'Reilly assured him airily. “This all the gang?”

“No—the two patrol ships aren't in yet, but the western one ought to be,” Kennard told him. “I—”

“Telephone, Captain!” came the voice of Pop Cravath, our bald-headed and fiery adjutant. “Long distance. Lo, Slim! So you're back, eh? God help us all!”

WHILE Pop and I were chinning I permitted myself a few grins at the sorely insulted Scarth. That he alone, of all the flyers, was unknown to the newcomer had put the final seal on his advance dislike of O'Reilly. He was now engaged in giving Percival Enoch a running summary of his border achievements, in a highly patronizing and self-satisfied manner. Dumpy was as naive as a child where flying was concerned. O'Reilly, several inches shorter than the far from lofty Scarth, was peering up into the cocky border man's face with an air of delighted surprise. Those light eyebrows were raised quizzically, and his eyes were mere slits. Finally, when Dumpy took breath, O'Reilly sighed:

“My, my!”

Ordinarily this would have glanced off Dumpy's skin like birdshot off a boulder. But now he bridled.

“And on the border we don't throw the bull,” he snapped.

“I'd never have believed it!” stated O'Reilly. “I—”

“Listen here!” blazed Dumpy. “New men don't get away with—”

“Listen, Cocky, yourself,” roared O'Reilly jovially. “Did anybody ever tell you you talked too much?”

Silence, so thick you could have carted it away in chunks. Dumpy, his face flaming, his lips moving soundlessly as he groped for words, was a fat hunk of helpless rage.

“News, boys.”

It was the Captain's raucous voice. One look at that square, battered face of his in the doorway, and I sensed tragedy.

“BERT GATES' ship was found fifty miles west, nearly burned up, Gates dead with a bashed in skull and pretty well unrecognizable. Sergeant Baker, with him when he left, wasn't in the ship—and can't be found, and it all sounds phony to me!”

In the interval of absolute silence which fell over us it seemed to me that the old spirit of the border rushed over me in a wave. I forgot that I was returning after months of absence—I felt that I had never left at all. The old days, when any passing moment might bring forth a tragedy such as this one, were with me again, and my mind just automatically felt its way on to the implications in the Captain's words.

Bert Gates was just a name to me, I didn't know him, and he had joined the flight after my departure. Despite the lack of personal grief, though, there was the fiercely bitter resentment which arises in every flyer's heart when one of the boys goes west.

Added to that was my instinctive feeling that Gates had been helped on his way out of this life. His observer was not in the ship, and could not be found. That was as peculiar a situation as could well be imagined.

“Who reported it?” I asked the Captain—the first words to break the silence.

“Chap named Gray. Said he'd bought the old Griffin place a couple of months ago. He saw the ship start down, apparently all right. It crashed in an open field about a mile north of Gray's house,” barked the Captain. “Gray started right over—couldn't remember hearing any crash—and found the wreck. The Sergeant must have seen Gray's house before the landing—if he was unhurt he'd naturally have made for that house.”

The other flyers said not a word. Grim-faced, I could fairly see their thoughts. Many a time a ship came back from patrol with bullet holes in it, and many were the men from El Paso to Brownsville who'd give much for the pelt of any border patrolman. Occasionally they succeeded. When that happened the flying clan did not like it. In fact, they never forgot it. It welded them into a coherent group of men with one idea—to make it distinctly unhealthy for the man or men who'd broken their ranks.

Remember, by any chance, the system of the old Texas Rangers? Many a lone ranger dominated a situation which had baffled a dozen ordinary minions of the law, and did it without so much as a bruise to show for his trouble. That was because when a ranger rode down the street of a wild town no outlaw was able to pull a trigger on him without deep thought. Said gunman could kill that ranger—but what would the other rangers do to him when they heard about it?

The answer was “get him.” Get him if it took the whole gang of them a year, or carried one of them half way across the earth. There was but one end to the trail.

And that is the spirit of the Air Service—and particularly the spirit of the border. Later, perhaps, you may see that more clearly.

Dumpy's eyes were ablaze, but for once his tongue was still. Then my eyes roved to O'Reilly, while the Captain paced the veranda with choppy strides.

Somehow O'Reilly's whole face seemed to have changed. His merry blue eyes were now round little pieces of glass, glinting as coldly as sunlight off an iceberg. His small mouth was thinned to almost nothing, and the skin appeared to have tightened over his jaw. Tiny little white scars seemed to leap into being here and there on his face, and for the first time I noticed that there was a slight bulge on one side of his jaw. Somehow, at that moment, his face seemed battered, if you get what I mean—the countenance of a man who had been knocked around, physically and mentally, a good deal. He'd aged, to the casual eye, ten years in one minute.

“Captain, let me fly down and see what's happened!” exploded Dumpy. “I haven't flown much today, and I'll ferret out—”

“I've got a better idea,” I cut him off. “Cap'n, how about me breaking in right now? You boys have all flown a good deal today, and I've been riding a train.”

Kennard did not hesitate.

“Two ships will go,” he said tersely. “Dumpy, you can go in one ship, alone, and bring back Gates' body. Slim, you stay around and see whether you can pick up anything of interest. I——”

“Captain Kennard!”

It was O'Reilly's fog-horn voice. The sturdy little flyer was straight as a ramrod, his cold eyes dancing up into Kennard's.

“I sure would like to go with Evans, sir,” he said in clipped phrases.

His consuming desire to be in the thick of things made him seem like a ball of fire. The vitality of the man shone through the outward semblance and his deadly seriousness.

“Huh!” snorted Dumpy. “Why send a man who's never been on the border before and doesn't know what it's all about! You flatter yourself——”

“Shut up, you!”

O'Reilly had whirled on Dumpy like a banty rooster in a rage. His red head was thrust forward, and his face was bleak and cruel.

And Dumpy Scarth sort of stepped back a little, and tried to fumble for words. It was as though some withering flame had shot out at him from the amazing little Irishman.

“Furthermore,” O'Reilly said slowly. “Don't ever pick me out for any more remarks, see?”

The words were very ordinary, but the effect of them was magical. Dumpy, red as fire and sullen-eyed, did not even bluster. He just quit trying to talk.

Kennard flashed a look at the discomfited, raging Scarth, and even circumstances such as we were involved in could not keep him from the hint of a smile.

“All right, O'Reilly. Get your stuff, all of you. Jimmy, have the ships warmed.”

“I fly the ship,” I told O'Reilly.

“What do I care?” he spat back at me. Then his face widened in a winter, wolfish sort of grin.

“Think Gates was tampered with?” he demanded.

I nodded.

“Means action, eh? Got here just in the nick of time, didn't we? Ho, ho, ho!”

And he was off for his tent, his short, thick legs covering the ground with amazing speed. His body seemed to fairly skim along the sand.

A MOMENT later we were on the line. Dumpy was already in his ship, warming it himself, while a sergeant was in the cockpit of mine. I relieved him, took a look at the instruments, saw that the temperature had crawled up over sixty, centigrade, and started the final test. With a mechanic on each wingtip straining backward against the ship, and another man sitting on the tail to keep it from raising in the terrific propeller blast, I eased the throttle forward until the four hundred and fifty horse-power Liberty was singing at sixteen hundred and fifty revolutions a minute and the whirring prop was sending a swirling column of sand high into the air. Air pressure three, oil pressure twenty-five, battery charging rate two, temperature close to eighty—all was well. I ran the motor on each switch of the double ignition system separately, and there was not a miss. As I eased the throttle back Percival Enoch, looking like a brownie in his coveralls and helmet and goggles, was climbing-in the rear seat. We had our Colts, there was plenty of ammunition for both front and rear guns, and everything was set.

Dumpy was already taking off as our mechanics pulled the wheelblocks from beneath the wheels. By the time I'd swung the ship and was taxying for the northern end of the field Dumpy was in the air. A terrific grandstand zoom took him over the buildings at the southern end of the airdrome, and then he banked sharply westward. He disappeared on a bee-line for our objective, scarcely a hundred feet high.

“He wants to get there as far in advance of us as possible, so he'll be alone in his glory before whatever crowd there is,” I remember telling m5rself disgustedly.

As a matter of fact he should have waited for us, and the ships flown together in case of a forced landing on the part of either. But Dumpy wanted a few minutes of solo strutting.

That all sounds nasty, I admit, but don't get me too far wrong. Dumpy felt as badly as any one about the tragedy, and would risk his life in a second to get revenge. But he was just constitutionally unable to forget himself, no matter what the circumstances.

FOR the next half hour the familiar panorama of the border unfolded itself before my reminiscent eyes. To the north the limitless sea of rolling mesquite which met the horizon twenty miles away; southward the twisting Rio Grande and the daily brooding chaparral of Mexico. Directly beneath us a few ribbon roads, some shacks, an occasional house, a few fields. And we were flying directly into a red sun which was only half visible above the horizon. It would not be very long before the quick Texas darkness was upon us.

I was keeping a sharp watch below, just out of habit. I looked around, and beheld O'Reilly with his helmeted head over the side of the ship, watching the ground uninterruptedly. He was so short he had to stand to get any sort of a reasonable view.

I knew the Griffin place. It consisted of a comfortable bungalow, and about a hundred acres of land, part of it under cultivation in cotton. Gray was a new name to me, doubtless a newcomer to the border. The place was a half mile or so from the river, bounded by mesquite on all but the southern side.

In exactly half an hour, my ostrich-like neck stretched to its limit and my eyes ranging the ground ahead of me, I picked up a ship on the ground. A few seconds later I saw the wreck. And there were only four people around it. Dumpy had not found much of a crowd.

With growing interest I surveyed that field as I came closer. It was fully three hundred yards square, plowed and planted. The ridge, though, were very small. In other words, it looked like a field where any kind of a flyer at all could make a safe landing.

And Gates' ship had burned. That meant it had crashed—not just nosed up in landing. The fact that his skull was crushed made a crash a certainty. And if I remembered correctly—

“Hold your horses, and get the dope straight from headquarters,” I admonished myself when I found that I was counting an awful lot of chickens without many eggs.

I swooped down over the field, and circled it to look it over from a hundred feet. Landing was a cinch, unless the earth was softer than it looked to be. Three horses stood at the side of the field. And one of the three people who were standing close to the blackened wreck of Gates' plane, unless my eyes deceived me most atrociously, was a woman.

Southward a mile or so was the Gray bungalow, corral, and three sheds. The mesquite started at the edge of that field, and continued uninterruptedly as far as one's good eye could see.

There were no other habitations for man or beast, aside from the Gray place, within eight or ten miles.

I circled around a few hundred yards west of the field, and cut the throttle gradually, skimming the mesquite to stall into the soft plowed ground. The nose of my ship tipped downward a little as the wheels sank into the loam, but in general the landing was a simple one.

O'REILLY said, as we started for the wreck:

“There's a woman there. Seems a little funny she should want to be around a corpse for this length of time, eh? She must be used to 'em.”

“If she's a border girl, she probably is,” I told him.

But there was no corpse. Gates' body had been removed from the blackened débris. One other thing I noticed immediately. That was that the motor had not buried itself in the ground at all. The tail of the ship—or what had been the tail—had been thrust into the air, as though the ship had simply nosed up.

One item of information was a dead cinch. That DeHaviland had not spun into the ground.

I pointed this out to O'Reilly in low tones as we neared the silent, waiting group.

“And even a DeHaviland,” he said in a gruff stage whisper, “doesn't often catch on fire in a noseup. To say nothing of there being few flyers butter-fingered enough to have nosed up this field!”

“Where's Gates' body?” I demanded of Dumpy, who walked forward to meet us.

“They'd already got it out,” he told me. “It's on the way to the undertaker's in Gray's car, he said. Took it to Pola Lasa.”

That was a village about twenty miles away.

“I wish they hadn't done that,” I said in a whisper.

“Here's Gray now,” Dumpy told us, and my eyes riveted themselves on the face of the tall young fellow who had come forward. The other two were nearly a hundred feet away, by the wreck.

He was a very prepossessing individual. Dressed in expensive riding clothes and bootees, his tan silk shirt open at the neck, and a Stetson which hadn't cost a cent less than fifty dollars cocked back a bit on his head, he looked more or less like a motion picture cowboy. His thin, lean face was fairly well tanned, and a pair of big black eyes met mine unwaveringly. Deep lines from nostrils to mouth strengthened his countenance, somehow, and there was a deep flush on his cheeks.

When Dumpy introduced us his grip was quick, strong, and nervous.

“And this is O'Reilly—a rookie on the border,” Dumpy spat forth when he introduced O'Reilly. “He just came for the ride.”

There was no doubt that Scarth had it in for O'Reilly in a very thoroughgoing manner. The Irishman shot a contemptuous glance at Dumpy, and then shook hands.

“You're the guy that reported this?” he asked abruptly.

Gray nodded, his handsome face seeming drawn and haggard, now that I looked at it more closely. He seemed to be under a terrific nervous strain.

“What happened?” boomed O'Reilly, and his cool eyes were like pin-points, boring into the full dark ones of Gray.

“We saw the ship circling down over this field,” Gray said slowly, and I noticed that his speech was that of an educated, cultured man. It had no trace of the southern dialect in it.

“It didn't seem to be having a forced landing, or to have anything wrong with it. In fact, as far as I could judge it made a normal glide for landing, up to the time it disappeared from sight. The next minute I saw smoke coming up above the trees, rushed over, and found things just as you see, except that the flyer's body was in the flames. And his skull was badly crushed. As soon as I had telephoned, we came back and got the body out and sent it in my car to Pola Lasa. I—”

HE STOPPED himself abruptly, his shadowed eyes darting from face to face.

He had been on the verge of saying something, and had apparently thought better of it. I was becoming more and more speculative regarding one Mr. Gerald Gray's nervous condition.

“Spit it out!”

It was O'Reilly. Short legs wide apart, the battered little flyer was a bundle of concentrated energy battering at the doors of Gray's mind. His head was thrust slightly forward above his wide shoulders, and his whole attitude was one of bullying the stranger before us.

“Why, what?” Gray asked surprisedly.

“You started to say something, I thought,” O'Reilly informed him in that deep voice. “Well, Mr. Gray, while we're alone there are two or three points which might as well be mentioned.”

O'Reilly took me off my feet, and I'll swear I didn't know what to do. Here he was taking charge of things—and apparently wasting no time whatever in subtleties, as it were.

And I let him go. If ever competence and audacious ability to take care of himself shone through the earthly body of a man it did in “Penoch”, which was to be his border nickname.

“In the first place,” boomed O'Reilly, “this fire's unnatural. In the second, the wreck's damn unnatural. In the third, the disappearance of the observer in this ship is —— damn unnatural. And we aim to find out some more about it—and we aim to find it out from you!”

In a second such tensity fell over that little group as I've never felt before or since—and that includes looking into guns, too. Gray, without the shadow of a doubt, was a man writhing in torture. His face was strained and white, his eyes pools of misery. And little Penoch O'Reilly, mustache bristling, eyes glinting, leaning forward pugnaciously while his loud voice batter away at Gray's defenses was like some human projectile. There was something so hard and sort of inevitable about him that it seemed to me that no defense, mental or physical, could stand against him.

Queer feeling to have about a sawed-off, scarred-face little squirt whose head didn't come to your chest, wasn't it?

My eyes were frozen so tightly to Gray's anguished face that I failed to notice the approach of the girl and the other man. I think that Dumpy did, though. After a moment of pregnant silence wherein it seemed that O'Reilly's will was battling with Gray's, Dumpy's voice lit the stillness.

“Oh, why all this stuff, O'Reilly? Mr. Gray, this fellow here just got on the border today, and doesn't know what it's all about. Don't mind what he says, necessarily.”

O'Reilly turned his head, and just shot one look at the round face of his antagonist. Dumpy's eyes were blazing defiantly. And O'Reilly's face gradually got purple. Not a word did he say, but his body sort of quivered, and his fists were clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white and there were deep depressions where the nails bit in.

Before a word more could be said Dumpy had turned toward the girl, and there was a world of bravado and self-satisfaction in his voice as he said:

“We were just coming over, Miss Gray. We got talking business all of a sudden, for no reason. May I present Slim Evans, an old border flyer who just got back to McMullen?”

KNOWING Dumpy as I did, I knew the why of his inexcusable challenge to O'Reilly as accurately as though I'd read his mind. It was Dumpy's habit to fall for any presentable woman immediately, in the first place. And in the second place, he liked to grandstand under any conditions. He'd seen his chance to make himself big—and to ingratiate himself with Gray.

Penoch O'Reilly started to get control of himself, under the triumphant eyes of Scarth, as we bowed to the girl. And both of us forgot, momentarily, what was transpiring between her brother and ourselves.

Let me get hold of myself before I rave, or you'll think I'm worse off than Dumpy where the speaker sex is concerned. No one knows better than I that good-looking girls grow on every bush—but knockouts sprout about as often as banana trees do in Labrador. Outside of the ecstatic descriptions of writers, and the idealized conceptions of the bozos who illustrate their vaporings, the perfect beauty is practically extinct, to my mind.

So when I say that this Ann Gray was the best-looking thing I've ever seen in my thirty-odd years of life, it means something. If she wasn't a knockout, I'm not six-feet-six, thin as a rail, and homelier than any man has a right to be. All of which I am.

She had everything. By that I mean more than a pair of gorgeous eyes, and a straight little nose, and a heavy mass of black hair, and all the rest of the things which go to make up prepossessing pans. Add to those outward things a personality that sparkled in her big dark eyes and was apparent even in the trembly, troubled sort of smile she threw us, and you've got what I call attractiveness. Her slim body, in riding clothes, was drawn straight and stiff as a ramrod when she greeted us, and her eyes were shadowed as they shifted from us to her brother's face.

BEING one of these misfit physical specimens, and knowing very well that whatever virtues I may have are safely hidden behind my nose as far as women are concerned, I never am tempted to kid myself about making any favorable impressions on them. And when that happens, you become, to a certain extent, anesthetic to the charms of fair sirens. Consequently, my impersonal admiration of the young lady was not such as to blind me to certain obvious facts.

One was that she, like her brother, was laboring under a tremendous strain. She was biting her lips now and then, and her oval face, delicately tanned, showed it plainly.

Under different conditions I'd have permitted myself a mild ha ha at Penoch O'Reilly. He growled a short “Good afternoon,” to her, as though she'd been a Mexican hag, and then his eyes returned to their silent attack on Gray. As far as he was concerned, the injection of woman interest meant not a thing.

“What's the matter, Jerry?” she asked, and the words seemed to be dragged reluctantly from her. Her voice was a sort of contralto, very low and musical.

“The officers think that this—tragedy—did not happen naturally,” he said slowly, and their eyes met as though in full understanding.

She took a step toward him, the rest of us scarcely breathing, and laid her hand on his arm.

“Listen, now,” came Dumpy's raucous tones with considerable blatancy, “no use of getting all wrought up over this, Miss Gray. Now we border patrolmen—”

“Shut up!” I yapped at him, and he did close his mouth momentarily. From surprise, I suspect.

The Grays seemed not to have noticed the interruption.

“Why don't you tell them, Jerry?” she asked him.

Penoch O'Reilly's breath was released in a long sigh, and his barrel-like little body relaxed. He felt that he'd won.

The tall stranger shrugged his shoulders wearily, as though shaking a burden from them.

“I will,” he said quietly. “Pete, ride one horse and lead the others. We'll walk.”

PETE was the roughly dressed, weazened old fellow who had been hanging back of the group a few feet. He was evidently an employee of the Grays. Without a word he made off with awkward, bow-legged strides.

It struck me as being high time for one Slimuel X. Evans to be taking a hand. So I broke into speech as follows:

“This is all very mysterious, so to speak. Mr. Gray, you'll excuse me for saying that we have no reason to trust you. Where are we going to walk to hear your story?”

“To the house, if you will,” he said with a faint smile on his aristocratic face.

I say aristocratic, because that's the way it impressed me. As a matter of fact, I hadn't got a good look at it, in detail. That huge hat shaded it pretty thoroughly, and now the light was failing. All I had up to that time was an impression of a lean, aquiline countenance from which a pair of very dark eyes looked fearlessly at the world.

He glanced at the sky now, and went on:

“You'll spend the night with us, of course. If you don't agree now, I think you will after I tell you a few things.”

“All that adds to our suspense,” I informed him. “However, as you will. I'll report by telephone. But get this. We're convinced that there's been foul play here. The disappearance of Baker, the sergeant, is an additional mystery. He must be within twenty miles of here—that's as far as he could have gotten, on horseback. Does your story throw any light on his disappearance?”

“Not necessarily,” Gray said steadily. “If it does—there's no use of looking for him now.”

What he said, plus the fact that it would be pitch dark in a few minutes, sounded reasonable to me. So I said the last stanza of my piece.

“Reminding you again that we have no reason to trust. I'll simply go on to say that we'll accept your hospitality, temporarily and with reservations. But there are three Colt six-shooters here, and any one of 'em will bark quick and sudden if we're suspicious. Personally I don't think that there's anything of an ulterior nature in your mind—but down here you must realize that we can't trust anybody. So watch your step, eh?”

He really grinned then—I could see his white teeth flash.

“I thoroughly comprehend your point,” he said with an intonation and a bow right out of a Back Bay drawing-room. “But it's a bit of a long story not easy for me to tell, I think we're all very tired, and the house seems most sensible, doesn't it?”

“It does,” I agreed. “But for —— sake let's get there pronto, eh?”

“Amen,” echoed O'Reilly with deep bass emphasis—and surprisingly, the girl laughed with such frank enjoyment that Penoch, when his eyes met hers, grinned himself.

“Sound like I'd had training as a Methodist deacon, didn't it?” he queried. “Well as a matter of fact, I have. Ho, ho, ho!”

THE GRAYS walked ahead, in deep conversation, while we brought up the rear, a hundred feet or so behind them. The swift Texas twilight was merging into darkness already.

“O'Reilly,” I remark, “I'm not noted for subtlety, nor yet finesse, myself, but I've got to hand it to you for nailing Gray to the cross in jig time. You figured the lay, and sure acted fast.”

“Why wait around?” he enquired jovially. “Say, looks as though we might find some excitement, eh?”

“It does. The really puzzling thing is the matter of this sergeant's disappearance,” I returned. “There are several dozen conceivable reasons for a border patrolman getting into trouble on the ground. But having his companion disappear is another matter altogether.”

Here Dumpy, his vanity still smarting, took a hand.

“Strikes me,” he proclaimed savagely, “as though a range of mountain was being made out of one molehill. Foul play—all right. But overstraining to connect the Grays with it——”

“Listen, you,” roared O'Reilly, but this time he did not seem wrathful. He spoke with entire lack of passion, as though passing the time of day. Feet wide apart, he planted himself directly in front of Dumpy.

“There's a little matter of unfinished business I want to notify you of,” he pursued, his eyes shining like a cat's in the dark. “You talk too damn much, and you're a complete and total fool. Furthermore, you've directed too much of your chatter at me. Just as soon as our minds are clear, so to speak, and we get this business straightened up, I'm going to take you out and lick the eternal daylights out you for two reasons. One to show you I can do it, and the other to give me a talking point so that I can shut you up whenever I please!”

“Don't wait!” flashed Scarth, and his open hand cracked against O'Reilly's cheek.

“Just another item proving that you're a damn fool instead of just an ordinary one,” O'Reilly told him calmly. He did not offer to resent the slap at all. “We'll wait until more important business is over before we have out little set-to.”

“Listen, both of you!” I interjected in no uncertain tones. “This stuff is out—get me? O'Reilly, hold your tongue. As for you, Dumpy——”

“Wait a minute,” O'Reilly interrupted raucously, and his twinkling face was turned up to meet my eyes, a foot and a half above him. “Slim, you're all right and a good guy—but don't tell me what to do in that tone of voice. See? I know your point as well as you do, and I don't need to be told. Come on—let's go.”

We followed him automatically. Dumpy still incoherent with wrath. Mr. Percival Enoch O'Reilly, striding along with ludicrously long strides, went on talking as though nothing had happened.

“Of course,” he said calmly, “Dumpy here's fallen for the skirt, hook, line and sinker. That, added to his natural bone-headedness and—er—egotistic loquaciousness, that is a flossy phrase, has turned him into a hard guy to keep down.”

“And I don't blame you, Caballero. She's one of the most elegant women I've ever seen, if not more so. So much so that I'm interested myself. You've got a rival, Dumpy, don't forget that.”

Suddenly he grinned, and pushed his helmet back further on his head. “Gosh, I hope she turns out to be wrong some way, or I swear I might get hooked!”

The conversation switched, at my suggestion, to the problems connected with official business, but when we arrived at the house we'd come to no particular conclusions. I remember, as we came into the clearing and saw the lights gleaming through the purple darkness, that I drew in my breath and admitted something to myself.

“It's hot and dusty and deserted, afflicted with tarantulas and divers snakes, Spigs, and assorted bugs, but there'll never be another strip of country to take the place of this one, for me!”

Perhaps anticipation of what lay ahead was responsible for part of my sentimentality, but that's another advantage of the border. Something's almost always just ahead, whether you know it or not.

We went into the fairly sizeable bungalow, and the red-faced Dumpy, the hard-boiled O'Reilly, and the simple Slim Evans all took a minute or so to register surprise. For the sitting-room which we entered directly from the porch might have been transplanted entire from some luxurious city home. There were standing lamps, and a reproducing piano which hadn't cost a cent less than fifteen hundred berries, oriental rugs, several paintings—mostly western landscapes—a davenport set which looked thickly enough upholstered to smother a careless sitter, and other items of comfort. It was cosy and rich and restful and all the rest of it.

O'Reilly, bleached eyebrows and mustache like bristling points of light, took his favorite stance, looked the place over in detail, and then stated:

“Some joint, Gray, some joint! In fact, I haven't set foot in a private home of any kind for several years, so this knocks me dead. I presume your sister is responsible. Congratulations, sis!”

Once again she laughed. This time she threw back her head and let it roll forth uninterruptedly. Dumpy threw a savagely disgusted look at the forthright Penoch, and said sourly:

“You mustn't mind him, Miss Gray.”

“Mind him! He's delightful!” chuckled the girl, and then she looked at her brother. That sobered her, abruptly.

WITH his hat off he was one good-looking chap. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Gray had had a good-looking crop of kids, it appeared. His hair was as black as his sister's, and almost as thick, and waved a little. He looked a typical movie hero type, except for one thing. There were signs of maturity and character there—as though he'd seen things, and been through trouble in his life, and knew, in general, what it was all about. His mouth was a bit thin and repressed, the lines a little deep, his eyes brooding—and he was going through an ordeal, right then.

His sister, too, showed a few things in the light, without her hat. In fact, she went out of the class of just a good-looking girl, right then. She, too, had character and maturity in a face that otherwise might have been the beauty of a simon pure dumb-bell.

I changed my estimate of her age from twenty to around twenty-four.

“Sit down, please,” she asked us.

Grimy, covered with oil, and in faded khaki as we were, I almost hated to occupy one of those chairs, but we did. Dumpy planted himself on the divan, close to the girl, who smiled at him generously. Her brother, whom she'd called Jerry, remained standing, as did O'Reilly. And Penoch was serious, his greenish blue eyes boring uncomfortably into Gray's. The two of them generated a certain tensity which fairly robbed through the silence.

“Shoot!” exploded O'Reilly—and as he leaned forward he was like an accusing statue.

“I will,” nodded Gray. “In the first place, I prefer that you know who we are. Then you can make full investigation, by wire. It may add weight to what I have to say. My half-sister, Ann, and I have lived in California for years. We are originally English. We had a little money, settled in Hollywood, and finally, more or less for a lark, she went into the movies and was fairly successful. Two years ago I made considerable money in the California Oil Fields. However, we went a little wild—too many parties, night-life, and that stuff—and decided that we'd combine business and a search for our partially lost health by coming down here to Texas, far away from our friends, and living here for a year or so, trying the simple life. I intended to dabble in oil in the Texas fields, too.

“However, Gerald Gray is known pretty widely around Hollywood, and any time you desire you can ascertain, by wiring names I give you or officials of your own choice, that I'm supposed to be an ordinarily good citizen.

“I mention these things because it's natural that you officers, right now, wonder who I am, and possibly, whether or not I had any connection with the murder of your friend, or friends.”

He stopped, went to a decanter, and tossed off a drink. O'Reilly didn't move a muscle. His head still thrust forward like some belligerent sparrow, he watched Gray unceasingly.

“To resume,” Gray went on in his meticulous way, “we bought this place and came down here a couple of months ago. We hadn't been here a week when an old friend of mine dropped in, to my intense surprise. I had no idea he was in this part of the world. His name is Frederich Von Sternberg.”

“What?”

It was a surprised bellow from the deep chest of Penoch O'Reilly.

“Know him?” snapped the astonished Gray.

“Go ahead,” commanded O'Reilly, his eyes two pools of cold fire. “I'll talk later.”

“I'll jump ahead of my story a bit,” Gray said with an effort. I'll swear that the telling of his yarn seemed to be literally torturing the man. “Do you know of this Mexican they call the Masked Bandit? Leader of the gang that just held a civil engineer for ransom—and got it?”

“Not me,” barked O'Reilly, and I shook my head.

“I do,” proclaimed Dumpy, and leaped to his feet. He wanted the center of the stage, now that he could talk. “I'm the only real border man here,” he went on happily. “So of course I'd be the only one that knew of him. Listen, you two. This bandit isn't one of the common run of 'em that you all know. This bozo always wears a mask, and so do his men. And he seems to work the American side of the river. Kidnaps considerable, and robs. He's never come close to being caught, and the dope is that some Mexican officials are in cahoots with him. Anyhow, it's a cinch that a bunch of peons across the river like him or are afraid of him, because it's almost impossible to get any information about him. Sort of a Robin Hood proposition, maybe.”

“I've found since I've been here that some legendary tales have come up about him,” Gray went on. “In Mexico, that is. He's supposed to have got a couple of big pay rolls around the Tampico oil fields, his ransom money has totaled ten thousand dollars, and the other robberies, of cattle principally, have come to considerable more in the last few months. Whether they're all to be laid at the door of the Masked Bandit is open to argument. Anyhow there is such a bandit, with a band of six or eight men, and he's daring and fearless and ruthless—and he'd just as soon tackle a job on the American side of the river as the Mexican. And I've suspected that Von Sternberg was the Masked Bandit!”

Penoch, hands on a table and bent almost double over it, shot his comment through the air like a cannon-ball.

“He's not a Mexican!”

“Of course not. He's a German. But he talks Spanish without the trace of an accent—as he does about a half dozen languages. The mask, a little further disguise—and he could pass for a Spig on this side. And Von Sternberg was here this afternoon, had started riding north a half hour before the wreck, and I believe had something to do with the murder of Gates and the kidnaping, or whatever it was, of the sergeant!”

I was on my feet in a second.

“Why didn't you spring it right away?” I raved. “We could have got back in the air and combed the country for him! You—”

“Just a minute, please,” Gray asked wearily. “I hated to admit to myself what I've told you. Not until you verified my instinctive suspicions about the crash did I make up my mind. And when I did, I knew that I must help catch Von Sternberg—catch him red-handed. And I have a scheme for that. Will you listen a little further, to understand the situation more thoroughly?”

I NODDED. I was pacing the floor, now, unable to keep still. I'd been away from the border, and this new bandit was brand new to me. But the thought of what had happened to Gates—and what might be happening to Baker—was enough to put me on edge for good. Doubtless Baker had been held for ransom. Possibly Gates had fought so hard they'd had to kill him. Jesus Rentaria had got fifteen thousand dollars ransom for Davis and Peterson a couple of years before—and later had got strung to a tree by an expedition of American soldiers and rangers. But it had been proven that army men weren't exempt from bandit attention.

“When I was in France as a buck private I met Von Sternberg,” Gray pursued quietly. “He was in the German Air Service. When he was captured he had credit for around thirty allied planes. He's of the nobility, and headed his own circus, similar to the Richtofen and Wolff outfits, you know. I was one of the guards at the prison camp, and got well acquainted with him. And he saved my life at the risk of his own when a prisoner went berserk, just before the armistice.

“Later, in Coblenz, I got to know him better. He's educated, cultured, traveled, charming. When the troops were pulled out of Germany he'd left—he was ruined financially, of course. He turned up here, to my intense surprise, and his. Since then he's dropped in three or four times. As I said, we were intimate friends. To further complicate matters, I'll tell you that he fell in love with Ann here. He told me so. And Ann has been very fond of him. Do you see how all these circumstances combined to make me—both of us—fight to the last ditch against the bare thought of his being—a murderer?”

“Absolutely!” proclaimed Dumpy largely. “And I want to say that you're both wonders to come clean like this!”

He smirked vapidly at the young lady, and her lips formed a silent “thank you” which transported Dumpy to the seventh heaven. I remember thinking it was sort of a flapperish, cheap thing for her to do, in a way, too. Didn't seem quite in her class, as it were.

AS FOR me, many possible inferences were struggling for supremacy in my mind. This Von Sternberg's possibilities were endless—

“When did you suspect him of being this masked bandit, and why?” barked O'Reilly, still in his stooping pose over the table. I don't think his eyes had wavered from Gray's face for a moment.

“His last visit—before today,” Gray admitted. “As I said, Von Sternberg was a German ace. I got interested in flying through him, and then out in Hollywood, where there is a lot of flying for the movies and a bunch of passenger carrying ships I had a good many flights and even took a few lessons, becoming so much enthused that I figured on having a plane of my own down here and flying back and forth from the oil fields. I figured it a great business proposition, as well as for pleasure, because oftentimes you have to act fast in that game. I've got some options now up in the Luling field which may require fast action. I was going to try to hire one of you border patrolmen, whom I understand form the best-flying bunch of men in the country, to give me some more lessons.

“Well, as all these things came out, Von Sternberg let some hints drop. Possibilities for making crooked money by plane on this border. You know, smuggling. And then he went on to say that they'd taken to flying their payrolls from Tampico out to the oil fields, and he kidded quite a bit about being an airplane bandit.

“There were other things. He's been all over the world since the war, living by his wits. Admitted it frankly. He evaded the subject when asked what he was doing now, and what he did say was suspicious. He'd look at me knowingly, laugh shortly, ask what a man could do to get along—and always had plenty of money. I didn't tell Ann, of course, until today. And he hinted that we might do business later. He was not above reminding me that I owed my life—and some other things—to him. But I owe nothing whatever big enough to force me to condone murder!”

“Is that all to connect him with this bandit?”

It was O'Reilly again, a compact package of compressed energy. That deep voice of his just boomed through the room.

“No. In size, method of working, daring, and, in the case of the robbing of the Manson ranchhouse, a horse—all connect him with it.”

I stopped my pacing before him, and asked my question.

“What do you think happened to Gates and Baker?”

“I think that Von Sternberg, who had two Mexicans with him when he left here, lured the ship to the ground in some way. I believe his object was to steal it! He might have laid down as though hurt, or done anything else to get Gates to land on that go field. I think he wanted a ship, and naturally would steal it. The idea would appeal to him, anyhow. Then, perhaps, Gates fought so hard that he was killed—possibly in an effort merely to stun him. His skull was bashed in by a blunt instrument, I believe. Then the ship was turned on its nose, by Von Sternberg and his aids, and burned to cover the crime.”

“What about Baker?” shot O'Reilly.

“I don't know. Possibly he was held for ransom. Possibly taken with Von Sternberg for a few hours to keep him from giving the alarm too soon. In that case—I hate to say it—I would be surprised if the sergeant ever came home.”

A STRANGLED sob came from the davenport. Ann was hiding her face, her shoulders heaving briefly. Dumpy, his fat face looking simple as only a lovesick swain's can, bent over and patted her and told her not to feel bad and other sensible pieces of advice.

“Sounds reasonable,” blazed O'Reilly, coming around the table with a curious crouching, catlike stride. “But why didn't you tell us right away, to give us a chance to get after Baker? To hell with international law or flying over Mexico or anything else in a case like that!”

“Perhaps I was wrong,” admitted Gray. “First, I wasn't sure until you came, as I've said. Second, knowing Von Sternberg, his ability, and his intelligence, I knew that he would figure out exactly what happened—in advance.

“He'd know I'd get there, having seen the plane land, within a few minutes of his departure. He'd not think I'd suspect foul play, probably, but he'd know I'd telephone the authorities, and that as soon as flyers arrived on the scene they'd miss Baker—and possibly figure out that it was a very peculiar wreck. He'd realize that they'd search for Baker from the air.

“That would mean that he must get under cover before planes arrived. I'm convinced that while I was still watching Gates' funeral pyre he and his men were getting across the border, and that by the time you arrived he was under cover in Mexico. Of course, I think the killing of Gates was more or less an accident. I hope so. But in any event, his plans went wrong.

“I was weak, doubtless, not to tell you as soon as you had confirmed my suspicions of the wreck—but it is my honest opinion that scouring around, the few minutes before dark came, would have done no good.”

And I was forced to agree with him.

“What's your scheme?”

The question was from O'Reilly, who was certainly hewing to the line. Planted on his widespread feet like a short block of marble, his fingers stabbed out at Gray with the question.

“Just this,” was the equable reply. “He'll come back here—maybe in a day, perhaps a week. Very probably he has a crooked proposition up his sleeve. In any event, I can gain his confidence. With me as a stool pigeon, he can be caught—and caught right. I'm positive he's planning something bigger than horseback raids.

“You people can keep a man or men here, and hide a plane in my shed, until that happens. The Mexican authorities—possibly sincere in their efforts—have never been able to touch him despite complaints. He works freely on this side—whether he's bribed certain officials remains to be seen. The point is that he's hard to get. I'll help—and God, how I hate it!”

“Sure,” I agreed. “Now, Percival, what do you know of Von Sternberg?”

“Nothing personally,” returned Penoch, but he had hesitated before speaking. “A lot by reputation. He was an instructor in the Mexican Air Service before I landed at Mexico City myself. Heard a lot of stories. He was always picking up money by hook or crook—gambling, a bit of airplane smuggling, stealing rides for people—all that. What I hold in my mind about him, after all the stories, is a big, handsome daredevil without an ounce of honor in his make-up, and not afraid of the President of Mexico, the devil, the United States of America, or God Almighty. I'd had a sneaking admiration for him, as a matter of fact.”

“I'll stay here,” Dumpy interjected excitedly. “We'll get him! Good flyer, is he? Well, I've played tag with a lot of those birds!”

“I'm getting busy on the phone right now!” I told the gathering suddenly. It took about two strides for my elongated legs to cover that room, and I used “official” plenty while conversing with operators. In less than ten minutes I had the customs service and the rangers notified, and Army headquarters likewise. Then I landed McMullen on the phone, and talked several dollars' worth with Captain Kennard.

“Stay the night, of course, and phone in the morning!” he told me tersely. “Sounds O.K. if Gray's all right. I'll get busy on this end in several directions. We've been waiting to nab that bandit for weeks—like to get him. 'By.”

I KNEW what the captain meant. The air would be shivering with radiograms here and there, and the telegraph lines busy, and the telephone far from idle. By morning he'd have so many different wires working that Sergeant Baker would be the most looked for man on the continent. And various investigations would be under way.

It was around nine o'clock when we sat down to a perfectly appointed dinner table, and were prepared to be served by a white-coated Chink. It was beyond my poor powers of imagination to remember all the time that surrounding that home was the border, and that a murder had taken place a mile away that afternoon. And that Baker was over across the river somewhere, in bandits' hands—or worse.

In the temporary lull, I took note of Lieutenant Dumpy Scarth and Miss Ann Gray. Dumpy, for the past half-hour, had been telling of his amazing flying experience—and this Ann Gray was sure eating them alive.

Every once in a while, when Dumpy got unusually vivid, illustrating his masterly handling of stick and rudder in some death defying climax, Percival Enoch O'Reilly would emit a reverberating “ho, ho, ho!” which invariably threw Dumpy off his beat.

Finally, when O'Reilly had listened attentively to Dumpy's yarn about putting another ship out of commission with his own, in the air and without using his guns, Percival Enoch added a snort to his laughter.

“Mr. O'Reilly, are you insinuating that Lieutenant Scarth is not telling the truth?” It was Ann Gray, and she certainly did procure utter silence. Eyes snapping, face slightly flushed, she just called Penoch cold.

“Don't mind him, Ann,” Dumpy said contemptuously. “He doesn't know—”

“Perhaps you'd like to tell us about your experience as a Methodist deacon,” the girl said witheringly.

Penoch, entirely unruffled, laid down his fork.

“Doggoned if that wasn't funny!” he said with an unembarassed grin. “Hoboed into Bilato, Kansas, one time, broke and hungry, palmed myself off as an evangelist, held a meeting, preached a powerful discourse, converted four sinners and took up a collection. And the collection was only forty-three cents! I ate eight hot dogs on it!”

No one could remain sober under the battering of that Rabelaisian laugh, even Ann relaxed.

“One time when I was flying over Nixon and hit the church steeple—” Dumpy started, and was off on another story.

No sooner had he paused for breath after the conclusion of his yarn than I, out of pure maliciousness, egged Penoch into doing his stuff by asking him about the time he became a Moro chieftain.

“Oh, that was just luck,” he answered quickly, “but Scarth's story reminds me of the time I landed old Colonel Kellog in a rice field in Louisiana, thinking it was a nice, level pasture instead of a pool of water covered with those green shoots.”

And he was off on a sidesplitting narrative in which he was far from a hero. His total lack of self consciousness was sublime. From Poland to Mexico City ranged the scenes of his ribald anecdotes—and none depending on the ability of Penoch O'Reilly for their points.

DUMPY was swelled up like a balloon fish half the time, and his mouth was gaping in the manner of that festive fish. Not in amazement or admiration of O'Reilly, either. He was merely on the verge of breaking into more speech himself. He fairly jiggled up and down with repressed hot air, waiting his turn to talk.

He slid in the story of the time when he'd made a vertical bank around the one skyscraper in Waco, Texas, and scraped his wing on the building when O'Reilly boomed forth:

“That's one of the dumbest tricks I ever heard of a flyer's pulling. Almost as inexcusable as what I did in Kentucky. I was to fly an artillery colonel to Indianapolis. I got inveigled into an all-night poker game, with moonshine refreshments. But I didn't know the shape I was in. I got in the air—I remember that. Seemed like a minute later I looked at the clock. It was an hour and a half after the takeoff, and I couldn't remember flying at all! And I didn't know any more where I was than as though I'd slept twenty years. I was flying north up a railroad track.

“And I got to thinking that if I'd been able to stay in the air in that shape, maybe I'd flown the course automatically likewise. If so, I was beyond Indianapolis, and maybe that railroad, followed south, would get me back there. But I didn't want the colonel to know how close to his eternal roost he'd been—or that I'd made this error. So I put the ship in the slightest of banks, and started circling. It took me forty miles to get straightened around south again, and this guy didn't know he hadn't been flying straight ahead all the time! We came into Indianapolis from the north, and then, like the dub I am, I knocked off a wheel landing! Since then I've made it a rule never to fly a passenger except when sober. Ho, ho, ho!”

“You should have been shot at sunrise!” Dumpy informed him vindictively. “One time I—”

The telephone bell clattered through the air.

“Excuse me,” chuckled Gray, with a glance at Penoch, and Dumpy ceased firing until his audience should be complete. A few seconds later, and I was called to the phone.

When that happened Penoch's battered, grinning face became serious, and his shining eyes followed me across the room and into the hall. He was hoping that something important was up.

Dumpy started talking, and I heard, as I picked up the receiver, O'Reilly's bellowed:

“Shut up!”

“Slim?” barked over the wires. “Kennard. Ever hear of this masked bandit? Dumpy knows of him. Spig been going wild for a couple of months. Just got a message, relayed from Sheriff Trowbridge. This bandit's just paid a visit to the Fox ranch, ten miles northeast of where you are this minute. Cut the wrong wire, thinking it was the phone, and Mrs. Fox got word to McMullen. Landed two thousand dollars in cash in the house, and some other stuff. Left ranchhouse for the border—four men with him—nearly half an hour ago. You and Dumpy get in the air, stop any gang you see with your guns! Ground men'll come as soon as they can. Stop 'em on the river and hold 'em. Shoot if necessary—hop to it! You know what to do!”

“DESSERT'S arrived, boys!” I shouted as I gamboled back into the dining room. “Gray, your masked bandit's just pulled a job ten miles north of here, and is on his way to the border now! Come on, Dumpy—you too, Penoch! We get in the air at once, and stop this boy!”

When Penoch got to his feet it was with the effect of having been blown out of his chair. I'll swear it seemed that he leaped five feet in the air and came down with a thump.

“Get us horses. Gray, pronto!” I told him—and at the moment noticed his face for the first time.

It was bitter and savage, the eyes gleaming unhealthily. Evidently the approaching showdown with his friend was no pleasant happening for him to look forward to.

Two minutes later we were galloping wildly through the mesquite. Back of us, making slow time in the returned car, came the Grays, inching their way across the open country with much less speed than our horses made. Not a one of us said a word, except Penoch, who took a brief look at the sky.

“Have a moon,” he shouted. “Good!”

I figured we had about fifteen minutes before they could make the border. As soon as we had the ships started, idling along on the preliminary warmup, I gathered the other two about me as the Grays joined us. Ann's face was white and strained, her eyes glowing with a sort of tigerish excitement the intensity of which surprised me.

“Penoch and I'll patrol up and down the river, covering a mile along the section where they'd hit the water if they rode a beeline,” I snapped briefly. “That's about a mile west of here. Dumpy, you shoot north and see if you can pick 'em up in the 'squite within five miles of the river right now. We—”

“I want to stay on the river!” Dumpy broke in feverishly, “There's more chance of getting hurt there in case something happens to you—”

He had glanced at the girl as he said that. Trying to impress her. And he wanted to fly where she'd see him.

“All right!” I fairly spat at him. “Penoch and I'll be back in time to help, anyway—we won't waste time in the 'squite.”

Dumpy was a master flyer with plenty of nerve, and would be just as effective on the river as any one, even should he be alone.

“Don't worry, Ann!” Dumpy told the girl spaciously. “This sort of stuff is our regular meat!”

“God!” O'Reilly rasped prayerfully. “Let's go, Slim!”

We wasted no time after we'd got into our ships. Gray had been instructed what to do, and he did it. He ran alongside my ship, hands on one wing, as I taxied the big ton and a half bomber through the night. At the end of the field, with the exhaust pipes spitting flame, he helped turn the ship on a dime.

Then he ran back for Dumpy's ship as I shoved the throttle all the way on.

“Giver 'er hell, big boy!” came an ear-shattering roar from the transfigured O'Reilly, standing in the back seat, and the DeHaviland was rushing for the bank of black shadow on the far side of the field.

THERE is nothing in all flying, as far as sustained thrill is concerned, to match the wild surge of excitement and anticipation of a takeoff at night in a strange field. A thousand possibilities for something to go wrong—and sure crash if it does. Nothing in sight—just a blind rush through the dark.

We made it, and roared over the bounding mesquite with plenty of space to spare. The cool, smooth night air caused the ship to fly with unusual buoyancy, and in a moment, three hundred feet high, I had a chance to settle down and watch Dumpy below. He was just getting off, two red streaks of fire marking his progress across the field. Suddenly I saw them change a bit, and angle upward.

He was zooming again to give the Grays a thrill. Suddenly a thought hit me. He was a poor man for the river, at that. Certainly, if the Grays could get close enough to see anything without endangering themsleves, they'd do it. And with that knowledge Dumpy Scarth would do his best to see to it that the aerial roundup was made in the most ornate style. Which meant increased chances of disaster.

However, the dice had been thrown, and if it was craps it would be hard luck. I sent the ship hurtling out over the mesquite, angled northwest, to intercept the course of the bandits. Dumpy's exhaust flames were disappearing toward the river. Crawling through the mesquite to the south was a wan light, like a single firefly almost out of gas. That was the Grays' car, making for the river.

Captain Kennard hadn't mentioned any cattle running. The Fox ranch was a small Texas truck farm of scarcely five thousand acres. But Fox had a few hundred extra fine blooded cattle. Evidently the bandit's organization was such that he received tipoffs on Americans. Otherwise he couldn't have known that there was considerable money in the ranchhouse. Furthermore, the place must have been almost deserted for e five men to pull the job. Certainly there weren't a half dozen cowboys hanging around.

Another thing bothered me. Perhaps we hadn't used the right strategy. If they heard a ship, they'd try to hide, almost certainly. That is, ride under the thickest possible camouflage of undergrowth and mesquite. I might have made a mistake in coming north with my ship; possibly it would have been best to wait at the river.

AS NEARLY as I could figure, we'd reached the approximate strip of territory which should contain our quarry—and the man who could clear up the death of Bert Gates and the disappearance of the sergeant. That was another funny thing. If Baker had been merely captured and held, he must be with that mob! They'd been on their way to pull the job when the crash had happened. They had scarcely had time to return over the border to some hiding place, and then come back. Which meant that shooting to kill was out of the question, no matter how desperate the emergency. We'd get Baker too.

I cut the gun briefly, and shouted that hunch to O'Reilly. In the moonlight it seemed that his eyebrows and mustache were absolutely white—he was like a freakish goblin of the upper air as he nodded his comprehension. Was he enjoying things? Say, his eyes nearly shot sparks through his goggles.

I turned south, and zigzagged back toward the river, five miles away. The moon was fairly bright, and made the mesquite a silver sea below us, splotched with white where the moonlight struck the sand. On toward the Rio Grande I went, covering a strip four miles wide as I crisscrossed the course. I was only three hundred feet high, and we could have seen riders below.

Suddenly I felt a grip that made me wince, and Penoch O'Reilly was pointing downward, and diagonally ahead.

As I went for the spot he had indicated, what he thought he'd seen became a fact. Five riders, and riding for all they were worth through the thinning mesquite.

In a second I'd made up my mind. They were slightly less than a mile from the river. And on the banks of the river there was practically open country, broken here and there with clumps of chaparral.

I jammed the throttle all the way on, and just for luck sent a burst from my machine guns into the ground in front of the hard-riding men on the ground. Then I flew for the river, to get Dumpy. We'd stop 'em right at the border line, as Kennard had suggested. And two ships obviated the chance of their escaping in the event of one D.H. going wrong.

I got very close to the river within thirty seconds, but Dumpy I could not see. Then, at least a half mile eastward, I picked up his ship. He was down low over the water, his plane like a giant dragon fly darting over the moon-silvered stream.

“What in God's name is he flying so low for, where he can't see for any distance,” I remember asking myself—and getting an answer.

“The Grays are probably somewhere along the bank, watching, and he's giving 'em a thrill,” was the reply, and then, more charitably: “Or maybe he thought he saw something up there.”

I made for him, angling toward the river. For a moment he went out of sight, behind a clump of 'squite. Then the D.H. shot upward in a climbing turn. Dumpy was about to make the trip back.

I WAS within a few hundred yards of him as the D.H. practically stalled, had its nose turned westward. It settled—he'd killed his flying speed. A great tongue of fire from the flooded engine spurted forth from each exhaust pipe. The next second the wheels of the settling ship—settling because that foolish climbing turn so close to the ground had stalled it—skipped the water. The DeHaviland seemed to bounce into the air, turning a somersault as the water clung to the undercarriage just long enough to turn the D.H. over. A split second later the ship crashed into the water, upside down.

There it was, underside turned to the sky, the tail from the water. I was circling over it now, a flyer gone half crazy. There was our quarry back there, within a half mile of the river—and Dumpy had not emerged from the muddied water. If he had not been knocked unconscious, he should be out from under his ship by now. Just a matter of unsnapping the belt and crawling out—

Again that grip, and I turned to confront two eyes that blazed like a cat's in the dark. Three simple motions, and I knew what O'Reilly meant.

At the moment it seemed a sensible, ordinary thing to do. Dumpy Scarth, whom we cussed and at times hated and knew we were fond of all the time, was drowning down there.

Before I could gather my thoughts together O'Reilly was out of his cockpit, one foot in my seat. As I circled back he was hanging outside the front cockpit by his hands. As easily as a professional acrobat he made the wing—and twice he was hanging over space by just one hand, gripping the cowling. Then he was alongside the motor, on the wing runway. I was a hundred yards east of Dumpy's floating wreck, and pointed back westward as O'Reilly crawled along the wing on his stomach. He reached the tip, and one hand found the little opening on the very edge of the wing tip, provided for a mechanic's grip when helping turn a ship or guiding its course on the ground. As I cut the gun slightly, and got down within five feet of the water, Penoch O'Reilly's body disappeared—except for one hand.

He was hanging from that wingtip.

Suddenly my sprained brain got one of its intervals of coherence and clarity. I was as cool as the night air that brushed my face, and it seemed that the bomber was a mere plaything in my hands.

Ten feet above the water, a hundred feet back of the wreck, my seventy feet of wing-spread almost scraping the bushes on the river banks, it seemed. And I brought the DeHaviland up into the air in a half zoom, and as I did so turned it on its side with stick and rudder. It was a sixty degree bank—and I was slipping the ship straight downward, with very little forward speed.

The wing to which Penoch was hanging was pointed down, of course.

Twenty feet above the water, I caught the ship, and slowed its downward speed. Your rudder becomes your elevator, and vice versa, when in a bank of more than forty-five degrees. For a second we hovered, on one wing there, and in that second the indomitable O'Reilly loosed his hold. How he did it I don't know to this day, but he hit the water with his body in a tight ball, like a porcupine in distress.

He was but twenty feet from the wreck, and I saw him come to the surface and fan through the water toward the DeHaviland.

He was all right. Whether he could get the unconscious Dumpy out in time to save him from drowning I knew not, but there was nothing more I could do. At the moment I didn't realize that I had seen one of the nerviest pieces of air work ever attempted.

I FLEW the Rio Grande west, taking the turns in that crooked river like a rail road train on the rails. And I swooped around one of them just in time to see two riders clambering up the bank on the Mexican side, another within five feet of it, a fourth close behind him.

The fifth was fully twenty feet back of the fourth man.

My decision was automatic, without conscious thought. Baker might be one of the four but certainly no prisoner would be bringing up the rear. The others had escaped—but one man could give us what information we needed to help us.

I shot a burst of bullets into the water, over his head. Any one on the border knew what that meant—and that a De Haviland in the air was the Federal Government.

But this rider did not stop. His horse was making tough work of it. His progress was slow—but it remained progress.

There was but one thing to do. I'm not a killer, and I wanted that man alive, but I had to take the chance. When he was fifteen feet from the Mexican side I gave it to him—and he toppled from his horse. The horse was dead as a door-nail, apparently, floating slowly down the stream. And a weakly struggling man clung to the saddle alongside, and floated with him.

I waited just long enough to watch the fleeing riders get a mile into Mexico, and then roared back up the river. I found three people standing on the bank opposite the wrecked D.H.—and one on the ground. As I swooped so low that my wheels fairly scraped the scattered trees that prone figure sat up.

DUMPY SCARTH was alive. And the Grays had helped to bring him to.

Again I came by, and motioned down the river. The Gray car was several hundred yards away, but there was no road for it to travel on. I waited to watch the tireless O'Reilly start down the bank of the stream, and then went on ahead to guide him. I circled the floating carcass and its living supercargo until O'Reilly arrived. The little Irishman took most of his clothes off, and within ten minutes had the man I'd shot on the American side of the river.

As I left the scene, to get on the ground, I took a flash downward at Penoch from a spot about ten feet above the river. Gleaming white in his underwear, mud and weeds still enswathing his head and face, bare feet wide apart and unmindful of tarantulas and rattlers and such, O'Reilly waved at me. And I almost thought I could hear him bellowing delightedly:

“Ho, ho, ho!”

On my gallop through the air back to the landing field, I spotted the Gray car making a detour in the general direction of Penoch, and decided that there was little sense of my attempting to return to the scene, after landing via horseback. So, after feeling my way down into the field, and making it safely, I had leisure to think matter over.

There was no need of attempting to count chickens before they were hatched. O'Reilly's wave had meant that everything was all right. Which included, I assumed, that we had made no mistake in the identity of the riders. Whether or not our one captive would talk was on the knees of the gods.

All that would come out later. But at the moment one thought stood out in my mind like a sparrow in Detroit. That was the deed done by O'Reilly in going down after Dumpy.

The flyer below in the river had been not only an acquaintance of but a few hours, but, in general, O'Reilly's enemy. And the Rio Grande has a habit of being very shallow for diving purposes. Penoch, instantly and without question, had tried to throw his life to whatever fish inhabit that muddy stream.

Even more impressive was the manner in which it had been performed. There had been no white-hot inspiration—no inner flame which had made him forget his own personal safety—concerned in the deed. Rather, it seemed to me, he had taken it as a matter of course, without the quiver of a nerve or the tremor of a heart-string. If there had been any emotion at all, it had been a boyish delight in the “kick” of the thing. It was apparent to me that the little question of how long Percival Enoch O'Reilly inhabited this vale of tears meant less to said P. Enoch than to any one else.

I commenced to think of him differently, right then, and to sense mental constitution somewhat different than any I'd previously dissected. His hundred humorous brushes with fate had stamped him a devil-may-care play-boy. Now I knew that he was all iron. And that caused me to think back to the brief moment when I'd seen him in the grip of simon-pure fury.

I decided that O'Reilly, really stirred into raging action, would be as terrible a foe to struggle with as could well be imagined. He'd never forget, never give up, and never know what fear meant nor figure the odds against him. He would be a human machine, pressing ever forward to crush one.

AS I threw myself into a chair on the Gray veranda, it may be that the events of the night, plus the night itself which seemed vibrating with sinister possibilities, which caused me to become somewhat exaggerated in my mental reactions. But that little brown-faced runt with the Gargantuan laugh and the scarred pan and the ridiculous mustache seemed to grow and grow into a sort of giant of my imagination. And I had a hunch crawling in and out of my mental chambers that I didn't know the half of it.

I was musing about the past years on the border, and how true to form this day had been, when the luxurious touring car of this amazing Gray menage rolled into the clearing and stopped before the porch. Gray, Dumpy and Ann were in the front seat. In the rear was O'Reilly, guarding a corpse.

“Our bandit's dead!” bellowed O'Reilly.

I darted a look at the girl. She ran into the house, and I could not estimate just what effect a night ride with a dead body had had on her.

“But,” O'Reilly went on jovially, as I came to the side of the car, “we got the masked bandit. At least, this bozo had that two thousand in his pockets, and some jewelry, and a mask as well. And you should carry him if you don't think he's big!”

“Von Sternberg,” I yelped with excitement. “What luck! Did he talk—”

“Hold your horses, caballero,” bade Penoch, hopping out of the car. “It's the masked bandit, but it isn't Von Sternberg!”

Gray was motionless at the wheel, and he did not turn his head.

“Wrong, eh Gray?” I demanded.

He nodded wearily, and slowly got to the ground.

“Of course,” he said slowly. “It doesn't mean at all that I'm wrong about Fred not being on the level. It does mean that he wasn't, personally, the masked bandit. But Von Sternberg was here on the ground when Gates was killed—and this bandit here was also in the vicinity, doubtless. Which may or may not mean anything—”

“Did he talk?” I demanded. “He was alive when you got him—”

“A little.”

All four of us—Dumpy, Gray, O'Reilly and I—were standing alongside the car, very close together. Dumpy hadn't said a word. For once his tongue was still because of what O'Reilly had done for him, I think.

“What did he say?” I asked crisply.

“Nothing that would help.”

As O'Reilly said that those eyes of his just bored right into my own. Then they shifted to Dumpy Scarth, and seemed to be digging into that rather wan young gentleman's very skull.

And I knew right then that O'Reilly had heard something from this unknown Mexican'—something that he did not want to confide in us. His look into my eyes had been significant, as though to warn me not to press him. And as he stood there, neck craned forward and staring into Dumpy's face, it was as though he was trying, without words, to make that chubby flyer uncomfortable with his inferences.

Gray's face was rather pale, I thought. No one uttered a word, and, for no reason, the silence was tense and meaningful.

Suddenly O'Reilly relaxed.

“Gray's going to take the stiff in to the undertaker,” he said carelessly. “I've got the dough and jewels. I—”

“Come right in here, Bob!” came Ann's voice. “Didn't I tell you not to stay out of bed a minute?”

And Dumpy paddled up on the porch, weaving a little from weakness. And through the window I observed Ann fussing around him as he lay on a couch and fussing in a very pitying, romantic and tender way.

“I'll be back in ah hour,” Gray said lifelessly, and was off.

“HELL of a night eh?” asked O'Reilly oratorically. “What do you know about that half-wit Scarth trying to make his ship into a water-bug, and crashing under such circumstances? Put him in the air to drop flowers at a funeral and he'd chase the hearse up a side street to give the mourners a treat!”

“Never mind that. What did the bandit say on his death-bed?”

“Nothing important.”

“The hell he didn't,” I told him elegantly. “Come clean!”

“Where do you get that stuff?” he roared like a swelling bullfrog.

I looked at him long and intently.

“Is there any good reason why you shouldn't give me the dope?”

For a moment, a telltale moment, he hesitated. Then:

“This bird did some goofy raving before he died. Von Sternberg was mentioned. And what this Spig's delirious yelling hinted at is something that—I'm going to prove personally before I say anything. It concerns a flyer, see? I'd be a fine egg to say anything unless I was positive, wouldn't I? And I can soon be positive, get me? Now, for God's sake Slim, don't ask any more questions!”

Which left me steaming in a fog. Was the dead Bert Gates' memory to be smirched? Or Baker's?

Was Dumpy Scarth, by any stretch of the imagination, mixed up in it? He was young and crazy—

“Let's phone the captain,” I said abruptly, and went into the house. Ann was tenderly washing off a large bump on the forehead of the smirking Scarth. And Dumpy, to my eagle eye, was pretending to be a lot sicker than he was.

O'Reilly stopped alongside the couch. Hands on hips, feet wide apart, his face like a worldly wise elf's as those white eyebrows raised quizzically, he merely gazed at the tableau in sardonic silence. Then that incongruous bass boomed forth.

“Pretty lucky, Dumpy! I thought I'd get ahead of you by pulling that hero stuff, but I'm not getting a look-in!”

Ann Gray darted a look upward at him, and then dropped her eyes like a flash. Dumpy grinned complacently.

“Just because I've been busy and haven't had a chance,” O'Reilly pursued calmly, “doesn't mean that what I announced a while back doesn't go. I'm just telling you, Ann, that you're the best-looking girl I ever saw, and just made to order for one Lieutenant O'Reilly. And he's going to rush you right off your feet, if he can, and make you forget this bird here.”

All this was said with entire seriousness, and lack of embarrassment. I was between a strangled laugh and a gasp of amazement, which combination nearly burst a blood-vessel in my Adam's apple.

“Don't get me wrong,” warned the sublimely collected Penoch. “This love at first sight business is usually a sign of bad peepers. I'm not saying that. But you certainly bounced one off my chin that caught me in the solar plexus on the rebound, and I'm completely non compus mentis about any other dame. Figured I wouldn't have a chance to get you alone for a while, so I'm putting in my bid right at the start. O. K.?”

I took one look at the gathering around the couch. Ann Gray's head was bent, and she was biting her lips. Dumpy's round face was red with wrath. O'Reilly, his red hair mussed and his barrel-like body enclosed in skin-tight wet clothes, splotched with muck, stood there like a calm colossus.

I made one leap into the hallway, and collapsed in a sales of muffled snorts, moans and tears of joy. Talk about a sheik!

I was still laughing when I got Kennard on the phone. I started to report, and he interrupted me and wiped the grins out of my system for a long time.

“Tell me in the morning—I'll be in at dawn,” came that rasping bark over the phone. “Sergeant Baker's just been found a mile from the airdrome, shot to death.”

CAPTAIN KENNARD arrived on schedule, and met four sleepless men who'd spent a bad night. Ann Gray had gone to bed. One of the worst features of the night had been the constant bickering between O'Reilly and Scarth. I'd heard O'Reilly say, just after Ann had gone to bed:

“Because I saved your life doesn't mean that I'm not going to knock the spots out of you for your running remarks about me—and I want no gratitude on your part, understand? There's only one thing'll save you from the doggondest beating you ever had, and that's to apologize—”

“The hell I will!” blazed the indomitable Dumpy, and that was that.

And it had grown worse through the night. There was a very curious change in O'Reilly's attitude toward Dumpy. Whereas it had been a sort of impersonal, passionless determination to stop Dumpy's bragging, it grew to a savage personal dislike, it seemed to me. And I wondered whether a girl whom they'd known only a few hours could be responsible for it.

“Probably on Dumpy's part, but I can't believe it of O'Reilly,” I decided.

Kennard scrutinized Gray carefully, and we went into a discussion. The end of said confab found us united in the belief that this unknown Von Sternberg was the head of a considerable organization of which the masked bandit was a part, and that said organization was starting to come to grips with the border patrol for reasons unknown, but surmised. Probably, we decided, for the purpose of stealing some ships and taking to the air against us. Which presupposed smuggling. Baker, we figured, had escaped in some manner and been trailed. He'd been killed to keep his mouth shut. A riderless horse had been found within a mile of the spot in the mesquite where the fleeing sergeant had been shot.

The connection of Von Sternberg with the masked bandit was simply the result of Penoch's story that the name had been recognized by the bandit, when O'Reilly had mentioned it—recognized with a fleeting, sardonic smile.

What other thing was in O'Reilly's mind as a result of that conversation he did not mention, nor did I hint that he tell it. You may think that peculiar, but I had come to have a high respect for that young man. And I'd be the last one to insist that gossip involving one of the patrol be broadcast without foundation, even to myself.

Penoch O'Reilly, on his own, would ferret out that foundation, or the lack of it, and keep his own counsel until he had finished.

IT WAS seven o'clock in the morning as we had coffee, and Captain Kennard summed up our plans.

“Somebody's going to pay for these murders,” he rasped savagely, “and it looks as though Von Sternberg would be the one. Gray, your story seems to make him the inevitable villain.

“The idea of your baiting a trap for him, is a good one. But it seems unnecessary and possibly unwise to have a flyer and ship stationed here all the time. Patrols are going to be continuous during daylight hours from now on. There'll be a plane within a few miles of you all the time. A system of signals will fix things. But we don't want to sweep down on him without the facts which will convict him. If he comes here to talk to you, the plane'll land so we can meet him in the flesh. Throw in with him if he broaches any criminal scheme, and keep us informed. Meanwhile, the government will be on the trail of the rest of the bandit gang, and looking up the gentleman's activities in Mexico.

“From what you people say of him, and what has transpired, I have an idea that what the gentleman contemplates will be an operation on a large scale. We'll see to it that the border is prepared.”

Ann came down, and went straight to Dumpy's side. Careless of the stranger present, or of any one else, she bent solicitously over him, touched the little bump with one hand, and smiled a smile down into his fatuous eyes which would have had more effect on me personally than an absinthe eye-opener. So you can imagine what it did to Dumpy.

I could scarcely believe it, but it appeared that that gorgeous girl was most deeply impressed by the fat little flyer. However, women are very peculiar pickers, some times.

Of course, men aren't.

She had barely been introduced to the stocky captain, when she asked: “Captain, I have a favor to ask of you. I'm sure the others won't mind. Poor Lieutenant Scarth here has had so many flying mishaps, that my brother and I both agree he needs a rest. Some of the stories he told last night were enough to make one's blood run cold! Would it be too much to ask that the flyer you leave stationed here be him?”

“There won't be any flyer stationed here, Miss Gray,” barked the captain, and several embryo grins chased themselves across his face. “Sorry.”

Dumpy's face fell.

“Honest, Captain, it seems best,” he exploded. “Just leave me here and I'll knock this Von Sternberg into a cocked hat—”

“Sure!” agreed the captain heartily. “But we'll need every flyer for patrol. This latest exploit of the bandits—and these murders—have got the country by the ears, and patrols, as I said, will be continuous. It wouldn't surprise me to see night flying lights along this border within three months, either!”

THE white-faced, haggard-looking Gray jumped a foot as the telephone rang. When he went in I noticed O'Reilly. His round blue eyes were hard as granite, and he was gazing fixedly at Ann Gray and Dumpy, who were talking in low tones.

“This certainly is a remarkable layout,” I remember telling myself gleefully. “Penoch O'Reilly's about the only man in the world who'd have said what he did last night to the girl—and I guess Ann Gray's movie life must have sort of taught her to come right to the point. That request for Dumpy in person was pretty raw!”

O'Reilly strode to the doorway, where he leaned carelessly. He was one human being who seemed tireless.

Evidently he could overhear some part of the telephone conversation, for he inclined his head slightly as though trying to make sure that what he was hearing from within was accurate. Ann, too, seemed worried about the meaning of the call. Inasmuch as the ringing of that phone had meant important news in every case for the past few hours, I sort of shared in their interest.

The conversation was brief, and in a moment Gray strode out on the porch. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flashing with excitement.

“Captain,” he said abruptly. “I have an unusual favor to ask of you. I want to ask you to have me flown to San Antonio right away—either myself or my sister.”

Ann seemed frozen to her chair, her wide eyes on her brother.

“Why?” barked Kennard.

Gray turned swiftly toward me.

“As I told these fellows, I'm interested in the Luling oil-field,” he said quickly. “You all know what that game is. It appears that I can make a large amount of money if I can get up there today—which will be impossible by rail. Ann knows all about our leases, too—even she could attend to the business. We have options on other acres we must take up today. A well came in unexpectedly near us, and they expire at midnight tonight. “I realize that it is an unusual and unheard of thing to ask. But I make this offer. If you'll send a ship up there with either Ann or myself, I'll contribute one thousand dollars to the nearest heir or heirs of both Sergeant Baker and Lieutenant Gates—two thousand dollars in all. You can have travelers' checks which I happen to have left for that amount right in your hands before the ship starts!”

THAT, in a manner of speaking, put a new complexion on things. Baker had a wife and child in San Antonio, we knew. I didn't know it at the time, but Gates had a widowed mother, too. The captain did know about that. He made up his mind instantly.

“All right,” he said crisply. “If you're sure your sister will do just as well up there, send her. Never can tell what'll happen down here, and we need you on the ground for a variety of reasons. You understand that you'll have to sign a release of responsibility in case of a wreck, do you not? No claims against the government or any one else?”

“I do!” nodded the excited Gray. “Sis, get packed right away.”

Without a word she flew up-stairs.

“Let me fly her!” yapped Dumpy, now a perfectly well man. “Please, Cap'n.”

Kennard flashed a look at Penoch and me. O'Reilly's face was a study as he looked at the red-faced, glowing-eyed Scarth.

“Seems to be no competition for the job,” Kennard stated. “Go to it.”

In a few minutes Dumpy, Penoch, the girl and myself were on our way in the car, with her two suitcases. The captain and Gray were drawing up the release of responsibility and arranging the cash payment.

Penoch grabbed the two suitcases at the edge of the field, and carried them to the ship. Just before I got out of the car he leaned over to me.

“Give me a chance for a private word with him,” he whispered, and was off.

I was completely puzzled, which isn't unusual. I'm just a lanky, dumb bird who sort of flaps and flounders his way through life, sometimes stumbling accidentally on explanations and ideas with which my mental processes have nothing to do.

“Might as well sit here a few minutes in comfort,” I told the girl. “The warm-up will take a few minutes.”

As the motor started I was helping her adjust the borrowed helmet and goggles, and seeing to it that she was properly enswathed in the flying coveralls. Her eyes were like stars, her face flushed, her body fairly quivering with excited anticipation.

That being done, and my curiosity growing greater and greater as time went on, I cast a glance at the ship and said as casually as possible:

“Just wait here a while while I go over and see if I can help.”

THE ship was fifty yards away, idling. No one was in the cockpit, however. Both Dumpy and O'Reilly were on the far side of the D. H., out of sight save for their legs.

As I strolled around the tail, coming within sight of them as an uninvited guest, I stopped in some surprise. Penoch's neck was thrust forward, his face was within inches of the raging countenance of Scarth, and he was saying something in no uncertain manner.

“No!” yelled Dumpy, one finger wagging in Penoch's face.

Casting a hasty glance behind me, I perceived that the girl was wandering toward the ship.

“What's the matter!” I exploded disgustedly. “If you two banty roosters don't quit fighting around here—”

“Why, this damn fool wanted me to—”

“Shut up, damn you!” roared Penoch, and in a split second he had Dumpy by the neck and was shaking him back and forth like a rat. For a second I was too stunned with surprise to move, as was the purple Scarth.

Then his stocky, powerful body twisted and squirmed, and his fist sank with a thud into Penoch's stomach. The little adventurer released his hold, fell back momentarily, and then hurled himself forward. It did not last five seconds, honestly, but never in my life have I seen anything so amazing.

Penoch hit Dumpy like an oversized cannon-ball. That isn't the simile either, for O'Reilly was a flying mass of arms and legs. I'll swear he kicked Dumpy several times in the shins and hit him at least ten times within that five seconds. He was moving so fast that his limbs were blurred, and when the cyclone was over Dumpy was on the ground, Penoch leaning over him.

And O'Reilly's face wasn't impersonal or collected. For the second time I saw raw hatred shine from his eyes, and he snarled his words. “Get up before she gets here, damn you, and keep your mouth shut!” he rasped. “And by God you do what I told you about continuing to keep that mouth shut, or' I'll resign from the army just to get you!”

He had Dumpy by the back of the coveralls, and jerked that maddened youngster to his feet.

“Act as though nothing had happened!” snarled O'Reilly. “Get in that cockpit!”

And Dumpy did. For a moment it seemed that his stubbornness would result in further complications, but O'Reilly's wolfish face was before his eyes. It seemed to me that Dumpy was a man in a nightmare. He was climbing in as the girl, her lips parted in startled surprise, came around the ship. Her wide eyes showed considerable fear, and her face was like chalk.

Penoch greeted her with a smiling nod as Dumpy jazzed the gun savagely. “Climb in, fair lady,” O'Reilly yelled with a grin, and there was no trace of the emotions he had been registering a moment before. As for me—I pinched myself prayerfully and inquired of myself whether I was going completely cuckoo. However, I'd soon find out.

Penoch and I wired the two suitcases on the wings, snug up to the fuselage. Kennard and Gray rode into the field just as Dumpy, goggles and helmet masking all expression on his face, took off. Outside of one quick glance at his passenger to make sure she was ready, he had not raised his eyes from his instrument board. Not a word or a gesture of farewell to us. He didn't even give the girl a chance to say good-by to her brother. He had all the aspect of a young man who's suddenly been dealt a paralyzing blow.

KENNARD and Gray rode alongside the other ship, and the captain seemed to be describing its details to the Californian. So I seized my chance.

“Penoch,” I said as quietly as I could, “there's considerable excess mystery around here. And I crave to be in on it. It's not plain curiosity alone, either. You're new to us all, and anything official in it should be told. Get me? Or was it just part of a fight between two beaus, who don't like each other?”

In his characteristic stance, with legs wide apart, he was looking at the ground. When he looked up I glimpsed, for just a moment, a new O'Reilly. I'll swear there was utter misery in his eyes, and a drawn look on his face. It was evidence that he really did have the feelings of a human being, and was not just the little machine which he seemed outwardly to be. Up to that moment any association of soft-heartedness in connection with him had been out of the question. Even his amorous warning to Ann Gray had been like the burlesque of some diabolical little joker. He seemed to be hesitating about what to do. It was plain to me that he desired to confide in me and yet some irresistible force damned his attempts to speak. For the moment he seemed really whipped, psychologically speaking, as he allowed me to prove into his eyes, expressive for the first time.

“Give me a little more time, Slim,” he begged. “I'm sort of of scrambled in my mind, and I don't want to talk out of turn. You can't ask me to. The reasons I have may be personal—but if they are, there are others who ought to be damn thankful.”

And while I was making up my mind that I'd keep my eyes open for a number of things, I was trying to keep from allowing my thoughts to roam where they wanted to. My mental condition may be surmised when I tell you that the border patrolmen were in no different circumstances than many other officials. Temptations, sometimes almost irresistible if you figure that every man has his price, came their way.

THE next week was an unpleasant one. As quietly as possible, all the forces of the law were working and watching. Double murder of government men did not happen without cognizance, considerable cognizance, being taken thereof by the country at large, Texas in general, and the border in particular. Every border patrol post was heavily guarded night and day against the possibility of airplanes being stolen. Agents were at work quietly trying to discover the hiding-place of Von Sternberg in Mexico. The Grays had been proven to be exactly what they had said they were in California, and the patrol, aside from flying almost night and day, marked time and waited for Gray's trap for Von Sternberg to function.

All this was nerve-racking to flyers with fury in their hearts and revenge on their minds, but that was not the main trouble with the McMullenites. They had two troubles. One was Penoch O'Reilly and the other Dumpy Scarth. The hatred between the two was enough to spoil a far larger organization than the little cluster of men who lived in close contact out in the mesquite. O'Reilly was quieter about it. But the feeling was there. Dumpy Scarth rubbed him the wrong way every time he opened his mouth, and Penoch was not backward about saying so. And Dumpy's mouth was open longer and more frequently than ever. They had three fights during that week, when the raging Scarth lost hold of himself under the sting of Penoth's incessant command to quit talking about himself. In every one Penoch, a devastating chunk of human dynamite, thoroughly licked the indomitable Scarth, who came back for more as long as he could stand. O'Reilly was savagely contemptuous of Dumpy and all his work. Scarth hated O'Reilly with a truly murderous feeling that made one creepy to watch. Gone was the devil-may-care, boyishly naive braggart whose quick tempers were as quickly over and meant nothing. Dumpy was a vindictive man, and a man, unless I was wrong, with a shadow hanging over him like a constant terror.

Patrol ships stopped frequently at the Gray home, and Dumpy was the most frequent caller. Penoch came next. They were fighting for Ann Gray, no doubt—and Penoch was a bad second. But that rivalry, to my mind, did not explain O'Reilly's attitude. It did account for Dumpy up to a certain point.

BUT there was something transcending that. O'Reilly was his master, in the sense that a cow-puncher riding a horse which always fights back until exhausted, is a master. And that goes from a mental as well as a physical point of view. Sometimes I thought of that puncher simile in another way too. It was as though O'Reilly was deliberately trying to break Scarth's spirit. He battered continuously and savagely at Dumpy, wearing that raving lunatic's resistance down. To make him confess something, perhaps?

It extended even to flying. We had been given one little S. E. 5 scout ship which was a darb for stunting. Dumpy took it up as often as he could, got high with it, and stunted wildly for e delectation of the entire city of McMullen and his fellow flyers. Not once did he come down from one of those flights that O'Reilly did not take it up immediately afterward. I'm not saying that Penoch was a better all-round pilot than Dumpy. But when it came to handling a single-seater in aerial maneuvers of a complicated nature I'll stand up and swear in any court that P. Enoch O'Reilly was one of the great stunt pilots of the world.

Even the flyers gaped in dumbfounded admiration. Upside down flying he could perform as though flying right side up. I've seen him start at five thousand feet, on his back, and do a barrel roll, finishing upside down, coming up out of the dugout another loop, doing a roll and a half, mind you, which finished him right side up, and then, with a reasonably fresh breeze, bring the S. E. down in a two thousand foot stall which was as close to imitating an elevator as I've ever seen. At other times he'd start high, and do a continuous succession of stunts on the way down. Each merged into the other without a break, and in two minutes he'd performed every stunt known to flying—and some, I verily believe, which no man but George Groody had ever done before.

O'Reilly's flights, made without comment of any kind, were obviously a contemptuous gesture of superiority at Scarth. Finally when Dumpy, truly a wild man as he saw his one cherished excuse for eminence slipping away from him, started going wild close to the ground, flying through a hangar and that stuff, the captain firmly forbid either one to fly the S. E. until further notice. It was inevitable that Dumpy would kill himself if he kept on.

AND all of grew sorry for the fat little beggar, pursued to desperation by his machinelike Nemesis. By the same token, Penoch was put down as a poor egg to have around. We didn't interfere, any of us—it was their own business. But the boys began to squirm with pity for the under dog as Penoch flayed him mercilessly. Only I realized that there was a reason for it which no one else knew. But sometimes, when Dumpy reminded me of a panic-stricken, bewildered beast throwing himself against the bars of its cage, I felt as though everybody would go crazy before the climax came. Which climax, thank whatever gods there be, was not far away.

Finally, with great unexpectedness, it was announced that Dumpy was taking a week's leave. Inasmuch as we were flying an average of five hours a day apiece, with every one's nerves getting more and more on edge from overwork, this announcement was somewhat of a mystery. I figured that it was the C. O.'s idea. He wanted to part Dumpy and O'Reilly.

When Dumpy announced triumphantly, shooting a glance full of vindictive triumph at O'Reilly, that he was spending his leave with the Grays, I saw O'Reilly sort of freeze into a statue. His battered face was a study, and his eyes were like gimlets, boring into Dumpy's very skull.

“I suppose,” he boomed, “that you'll keep watch for us in case Von Sternberg turns up.”

Dumpy nodded. He was really incapable of a civil word to O'Reilly.

“I'll be down often to help you,” announced O'Reilly.

Dumpy turned and left the mess-hall without a word. And Jimmy Jennings, a highly keyed-up character anyway, burst into speech.

“For god's sake, O'Reilly, can't you leave him alone even down there?” he flared.

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walls of the room. The Grays kept their eyes on him almost continually. Gerald, more urbane and polished and handsome than ever in his conventional clothing, was a real touch of class to the occasion.

As dinner was ending he said suddenly: “I'd like to see you, Sheriff, the Captain, and O'Reilly and Evans. I'd include Bob, but Ann will take care of him.”

Neither objected, so we gathered in the captain's office, followed by the alertly interested gaze of the other flyers. Tex MacDowell's gray eyes glowed with the light I knew so well. And he had a nose for excitement which was the most delicate and infallible I've ever known.

“I've heard from, and talked to, Von Sternberg,” Gray said abruptly.

That got the kind of attention from his audience that actors dream about.

“My place, it seems, is on a direct air-line between Von Sternberg's base in Mexico and San Antonio—or the vicinity of San Antonio. Von Sternberg knows that we are friendly with you flyers. He made no offer, definite offer, that I join him, although he was much interested in the plane I have ordered.

“To make a long story short, he's coming through by air on next Saturday night. Why by air, he didn't say. You can surmise. Being Von Sternberg, with the nerve of the devil himself, and figuring that I'd keep my mouth shut, he simply put the proposition cold. It was for me to see to it that no flyer or flyers were at my house for the week-end. If by any chance there should be, I'm to see to it that the flyer is very sound asleep when he passes over. Drug you—that is. I say—I don't know whether he will fly personally or not.

“I didn't dare ask him about the murder. I did hint, in a jovial way, at the ship stolen from Laredo. He merely grinned that deceiving grin of his, which'd make you believe he was an ingenuous college boy, and said the smaller one's investment is the greater the profits.

“He doesn't want to make a big circle around my place—matter of figuring his gasoline supply, I think.”

PENOCH'S head was thrust forward in the characteristic position, but he said not a word while Kennard and the sheriff talked in terse sentences. I, for a wonder, said nothing either. I was in too much of a mental tailspin.

Finally Kennard summed it up. “Tomorrow we'll borrow an MB and a Briston from Donovan Field. They're both capable of a hundred fifty miles an hour. We'll hide 'em down at your place. And wait for him, as you say. Your suggestion that there might be more than one ship is a possibility. And Laredo and McMullen will be ready to take the air at any time we get the word.”

“And please remember this,” Gray said quietly, but his eyes were shot with red and his face was strained. “You don't know Von Sternberg—but I do. You realize my position. I hate to ask it, but will you try, in your conversation and such other ways as may be necessary, to protect me as far as possible?

“I'm going to send Ann to San Antone for a while to get her away from possible trouble. Besides, she's been having twinges of appendicitis for some time, and she can be operated on. I'll use that as an excuse.”

“You can depend on us,” Kennard said crisply.

Gray, shooting a curious glance at the half-crouched O'Reilly, went out.

“Captain,” O'Reilly said slowly, “I want to ask a very presumptuous thing. I want you to assign Dumpy Scarth, Slim and myself to those ships.”

“Why?”

Penoch hesitated, staring into the captain's eyes as though on the verge of saying something vitally important.

Because I'd served under the captain for years, I put in my oar.

“Captain Kennard, I'm sure you'll believe me—and believe that my judgment isn't so rotten and that if I'm mysterious I have damn good reasons for being so. As an individual favor for me, which may lead to—to something very important, will you do what Penoch says?”

Sheriff Trowbridge's puckered eyes were surveying me keenly, as he pulled his mustache. Kennard gazed long and hard into my eyes. Then, because he was the kind of a man he was, he said crisply:

“All right, I'm completely at sea, but if there's something you don't want to confide in me, yet, I can appreciate it.”

The dance was a huge success, and Ann was the queen of the May, Dumpy's face shining with happiness, was like a glowing, red-faced kewpie.

I do not fling a wicked foot, so I foregathered, as is my custom, with a few cronies near the bar. And we laughed until four o'clock in the morning at Percival Enoch O'Reilly. The little twospot picked for partners all the stout old better halves of the McMullen oldtimers, and he swung those dreadnaughts about hilariously. He danced 'em right into the ground. Sometimes it was hard to spot him, and then he'd emerge from the tangle of amply swinging skirts, his head barely to his partner's shoulder, his arm going one quarter of the way around her, and with elfin face shining go into more complicated evolutions.

The crowd was going at four in the morning, and I was preparing to retire. We were to haul off for San Antone before noon, and grab those three fighting scout ships. Suddenly there seemed to be excitement in the rear end of the hangar. Penoch O'Reilly and I rushed over.

It was Ann. She'd fainted. As Major Searles, our weazened old flight surgeon, had her carried to a tent and started to revive her Penoch and I were right on the trail, along with Dumpy and Gerald.

She came to quickly, and sort of grabbed her side.

“I knew it!” exploded Gerald.

Dumpy's face was pitiful to see as he begged to know what. He was sure a lovelorn kid.

“That damn appendicitis!” grated her brother. “Let's go out and give the doctor a chance.”

We heard Ann talking faintly, and in a moment the doctor came out. He glanced at the sky.

“No need of an examination, from what you've both told me,” the little major said hurriedly. “She must be operated on as soon as is humanly possible.

“Mr. Gray, I'd advise you to have her taken to a hospital in San Antonio. She can be flown up there in two hours and a half. Here in McMullen you wouldn't find expert attention. It will be drawn in a few moments.”

“Dumpy, take him to see the captain about it, Penoch said suddenly, and the dazed Dumpy, as though unmindful of who was speaking, obeyed.

O'Reilly whirled on me.

“Slim, come with me,” he whispered. “I want to examine their baggage!”

For a long moment we looked at each other, and without a word we knew a part of what each one of us had been thinking.

“Information or no information, I want to know!” he said in that hoarse whisper. “Come on!”

IN A moment we were in my battered car, and flying toward McMullen. Not a word did we speak. Then:

“The minute she got sick and I got close to her I grabbed some keys from her pocket-book,” he told me calmly. “I think I'm wrong, but I'll never be comfortable until I know!”

Even under the circumstances I threw back my head and laughed. To think of that cast-iron little squirt stealing keys while a girl was as sick as Ann somehow seemed humorous to me. Penoch was indeed a business man.

They were occupying the two rooms which the flight rented by the month in the hotel, for casual guests. It was no trick to get the key, and in two minutes we were in Gray's room. There was but one suitcase there—open. We tore into Ann's room, and there were two suitcases, locked, and one open.

Working with silent speed, not wasting movement, Penoch had the first one open in a few seconds.

“Look at it,” he whispered, and started work on the second. He had it open as I was poking into the top layer of clothing. A muttered “God!” passed his lips as my own tongue worked convulsively in an effort at speech. Spread before us in the two suitcases there was at least twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of dope, neatly put up in small packages easily opened. My eyes met his—and they were alight with a wintry, savage glow which made them shine like an animal's at night.

He snapped one suitcase shut. “Let's get out of here!” he whispered hoarsely.

HE asked my permission to drive back, which I gave him. He must have thought he was contesting for the Vanderbilt Cup. That veteran vehicle of mine ran faster than the makers thereof had intended it to go when in top condition. Penoch skirted holes in the road and hurtled over thank-you-ma'ams like a man possessed.

Our fragmentary conversation was sufficient, however, to enable us to agree on deductions, methods, future plans. All would have been pleasant anticipation save for one thing: Dumpy Scarth.

“I'll tell you who comes in it,” O'Reilly roared at me above the wheel. “Here comes a car. They're bound to town for that baggage.”

Providentially there was a side road—just an alley—and we drove up that while the other car went by. It wasn't of vast importance, but it would be just as well if Gray didn't know that Penoch and I were driving home from an unexpected trip to town.

Out at the airdrome a hundred or so people were standing around, waiting to see the takeoff. Two ships were on the line, spitting fire from their exhausts as sleepy mechanics warmed them up.

In a moment Penoch had collected Captain Kennard and the huge old sheriff. The quartette of us foregathered in Kennard's office. O'Reilly was a bundle of irresistible energy—he gave the impression of a man who was white hot inside, and controlling himself with an effort.

“SHOOT!” commanded the captain, and I let Penoch do the shooting.

In two sentences he told what we'd found. Kennard's stocky body stiffened and his gray eyes widened in utter amazement. Trowbridge clawed at his sweeping mustache, and his eyes were bright slits in his lined old face.

“How come?” he boomed, and in a hoarse stage whisper Penoch shot the works.

“When I went after that masked bandit we'd shot down, he was more or less delirious. I listened to his talk. For a minute or so before he died he seemed to be half sane. I fired questions at him, mentioning the Grays, and Von Sternberg. No need of taking up time trying to recall things exactly. This guy made me think he worked for Von Sternberg's gang. And that the Grays were in some way connected with operations. This bird thought, I imagine, that he'd been doublecrossed—that Gray had given the tipoff to us. It wasn't definite, any of it, but his rambling conversation just gave me possible lines to work on.

“And, most important, when he saw me first his eyes got big and he said 'Senor Scarth?'”

O'Reilly stepped a moment, and no one offered to talk. So that was it. Scarth had been mentioned by this outlaw whom he'd never seen—

“And when I shook my head,” O'Reilly drove on, “This gink, sinking fast, grinned a mean sort of grin, said something sarcastic about the border patrol being honest men, asked where Dumpy was, and then started a crazy raving fit wherein he cursed the Grays, and frothed at the mouth in general.

“Right then I decided that there might be something a bit peculiar smelling in the woodpile. I figured that Von Sternberg had been talking, perhaps, about the Grays joining him, as per Jerry's story. I couldn't get the Dumpy Scarth thing out of my noodle, however. Why he should be mentioned with a sneering grin, and that sarcastic stuff pulled about the honesty of the border patrol.”

HE STOPPED again, his eyes flashing from face to face. We stood like statues, and I saw Kennard's face almost aging before my eyes. The lines were deeper, the eye terrible. Trowbridge wasn't smiling now he was leaning forward like some fierce old eagle watching hungrily for its prey.

“I couldn't shoot off my mouth,” Penoch went on. His stunted body was erect, those pillar-like legs widespread, mustache and hair disheveled. “I just watched, suspecting everybody and yet not really believing anything, you understand. I tried to sneak in a private word or so with Scarth, and the damn fool is too bull-headed to even try to clear himself. He just wouldn't say a courteous word to me.

“Then, after he'd wrecked his plane through plain damn foolishness along the river, accidentally knocking himself out too, I figured that a border flyer who'd take chances stunting when important duty was five minutes ahead was either unfit for duty because he didn't have sense enough or maybe unfit because he hadn't wanted those bandits caught. Next morning, when that telephone call came and the project of flying Gray to San Antone hove over the horizon, I got a freakish idea.

“I got it, I presume, because the audacity and grim humor and utter daring of this Von Sternberg. Some of his biggest jobs are jokes that even the victim has to laugh over. Anyway, it tickled me to construct the proposition. Wouldn't it be a laugh, I figured, if a couple of smugglers, knowing how tough it is to get the stuff north on the ground, should get friendly with the border boys, get a few trips north on various excuses, finally get a ship of their own and have a border man fly it, and all the time have border patrolmen carrying dope for 'em, innocently?

“Then the Dumpy thing came up in my mind. Suppose Dumpy had been corrupted some way? Slim, here, caught us just before that first trip started. I wanted Dumpy to give me a shot at examining the bags quickly, and he refused, all swollen up like a poisoned pup. Then I wanted him to see what he could find out by following her up in San Antone, and he started to lick me and shoot off his mouth kid fashion.

“For various reasons, I didn't want to confide in any one. You can realize some of 'em. It sounded far-fetched for one thing, and the Grays—

“To make a long story short, Dumpy Scarth has acted exactly as he would act if he had full knowledge of what the Grays were up to. Except for one thing. That is that he should have figured that I suspected something, and in that case would have warned 'em to lay off. His actions, plus the mysterious words of that Spig, make it look black for Dumpy to me. That angle of continuing the attempts at dope running is the only excuse for him. “But remember that even if he is innocent, he's a damn poor border patrolman to act as he has!”

“We'll soon find that out!” grated Kennard, and made a leap for the door.

THE three of us, silent as the grave, heard him bawl an order to some one to find Dumpy and bring him here. It was dawn, now, and the low drone of the two motors was the only audible sound.

When Kennard came back I took a hand.

“Our idea was to let the trip go through,” I told him. “Penoch and I suspected that this sickness was merely another good excuse for a trip under government auspices. We could get the Department of Justice on the job in San Antonio, have Ann shadowed, find out who buys the stuff and be all ready to rope in the whole gang whenever we're ready.”

“While we get Von Sternberg,” O'Reilly put in.

“How?” boomed the sheriff.

“My idea about the whole thing is this,” I told them swiftly. “Penoch's and mine, that is. It would be characteristic of this unknown, anyhow. The Grays are his accomplices, and planned to ingratiate themselves with the patrol somehow and work as they now work, getting the dope north. However, Von Sternberg wanted to steal a ship. Gates was inveigled into landing. Probably by the Grays themselves, for that matter. They were in on it. Von Sternberg was there. Then plans went wrong because Gates and Baker got wise and fought. Gates was killed. Baker escaped, and was tracked and killed to keep his mouth shut about Gray.

“Here's where the lovely audacity comes in. They fitted their plans to the disaster right away. Gray, telling part of the truth, got in with us by mentioning his boss and telling the truth about him. Or part of it. Von Sternberg, according to Penoch, is so firmly enthroned in Mexico, where the Germans stand ace high anyway, that he didn't give a damn about his name being mentioned, and it set the Grays right with us as nothing else could have done. Took us in completely, because it was based on fact.

“Now Penoch has an idea that Gray senses his suspicions. Possibly that we're all restive. So, if he's going to keep his unassailable position in our minds, he may have figured he'd have to make good some way.

“We think that on Saturday night there will something happen. Maybe a ship—the stolen one—come over and shoot right back across the border. Just enough to prove Gray's good faith, but with no chance of being caught. We'd figure he'd been scared back, but we'd also be sure Gray was on the level, and any suspicion we might have had would disappear.

“We though it would be a great idea to let the Grays think they're getting away in fine style, go down there as scheduled, and see what we can see. God knows what will happen, but we might land Von Sternberg.”

“If a ship comes over, he'll be in it,” O'Reilly said positively. “He's the kind of a devil that would love to swoop down and thumb his nose at the American Air Service, so to speak, kid 'em along. There's one ruling passion in his life. That's to belittle America, and his ambition is to be a wild hair in the beard of Uncle Sam. The war isn't over for him. But he does it with a sort of sardonic grin, if you get me. Why, down around Tampico he never did a dirty trick to any but American companies—that's why he's ace high in Mexico. I shouldn't be surprised if many a high ranking Jefe down there chuckled over everything Von Sternberg does to show his contempt for America and Americans—”

“WANT me, Cap'n?” came Dumpy's voice, and the fat flyer bustles in sweating profusely. “My God, we ought to get started. Poor Ann—”

“Sit down, boy,” boomed the sheriff, and the kindly old man's eyes were almost moist.

Dumpy looked around the circle with growing discomfort.

“What the hell is the wake about?” he demanded loudly, but he sat down.

“Dumpy, did you ever see either of the Grays before the day Bert Gates was killed?” rasped the Captain.

Penoch O'Reilly was standing almost over Dumpy, head forward, as though to force Dumpy into confession by sheer power of will. Dumpy's eyes left the captain's grim face, and rested on O'Reilly. There was a nasty sneer on his fat face as he spat:

“No, sir! O'Reilly been talking, has he?”

“Never mind. Dumpy, we just went down to the hotel and found out something about the Grays. About their baggage.”

Every eye was on him, but he did not shrink.

“Huh?” he grunted. “What?”

“Ann Gray's suitcases were filled with dope!” Kennard said slowly, and he ran his hands through his scrubby pompadour as though unable to keep still. But his eyes never left Dumpy's face.

And my heart did seven flip-flops of joy, and I felt like jumping up and clicking my heels together in goatish abandon. For no actor who ever lived could have faked what was apparent on Dumpy's moon-like countenance.

His jaw dropped, his eyes widened, his face paled. He was utterly stupefied—so much so that for the moment I don't believe he could comprehend the implications in the captain's words. He gaped like a fish out of water, struggling to speak.

Penoch O'Reilly relaxed with a long sigh. A grin flitted over that battered, sparkling, ridiculously contradictory face of his. “My error!” he announced snappily. “I guess they made a careful survey of the border and picked Dumpy as the easiest prey for Ann Gray's wiles. He was to be their man Friday, not knowing what he was doing, and jump when they cracked the whip. Damned if they weren't willing to marry the pair off just to make sure of a tractable pilot who wouldn't suspect anything!”

That was it, I decided instantly. Dumpy had been picked as the leading sacrifice, long before the scheme had got under way.

Suddenly, with that shadow of possible corruption among us dispelled, the air was electric. Matters of interest and import lay ahead. I felt five years younger, and the old sheriff began pacing the floor. We forgot Dumpy, for a second.

Then he came to himself. As he leaped to his feet I just froze into a statue. Never have I seen such utter misery on the face of a human being before. His anguished eyes were beseeching as he put his arm on the captain's arm.

“It isn't true, Cap'n!” he raved. “It can't be! Isn't this joke? I—”

“Sit down, Dumpy,” the captain said with unwonted softness in his voice.

FOR ten minutes we sort of labored with the heart-broken kid. Then the captain, in no uncertain terms, retold the yarn and showed Dumpy just what kind of a stubborn—almost treasonably stubborn—fool he'd been.

Penoch O'Reilly, firmly planted on his short legs, stood like some silent, sardonic demon, reminding the tortured Scarth of his downfall.

It wasn't pleasant for me to watch. I knew what I was seeing, and it had never before happened to the indomitable Dumpy. For I was looking at a man who was whipped—utterly, completely, thoroughly whipped. The errors into which he had been led by an adventuress, his own conceit, and his hatred for Penoch O'Reilly were laid bare before him. His romance was shattered, and utter disillusion was the residue. And before him stood the man who had, in his own words, outthought him, outfought him, outflown him. Dumpy's high estate as a border flyer was no more. All that made life worth while for him had been swept away.

And the man who no peril of the air could daunt, whose spirit had never been broken, whose serene belief in himself and his ability had never wavered, was now a broken thing.

I hoped to God that it would not last. Often, in the case of a man of Dumpy's egotistical type, a lesson harsh enough to really mean something is a lesson so cruel that it breaks him. I felt that there was more of a chance of killing than curing.

He was a pale, haggard-faced, tragic-eyed wreck of the man he had been two weeks before when we'd finished.

TIME was getting very short, so Captain Kennard, with Trowbridge chipping in, outlined his plans quickly. Dumpy sat and listened, and I had the feeling that he did not hear a word that was said, although the scheme included, of course, his continuance in the rôle of Ann's affectionate fiancé for a few more days. We were to go through with the trip to San Antonio, Dumpy flying her and Penoch and I riding together. Then we were to bring back the faster ships from Donovati.

It looked reasonably good. No sooner had the captain finished than Dumpy stumbled to his feet. His face was working a bit, his eyes like those of a suffering, bewildered dog.

“I'll go the limit,” he said slowly, as though to himself. “Anything you say. I'm just a—a false alarm, with no business on the border. I gummed up that business of catching the whole bunch of bandits because I was a blind, fat-headed fool. I fought O'Reilly because I was scared in my heart that there was one chance in a million he might be right. No, by God, that wasn't it! It was because I hated him for no reason, and was such a fool about—Ann—that I couldn't do my duty where she was concerned. “I—I'm sorry. O'Reilly, I was wrong on every count. You've put it over me—good. I'll try to make up for it—”

He turned blindly, and shuffled toward the door. Little O'Reilly leaped forward. He showed no emotion whatsoever in his twinkling face and cool blue eyes. He was as matter-of-fact as though mention the fact that dawn was upon us.

“That's all right, Dumpy,” he boomed. “How about shaking, calling quits, and combining to get even?”

Dumpy shook with him, but his eyes could not meet those of his Nemesis. He shuffled out, as though he wanted nothing but to be alone with himself. No one else could help to heal the hurts of his spirit then.

THE witching hour of midnight, on the ensuing Saturday, and three flyers were scanning the moonlit sky with night-glasses. One flyer, being myself, felt his heart pound considerably. Another, meaning Dumpy Scarth, was white-faced and blazing-eyed. There was something in those wide orbs of his which gave me a curiously uncomfortable feeling. It was as though he was seeing visions beyond our ken, almost. Percival Enoch O'Reilly showed no particular signs of the strain. Perhaps those light eyebrows and mustaches seemed to bristle a bit more, and his blue eyes to sparkle with a little more life, but otherwise he was strictly business. He was on a job, and took it as a matter of course.

The two ships, mechanics stationed at the propellers, were in a shed, out of sight of a flyer in the air. At the moment Ann Gray was in the house, but Gerald was sitting quietly on the ground, a few feet from us. He did not know that a trusty posse of Sheriff Trowbridge's, reinforced by three rangers and several customs men, were lurking all around his estate—in particular at intervals of a few hundred feet along the river.

The wonder in our hearts was not whether anything would happen or not. We were convinced that something would, in order to keep the Grays in the good graces of the patrol, and make our trust of them absolute. That having been decided, the point of issue was to figure exactly the method Von Sternberg would use to back up Gray's information, and yet to escape unscathed himself.

It had been a long drawn out three days, although the machinery we'd set up had worked beautifully. Federal agents had full knowledge of the San Antonio distributors to whom the suitcase of stuff had been delivered, and those gentry were being most efficiently watched. The contraband was now being traced north, and at the terminus of its travels the recipients would be under the scrutiny of Uncle Sam and find it difficult to escape it henceforth. In a day or two the government agents expected to sweep down on a very large and smooth-working ring.

During our two day stay at the Gray ranch I had made a few second guesses about the cultivated Mr. Gray and his supposed half-sister. One was that they were, themselves, users of poppy-fruit. The other was that I could see in the beauty of Ann Gray, now, a certain diamond-like hardness, and, occasionally, the real sophistication of her shining through her well taken pose of refinement and girlish sincerity. Both of them were excellent actors. Our guess was that they had become entangled with the dope around Tia Juana or Hollywood, and had finally gone into the business as a sort of final downward step in their careers. Possibly Von Sternberg did have something on Gray and had forced him into the game.

The audacity of their methods was such that Penoch was positive Von Sternberg was the leading spirit of it.

“I didn't tell the complete truth when I said that I didn't actually know him personally,” he had confessed to me. “I do—slightly. We tangled once—a little affair I don't like to mention. But every detail of this line-up here smacks of him. If he puts anything over, he's the kind who'd enjoy sending the Air Service a sarcastic letter about it—get the point? He's chuckling now, I'll bet—and I'm going crazy waiting to see what he's up to. Probably just a scoot across the river and back to give us a thrill—but maybe more. And in an airplane that gink would just slap the face of all the law there is in the world!”

It had been rather a tense period, at the Grays, for another reason. We had to watch him like a hawk, of course, although there seemed little danger of foul play as long as they didn't realize that we were wise to them. Dumpy, more than any one, helped us out there. He was as good an actor as the Grays. Not once, around them, did he give the slightest indication of the fact that his heart was ashes within him, and the spark of youthful delight in his life and work gone out. But when he was alone he slumped, and no efforts of Penoch's or mine could hearten him. He was too naive and transparently sincere to hide it. He was a silent, hollow-eyed, tragic figure of a king who'd lost his power, and with it his interest in life. And I know he felt that he'd lost it to Penoch. No longer could Dumpy think of himself as the perfect border patrolman—star of the outfit. Another man had showed him up, at every turn, and topped it by almost contemptuously saving his life in a manner that had already sped through the Air Service. Add to all that the numbing realization of his own criminal negligence—and you have a man going through hell with no exit in sight.

And it was a cross section of hell to realize that, for me.

THESE things, and many more, were burning in my brain as we waited there in the pungent border night, silently, because Gray was close and casual conversation which he might understand did not appeal to us at the moment. Suddenly however, O'Reilly shattered the night with loud brays of laughter.

“Reminds me of one time in France when I watched the sky like this and went up and fought Dink Groves, of my own squadron, for damn near ten minutes and he put a bullet in my gas-tank and I came near burning up! Ho, ho, ho! Talk about a jackass!”

“Look!” It was a cry from Gray, and something in the timbre of his voice gave me all the evidence I needed to determine that Mr. Gerald Gray was strained to the limit. He was no cold, iron-nerved outlaw, but a highly nervous one.

In a few seconds we picked up the ship as the roar grew louder and tiny pinpricks of fire appeared in the sky over Mexico. About five thousand feet high, I figured.

As our ships barked into life I was suffering with chills and fever. Had Gray succeeded in getting word to Von Sternberg that we had two fast and powerful ships to overcome that DeHaviland? If he knew it, what did he intend to do? Would we scare him off too soon?

Dumpy had the MB, a one-seated fighter that would run up more than a hundred and fifty miles an hour and climb like a shot from a howitzer. Penoch and I were in the light, fast little Briston, capable of close to a hundred and fifty with its Liberty wide open.

Dumpy's three hundred horsepower motor roared across the ground. He took the air in a breath taking zoom that carried him close to a thousand feet. We must both get off the ground now without bothering for warmups—that ship high in the sky was now a mile into American territory, and we dared not lose sight of it. Of course the unknown pilot was watching the ground—could either of us catch him before he got back over Mexican soil? Dumpy, maybe, could get close enough for a shot.

We were on the way, Penoch at the stick in the front cockpit. We'd tossed to see who'd fly, and he'd won. I was standing in the rear, my observer's belt around me and my hands on the double Lewis, all ready. I never took my eyes from that other ship. It had sounded like a Liberty motor, and its dark shape loomed against the moon like that of a DeHaviland. Doubtless our stolen ship.

It did not turn around. My mind was working like mad, following a hundred possible trails like a hound casting around for a lost scent. It was unbelievable that the pilot was not aware that ships had taken off from Gray's pasture. Could he be utter lunatic enough to attempt to go on to San Antone? Possibly, if he figured that we, too, had only DeHavilands, but it seemed entirely improbable. Not even the fabled Von Sternberg could figure on deliberately tipping us off that an illegal flight was to be made, and then go through with it on schedule.

Dumpy was about three thousand feet below him, and not far back, as nearly as I could tell. We were a full half-mile back of him, and climbing very slowly so that our forward speed would be as great as possible.

Leaning against the terrific air-stream which seemed to be trying to tear them from me, I clamped the night-glasses to my eyes. A second later I saw the D. H. turn westward, and in ever so slight a dive hurl itself along parallel to the line of the river.

Penoch swept our ship about in a vertical bank which nearly hurled me out of the cockpit. The tactics of our prey was puzzling me more and more. Why on earth had that ship gone a full ten miles over the United States, and only now be trying to back track to Mexico and safety? It would have been enough, surely, to flash over the Gray farm, turn as we got into the air, and laugh its way back over the river while we were still helpless, a couple of thousand feet below.

ON IT went, and now it was angling toward the river. Dumpy was climbing slowly, still a good distance lower than the De Haviland. And the D. H., flying level, had almost, if not quite as much speed as the climbing scout. There was a good chance of the D. H. getting away before Dumpy came near enough for a good shot. We, too, were forced to keep climbing, this cutting down our speed, but we had the shortest distance to cover and there was more than an even chance that the fugitive ship could be cut off by us if Dumpy failed.

On we roared, while I turned into a nervous wreck as I felt more and more certain that whoever was in that D. H. was laughing at us. The silver sea of mesquite flowed along beneath us, and the river was in sight. We were angling toward it now as the wide open motor seemed to be straining every nerve like some living pursuer.

We were less than a mile from the river, the D. H. possibly two miles, and Dumpy, now within less than a thousand feet of the D. H.'s altitude, was between us. All three ships were flying on converging courses which would meet close to the Rio Grande.

Subconsciously, I remembered that by now the Grays would be in custody; that a moment or two more would see us in battle; that the Briston was still far too low to fight efficiently. Dumpy might get that fleeing bomber—if it was Von Sternberg it would be a good fight——

In an instant my mind sort of opened up to a dazzling thought. The association of Von Sternberg's name did it, I guess. I was leaning over into the front cockpit, and one hand gripped O'Reilly as the other hauled back on the throttle. A second later the whine of the wires shrilled through the shocking stillness of the night, and I was yelling into Penoch's ear.

“That ship may be a decoy!” I bellowed. “Acts to me like it was just getting us out of the way! Another ship might be coming over with a big cargo—”

“Just like Von Sternberg!” came that foghorn roar of O'Reilly's, and he did a reenversement which nearly broke my neck.

In a second or two we were roaring eastward along the river, straining every nerve to get back to the Gray farm. Dumpy, with that scout, should be more than a match for the comparatively slow and clumsy D. H., if he caught it. The bomber was diving now, and while that sacrificed altitude, it gained speed, and no pilot in a D. H. wanted to fight a scout. He wanted to get away.

I don't know why I was so sure that the plane we'd followed had been a decoy. It seemed a workable and characteristic plan, that was all. Another ship, flying high as we were drawn ten or fifteen miles westward could get through, possibly without being spotted at all by any one on the ground. And if so, the ship doubtless would cross in the neighborhood of the Gray place, for that matter of gas and oil which Gray himself had mentioned was a serious one and he was probably telling the truth about the necessity of the air course leading close to his ranch.

Down below was the place. Lights were gleaming from the windows.

“They're not feeling so good down there, I don't suppose,” I told myself absently as my eyes searched the sky.

Men were popping out of the house, now, looking up at us. We roared on eastward, climbing all the time. My legs were tired from bracing against the propeller stream, my face raw from the wind, and my eyes watering as the air whirled below my goggles despite ail I could do.

Then I leaned forward and gave Penoch a belt on the back. Northward about five miles, and at least ten thousand feet high, what might be tiny stars winking tiny blue and yellow flames stabbed the light darkness. Penoch banked the ship, and we were flashing northward, climbing to the limit of our fleet ship's ability. Soon, through the glasses, I was sure of my ground.

For a brief moment I trained the binoculars westward. I was just in time to see a ball of fire, fully fifteen miles away, on the hank of the river. Was it the funeral pyre of Von Sternberg H or of Dumpy Scarth?

I did not inform Penoch of what I'd seen, and momentarily it was buried deep in my mind. For those ships beyond and a half mile above us were turning back toward the river. They, too, had been watchful, and knew that their northward flight would be abortive now.

Again the motor's roar died as I cut the throttle and yelled to O'Reilly.

“I'll climb!” he roared back at me.

There was not an instant of hesitancy nor the shadow of doubting timidity in that mighty bellow. To Penoch it was a matter of course that we attack the two planes now speeding back toward us as our ship climbed in huge circles. We must get as high as they were.

But we could not. They grew larger with amazing speed, like two messengers of fate. We were but a few hundred feet lower than they were when they had come within a quarter of a mile of us—but a few hundred feet means plenty in any combat.

And P. Enoch O'Reilly did not falter. For a second he dived, as though fleeing. Then the Briston came up smoothly—on up until it was standing on its tail. Then it started over on its back, and as it did so it slowly turned on its own axis. An Immelmann turn, and we had gained three hundred feet. Now we were pointed at them, head on, two hundred feet below them. They were five hundred feet apart, almost abreast, and diving in converging lines on us.

At that instant I remembered O'Reilly's war record. Never had he hesitated, no matter what the odds. Crouched over my guns, mentally kissing the world good-by, badly frightened, I nevertheless silently saluted the indomitable little man who was hurling us into an almost hopeless battle.

Suddenly our ship swerved, and went into a dive. Then Penoch banked swiftly. He was dodging as the enemy guns spit fire. Another bank, to the right then into a terrific dive. I hadn't had a shot yet. Now they were almost above us, and their angle for diving was such that they could not draw a bead on us for a second.

Again our ship swooped around, as though for a loop. And on top of the loop Penoch was shooting his forward guns. The shots drummed forth as we started down out of it. At the last minute he performed the Immelmann again, and at the bottom of our dive we were right side up, heading toward them.

The shots had not taken effect. And they were flyers, too. Again we were coming head on, and still they were slightly above us. Now they were headed north, and we south.

For a full minute we fought. I got in a few shots as the ship twisted and turned through the air like some great beast threshing in torture. Diving, zooming, banking, with the motor now roaring at terrific speed and again almost dying in a stall, Penoch fought his battle. Our wings were full of bullet holes, our prop off balance from a bullet. And still they had kept their advantage.

Twist and turn as we might, stealing a shot here and there, we could not gain a point on them.

Then, as they came at us from almost opposite sides and I was pumping lead into the nearest one it happened. With a shout of joy I saw my target waver in its dive, and the prop fly off. It banked steeply, and then went into a dive for the river.

“Got one!” I yelled hysterically—and just then Penoch banked to meet our other opponent.

But we never did. The ship quivered as though mortally hurt. Ahead of me Penoch was suddenly still in the cockpit. The windshield before him was shattered, and our motor cutting out badly. A shower of bullets had caught the fore part of our ship.

I grabbed the stick in the rear cockpit, and as the enemy plane flashed above us at right angles I sent the Briston into a steep dive. We were helpless and crippled, and must run for it.

For a moment it seemed that we had lost the ship. It circled, as though the two passengers could not pick us up in the gloom. Ahead of us the second ship was gliding for the ground. It was a shallow dive, too—they wanted to make the river, three miles away.

Then the effective plane spotted us. We were now about three thousand feet high, due to the terrific dive I had put the ship into. Our opponents were at least two thousand feet higher.

On they came. Their ship was nosed down into almost a nose dive as they came at us like a dropping eagle after a crippled rabbit.

Flying with the stick between my knees, my guns pointed backward, I wait, helpless. I'd pour bullets into their shielding radiator and motor, but it was just to sell our lives dearly. We'd got one——

THEN I let out a shout which almost was audible above the racing motor ahead of me. Coming down out of the sky like a meteor, angling from the west at our approaching enemy, came Dumpy Scarth and the tight little MB. God knows from what Olympian height he had dropped his ship, but his dive was a streak of fire athwart the sky. Could he get down in time to knock that ever-nearing enemy plane before it showered us with bullets?

Sitting there with my neck craned around, motionless as a statue, my mind too numb to be conscious of fear, I watched the race for my life.

Suddenly streaks of fire poured from that flashing scout's guns. Dumpy had started his spray of machine-gun fire, but he was still five hundred feet away—

Then my body slumped, and all I could do was think stupidly:

“That's every bit of it.”

Possibly because of the wild dive stepping up the speed of motor and propeller to such an extreme, or possibly just because of failure in the synchronizing gears, Dumpy had shot off his own propellor.

It was all over. In a second I'd start shooting.

BUT a superman was at the stick of the MB that night—a man who had been turned into a being who could not turn back from the work he'd set himself, and felt no fear. The bragging youngster was a man who had suffered and was willing to give his life for one last moment of glorious proof, to himself and to the world, that he was worthy of a trust. Sometimes I think that he might have preferred, at that second, that he die.

For he never wavered. And just as our intent pursuer saw him, and banked to get out off the line of fire, Dumpy's propellerless ship dipped slightly. Never will there be a more perfect flying feat—never a more nervy one. Like a projectile the MB, traveling at more than two hundred miles an hour, dragged its undercarriage through that upturned wing. With the struts and wheels hanging in a splintered mass below the tiny ship, the MB gradually came level, and then went into a shallow dive toward the river while its victim, one upper wing-tip smashed and the struts useless, dipped and slipped and dived helplessly for the ground.

No more did the mesquite below mean anything, nor my spitting, missing motor. A reprieve from death itself made a crash a minor thing. I watched the helpless struggling ship crash gently to the ground on its shattered wing, and then sent my Briston staggering toward the river with barely six cylinders working and a shallow dive necessary to keep flying speed. I saw Dumpy crash level into some trees, and the ship disappear below them. But a second later he was waving something white—he was alive.

The other enemy ship was on the ground. It had reached a clearing, and landed safely except for running into some mesquite after it had got its wheels down. It was telescoped, but two men were running the scant mile which separated them from the river.

They did not make it, however, for the McMullen ships came thundering down the river—three of them. Tex MacDowell circled me, and two or three significant gestures sent him after the fleeing men. Another ship circled Dumpy Scarth, a third accompanied me as I slipped and skidded and staggered through the air, pointing northward toward the wreck of the ship Dumpy had ruined.

I was trying to make the field, with my unconscious supercargo in the front. The motor spit and popped, and the ship was in a half-stall all the time as I tried to get along without flying speed. Every foot of altitude was more valuable than pearls—yea, than many fine rubies. I thought I was going to make it. At the very last moment, however, the ship settled on a mesquite tree which was the last obstacle before the field itself. The motor dragged through the branches, the front part of the ship hit the ground, not too hard, but it snapped my head forward against the cowling. Men were running toward me as I became completely null, and not a little void.

THE funny part of it is that I, suffering from an ordinary crack in the conk, took four hours to recover my senses, and when I did, in the Gray house, I was on the couch in the sitting-room and Penoch O'Reilly, the iron man, was in a chair with a bandage around the top of his bared shoulder and neck, and Dumpy was walking up and down. The other guests were Major Searles, our flight surgeon, Tex MacDowell, Captain Kennard, Sleepy Spears, and two observers, George Hickman and our bald-headed adjutant, Pop Cravath. Sheriff Trowbridge sat on a piano stool, like an elephant on the point of a pin.

Penoch saw my eyes open, and in a flash was over beside the couch while the others talked excitedly.

“Where are the thugs?” I asked as my senses snapped into place.

“All, including the Grays, being escorted to McMullen, whence they go to the San Antonio jail,” came O'Reilly's voice in partially subdued tones. Then in a whisper: “They say Ann's language was far from pretty to hear. Two of the flyers—one American and one German—were hurt, but not badly, and it was decided that it wasn't safe to keep 'em here. Those ships held more than a hundred thousand dollars' worth of dope. Some haul, eh? Not a one of the gang would open their mouths, either!”

Dumpy was talking, but at the moment Sheriff Trowbridge announced:

“Slim's woke up. How goes it, Slim?”

“Great,” I answered, getting up into a sitting position. “Dumpy, I suppose you got Von Sternberg, according to that fire—or was it him?”

“Yes—but the hell I got him!” yapped Scarth. “A few hundred yards from the river, just as I had a bead on him, the son-of-a-gun jumps in a parachute! I couldn't shoot him in cold blood, and he slipped his chute right across the river with me circling him! And that —— —— —— was wriggling his fingers against his nose all the way down, kidding me! It must have been him—big and—”

“Sure it was!” boomed O'Reilly. “And if the government 'll give me the leave I got comin' to me I'm going to take a vacation and try to nab him for the fun of it—down in Mexico, as a vacation. This makes the second time I've run into him, and the second time I've generated a private grudge against him.”

I sort of admired the bird who could thumb his nose under the circumstances, and I wondered why O'Reilly should have a personal feeling against him after the night's soirée. The first time, of course, was beyond my ken.

“So,” continued O'Reilly, “If Slim here wants to get a leave and sort of horse around, we might generate something.”

It was several days before I cornered Penoch and demanded: “When I caught you and Dumpy fighting that time over the baggage, why shouldn't you have stepped out and told me, at least, what you suspected was up, told it to me as a friend of Dumpy's and—”

“Because I was crazy!” he roared. “That Ann Gray girl—Gerald's sweetheart—had me seeing double. I was nuts about her, and didn't want to reflect on her: unless my nasty suspicions that I couldn't help feeling were proved. I didn't believe what I thought myself. I was figuring on marrying her! Ho, ho, ho!”