A Viking of the Sky: A Story of a Boy Who Gained Success in Aeronautics

"Oh, how I wish I was up there!" muttered Hal Dane to himself as he cocked an eye upward into the far heights of the moonlit sky.

In mind, Hal Dane was already just below the stars, riding the clouds in a winged ship; before him, on imaginary instrument board, ticked the latest thing in indicator, controller, tachometer. And all the while, like the other half of a dual personality, his hands and feet mechanically guided his rattletrap old truck along the ruts of the lonesome country road. On the downgrades Hal's left hand with skill of long practice chocked a brakeless wheel with a wooden block, and on the upgrades his right foot judiciously kicked a wire that let on extra "juice" for the pull.

In Hillton, Hal's home village, folks laughed considerably over the Western Flyer, which a green daub of paint on the sideboards flaunted to the world as the ancient truck's title. But folks didn't laugh at the boy who persistently patched up the rattletrap and drove it. Anyone knew that it took genius of sorts even to hold the contraption to the straight road.

For all its decrepitude, Hal had to hang on to the old truck. It furnished his living--and a living for his mother and his great-uncle Telemachus, who was "stove-up with rheumatism." The weeks when hauling was brisk, the truck even earned a few strange luxuries such as queer Hal Dane would want--bottles of odd-smelling glue, old wire springs and bits of metal from Kerrigan's junk pile, and now and then a precious book full of diagrams of aeronautical engines.

Usually Hal got a chance to make at least one trip a day, hauling garden truck over the thirty-mile route from Hillton to Interborough, the nearest city. On the return trip he'd bring supplies for the little stores in his home village and other villages beyond Hillton.

Sometimes he had the luck to land a second sixty-mile round of hauling in one day--like the present occasion that was bringing him rattling homeward in the night.

Night hauling was wearisome work, and if it hadn't been for Hal's lively imagination he would have been tempted to doze on his job. But Hal Dane's air-minded brain was seething with spirals and Immelmanns and three-point landings. One of the great events of his life, the State Air Meet at Interborough, had been over for a week, but every flight and entry was still fresh in the boy's mind. He lived them over again. By twist of the imagination old man Herman's two milk cans rhythmically banging against Grocer Kane's crate of lard buckets seemed almost the roar of a stunt plane warming up for action. Hal could almost think himself into seeing in that empty stretch of sky above the host of planes that had formed the "flying circus" of last week. There had been Rex Raynor, famous pilot who stunted upside-down; there had been aerial rope-swingers and ladder-climbers. There had been--

"Bang--bong--scre-e-eak!"

With a snort of dismay at the clattering outspilling of his load and the scrape of his truck as it careened sideways, Hal chocked his wheel and leaped for the ground.

"Jumping catfish!" moaned the lanky, long-legged blond young trucker as he raced madly down the road he had just rattled up. "Ought to have looked back once in a while 'stead of always up at the sky--wouldn't have happened then!" And onward he sped, chasing a runaway wheel.

This, though, was no unheard-of performance. The Western Flyer flung some piece of its anatomy to the winds on at least every other trip.

With a grunt of satisfaction young Dane fell upon his miscreant wheel as it thumped to a standstill in a ditch. Methodically he trundled it back along the road, jacked up the ancient truck on the side where its protruding axle had ploughed the ground for some forty yards, and set to work repairing damages.

An hour later the boy had his wheel cotter-pinned and hub-capped back into place. As he slid under the steering gear, he determined to keep his eyes and his mind out of the sky, and to concentrate all energies on navigating the Western Flyer safe into her garage by dawning.

But farther along the road his imagination began playing him false again. Rhythmic thump of his load of cans seemed to simulate whir and zoom of an air engine.

Imagination! Was it imagination?

All in a quiver of excitement, Hal Dane silenced his own engine and cocked a listening ear towards the skies.

There it was again--faint hum of a motor high in the air. An airplane was winging its way across the forest-covered hills that lay between Interborough and the railroad gap at Morris Crossing. No air mail route lay that way. This must be something out of ordinary; an important message to be dropped at the railroad crossing, perhaps.

"Gosh!" ejaculated Hal to himself. "Speaking of dreaming things till you really see 'em! Listen at her coming in!"

The plane was swooping nearer; was now practically above him. Staring upward, Hal caught a glimpse of the spotlight focused on the hills below. It was turning from side to side. The boy looked on with anguish beginning to clutch at his heart. The motor of the plane was missing in an alarming manner. It sputtered and coughed--ran smoothly for a few seconds, then sputtered again.

"Trouble!" muttered Hal. "In trouble and looking for a place to land. There's no place--unless--"

Above him the plane slid crazily on its way. Now it seemed to hang in the air at a mere crawl, now it shot onward. At a spot which Hal judged was a couple of miles distant, the light became stationary for an instant, then tipped sharply downward and was swallowed up by the pine forests on the hills.

"A crash!" whispered Hal Dane. He shut his eyes, then opened them quickly, staring hard at the moonlit landscape to impress location on his memory. That jagged pine, that spur of the hill--it was somewhere between these that the plane had crashed.

Next moment the boy was on the ground and cranking up his old truck like one possessed. As it roared into life, he swung aboard and let her out for all she was worth. In the case of a human pinned under wreckage in horrible certainty of fire or suffocation, speed of rescue must mean the saving of life. So down the woods road shot Hal, his ancient truck gallantly riding roots and ruts and snorting to the charge with a backfire like gattling guns. A tire blew out and nearly careened Hal, truck and all into a bank. But the boy held to the wheel, wrenched her nose straight to the road and bumped onward. A second tire burst, and the bumping went on more evenly.

Then the headlights showed an opening through the trees where great white wings lay flattened to the earth.

"He made it down--in the only landing place for miles!" jubilated Hal as he leaped from the truck and raced toward the grounded plane.

As he reached the scene of the crash he saw that the plane really had made a marvelous landing, merely slightly down-tipped as to nose, and frame intact save where a sapling stub had torn a jagged hole through one wing.

Minor injuries to the plane--but the man! The aviator hung limp against the supporting belt. As the boy loosed buckles and lifted the pilot out, he felt blood dampen his hands.

Hal raced to a stream he remembered crossing. With his hat full of water, he was back and kneeling beside the aviator, splashing water in his face.

It was like a ghost rising from the dead when the prostrate man flicked open his eyes, then suddenly--as though some valiant pull of power within urged him--staggered to his feet, made a few steps and leaned heavily against his plane.

"Why--" Hal Dane's mouth dropped open in amazement as he stared at the figure picked out whitely in the moonlight, "it's--it's Rex Raynor, famous--"

"Yes--yes! Don't waste time gawking at me. Need help--got to get this--this packet on the train--at crossing!" He touched the bulge of the packet beneath his coat. His eyes were wild with pain, but somehow he forced his voice to be steady, even as he forced his body to stay upright. "Can you help--patch things--get me off--"

"Yes," Hal Dane answered, "yes!" At first he had thought to offer the truck, but two tires were down and the back axle had steered in a strangely crooked fashion towards the end of that wild dash over stumps and boulders. It might take hours, days, to get the truck back into running order. The plane--maybe there was a chance there!

First, though, Hal slit open the bloody sleeve of Raynor's coat and shirt. From torn strips of clothing he made bandages over a bullet wound in the lower left arm, and tightened a tourniquet above to stop further bleeding.

With iron grit Raynor held on to himself--sheer will power must have kept him from fainting a dozen times. In his harsh, steady voice he barked out his orders.

The impaling sapling was cut away below the plane wing. Then the upper length of wood was worked gently out of the jagged hole it had torn in the fabric. With quick, deft fingers Hal Dane whittled repair sticks out of pieces of pine. Wire from his tool chest slid in tight coils over wood, under wood, binding breaks together. Except for his overalls, Hal had very little clothing left. What hadn't gone for tourniquet was now masquerading as wing fabric. Tire glue had to do duty as "dope" to lacquer smooth the patched wing.

Rex Raynor, flyer, was too pain-dazed for his mind to give even passing thought to the strangeness of his finding, out here in the pine woods, a long-legged youth whose nimble fingers seemed expert at splicing framework and patching wing fabric. The trouble he was in tensed his nerves to breaking point. His one idea was, "The packet must go on--the packet must reach the safety of railroad officials at Morris Crossing."

In between directions for repair work and frantic urgings for haste, Raynor muttered broken details of the disaster that had befallen him.

Blue prints--aerial engine designs for the Nevo-Avilly contest--finished too late to submit even by air mail--rushing to get packet aboard mail car at crossing. Nobody supposed to know of his engine designs. As Raynor crossed level by forest ranger's hut, a red rocket, distress signal, had shot into the sky, signaling him to a landing. Knowing that the ranger, a former flying pal, had been disabled by illness, Raynor had answered the silent call by gliding to earth to render aid in some emergency. Instead of the ranger, a masked bandit had leaped upon the aviator, demanding the packet, even before switch could be cut or motor throttled. In the ensuing fight Raynor had got winged in the arm by a close range bullet, but had managed to shake off his assailant, and had risen to the safety of the airways in his plane.

Knowing that one such daredevil attack would likely mean further pursuit, Raynor fought off bodily pain and strove to keep his mind fixed to one purpose--getting the packet aboard the U. S. mail train.

The flyer completed examination by electric torch of landing-gear, engine, wings, Hal's last improvised piece of patchwork that was hardening miraculously under its spread of tire glue.