Medium boiled

He grinned to himself as he thought:

“Boy, what they’d say if they knew that I never flew a De Haviland in my life before today! But I got this baby off the ground at Donovan and nobody’ll ever dream I never flew one!”

No more than they’d dream how much his wings and flying meant to him. The dogged, heart-breaking fight he had waged to drag himself from the poverty-stricken slime of his boyhood, through school, and then to an officer’s commission. The ambition of terrible years was fulfilled for Shag Moran. And nobody suspected that there had been tears in his eyes when he got his commission. Big, hulking, shambling Shag Moran was supposed to be hard-boiled. That’s what the carelessly competent young fliers thought about him, and he was glad of it. He would have cut off his hand rather than let them know his real love for the air, and of his perfect contentment, now that he was a flyer. Why, if the border men knew how he felt about being one of them, they’d laugh themselves sick. Think he was crazy. They took the job as a matter of course. They hadn’t worked a lifetime for it.

There was McMullen, and he was going to hit it right on the nose. It must be, according to his map. There was a dun pocket-handkerchief of a field, surrounded by buildings, a few miles west of a sizable town. Surely those big, black blotches against the ground were the two iron hangars flanking the field to east and west. And that town was McMullen, all right--it was too big to be an unnoted settlement. Southward a few miles the Rio Grande was a twisting, silver ribbon, glinting in the flooding sunlight.

He’d start down, now. Had he been more familiar with De Havilands, he might have essayed spiraling down closer to the field. He would take no chances now, though.

He eased back on the throttle, until the tachometer was down to nine hundred revolutions a minute, and nosed down slowly. He watched his airspeed meter like a hawk. He kept the speed of his ship at a hundred miles an hour. The wind was making the wires sing, and there was considerable vibration.

In a perfectly straight, conservative dive he flashed earthward, his body tense with the strain. Now he could see tiny figures lounging on the steps of one of the buildings which formed the southern boundary of the sandy airdrome. He was going to have an audience for his landing, which made it worse. With every moment, it seemed, that field was shrinking in size. The northern boundary of it was a fence. He prayed that the wind would be from the south, so that he could land in from the north. It would be impossible for him to bring that big plane down over the obstacles on the other three sides.

The altimeter read a thousand feet when he pulled the ship up and shoved the gun all the way on. He was a half mile back of the field as he flew level toward it. He circled it once, and saw that the wind-sausage on top of one of the corrugated iron hangars indicated a south-east wind. Some one had said that the wind was usually southeast--the Gulf breeze. Yes, there were at least a half dozen men lounging in the shade of a porch. There were several buildings along that southern rim, and two long lines of tents.

He drove northward a half mile, circled warily, and cut the gun to seven hundred revolutions. He fairly felt his way toward the ground, trying to watch the ground, his airspeed and the tachometer all at once. He must barely ease over that fence, at the lowest speed possible.

He got too low. He was only fifty feet high, several hundred yards back of the fence, and the motor barked into sudden life as his hand thrust the throttle forward. He seemed to be going terribly fast, for being so close to the fence, and he cut the motor to idling. Downward, bit by bit, the fence had flashed beneath him. He was going like lightning.

From a height of six feet it seemed that the D.H. dropped out from underneath him. The wheels hit the ground hard, and the big ship bounced high in the air. His hand automatically found the throttle as the plane hung, nose in the air, and jammed it all the way forward.

He’d have to go around again. Cursing himself for a clumsy fool, he raved--

“I thought I was flying a Jenny, ---- it! I ought to be pushing baby carriages.”

Those veterans down there were laughing at him, doubtlessly. Having to go around twice to make a field--an airdrome--with a perfectly good motor. He had looked like a cadet, on his first solo.

Again he shot for the field and this time, with his heart in his mouth, he got to a foot above the ground with the fence only twenty-five feet behind him, and he held the ship there. Again it seemed that he was going at express-train speed, but he caught the drop in time. He jerked the stick back, and although he was a bit late, the ship only bounced once, and scarcely more than a foot. The buildings seemed a safe distance ahead, too.

They were, for a Jenny, but not for a heavy D.H., rolling fast on a hard, sand field as smooth as a floor. Desperately he cut the switches, and finally, panic-stricken, threw his stick to one side and jammed on full rudder. The D.H. ground-looped, one wing-skid dragging the ground. Not enough to cause any damage, though, and as he snapped on the switches again he told himself:

“I got down--but how? This time I was going too ---- fast, after coming in too slow the first time.”

Mechanics were waving him toward the line in front of the eastern hangars, and he taxied toward them, gingerly. He felt that he was handling the D.H. awkwardly. It was infinitely more responsive, even on the ground, than a Jenny. Somehow or other he felt uncertain, now, about his ability to control these bigger ships as he had learned to master the training planes.

He was grateful for the fact that the mechanics came out to meet him, and by pulling on the wingtips helped him, into the line straight. At the same time his quick sensitiveness made him wonder whether they were doing it because they had noticed his uncertainy in handling his ship.

A short, stocky officer was coming toward him, and on the collar of his O.D. shirt were the bars of a captain. That was the famous Captain Kennard--two planes to his credit in France, D.S.C. and Croix De Guerre, recognized as the best squadron commander on the border.

Moran came to attention, and the square-faced captain returned his salute nonchalantly.

“You’re Moran, eh?” he said in a raucous voice, and his face, scarred by innumerable wrecks, split into a genial grin. “Glad to see you. The boys’ll unwire your suitcase. Come on over and meet the gang.”

Moran relaxed a bit. So the C.O. wasn’t going to hop on him about that landing right away, he reflected gratefully. He removed his helmet in the withering heat, baring the coarse, unruly black hair which had given him his nickname. Perhaps his beard had had something to do with it, too. Sometimes he shaved twice a day in an endeavor to control it, but his heavy jaw always looked dark and bristly, nevertheless.

“Sure glad to see you,” repeated Kennard, his bowed legs moving faster than Moran’s unusually long ones. “They’re flying us ragged, and a new man’s welcome.”

“I heard something was up, but no one seemed to know much about it,” ventured Moran.

“We don’t know a ---- of a lot, ourselves,” Kennard told him. “But it’s pretty plain that they’re watching a gang in Mexico who’ve been running chinks and other immigrants over. The runners get around a thousand per man, delivered in San Antone. Army of ’em. Anyway, it’s patrol all day, and be on the alert all night, with a dozen false alarms every hour. Must be good and big and tough, this gang, or Washington wouldn’t be acting as though there was a war on.

“Attention, boys and girls. Here’s the latest victim. Moran, shake hands with Tex MacDowell, Slim Evans, Pop Cravath, George Hickman, and last, but not least, Dumpy Scarth.”

Moran recognized all but the last man from things he’d heard about them. Lean, lounging “Tex” MacDowell; “Slim” Evans, who was nearly six feet six inches tall and as thin as a rail; big, blond Hickman and “Pop” Cravath, who were observers.

“Dumpy” Scarth was a new name to him, and he had thought he knew every member of the flight by name and description. Scarth was a short, fat, little fellow, with a pug nose, a full moon-face, and boyish eyes, which looked the big, new man over with a critical air.

“I know of all of you,” Moran told them slowly. “That is, except Scarth here. I--er--never heard--”