Nerve enough

was what the morning paper shouted to the city at large, and the growing clientele shriveled like a violet on a griddle, and the bank account was not slow in following it. Of course Del O’Connell hadn’t fallen an inch; he had merely glided down without motor; but how are you going to explain that to a headline-reading public. It worried him, however, that the cracking of two struts should split their little business to its foundations. And he prophesied no more.

At last the T. M. O. Transportation Co. loaded itself into the two good ships remaining, left two of the mechanics behind and departed for fresh fields.

At another town, smaller than the first, they had pitched their tents and taken a field--by the month. The hard work of building up reputation in a business generally considered the apex of the risky was begun again. They carried hundreds of passengers in safety. Not once did one of the pilots yield to the desire for a jazz ride and tailspin a ship or even roll it over once or twice. The strict aeronautical aristocrats consider such antics in commercial flying equivalent to the employment of a puller-in outside the store in the retail clothing business.

Prospects were good, though the company was not yet prosperous. Then, one morning when Burt Minster took off alone to test-hop his ship, he banked a bit too much just after leaving the ground and came down in a side-slip that completely washed out his plane and left him in the wreckage with a split ear and a bad headache.

That reduced the T. M. O. Transportation Co.’s assets to Jim Tyler’s ancient training-ship. They moved on, minus the last mechanic. They were no longer an organization with a fixed base, a reputation and a bank. They had descended in the world to the low estate of gipsy fliers, winging hither and yon, picking up such business as presented itself and landing in more cornfields than in airdromes.

Yes, they learned about flying from those cornfields--more than a pilot will ever know who always has four hundred yards or so of neatly groomed turf in front of him to set his ship down on, but it didn’t help their self-esteem any.

And in Burt Minster’s big head grew the conviction that if he hadn’t side-slipped his bus in that silly way, the company wouldn’t have dropped so low in the scale. He had made them aeronautical hoboes.

The day arrived when an offer came from the Baychester Fair for a stunt-flying, wing-walking, parachute-dropping exhibition. The three partners grasped it eagerly. Stunting a ship, walking around on wings and fuselage with a desert of space under you and dropping overboard with only thin silk between you and the next world are all hazardous propositions, but not nearly so hazardous as consistently going without food. It was hard on their pride, of course, for they remembered the time, only days behind them, when no money would have tempted them to descend so low as to indulge in thrillers to drag a crowd into a fair grounds. They were--had been--in the transportation, not the Desperate Desmond, business.

The contract was couched in terms that permitted them to kill themselves without incurring the animosity of one Jenkins, manager of the fair, provided that they did it in a spectacular and public manner. In return for this concession, they extracted sufficient cash from Jenkins to buy two parachutes and three square meals.

And here they were, in an old shack within the mile track of the Baychester Fair Grounds on the evening before opening day, with discord rampant in their ranks, and threatening to blow the company into its three component parts.

At one end of the rickety table sat Delevan O’Connell, a slender, animated young man. His wiry body was so short that he was compelled to lean forward on his elbows in order to raise his angry blue eyes above the two brand new parachute packs on the table and focus them on the big form of Burt Minster. Burt scowled back at him.

“Oh, shut your traps, both of you,” growled Jim Tyler, bestowing an impartial glare on his two partners. “What difference does it make which of you does the first jump?”

The gist of the trouble was this: Both O’Connell and Minster felt responsible for the straits in which the company found itself, and therefore each man aspired to go over the side in the new parachutes. Now a chute jump is nothing much; but when you haven’t made one before, and haven’t even a man alongside you who has and knows something about the sensation and the harness, it is somewhat lacking in dullness.

Delevan O’Connell was swift to answer Jim Tyler’s question. Already the discussion had gotten well within the bounds of plain speaking.

“It makes this much difference,” he snapped, keeping his eyes fixed on Burt, although he spoke to Jim. “The first jump must not be botched.”

“And therefore you must make it!” exclaimed Burt Minster, with a great laugh.

Del O’Connell flared up.

“I can not have this outfit broken up because this great oaf lacks a little nerve at the crucial moment.”

Burt Minster leaned backward in his chair to give his chest room for the discharge of another roar of mirth.

“Why, you poor insect, you, I’m only about twice your size, but I’ve three times your grit, at least.”

Jim Tyler thumped Del O’Connell on the back in time to halt the fiery little man’s response.

“It isn’t nerve but nerves that both of you have,” he asserted emphatically. “You’re both worried about those crashed ships, and you both want to take the first risk, in consequence.”

The truth does not belong in an argument. This theory of their conduct was drowned in a combined shout of protest, but Del O’Connell was a bit faster on the tongue than Burt.