Prize of the air

At a height of about two thousand feet Bill Barlow completed the loop and then flew into the wind over the landing “T”.

“Great stuff!” yelled his passenger, and Bill could hear his chuckle, for he had now throttled his motor and was making a quick bank to the left.

“Thought you’d like it,” he called back, “but it may get me in wrong down below.”

After making a complete circle, he landed just where he had intended to, and taxied up toward the hangars. It was a maneuver he had learned thoroughly years before, when he was a cadet flyer--this landing with a dead engine.

Bill’s passenger was smiling as he unbuckled his safety belt and climbed from the cockpit, but there was no smile on the face of the field superintendent who came running up to the plane.

“Hey, what’s the idea, Barlow?” he queried. “You know as well as I do that it’s against the law to loop with a passenger, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You bet it’s right! Then why did you do it?”

“Boss,” said Bill Barlow, showing his sound teeth in a wide grin, “Mr. Saxton here, my passenger, has some red blood in his veins. He offered me five hundred dollars to loop the loop with him. You know that temptation is the one thing I can’t resist, and--well, Mr. Saxon’s got plenty of jack, and if I didn’t do it he’d have found some one who would, and I just happened to need the five hundred very badly right now.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing against you personally, Barlow,” said the superintendent, which was probably true, for very few people had anything against the likable Barlow. “But either I’m here to see that the rules of this field are kept, or I’m not. You fellows are getting too skittish around here. I’ll have your license as a passenger pilot revoked.”

As a matter of fact, he did have Bill’s license revoked. Friendship in private life is one thing; in aviation, as in the army, it is quite another when it interferes with vested authority.

But Bill Barlow didn’t seem to mind. A man who can laugh in the face of death is not to be disturbed by such a trifle as the revocation of a license. It was Saxton, his passenger, who seemed the more concerned. He approached Bill later that afternoon.

“I think I’ve got a job for you, Barlow,” he said. “I’ve got to start tomorrow for my home in Pampa, New Mexico, and trains are getting too slow for me in my old age. How about flying me there? I’ll buy the gas and pay you for the trip.”

Bill looked at him wistfully, and shook his head.

“You’re hitting me right where I live,” he said dolefully. “An old pal of mine, Jack Harraden, is barnstorming down that way, and I’d like to join him. If I could make connections with Harraden I’d be set for the season. More than once Jack and I have gone through a season together stunting at fairs and carnivals--and I’d like to make the dough, too. But you know I can’t go.”

“And why not? Seems an ideal arrangement to me. And, by the way, when I left Pampa, your friend Harraden was part of a carnival at Las Vegas, according to the papers.”

“Las Vegas, eh? Well, I might join him. But I couldn’t carry you, now that my passenger license is revoked.”

Saxton laughed. “I’ll fix that for you, boy! I’ll buy your plane. Give you two thousand dollars for it. You ride with me technically as a passenger, but you’re hired to do what you’re told to do--and you’ll be at the joy-stick. Get the idea?”

Bill got the idea, and the transaction was duly carried out.

“Remember,” Saxton warned him, as he pocketed the dummy bill-of-sale. “I’ve ‘bought’ that plane. I have you at my mercy now. I may charge you plenty when you want to get it back--and get the free ride into the bargain.”

“Fair enough!” Bill chuckled. “But you haven’t got it all your own way, Mr. Wise Guy. Don’t be surprised if I suddenly decide to quit piloting the ship when we’re five thousand feet above a Kansas farm and take to parachute stunts unless you come to time with me.”

So Bill Barlow and Frank C. Saxton, since they could laugh with each other and threaten to do each other, knew that they were friends, and the next day Bill Barlow had his ship ready for the long jump.

Saxton wished to arrive at Pampa, where he operated a cattleman’s bank, as soon as possible, he explained, as a shipment of gold bullion was due in Pampa that week from a correspondent bank in Trinidad, Colorado. He wanted to be on the ground when the transfer was made.

He rode out to the field in a taxicab accompanied by a slender, gray-eyed girl who looked trim and athletic in a heavy blue jersey and knickers.

“Think she’s dressed warm enough for the hop?” Saxton asked, his shrewd eyes twinkling. “I forgot to mention yesterday that my daughter is going along. This is Mr. Barlow, Ruth. He’s the fellow that looped the loop with your dad yesterday.”

Ruth extended her hand boyishly, and Bill may have held it just a trifle too long, but the act was unconscious.

“The more I see of you bankers, Mr. Saxton,” he said, turning to the gray-haired man, “the less I value your keenness in a business deal despite your reputation. If I’d known Miss Saxton was coming along, I’d have piloted you for nothing.”

And the remark may not have been entirely jocular. Hours later, flying high above the fields of Ohio, Bill Barlow somehow could not develop that devil-may-care feeling that he always had in the air.

He had done his share of stunt-flying and had never known fear of any kind, but right now there was a certain conscious concern within him which he could not analyze. He finally doped out what the matter was.

It was the precious freight he was carrying. Those straight-gazing gray eyes of Ruth Saxton had nearly sunk Bill Barlow.

A single stop was made, at the air mail field at Maywood, Illinois, for refueling; then the flight was continued, and completed without special incident, Bill Barlow making a landing in a field just east of the town of Pampa.

He had never been in the Southwest before, and he was eagerly anticipating the surprise he had in store for Jack Harraden. Two planes in a New Mexico town would be something of a sensation, he assumed.

That day he enjoyed an old-fashioned noonday dinner at the comfortable home of the Saxtons, and telephoned Las Vegas. The city authorities, Saxton had said, could doubtless enlighten him as to the activities of his friend Harraden.

But the news he received proved to be a keen disappointment. Harraden had been flying passengers in Las Vegas, but had hopped off in his De Haviland two days before, saying that he was going to Beaumont, Texas.

“Me for Beaumont, then,” said Bill, “I’m beginning to vegetate already, with nothing to do.”

Ruth Saxton lowered her eyes. She was not the type to be forward. If this good-looking chap chose to hop off for Beaumont, then that was his business, she supposed.

And Frank C. Saxton said nothing. He had liked Barlow on sight, but he himself was in the banking business and this young daredevil would never be satisfied with that. And Bill himself was thinking that he might better have been in some game like banking as the husband of a gray-eyed girl like--

Oh, well, he’d hop off for Beaumont in the morning.

But he did not hop off for Beaumont in the morning. For something happened that night to keep him from Beaumont. As a matter of strict record, to this day he has never seen Beaumont.