by Joan Clark
CHAPTER II
WINGS
When Hal Dane came to himself, lanterns and electric torches on allsides bobbed crisscross lights above him. A dozen hands seemed pullingand tugging to extricate him from the one-sided crash of plane wreckage.
He was laid out on the ground. A wet handkerchief mopped blood out ofhis eyes. He felt broken all over. Through a mist of pain he heardvoices frantically calling, "Send for Doc! Get Doctor Joe!"
But something more than the pain and the voices beat in his brain--athrobbing "chug-chug-chug" that stirred him out of his apathy. Thetrain, the eastbound that he'd raced!
"G-get me up," he croaked hoarsely. "Hold that train--mailpacket--im-m-mportant--no, no, no!" He fought away hands that strove tohold him quiet. His struggles seemed to clear his brain, give himstrength to rise. "Don't doctor me, doctor him," pointing to Raynor,"he's injured, bad off! Me--I--I'm not dead yet, not by a l-long shot!"and Hal even managed a white-lipped grin.
It was pain to walk. But the urge to complete what he had undertakendrove him on. From Raynor's coat, thrown aside by Doc Joe who wasprobing the bullet wound, Hal extracted the thick envelope. After aneternity of putting one foot before the other foot, he got it deliveredat the mail car of the long train that Mr. Tilton, the rotund littlestation agent, was importantly holding.
After the train pulled out, there was still one more job to attend to."That airplane, Mr. Tilton," he begged of the fat little agent. "Don'tlet cows get at it--or people poke around too much. And maybe you'dbetter rope what's left of it to the fence. Big wind--might--come up."
The urge had spent its force. Hal Dane felt a thousand years old all atonce. He sank wearily into the spidery, yellow-painted little car ofFuzzy McGinnis, his chum, whom all this excitement had summoned to thescene. Fuz understood. Fuz had been in smash-ups himself. In silentsympathy, and keeping the Yellow Spider throttled to a gentle gait, hecarted Hal the half mile from Morris Gap to Hillton.
Doc Joe, in his own car, was bringing Rex Raynor also to the Danes'hospitable, ramshackle old house.
After his mother, Mary Dane, wild-eyed with fear, but holding to hercalm, had gone over him for broken bones, that she didn't find, and hadbound up his head better and had poured hot milk down him,--and afterUncle Telemachus had excitedly heard the story of the air crash threetimes--Hal crawled into bed and slept a round of the clock.
Next day Hal Dane's sturdy constitution asserted itself and yanked himout from any lazy coddling between the sheets. His scalp might stillshow some split skin from bucking a wire strut, and bruises the size ofplates and saucers decorate him here and there, but he'd better bethanking his stars he wasn't disabled. And Hal did thank 'em! His workwas needing him too. The truck that earned the family living was idlingup there in the pine woods.
Need to get back to work rested heavily on Hal's shoulders, but worsethan that was a worry burden that weighted down his heart.
As Hal, cap in hand and a bag of tools thrust under one arm, tiptoeddown the long hall whose once beautifully plastered walls now gaped inugly cracks, he paused before the room Rex Raynor was in. The door swunghalf open in the summer breeze. Hal stepped in, stood uncertain,twisting his cap into a knot. He opened his mouth once or twice as if hewere trying to speak and couldn't. Then finally he blurted out:
"Mr. Raynor, I--it's awful that I smashed your plane--I, oh--someday--I'll try--pay--"
"Huh!" snorted the recumbent Raynor, slightly raising his head andglaring with fiery eyes beneath beetling brows. "Huh, come here!" Hisinjured left arm, grotesquely enlarged by bandages, lay on a supportingpillow. But with his right hand, he beckoned imperiously.
Hal came to the bed.
"Did you ever fly a sky bus before?" questioned Raynor.
"Not--not a real plane," answered Hal. "I've got books and--"
"Boy," said Raynor, reaching out his good hand and pulling him close,"boy, you're a wonder. You brought us down alive--in the night. More'nsome trained pilots can do. Wing sense must have been born in you. Andsay," Raynor's brows drew up fiercely again, "get that pay idea off yourchest. I owe you more than you owe me. If you hadn't been a pluckyyoungster to go up with me and bring down my wind bus by book learning,I'd--I'd have crashed to a dead one. That's sure!" Raynor shut his eyes.
Hal eased out of the room. His head and his heart felt suddenly,gloriously light and tingling. He hadn't known what a burden he'dcarried--until now that it had lifted. His spirit was free again.
After the crash where, in that last downward swoop, he had evidentlypulled the wrong mechanism and tipped the plane to a dangerous turn, anobsession of distrust had oppressed him. He had begun to fear that helacked air sense, was not fitted for the fulfilment of his dreams ofwings and the airways.
And now with one lift of his brows, a wave of the hand, Rex Raynor haddispelled the gloom. What was it Raynor had said--"Wing sense--born inhim!"
Hal flung himself through the front door and down the steps so excitedlythat he near toppled over his red-headed friend Fuz McGinnis, who wasrushing up the steps.
"What do you think you are--a Wright Whirlwind Motor?" Fuz fiercelyrubbed a barked shin. "Here I was thinking you an invalid, and hopped byto say I'd take the Yellow Spider and tow in the truck from the pinewoods for you."
"Don't believe my famous vehicle needs any towing-in," answered Hal,"but I'll be thankful to have you haul my carcass and these tools outthere, and apply some of your manly strength to helping me jack the oldbus up." And linking arms with Fuz, Hal strode off toward the yellowroadster.
For Rex Raynor, his week's stay in the shabby old Dane home was a periodof mixed pain and pleasure. At first his arm wound throbbedirritatingly, and added to it was the anxiety for the condition of hiscrashed plane. But these pleasant, kindly people among whom Fate haddropped him were an interesting compensation.
There was Mother Mary Dane. She was a little woman with blue eyes andlots of soft brown hair that was usually wound into a firm, tight knot,because there was never any time to primp it up and do it fluffily. Whenthe fever pains let the aviator up from his bed and allowed him the runof the place, he marveled at the amount of work a slip of a woman likeMary Dane could "turn off." He seemed to find her always churning, orstooped over everlasting "taken-in" sewing, or on her knees with gardentrowel in her hand. Her mouth would be a stubborn line combating theweariness of her eyes, offsetting the whiteness of her face--only folksdidn't often catch her like that. When she saw Raynor or Hal or UncleTel coming, she could usually produce a smile.
When the sun shone warm and bright, from a big room at the end of thehall would arise snatches of quavery whistling, thump of hammering. Thatwould be Uncle Telemachus Harrison enjoying a "good day." Uncle Tel wasHal's great-uncle. When the sunshine eased his rheumatism, he poundedaway at chair repairing and odd jobs to help along with the very limitedfamily exchequer. Uncle Tel Harrison was a curiosity--a fiery little manwith bright blue eyes and a bristling, bushy mustache.
As great a curiosity as Uncle Tel was the old house. Hal's mother was aHarrison and had inherited the ancient dwelling from her people.
The Harrison house had been two-storied. Then the roof fell in. Hal andUncle Tel, with very little outside help, had cobbled up some sort ofroof over the remaining lower story. In the bleakness of winter, themakeshift, curling shingles and the warped walls must have looked theirpitifulness. But now in the summer, when the cudzu vine was in itsswathing glory, the old cobbled-up house looked rather quaint and coolunder its dress of vines.
Back of the tumbledown dwelling was a tumbledown barn that had oncehoused the high-stepping Harrison horses. Now it housed some strangecontraptions beneath its sagging roof.
When Rex Raynor went out to that old stable under the voluble andexcited escort of Uncle Telemachus, he was amazed at the variety andperfection of things aeronautical that he found there.
"Just look at 'em," chortled Uncle Tel, waving a gnarled hand about
thebarn workshop to include little models of gliders, models of planes inpaper and wood, some tattered books on aviation mechanics, and a crudeman-sized glider made of wood strips and cloth.
"Looks like this one's seen real usage." Raynor's eyes lighted up withinterest as he laid a hand on various splicings of the wood and hugepatches on the fabric.
"My sakes alive," sputtered Uncle Tel, "I'll say it's been used! Thatcrazy boy's always rigging himself up in something like this, and havingthe kids from the village pull him off down that bare slope of oldHogback Hill. Sometimes he'd achieve a pretty good float before he'ddrift to the plain at the hill bottom. He achieved his head bumped, too,a score of times, a shoulder wrenched, arms and legs knocked up--butdang it, he keeps on trying the thing!" Uncle Tel's voluble complainingwas belied by the prideful glint in his old blue eyes.
"And what does Mother Mary Dane think of all this gliding and headbumping?" laughed the flyer, turning to Mrs. Dane who had just come in.
She stood there, a hand resting on the glider wing. The eyes she liftedheld a glow of pride, but around those eyes anxiety had etched its ownlines too.
"Umph, Mary, she's got sense--if I do say it," grunted Uncle Telemachus."She knows it ain't any more use to try to keep an air-minded boy out ofthe air than it is to try to keep a water-minded duck out of the water.Mary, she's shed tears over his busted head and banged-up shouldersconsiderable times. But shedding tears didn't keep Mary from giving herwing-sprouting offspring all ten of the linen sheets she heired off herGrandma Harrison. Real linen sheets and a silver spoon or two was allthere was left to descend to Mary. Grandma Harrison would turn over inher grave if she knew just what an end her good hand-woven cloth hadcome to. A whole sheet ragged up on a hawthorn bush where Glider NumberOne went gefluey in a gulley and spilled Hal for a row of head wallops.Another burned to a crisp when some invention of wing lacquercombustulated and liked to have fired us all out of house and home.There's four on that glider contraption, and the rest of 'em--the restof 'em--" With a guilty look, Uncle Tel clapped a hand to mouth and wentoff into a hasty fit of coughing. He turned away and stamped down thelength of the shop where he began to putter with some spruce sticks anda lathe.
When he rejoined the others, Raynor was saying:
"Didn't Hal drop a few hints that he was going to do some gliding for mybenefit to-morrow?"
"I fear so." Mary Dane's lips quirked up in a smile, but her hand wasflung out nervously. "And just look at that innocent little wind cloudlazying out there on the horizon! It could roll up into anything. I tellHal that every time he even plans a glide, his subconscious mind stirsup a wind somewhere."
"What's he going to take off in--this?" Raynor touched the batteredglider.
"Gosh, no--er-r--" Uncle Tel joined the conversation, then sputtered offdistractedly, "er-r--well, you just wait and see!"
