by Alan Lemay
Nobody who heard Joe Sebring's engine at Encampment was surprised that he did not finish ahead of Frank Manosky. As flyer after flyer checked in at Glendale, Sebring was not second. He was not third. He was no place.
Frank Manosky, and some of the other racers, flew back to Encampment to develop a search, as soon as their airplanes were checked over. Within twenty-four hours a number of flyers were gathered there. They got in a few hours' search. Then a nasty stretch of fog and rain came into the mountains, and the search stopped.
Ellen Scott appeared on the evening of the second day. She had started from Encampment by airliner, for her own airplane was in overhaul, and then came on by rail when the liner was grounded by X-weather. She cornered the boss mechanic.
"Harry, I have to have a plane."
"Gosh, Miss Scott, everything's booked. You'll have to....11
"I suppose that's Justine Pryor's plane they're polishing up, over there?"
"Yeah...she has a standing order it has to be rolled out and warmed up by daylight. Then, when it's all splattered up, she says... `Roll her back.'"
"Harry, what was the matter with Joe Sebring's engine?"
"Gosh, Miss Scott, plenty. I says to him...`Joe, this kettle is fixing to throw an armful of rods right in your puss.'"
"What did he say?"
"He `Jerksays... them blocks!' It wasn't like Joe."
Ellen went back to town.
It was still dark the next morning, and nobody was around but the radio operator and one mechanic, when the two girls met. Ellen Scott was standing at the teletype in the radio room, running the tape through her fingers, when Justine Pryor came in. Justine's quick step checked a little as she saw Ellen, but for the moment neither girl gave any other sign.
"Miss Pryor," the mechanic said, "your plane is warming on the...."
"Well," Justine snapped, "I can hear it." She turned on Ellen. "Are you flying? Because if you're not, I'd like a look at that tape."
Ellen relinquished it. "I can tell you what's on it."
"I'll see for myself." Justine tossed a newspaper on the table. "Your picture's on the back page of this one, if you want to admire it."
Ellen didn't. "I don't suppose," she said, "you'd care to put a price on chartering your plane to me?"
Justine Pryor said "Oh, Lord." and picked up the tape.
"It isn't as if you were using it yourself. Everybody knows you don't take off in weather like this."
Justine let the tape dangle, and looked at her coolly. "Just what do you think you would do with it?"
"It's going to clear up a little to the west. And I have an instrument ticket. An hour or two west, on Joe's course, I ought to get some visibility. I want to be out there ready to accomplish something. Because the boys have already combed the country close in."
"Forget it," Justine said shortly. "I'll fly that plane when there's flying to be done. You see any chance of getting up out of this, Mac?"
"We'll know a lot more in a couple of hours, Miss Pryor."
"This thing gets me down," Justine fumed. "There are a dozen good pilots here, wasting their valuable time. Before they're through, some of them will have risked their lives and their planes. And why? Because Joe Sebring sold himself the idea he was a smart guy!"
"Justine," Ellen said, "who do you think sent him on?"
"You should know! The whole country has seen that picture of you mugging him at the take-off. If you're going to encourage these short-hour experts to fly 'way out of their class, this sort of thing is bound to happen. They ought to ground you both!"
"Justine, it was you sent Joe Sebring over the mountains in that ruined ship."
"I? I told him not to fly. I all but begged him not to fly!"
"I saw that in the papers," Ellen said. "But I'm no more fooled than you. It burned you up when he beat Frank, because it gummed up your publicity. So you set out to ride Joe Sebring out of the air. You know what you've done. You'd ridden him and taunted him and bedeviled him at every turn. You could do that, because you're a picturepaper flyer."
Justine Pryor appealed to the radioman: "Do I have to stand for this? What right has she to come in here and...?"
"A picture-paper flyer," Ellen said again. "That's all you are, and that's all you ever will be. So you put him in a place where he had to fly, equipped or not. If Joe Sebring is dead, you'll be marked with it all of your life."
Justine Pryor stepped forward and slashed Ellen across the face with her gloves.
"Hey, wait!" the mechanic broke in. "Listen, you dames...."
The radioman said: "Easy now...easy...." They got Justine to sit down. In the quiet they could hear Justine's engine, warming futilely in the fog.
"Phony," Ellen said, her voice flat. "As phony as they come. So now the real pilots have to clean up after you." She felt of her lips with her fingers, and studied the lipstick on them. "You can't even read a weather report. If Joe is dead, you killed him."
She walked out then, and, as she passed the table, she tossed her hat upon it, and picked up the helmet that lay there.
They gave Justine Pryor a cigarette, and it seemed to steady her.
"She's nervous," the mechanic said soothingly.
"Look here," Justine demanded, "does she have a plane?"
"No, ma'am! I haven't got any order to let anything out, or warm anything, except your own ship."
Justine was still worrying about a possible publicity scoop. "Then, at least, she can't...."
She stopped. Out on the apron the pulsing undertone rose to a snarling thunder, then definitely pulled away.
"That...that's my plane!"
The mechanic looked sheepish. "I guess she must've stole it," he offered.
If Joe Sebring had been near Encampment, they would have found him before the weather closed. He was down on the line of his course, and its checkpoints were bold and obvious. It took no miracle to find him. The only reason Ellen Scott found him, instead of someone else, was that, when she met visibility, she was out there where he was.
Joe Sebring had wrecked an ankle when he bailed out. It wasn't broken; he could hobble on it a little bit. But he had decided he would do better to camp by his cracked ship, where he could easily be found, rather than to attempt a hike.
By the third day he was out of cigarettes, dripping wet, and so hungry he had forgotten what was the matter with him. When a little plane passed over him, flying very high, he went into a brief panic for fear he would not be seen.
He ran limping and stumbling out to a pile of fuel he had, but found it too wet to catch. He tore off his shirt, and waved it frantically. Nobody got any good out of thatit was a khaki shirt, invisible from the air. The searcher apparently saw his crack-up, however, for the plane spiraled downward for a closer look.
Then, with utter amazement, Joe saw that the little ship was approaching to land. Joe Sebring would have sworn that the pilot didn't live who could land a hot ship in that place. The nearest thing to a landing strip was the bottom of a crooked ravine, heavily hazarded with boulders and creosote brush. He held his breath as he watched the accurate triangle, the slow, risky approach. The pilot purposely pancaked with a wallop that not quite washed out the landing gear, tipped up, and bounded upon half-locked brakes almost, almost recovered to a sensational landing. Then a clump of cat-claw snatched at a wheel, the plane ground-looped, vaulted high off one wing, and crashed in a clump of lodgepole pine.
Yet she got by with it. Ellen was free of her safety belt and climbing out by the time he got there. He caught her in his arms as she slid down a wing, and carried her, his ankle forgotten, to a place where he could put her down. When he had found she was unhurt, he held her in his arms and shouted at her.
"What do you mean by trying a landing like that? You ought to be grounded a year! Why in hell did you...?"
"Because I'm a plain damned fool, Joe. I saw your cracked ship...and I just had to know. Stop talking like Justine!"
After that he just held her and
let her cry for a little while.
"I'm the fool," he said at last. "You were right, and I was wrong. You don't know how wrong I was. All my life I've hated to see my name in print. A news camera gives me jitters. And here I've been trying to throw away everything I had...and succeeding...trying to get something I don't like and don't want. Ellen, I'm glad I didn't beat him."
She pushed away from him a little and stared at him oddly.
"Think I'm nuts?" he asked her.
"No, not exactly. You look pretty tough, with red whiskers, but you're not nuts. But, Joe...something has happened to us that you don't know about yet."
He waited.
"It's my fault, partly....Joe, we're suddenly famous."
"Who? You? Me? For what?"
"Do you remember that flash bulb going off when you kissed me, at the take-off? Well, after that, I broke down and told the reporters what you were flying. I said you were racing a patched-up, pretty nearly home-made crate with hardly any engine at all. And they played that up. The picture came out pretty well."
"Oh, my," said Joe.
"Then...you were fifth at Kansas City, running very hot, and not reported again. Everybody thought you had probably trailed out of the race. Then suddenly you scorched into Encampment like a bat out of nowhere, way out in front. We all went wild. The newspapers said... `Flying Wreck Blazes Way into Mountains Two States in the Lead,' and all such junk. Then they found out how rotten your engine sounded at Encampment, and everybody was holding his breath for you. Sure enough, you were never reported...and that was the most popular sensation of all."
"Popular? But... I didn't even finish!"
"Finish? Nuts. Anybody can finish. Getting lost, after all that build-up, was the most sensational thing you could have done. Winning would have been nothing beside it."
Joe said nothing.
"And the search for you...special bulletins on national hookups...front page every day...you're just a flock of headlines, and I'm not much better off."
"I guess," Joe said, "everything has happened to us."
"That isn't all. That's Justine Pryor's ship. I stole it. I thought I might need help, and there wasn't anybody I could turn to except a couple of reporters. They were crazy about the idea and... I was just plain crazy. A couple of them were standing by ready to jerk the blocks, before Justine even had a chance to refuse me charter. Can you imagine what kind of a story they'll make of all that now?"
"No," Joe admitted. "It staggers the mind."
"So now we're both notorious. To all intents and purposes, I'm Justine Pryor and you're Frank Manosky... only more so. Everybody wants to give you a job, and give you an engine, and build you a ship. You're rich as hell, and we're both just public property." She began to cry. "But I don't care. I'm so darned relieved."
He thought it over. "Tell me just one thing," he said finally. "Did you bring any grub?"
"Enough for a week. I sneaked it into Justine's ship before...."
"Then," he grinned, "everything's all right. Maybe we can manage to stand prosperity, until it blows over, if we stick together. And maybe" inspiration lighted his darkcircled eyes "maybe not until the grub gives out, even!"
She blew her nose, and brightened enough to smile. "That would suit me," she said.
Alan LeMay was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and attended Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, in 1916. Following his military service, he completed his education at the University of Chicago. His short story, "Hullabaloo," appeared the month of his graduation in Adventure (6/30/22). He was a prolific contributor to the magazine markets in the mid-1920s. With the story, "Loan of a Gun," LeMay broke into the pages of Collier's (2/23/29). During the next decade he wanted nothing more than to be a gentleman rancher, and his income from writing helped support his enthusiasms which included tearing out the peach-tree orchard so he could build a polo field on his ranch outside Santee, California. It was also during this period that he wrote some of his most memorable Western novels, GUNSIGHT TRAIL (1931), WINTER RANGE (1932), CATTLE KINGDOM (1933), and THUNDER IN THE DUST (1934) among them. In the late 1930s he was plunged into debt because of a divorce and turned next to screenwriting, early attaching himself to Cecil B. DeMille's unit at Paramount Pictures. LeMay continued to write original screenplays through the 1940s, and on one occasion even directed the film based on his screenplay.
THE SEARCHERS (1954) is regarded by many as LeMay's masterpiece. It possesses a graphic sense of place; it etches deeply the feats of human endurance that LeMay tended to admire in the American spirit; and it has that characteristic suggestiveness of tremendous depths and untold stories developed in his long apprenticeship writing short stories. A subtext often rides on a snatch of dialogue or flashes in a laconic observation. It was followed by such classic Western novels as THE TNFORGIVEN (1957) and BY DIM AND FLARING LAMPS (1962).
Table of Contents
Foreword
Death Rides the Trionte
Mules
The Killer in the Chute
Sentenced to Swing
The Fourth Man
The Fiddle in the Storm
Terlegaphy and the Bronc'
Gunfight at Burnt Corral
A Horse for Sale
Pardon Me, Lady
Six-Gun Graduate
Range Bred
West of Nowhere
