Wings for Nurse Bennett
By
Adeline McElfresh
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
CANDLELIGHT ROMANCES
A Nurse Abroad, Marion Marsh Brown
Ellen Matthews: Mission Nurse, Ralph E. Hayes
Settlement Nurse, Rosamund Hunt
Chesapeake Doctor, Adelaide Humphries
Remembered Melody, Frances Dean Hancock
Bravely to Dream, Natalie King
Nurse on Holiday, Kathleen Harris
Nurse in Alaska, Grace Muirhead Hendron
Spotlight for Megan, Marcia Miller
The Candystripers, Rachel Cosgrove
Timberline Nurse, Ruth McCarthy Sears
Night Nurse, Rosamund Hunt
John Keith, Intern, Jeanne Judson
Nurse Janice Calling, Isabel Cabot
The Nurse Made Headlines, Adelaide Humphries
Hong Kong Nurse, Ellen Elliott
Arctic Nurse, Dorothy Dowdell
Staff Nurse, Jane Corby
A Nurse for Sand Castle, Arlene Hale
A Feather in Her Cap, Adelaide Humphries
North Country Nurse, Robert Ackworth
Nurse Kilmer's Vow, Virginia C. Holmgren
Nurse Comes Home, Ethel Hamill
Nurse for Mercy's Mission, Adeline McElfresh
Kay Manion, M.D., Adeline McElfresh
Private Hospital, Arlene Hale
Emergency Nurse, Rosamund Hunt
Children's Nurse, Arlene Hale
Doctor of the Keys, Adelaide Humphries
Doctor Lesley's Triumph, Annie L. Gelsthorpe
Nurse in Yucatan, Adeline McElfresh
Holiday to Fear, Arlene Hale
Surgeon's Nurse, Ann Gilmer
Doctor Garrett's Girl, Miriam Lynch
The New Nurses, Arlene Hale
Assignment in the Islands, Jennifer Blair
Special Duty, Arlene Hale
The High Road, Dorothy Worley
Published by
DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
750 Third Avenue
New York, New York 10017
Copyright © 1960 by Adeline McElfresh
Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Previous Dell Edition #A206
New Dell Edition
First printing—December 1970
Chapter 1
"Seat belt, Mr. Jefferson," Stewardess Sarah Bennett of Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways reminded the full moon-faced man in an aisle seat halfway back.
"With Fergis at the controls? That guy can fly backward and blindfolded." He fastened the belt around his beginning-to-be-ample middle. "Better?"
Smiling, Sarah said, "Much."
She moved on along the aisle, hoping that that funny little Mr. Elder, who had changed seats and taken one as close to the pilots' compartment as he could get, hadn't heard. As Jenny Fergis said of her newly creative insides, he had been nervous as a ptarmigan in a hot skillet all the way from Fairbanks and was apt to look upon Mr. Jefferson's nonchalance toward safety as an evil portent.
"Comfy, Mrs. Stevanic?" she asked the pretty, dark-eyed girl who was going "outside" to have her baby.
"Oh, yes, thank you."
Her young husband grinned. "I'm the one with the butterflies, Stewardess."
"Well, don't let it worry you," Sarah reassured him. "It happens to lots of husbands."
In that moment she might have been back in the hospital in Dayton, on o. b. duty and helping another young soon-to-become-parents couple to settle in to await baby's arrival. Of course, young Master or Miss Stevanic was not that imminent—at least she hoped not, although her nurse's experience had nudged into her mind the thought that they had waited until awfully close to time to start "out."
To take his mind off his butterflies Sarah said, "Good-by, Killmoose."
It was. The steady throb of the motors had deepened, the plane was moving, slowly at first, with the dull, gray-brown, rainswept landscape tiptoeing backward past the plane's windows, and then faster and faster as the two engines increased their deep-throated, powerful rhythm in perfect unison, until the breathtaking moment in which Sarah realized they were airborne. She had felt the same way this morning when they took off from Fairbanks, as if she were in a strangely enchanting, exciting, new world.
As, she thought, she was. Flying as stewardess was different from flying as a passenger. She was a member of the team, just as she had been at the hospital… as she had not been, not really, in Ralph's office.
Although she had determined that it should not, the thought intruded. She was grateful when Mrs. Stevanic said, "I wonder why 'Killmoose'?"
"That's easy," Mr. Jefferson—he was listed on Sarah's passenger list as George Jefferson, Fairbanks and Seattle—volunteered. "Somebody killed a moose, so it's Killmoose."
"Just like Forty-Mile and Sixty-Mile," Jan-Doreen Stevanic said.
"And Twenty-two-Mile."
Sarah left them discussing the quaint logic that had dotted the map of Alaska with its picturesque names. Paul Fergis's Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways might not be a regularly scheduled airline, but as stewardess she had definite duties. And, for the moment at least, one of those duties—putting Andrew Stevanic at ease—had been taken over by Mrs. Stevanic and Mr. Jefferson.
The others, though, especially Mr. Elder—
Moving along the aisle, pausing for a word here, another there, offering yesterday's Fairbanks newspaper or a magazine, Sarah ran a mental finger down her passenger list: Herman Thornton Elder, Juneau (probably going home after a business trip to Fairbanks, she thought); the Stevanics; Mr. Jefferson; John Norstead (who was going to Tanacross, their next stop); Mrs. Cornelia Emlyn (who must be about seventy and who was going to visit a daughter in Yakutat and after that another in San Diego, she had confided); MacDonald McDavie (who was riding "deadhead"—without paying, because he was a special friend of Paul's—from Killmoose to Copper Creek); and the other three who had boarded the plane at Killmoose, Mr. Smith and— what was the name of the other two?
Oh, yes, she remembered then. Rand. They must be brothers, or perhaps cousins. They didn't look much alike—
Tiny Mrs. Emlyn's voice, spirited and surprisingly young, interrupted the thought. "You tell that child it was Sourdough Charley who killed the moose."
"All right."
"He was pretty near to starving. He was like a lot of them, pretty near to making a strike, he thought, and he stayed too long. Winter caught him…" Her bright-blue eyes flickered to the window beyond which now there was only the gray curtain of the rain. "I don't like this weather. I hope Paul Fergis knows what he's doing, taking off in this."
Sarah smiled. "Mr. Jefferson says Paul can fly backward and blindfolded. Presumably that includes a rainstorm."
"I heard him. He's a fool."
Although Mr. Jefferson seemed a likable sort and perfectly at ease, Sarah felt inclined to agree with her. Paul had logged a lot of hours during twelve years in the Air Force and a lot more since he had started his own air freight and passenger service in Alaska, but Sarah could picture jagged snow-covered mountains slipping unseen on either side and beneath them and in this heavy rain— If the plane should start icing up, it would take more than being able to fly "backward and blindfolded"
to save them.
Stop it, Sarah, she ordered herself. Paul knew what he was doing, all right. He and Al Malcom, the copilot, had talked it over between themselves and with the radio operator at Tanacross. It wasn't raining there, although it had been earlier, so they were heading toward the edge of the storm, they had decided, not into it. Sensing her own well-concealed nervousness, Paul had explained that to her.
Tanacross, and then Copper Creek, where they were to drop Mac McDavie and pick up a consignment of something or other, supplies, probably, for someone down-country, where there wasn't even an airport. There almost wasn't one at Killmoose, Sarah thought. Just an airstrip and a radio shack that was the meager handful of buildings' sole contact with the world—no wonder Paul hadn't wanted to get weathered-in there, she thought. With no facilities for his passengers, he would have to quarter them with the few families or else put them up at the trading post. That might be all right for a few hours, but not for longer.
Snatching her worried glance from the gray nothingness beyond the windows she said, "Anyhow, it isn't raining at Tanacross."
The smile that twinkled in Mrs. Emlyn's eyes before it leapfrogged to her mouth was as if someone had lighted a candle within her. "Bless you, Sarah Bennett, don't you worry about me!" Her voice dropped. "Him, now—" with an inclination of the graying, small red-hatted head at Mr. Elder, across the aisle and one seat forward.
Nodding, Sarah moved on, stopped beside him. The poor man was petrified.
"Something to read, Mr. Elder?" she asked.
He shook his head. But with an obvious effort. "Stewardess—"
"Aw, he'll be all right, Miss," one of the Mr. Rands, who in the few minutes since they had left the airstrip at Killmoose had settled down like a seasoned traveler, cut in. "I've seen 'em before, scared stiff at the first sign of trouble." He shifted heavily about in his seat, which was beside Mr. Smith; the younger Mr. Rand had taken a seat at the rear of the cabin. "Can't say's I blame 'im, though. This weather. What's that you said about Tanacross?"
Sarah told him.
"Storm must be moving to the northwest, way the wind is."
"Probably," Sarah said. She turned back to Mr. Elder. "You see, Mr. Elder? We'll soon be out of it."
He swallowed his Adam's apple. "How long before we reach Tanacross?"
"Well, we're flying into the wind—I'll ask the pilot," she offered.
She opened the door to the pilots' compartment.
"How's the little mama?" Paul asked before she could close it.
"Oh, she's fine. Her husband is the one who's worried."
Paul Fergis sighed. "So am I. For once I wish a passenger had taken somebody else's airplane."
"And us with a nurse aboard?" the co-pilot chided him. He winked at Sarah. "I think circumstances at home have old Paul baby-conscious, don't you?"
"Could be." Sarah asked then, "How long to Tanacross? Mr. Elder has the fidgets."
"The brown wren?"
Apparently Al Malcolm had his own way of sizing up the passengers. Sarah said yes.
"What's chewing the guy? I thought he was going to balk at coming back aboard at Killmoose."
"Frightened of the weather, I guess," Sarah said.
As why wouldn't he be? she thought. The plane seemed to be burrowing through a world of soft pale chiffon that knew no limits, no boundaries, not even rough jagged mountains or glaciers for them to fly smack into. Although she scarcely knew one instrument from the other Sarah's eyes sought the crowded instrument panel. One of them was the altimeter, which told their altitude—but altimeters had failed, and suppose a pilot didn't know the true height of some peak?
Al Malcolm, who was not busy with the controls, noticed her moment's unease. "What's it with you? Weather or first-flight jitters?"
"A little of both, I guess," Sarah admitted. "Which is the altimeter?"
He pointed it out. Then, "Stop worrying. We're at nine thousand. The highest peak along this stretch is something around six."
She had liked Al Malcolm from the first—which had been exactly three days ago, when she'd stepped off another plane at Juneau to find him waiting for her instead of Paul, who had been tied up with some business of loading for take-off an hour or so later. "Tall, willowy, honey blonde, gray eyes flecked with the same honey color of her hair," he had checked off the physical characteristics with which Paul obviously had supplied him as if she were a piece of freight consigned for delivery by Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways. "You must be Sarah Bennett…"
Now she said, "Thanks, Al," and knew that it was relief that deckle-edged her voice. "I think I'll serve coffee before Tanacross."
"Good idea," Paul Fergis said. "Might take Elder's mind off it. We're going to be late."
"I don't tell him that, do I?"
"He in that bad a way? Maybe we should have left him in Killmoose."
Or Fairbanks, Sarah thought. But then Mr. Elder hadn't been nearly so upset until a few minutes before take-off at the Killmoose airstrip. She had come back on board early and found him practically cowering in his seat.
"Use your own judgment, Sarah," Paul said after a moment. "You get them like that once in a—"
He broke off to cast a quick look over his shoulder as the door to the compartment opened.
They all saw the gun at the same time, Sarah was to decide later. Now, in this infinitesimal span, her quick, sharp intake of breath, Al Malcolm's lean, brown, bony-knuckled hand darting for the radio switch, the gun barrel going thudddd alongside his red-sand head seemed one.
"Don't you try anything, bud," one of the Mr. Rands said to Paul Fergis.
Chapter 2
The rain driving against the window of the tiny radio shack crouched alongside the airstrip at Kill-moose seemed to be worsening. Fletch Minsen gave up fiddling with the dials and sat for lengthening minutes watching the myriad runnels chase pell-mell after each other as if they too wished they could flee the pelting storm. A devil of a day, he grumbled to himself. Couldn't even pick up any decent music from the States (it was difficult for him to remember, sometimes, that Alaska was a state now too), which he usually managed to do. Oh, well. At least he wasn't fighting a plane through this stuff, though if anyone could do it Paul Fergis could. A sharp flyer, Fergis. Most flyers in Alaska were. They had to be to stay alive, fickle as the weather was this time of year.
Look at it. In an hour the sun might be shining— would be, probably, if the info he'd just gotten from Tanacross was right.
But look at it now! Holy Jeez, visibility must be down to a couple hundred feet and upstairs where it was colder— The radio crackled and snapped at him when he started twirling dials again but the radio man at Tanacross, a hundred and seventy-five or so miles roughly south, came in clear.
"Still getting it, Fletch?"
"Jeez, yes. Worse, if anything."
"Anything more from Fergis?"
"Not since he went to nine thousand. Must be plenty rough up there."
"You can say that again!"
They talked on for a scant minute before Fletcher Minsen went back to his search of the disturbed airwaves for something besides the hymns some station or other—the only one he could tune in reasonably clear —was broadcasting. Jeez, if the light had been kindly it would have led him out of this place a long time ago and—
"—wreckage sighted yesterday—"
The familiar voice of Barthey, the newscaster on a Fairbanks station, halted his seeking fingers in mid-twirl of a dial.
"—by Air Force planes from Eilsen Air Force Base at Fairbanks is believed to be that of a light plane stolen last Friday by three men wanted for questioning in the attempted sabotage of one of the United States' Distant Early Warning bases in far northern Alaska. The wreckage is in an inaccessible area between Flume Creek on the Seventy-Mile River and Sam Creek—"
"Jeez!" Fletch Minsen's whisper sounded shocked, suspicious, in his own ears.
Them three guys who'd come up after Paul Fergis set the plane dow
n—
Desperately he fastened his attention to the announcer's words: "—no sign of life around the wreckage, which appears to have burned. An effort will be made to reach the site today, possibly by helicopter."
Not in this they won't, Fletch Minsen told the newscaster silently. Jeez, a storm like this, in them mountains along the Seventy-Mile—
"Only a meager description of the trio is available. Luke Jasper, whose Cessna was stolen from his private hangar at Barrow, believes a man who engaged him in conversation regarding flying conditions may have been one of the three. The man, Jasper said, carried one shoulder hunched higher than the other—"
Fletch Minsen didn't wait to hear the rest of it. One shoulder hunched higher than the other! That big guy! Jeez— Short, pudgy fingers transmitted excitement to the set; almost before he'd touched the dials Tanacross was answering him.
"Okay, Fletch. Come in."
"Them three guys, Lee! They're on Fergis's plane!" He could almost see astonishment leap into O'Kinnelley's ruddy face. "You sure?"
"Three guys I never saw before come up after he'd landed to pick up Mac. One big guy carried a shoulder funny— You hear Barthey?"
"Yeah. Don't worry, Fletch. There'll be a reception committee!"
But Jeez, Fletch Minsen thought, Paul should have checked with Tanacross by now. You don't suppose—
After eyeing the rain still sloshing against the window above his radio he rose and went to the door.
The end of the airstrip vanished soggily, forebodingly, into the storm.
"Stick to your flying, bud," the man with the gun ordered Paul Fergis. "You, girlie, get him out of here."
Sarah gave him a look.
"Do as he says, Sarah." Paul's voice sounded taut, drawn, as his face was. "Somehow."
She knew what he was thinking. They were at this man's mercy, they couldn't expect help from the cabin. There had been three of them—this hulking, stiff-shouldered man, a wizened shifty-eyed creature who had given her the creeps and the young one…
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