Part 2
A thin gray light was beginning to break over them as they reached the house. Nick explained the circumstances quickly.
“We need water for the radiator,” he told the farmer. “And when we get that we’ve got to figure some way to get the ship out of your field.”
“I reckon as how we might take a fence down for you on that far side of the field,” the farmer proposed. “That would maybe give you a longer run.”
“Take too much time to do that,” Nick objected. “We’re in a hurry. Have you got any old fence posts, or logs, around here?”
The farmer considered this with exasperating slowness.
“Yes, I reckon you could find a pile of old posts down there near where you’re at now--just across the fence. I’ll call my boys and they can help you. What good’ll fence posts do you?”
“I’m going to build a ramp at one end of the field--to throw the ship up into the air. That’s the only way we can get out.”
The farmer got a ten-gallon milk can and filled it with water, and Nick and Wilson carried it to the ship. The problem of getting the Vought safely across that forbidding ninety-five miles was causing the Patrol pilot a great deal of concern; he disregarded the difficulty of the take-off for the moment. Suddenly he exclaimed:
“It’ll work! We’ll make it!”
“What?”
“Never mind--I can show you quicker than I can tell you.”
* * * * *
The Vought that Nick was flying--like all the other planes in the Patrol service--was equipped with a “center-section” auxiliary gasoline tank, placed in the center of the upper wing. The capacity of this tank was twenty-five gallons.
With a small wrench and a pair of pliers from his tool kit, Nick quickly detached the gravity feed-line from the “three-way” valve that led to the carburetor, taking care to turn the cut-off valve at the base of the center-section tank to the “off” position. This feed-line was about three feet in length, and when Nick bent it forward toward the top of the radiator he saw that it lacked about ten inches of being long enough to reach.
“Run back to the house and tell that farmer he can have twenty-five gallons of good gasoline if he’ll get cans down here to hold it,” Nick called to Wilson. “Tell him to get those kids of his down here--I’ll put ’em to work building that ramp. See if you can’t pick up a piece of rubber hose about a foot long while you’re there--and step on it; it’s six o’clock now!”
Wilson returned within five minutes. Nick saw the farmer, a few yards behind him, carrying a tub.
“No hose around here!” the Doctor complained. “Have you got to have it? Can’t we fix it up some way--it’s getting late!”
“We’ll fix it some way.” Nick climbed down from his perch above the motor. He cut off about two feet of the radiator overflow tube, and fitted one end of it into the lower end of the gasoline feed-pipe. Then, with his handkerchief he bound the joint tightly, and, bending the line to one side of the fuselage, drained the gasoline out of the upper tank into the tub.
While the fuel was draining out, Nick put Wilson and the farmer and the two boys to work building a ramp at the south end of the field. He would have to take off the short way of the field, by having it there, but he would be going into the wind--a primary essential in getting an airplane into the air.
At six-thirty Nick had carried enough water to fill the radiator and the gravity tank in the center-section. He had stuck the end of the feed-line into the filler neck of the radiator, and plugged the neck with a wadded-up piece of his shirt. The feed-line was in place--wired there--so that when Nick turned the valve at the base of the gravity tank water would run down into the radiator; he had defeated those ninety-five miles of bad land.
He was ready to go, but the ramp was not completed, and for fifteen minutes more, while the water dribbled from the leak in the radiator, he worked furiously with Wilson and the other men, shoveling sandy soil up upon the built-up incline. When this work was completed the ramp looked like a huge V laid flat on one side. Beginning a few feet from the fence, it sloped with increasing steepness toward the south. At its highest point it was four or five feet above the level of the field.
* * * * *
It was full daylight, gray with drifting clouds, when Nick and Wilson started out again. The Patrol pilot taxied as far back in the field as he could get and made a running turn to get as much room as possible for the take-off. The wheels hurled sand as the turn was made, the ship straightened out and roared down toward the ramp.
The Vought picked up thirty miles an hour before it hit the slope. When it struck the incline it seemed to be catapulted into the air, so violently did it ricochet. It struck the ramp a crushing blow and bounced nearly forty feet above the level of the mesquite trees, and before it could settle back Nick fought it into control and held it in the air. They had made it!
[Illustration: The Vought bounced nearly forty feet, and before it could settle back Nick fought it into control.]
They were in the air, yes. But that shock against the ramp had done something to the landing-gear! Nick felt it give way--and knew that at least one wheel was out of commission.
With this knowledge, Nick realized he was almost helpless to prevent a serious crash when he reached Rock Springs; he felt a profound regret that he had attempted this journey in the first place: he knew that Wilson would in all probability be of no value to the sufferers of the storm after he got there!
But Nick did not turn back to San Antonio, knowing this. He circled the field; then swung toward the northwest and settled the ship on its course. He believed that he still had one wheel of his landing-gear intact, and if he did he might get down without serious injury to himself or Wilson.
Fifteen minutes after he had taken off, the motor began to heat, and he reached up and turned the valve at the base of the gravity tank. Water ran down through the tube to the radiator, and a large part of it spewed from the joint in the pipe and was flung back into Nick’s face. The needle of the centigrade swung down to normal after a few minutes, and Nick shut the water off.
He was well into the hill country when, far ahead of him, he saw the clouds breaking. The storm had passed on, and the clouds were sweeping away to the southeast, leaving the clean, washed-blue that follows rain. Five minutes later they hit the wind. They had been flying in comparatively calm air, making ninety miles an hour over the ground, but when they struck the “norther” their ground speed was cut to sixty--they were bucking a thirty-mile wind. And seventy miles to go!
* * * * *
He dived the ship to two hundred feet, and for ten minutes flew along just above the rounded tops of hills, trying to keep as low as possible to avoid the stronger wind at higher elevations. But as the plane bored through the air mile after mile he realized that the wind was becoming stronger, even at the ground. He pulled up, then, and climbed five thousand feet, checking as closely as possible the speed the ship was making over the ground. The velocity of the wind at five thousand feet was more than fifty miles an hour!
He went on up, fighting the little ship into the blasting cold of the upper reaches at ten thousand feet. But still the wind did not diminish; they seemed to crawl along, making hardly any progress whatsoever. He dived back down to a level with the higher hills.
The motor began to heat again, and Nick drained more water from the tank above his head. He estimated that he was half way there--forty miles to go--and the tank was almost empty.
“Never make it!” he muttered. “We’re down in these hills just as sure as hell!”
They should be there now, it seemed to him. They had flown an hour and a half since the last take-off. He checked the map in his hand, but the country below was shown as a blank space, with nothing to identify the hills from one another. A creek slipped under them, but there was no creek shown upon the map.
The centigrade showed the motor heating once more, and with a forlorn hope Nick reached up and let the last of the water run down to the radiator. As much leaked out as went in--half of it streamed out at the joint under the handkerchief--otherwise there would have been enough to get them through.
* * * * *
Minutes passed, counted off against the miles; there were more minutes than there were miles. The ground crawled back behind them in agonizing slowness.
The centigrade went up again, slowly, as it had on each first warning. They could fly perhaps five minutes more--and then a welter of destruction!
Then, far ahead of them, a blot on the top of a rounding hill, Nick saw Rock Springs. Ten or twelve miles away, and close, from the standpoint of an airplane, yet utterly unattainable.
The motor began to knock slightly, increasing until it sounded like the hammering of loose pieces of metal in a heavy can. The needle of the centigrade was glued to the peg.
Ahead of them a half a mile or so was a winding road, a scar that twisted through the hills; and beside this trail a little field was snuggled. Too small for a normal landing--far too small--yet it was better than going down in a maze of brush and trees on a rocky hillside. Nick turned a little and headed for it. He throttled down a little, hoping that the con rods of his motor would stay with him half a minute more. The distance was cut to a quarter of a mile, and the metallic clinking of the motor grew in volume. It was seconds now.
The motor dropped two hundred revs, and labored under protest to hold fourteen hundred. A blast of hot water spewed violently from the shortened overflow and trailed away in a white mist to the rear. Suddenly, with a chug of torment, the propeller stopped--vertical.
“Of course it’d be straight up and down! ” Nick complained. “Wrap it into knots with the rest.”
He dropped the nose and came in toward the field in a slow glide, the little Vought bouncing in the rough air. Nick yelled to Wilson again to get his goggles off.
The little field lay in the lee of a high hill, and as the ship slipped down below the sweeping current of air that poured over the lip of this hill, the wind dropped it. It did just that--literally. Where the Vought had been gliding into a thirty-mile wind, almost standing motionless above the ground, it was suddenly gliding into no wind at all--and still hanging almost motionless above the ground. It dropped like a rock, barely clearing the edge of the brush. It came down fifty feet as nearly vertical as an airplane can come, and it hit on the remaining undamaged wheel, the bottom of the radiator and the right wingtip--a perfect “three-point landing.”
[Illustration: It dropped like a rock--as nearly vertical as an airplane can come. The wings folded up like tissue paper.]
The fuselage broke in two just behind the front cockpit, and Doctor Wilson, sprawling grotesquely, was hurled out of his seat, to be brought up abruptly sitting in shocked semiconsciousness on the ground, ten feet away. The wings folded up like tissue paper and the folds of fabric billowed up in the little currents of air that slipped down over the brow of the hill ahead.
“Wentworth!” Wilson cried anxiously, when he realized fully what had happened. “Wentworth!”
There was no answer. The Doctor plunged into the midst of the debris and pulled Nick out. He was not seriously hurt, although he was unconscious; an indentation on the leather-ringed cowling and a swelling welt on his chin showed Wilson what had happened to him.
* * * * *
Nick regained consciousness in the back seat of a battered touring-car that wound its way at great labor over the rocky, washed-out road half a mile from where the wreck occurred. He found Doctor Wilson sitting beside him holding a bottle of something by his mouth--something that made his nostrils burn and his eyes smart.
“Get that stuff away from here!” he objected vigorously. “Where are we? Damn that radiator! Did we pile up?”
The girl in the front seat of the car looked around, and Nick noticed with startled surprise that her face was bruised, and that she had a wide bandage around her forehead.
“I’m so glad you weren’t hurt,” she said seriously. “And thank you so much for bringing Doctor Wilson out here.”
Wilson introduced them. “This is the girl who got the word outside--she walked ten miles through that storm last night to get to a telephone!”
“_Walked?_” Nick exclaimed. “Ten miles--in a storm like that one must have been?”
“Shore she did,” the driver of the car volunteered. “It shore must ’a’ been a trial, too! She come right along this road, with the clouds a-pourin’ lightnin’ an’ rain an’ hell’s puppies! I tell you, it was a-stormin’ like sin, even when she got to my place at three o’clock this mornin’. I’m just now takin’ her back to Rock Springs--she don’t know yit what’s happened to her folks.”
“My mother was visiting there,” Wilson explained soberly. “You didn’t hear of her did you--Mrs. Wilson?”
“No, I didn’t hear about her,” Mary Collins admitted sympathetically. “But I wasn’t there long after it happened--I went home, and--and then I started right out.”
The car labored up a slope, and thus out upon a hilltop, and they all looked down upon the desolation of Rock Springs, half a mile in front of them. Doctor Wilson had grown a little pale. The car pitched down the grade, the grizzled driver dodging debris as he wound his way into the town.
* * * * *
That night Nick went with Wilson to a consultation which the latter had with Doctor Collins.
“Your mother?” the Patrol pilot asked, as they threaded their way along. He had not seen Wilson since they reached the town.
“Went down to Uvalde the morning before the storm. Man, you know that’s a relief, to learn a thing like that!”
They were silent, finding their way cautiously. Suddenly Wilson exclaimed: “You know, Wentworth, I can’t get over the bravery of that girl! Think of starting out in a storm like that! Just think of it! ”
Nick rubbed his swollen jaw.
“She got there, too!” he commented. “But the doctor she was going for almost didn’t. She ought to be glad she didn’t have to make it in an airplane!”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the August, 1929 issue of _Blue Book_ magazine.]