Part 3

“My wedding present,” he mumbled and handed her a paper. “And my reparation for the other stories,” he added, looking at King. Then he walked away across the field, trying to swing his stick with a casual air.

There was in the _Era_ a story--a front-page story. But it was not about the Ace of Deuces--the wild man of the air. It was how Winship, the great financier and keen judge of men had entrusted his life and his associates’ lives to an unknown pilot merely on his looks.

It told of a mechanic’s blunder and the pilot’s desperate and successful fight to save his passengers in the closed cabin from death by a crash landing or by drowning in the bay.

And it concluded:

The man who stood upright upon the wing of a pilotless plane and snatched fuel from the sky, saving lives with a mixture of courage and skill that would be hard to find even among transport pilots, was King Horn. Horn has crashed thirteen ships without injuring or endangering anyone but himself. He was keeping his record unstained.

There was no further question of King Horn’s future as a transport pilot.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 7, 1929 issue of _The Popular Magazine_.]