Part 1

[Illustration: It was clearing nicely, when the right wing tip struck the bank.]

FLOOD WATERS

By Leland S. Jamieson

A stirring story of an adventure by the Kelly Field pilot who gave us “The Affair of the Juxacanna” and other memorable stories.

Illustrated by Paul Lehman

Slow rain for days, falling interminably from leaden skies that hovered just above the earth. A chill northeast wind, gusty at times, never changing in direction; a wind that brought more rain. The dreary patter of water on shingled roofs, falling now as a gusty shower, sounding like a handful of pebbles striking overhead; then settling into a slow descent maddening in its monotony. Gray dampness in the air; a sticky dampness that soaked through one’s clothing and into everything. Day after day, tedious in its incessancy, dribbling down in a steady, growing stream that seemed mechanical. Rain falling from a solid blanket of wet fog above, in which there were no broken patches, no blue sky, no promise of relief.

For a week rain fell almost unbrokenly, until every slight depression in the ground, every track of man or beast, held water that dully glistened. Roads became impassable; here and there a car was stuck, its rear wheels burrowed deep in mire that had no bottom. Teams of horses, their backs steaming from the moisture in their coats, struggled through the slimy, glutinous muck, tugging patiently at wagons piled high with the household goods of refugees. Gaunt-eyed men, their faces blackened from days of neglect, sloshed wearily along behind their teams, turning now and then to speak some word of encouragement or caution to their wives and children who clung to precarious positions among the water-whitened furniture on the wagons.

The rain continued unabated. Creeks and bayous, dry ordinarily, filled now to their banks, then overspread the flattened countryside with their regurgitations. Inch by inch the water crept up, snarling viciously at the underpiling of bridges, grinding sedulously at the approaches of culverts and the embankments of fills. One by one the bridges over streams and creeks gave way to the ugly swirlings of the water; one by one the avenues of escape were beaten down; men and women and children were trapped, some of them to be snatched, horror-stricken, by the muddy flood when the earth of roadways was eroded relentlessly away beneath their feet. Others, more fortunate, reached higher ground; but even they were hardly better situated, for they were cut off without sufficient food or clothing. Disease set in; death threatened hideously the survivors who existed now in wretched deprivation on the tops of hills or ridges. Helpless in themselves, they stolidly awaited help; and yet they knew that for many of their number it would not come in time.

* * * * *

“The Mississippi had been in flood stage nearly a week before Nick Wentworth, chief pilot of the U. S. Air Patrol, received orders from Stiles, of the Treasury Department, to drop his work with prohibition and narcotic officers on the Border and proceed with all his ships to Little Rock for work under a representative of the Army seventh corps area. The quartet of Patrol pilots departed at once, arriving in the Arkansas town in the afternoon of the day Nick received his orders. They reported to Major Morehouse, of the Army Air Corps, for instructions. The Major, an austere man who had been harried almost to a nervous collapse during the past three days, explained the situation quickly.

“The water covers the entire river district,” he told them. “Some of the smaller towns near the Mississippi are completely submerged, and most of the people who lived in them are camped for the time being in emergency quarters on high ground--out of danger if the water doesn’t rise, or if disease doesn’t become too prevalent. Conditions are frightful. We can’t hope to do very much in getting these people out of the flooded area entirely, but we can take food and medical supplies forward and drop them wherever they are needed. I’ll want all four of your planes in the air constantly; I’ll have mechanics at your disposal so you can save your energy for flying. What we want is action--speed; you’ve no idea of what the people down there are going through.”

“What about landing-fields?” Nick asked.

“I’ll send you down to Monticello tomorrow. A small field is available there, and in a few days a new field at Pine Bluff should be finished--” A telephone at the Major’s elbow jangled restlessly, and he paused to answer it. He listened tensely, nodding his head and speaking a word of confirmation or denial occasionally, scratching down figures and jumbled words upon a pad of paper as the information was forthcoming. Presently he hung up the receiver and turned back to the Patrol pilots. His face was grave.

“Have any of you men had experience flying big ships--transports?” he asked. “Quick,” he added, when no one spoke for a moment. “Wentworth, can you fly an Army transport?”

Nick had had some experience with the large planes used by the Army in transporting passengers and supplies, but he was by no means an expert in handling one of them, especially under the operating conditions he knew he would encounter in bad weather and wet landing-fields. But the Major’s manner forewarned him of some emergency to be met, and he replied, “Yes, sir, Major. What’s up?”

“Train wreck. Piled up down near McLearson--trying to get through with supplies before the roadbed washed out. Hit a soft place in a fill and went into a ditch. Engine crew hurt badly, and a brakeman isn’t expected to pull through--engine fell on him when it went over--both legs crushed.”

“Where’s the plane I’m to take?” Nick asked.

“Wait,” said the Major. “There’s no place for you to land at McLearson. The nearest landing-field is at Plateau--twelve miles north of there. You’ll have to get a boat at Plateau and go after ’em. You land at Plateau and I’ll try to get word through that you’re on the way. I’ll have the ship fixed up with three stretchers and a place for a doctor.” He telephoned his orders to the crew-chief of the plane, then turned back to Nick. “If you can’t get down at Plateau, find a landing-field as near McLearson as you can, then go back to the wreck and drop a note telling them where you’re going to land. You’ve got only three hours of daylight left, so you’ll have to hurry. I can’t send a mechanic with you because they’ve got more work than they can do--rush stuff. I’ll put your other pilots to work.”

* * * * *

Nick found his plane--a single-motored Douglas--in the hangar, with mechanics just finishing the transformation of its cabin to an ambulance. He waited impatiently while these men pushed the huge plane out on the flying-field and warmed up its motor; then, after a final scrutiny of his map, he climbed up into the cockpit.

The flying-field was muddy to such an extreme that any kind of flying from it was hazardous. Ten days of ceaseless rain, falling in a slow drizzle that allowed the water on the ground to soak in, had transformed the sodded surface into a slushy expanse of blackish, soupy mud that was flung from the revolving wheels of the ship like spray from the bow of a racing speedboat. The Douglas was slow in starting to roll over the ground; it was slower yet in lifting itself, light as was its load, but finally it climbed awkwardly into the air. Nick turned quickly away from the field, making no effort to climb for altitude, and settled the ship upon a compass course that would take him directly to McLearson, seventy-five miles to the southeast.

Fifteen miles out of Little Rock he crossed the engorged Arkansas River, its waters flattened out over an area of ten miles on either side of the main channel. The water looked like some huge tropical lake, with weather-blackened vegetation jutting raggedly up through the surface and extending a few feet into the air. Here and there was a high ridge or hill, and not infrequently Nick could distinguish the tents of refugees pitched in precarious uncertainty upon their topmost areas.

Occasionally, and with increasing recurrence as he neared the badly flooded area, a rowboat flicked past under the wings of the racing plane--rescuers seeking out the isolated people stranded upon the tops of barns and houses. These men waved as the plane passed over them, and Nick waved in response. Almost paralleling the course of the Arkansas, Nick presently passed a town, the low buildings of which were all engulfed in the sluggish flood. In the railroad yards, as he passed, he saw the tops of freight cars; and a few hundred yards up the track from the station a locomotive was stalled, canted on the rails, as if the roadbed had partially been torn away from under it.

* * * * *

After fifty minutes in the air Nick saw McLearson, and he turned to the left and followed the invisible track toward where he expected to see the wreckage of the train. He knew, from his map, that McLearson was at the end of the railroad, and he observed, when he passed the town, that it was almost completely out of water. It was situated on high ground, and the flood had not as yet climbed to that level. Fields surrounding the town were water-soaked and glistening; they were without exception small, and partially or completely surrounded by tall timber. Nick examined them appraisingly as he passed, but could not find one that would be suitable. There was only one in which he could have landed, and with three men and a doctor in the cabin of the plane, he would have no chance of taking off again.

The railway yards in McLearson were out of water, but immediately north of the town the right-of-way dropped into a cut and out of sight. Nick, taking his direction from the portion of the track that he could see, flew up the road for two miles, found the wrecked train, and circled over it.

The locomotive had left the track and was lying now upon its side in the water a few feet from the edge of the rails. The cab and tender were more than half hidden by the muddy water. When he saw the engine Nick wondered how the crew had escaped at all!

The first box-car also had left the rails, but had remained upright, and was now standing in water that covered the trucks and lapped at the bottom of the car. The other cars of the train--three--had not been derailed, and from the platform of the caboose two men waved excitedly as Nick passed them at a low altitude. He raised his hand in a return salute, then flew on toward Plateau.

* * * * *

Since leaving McLearson, he had been wondering how the injured men could be brought ten or twelve miles in a boat in time for the plane to return to Little Rock before darkness set in. If the brakeman were in serious condition, it would prove difficult to transfer him without increased injury to his wounds. If the case were as urgent as seemed apparent, a landing at Plateau would take too long! For ten minutes he flew, holding, as near as he could estimate, the line of the right-of-way. The water, as he proceeded, was deeper; the track was nowhere evident.

At Plateau, although the town was above the flood level, the flying-field was almost completely submerged. At one corner of the area, fluttering in damp dejection, the “wind sock” showed that the wind still blew from the northeast. Nick looked the place over and shook his head. He was doubtful about attempting a landing there; after several moments’ consideration he decided that the pasture at McLearson would prove better, so he turned back and raced downwind.

[Illustration: From the platform of the caboose, men waved excitedly as Nick passed them.]

The “field” at McLearson was in reality a farmer’s rye pasture. The green shoots had pushed themselves through the water-soaked soil and into open air; yet they did not form a sod, and Nick could see, even from the air, that his plane’s wheels would sink down into the mud so far that there was a possibility of “nosing over” when he landed. On three sides of the pasture pine trees lifted themselves forty feet into the air; on the fourth side--the one toward which Nick would approach in landing-- there was only a low fence, which, at one point, dipped down into a ravine and then up again to the level of the ground.

The field sloped rather steeply from the fence up toward the trees; and the wind was blowing up the hill. Nick had his choice of landing over the trees, into the wind and downhill, or over the fence and uphill--but downwind. And the wind at his back increased the possibilities of the plane nosing over when its wheels sank into the mud. But landing up the hill was the only logical way, for the trees were so tall that if he approached the field over them he could not settle the ship to the ground before he reached the fence.

He cut his gun and glided in, rolling the stabilizer back until the plane was decidedly tail-heavy. He came in on a long glide, downwind, and crossed the fence at five feet above the ground, gunning his motor spasmodically to keep the ship in the air until it was over the fence. He cut his gun, jerking the lever back violently, and pulled his control-wheel back into his stomach with both hands. The plane settled into the mud with a soft splash; the mud from the spinning wheels slapped up against the taut fabric of the wings with a crackle like the splattering of hail on a tin roof.

The muck clutched at the tires and dragged them down; the plane, with the flippers hard up, reared its tail off the ground and tried to bury its nose into the mud in front of it, but Nick slammed the throttle open before the propeller was far enough down to flick the ground. The propeller blast slapped back at the tail, but at the same time it pulled forward on the plane, and thus created forces that opposed each other. While the tail tended to be blown down into its proper position, the wheels were almost stuck, and tended to nose the ship downward. The tail remained four feet in the air--higher than normal take-off position--and gradually the plane decelerated to a pace that permitted safe taxying. The mud was so deep that at fifteen hundred revolutions of the propeller, the ship barely crept over the ground.

“I’ve gummed things now!” Nick muttered, when the ship had stopped. “We’ll never get out of this field before next summer! That brakeman will have to stay where he is.”

But, hopeless as he was of taking off from the field again, he left the Douglas in a corner of the field and hurried to town. He went first to the depot, and routed out the station agent.

“Where’re the men who got hurt in the train wreck?” he asked. “I’m down here with an airplane--an ambulance--to take them to a hospital.”

“Up the track a piece,” the agent replied. “The conductor walked back through the water and told us about ’em, but there haint nothin’ we can do about it.”

“Do? Haven’t you got a boat?”

“No, haint a boat in McLearson. The conductor, he thought they’d send a seaplane down here for ’em--they’re still up there in the caboose. I reckon that brakeman’s sufferin’ suthin’ too, the way he got that engine on his legs! Wouldn’t be surprised they’d have to amp’tate them legs. Mirac’lous, too; he’d oughtta been drowned, but somehow or other he got out from under that engine!”

* * * * *

Nick looked at his watch. He had consumed an hour and twenty-five minutes of precious time in getting to McLearson; only slightly more than that amount remained before darkness, and at all costs he must be in the air before night: he knew that he would never get out of the field after dusk--if he did then.

“Got a hand-car around here?” he asked the agent.

“Nothin’ but a push-car--you couldn’t do no good with that. The water’d come up over the top of it. We thought o’ that, but we knew we’d drownd them fellers if we tried to bring ’em through on a push-car.”

“Where is it? We’re going after those men. Is a doctor up there with them?”

“Sure, they’s a doctor up there--walked up through the water. But I’m a-tellin’ you, you can’t do no good with a push-car.”

“Get it!” Nick snapped, and the agent moved with alacrity to obey. While he was gone Nick looked around the yards. A pile of ties stood back of one switch, and he estimated their weight.

“Now, Mister,” he told the agent, when the man returned, “we’re going to load this car with ties so the tops of them are out of water, and we’re going after those men! Are you good at pushing?”

In spite of his objections and his insistence that it could not be accomplished, the agent helped Nick pile two layers of ties upon the hand-car, and together they pushed it up the main track toward the wreck. It was, at best, a slow progress that they made; at times the water rose so high that it floated the ties, and when that occurred one of them climbed up upon the stack and weighted it down. They pushed through cuts and over fills, all of them invisible under the murky water, and after forty minutes arrived at the rear of the caboose.

Two of the men who had waved to Nick were standing on the platform of the car waiting for him. One of them wore the cap of a railroad conductor; the other was dressed in business clothes.

“You the doctor?” Nick asked the latter, and without awaiting a reply added: “I landed my ship at McLearson. As soon as we get the men on board it I’ll have them to a hospital in Little Rock within forty-five minutes--or kill them trying to get off the ground.”

Doctor Matthies, a short, stumpy man, still very wet from his walk through the water from town, introduced himself.

“We’d kill the brakeman if we tried to take him to town on a hand-car through this water,” he said. “We thought of trying that, but he’s too weak to be moved with safety. He ought to be in a hospital--quickly; but we can’t take him there on any hand-car!”

“That’s what I been a-tellin’ him all the way out here!” the station agent said resentfully. “But he don’t seem like one to--”

“Shut up!” Nick barked. “Doctor Matthies, I landed just as close to the wreck as I could get. This hand-car is the only way to get the men to my ship. If the brakeman can’t be moved, suppose you stay here with him and I’ll take the others to town. I’ve got to hurry--it’ll be dark in a little while and I’ll have--”

A woman’s wail inside the caboose startled him. He heard the groans of one of the injured men.

“What the hell!” he ejaculated. “Is a woman out here too?”

“The brakeman’s daughter,” Doctor Matthies replied. “She came out with me as soon as we got word. Couldn’t keep her at home--insisted on coming. She waded out through that water right behind me!”

* * * * *

Just at that moment the girl came to the doorway of the car and stood, a handkerchief clutched in her hands, looking at the four men. She was sobbing brokenly; there was about her a note of tragedy, Nick thought, but at the same time fortitude. Through tear-filled eyes she looked quickly from one man to the other.

“Can’t you do _something_?” she choked. “Don’t just let him lie there like that and suffer and--and--”

“We’ll do everything we can, Miss Richardson,” Doctor Matthies assured her gravely. “Try not to worry about your father.” He went with her back into the car.

“What about the others?” Nick asked the conductor. “Are they badly hurt?”

“Burns, mostly. The hoghead has a broken arm, but Doc set it for him and he’s resting pretty easy now, I guess. Tallowpot--that’s the fireman--was on the high side when the engine went over. He got burned some, but not bad. We were running slow--water up to the axles of the drivers; I don’t see yet why all of ’em weren’t drowned.... Damn this rain!”

Doctor Matthies emerged from the caboose. “Richardson is likely to die at any time,” he told them in a whisper. “I’m sure he can’t last two more hours unless we get him to a hospital. He’s losing blood, and I can’t help him much--and she’s willing to risk it. He wont die any quicker, I suppose, on that hand-car than he will lying in there. Let’s try to take him along--we might save him.”

“All right,” said Nick. “I’d like to speak to Miss Richardson a moment.” He called softly to her, and she came out to the platform. “My ship is stuck in the mud at McLearson,” he told her, “and I’ll need all the men you can get for me. I want you to hurry back to town and get all the men in town out to my ship. It’s in a field on the north side. Now hurry.” The girl nodded. “You hurry, too,” she said, and stepping down into the water, she started out along the track.

* * * * *

One at a time the three injured men were carried out and placed on top of the ties upon the hand-car. The enginemen were able to sit up, although in terrible pain, and one of them was placed at each end of the car. Richardson, the brakeman, was laid between them, and covered with what blankets and coats were available. The ends of the ties were lashed together with some small rope that was found in the caboose, making a raft that could not break up when higher water was reached.

Slowly, for the water was rising and was higher than when the outbound trip had been made, Nick and the conductor and the station agent started pushing the hand-car along the track. Doctor Matthies rode upon the car, watching the ebb and flow of Richardson’s pulse with tense concentration.

The rain, which had fallen most of the morning in a slow drizzle, had ceased about midafternoon; but now it commenced again, dribbling down from lowered clouds. Nick watched the weather apprehensively, fearing that fog might set in as dusk approached.

As they pushed the car the three men walked in water that came almost to their hips. Their coat sleeves, being in water almost continually, soaked up moisture and let it drain down against their bodies, bringing even more discomfort. They stumbled for a footing on the submerged ties below their feet, and more than once one of them would have fallen if he had been unable to grasp the ropes that bound the ties, and thus support himself more firmly. Progress through the water was won only by torture; it was an ordeal in which stamina and time alone could win.

[Illustration: Progress through the water was an ordeal in which stamina and time only could win.]