PRIZE OF THE AIR

At a height of about two thousand feet Bill Barlow completed the loop and then flew into the wind over the landing “T”.

“Great stuff!” yelled his passenger, and Bill could hear his chuckle, for he had now throttled his motor and was making a quick bank to the left.

“Thought you’d like it,” he called back, “but it may get me in wrong down below.”

After making a complete circle, he landed just where he had intended to, and taxied up toward the hangars. It was a maneuver he had learned thoroughly years before, when he was a cadet flyer—this landing with a dead engine.

Bill’s passenger was smiling as he unbuckled his safety belt and climbed from the cockpit, but there was no smile on the face of the field superintendent who came running up to the plane.

“Hey, what’s the idea, Barlow?” he queried. “You know as well as I do that it’s against the law to loop with a passenger, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You bet it’s right! Then why did you do it?”

“Boss,” said Bill Barlow, showing his sound teeth in a wide grin, “Mr. Saxton here, my passenger, has some red blood in his veins. He offered me five hundred dollars to loop the loop with him. You know that temptation is the one thing I can’t resist, and—well, Mr. Saxon’s got plenty of jack, and if I didn’t do it he’d have found some one who would, and I just happened to need the five hundred very badly right now.”

“Well, I’ve got nothing against you personally, Barlow,” said the superintendent, which was probably true, for very few people had anything against the likable Barlow. “But either I’m here to see that the rules of this field are kept, or I’m not. You fellows are getting too skittish around here. I’ll have your license as a passenger pilot revoked.”

As a matter of fact, he did have Bill’s license revoked. Friendship in private life is one thing; in aviation, as in the army, it is quite another when it interferes with vested authority.

But Bill Barlow didn’t seem to mind. A man who can laugh in the face of death is not to be disturbed by such a trifle as the revocation of a license. It was Saxton, his passenger, who seemed the more concerned. He approached Bill later that afternoon.

“I think I’ve got a job for you, Barlow,” he said. “I’ve got to start tomorrow for my home in Pampa, New Mexico, and trains are getting too slow for me in my old age. How about flying me there? I’ll buy the gas and pay you for the trip.”

Bill looked at him wistfully, and shook his head.

“You’re hitting me right where I live,” he said dolefully. “An old pal of mine, Jack Harraden, is barnstorming down that way, and I’d like to join him. If I could make connections with Harraden I’d be set for the season. More than once Jack and I have gone through a season together stunting at fairs and carnivals—and I’d like to make the dough, too. But you know I can’t go.”

“And why not? Seems an ideal arrangement to me. And, by the way, when I left Pampa, your friend Harraden was part of a carnival at Las Vegas, according to the papers.”

“Las Vegas, eh? Well, I might join him. But I couldn’t carry you, now that my passenger license is revoked.”

Saxton laughed. “I’ll fix that for you, boy! I’ll buy your plane. Give you two thousand dollars for it. You ride with me technically as a passenger, but you’re hired to do what you’re told to do—and you’ll be at the joy-stick. Get the idea?”

Bill got the idea, and the transaction was duly carried out.

“Remember,” Saxton warned him, as he pocketed the dummy bill-of-sale. “I’ve ‘bought’ that plane. I have you at my mercy now. I may charge you plenty when you want to get it back—and get the free ride into the bargain.”

“Fair enough!” Bill chuckled. “But you haven’t got it all your own way, Mr. Wise Guy. Don’t be surprised if I suddenly decide to quit piloting the ship when we’re five thousand feet above a Kansas farm and take to parachute stunts unless you come to time with me.”

So Bill Barlow and Frank C. Saxton, since they could laugh with each other and threaten to do each other, knew that they were friends, and the next day Bill Barlow had his ship ready for the long jump.

Saxton wished to arrive at Pampa, where he operated a cattleman’s bank, as soon as possible, he explained, as a shipment of gold bullion was due in Pampa that week from a correspondent bank in Trinidad, Colorado. He wanted to be on the ground when the transfer was made.

He rode out to the field in a taxicab accompanied by a slender, gray-eyed girl who looked trim and athletic in a heavy blue jersey and knickers.

“Think she’s dressed warm enough for the hop?” Saxton asked, his shrewd eyes twinkling. “I forgot to mention yesterday that my daughter is going along. This is Mr. Barlow, Ruth. He’s the fellow that looped the loop with your dad yesterday.”

Ruth extended her hand boyishly, and Bill may have held it just a trifle too long, but the act was unconscious.

“The more I see of you bankers, Mr. Saxton,” he said, turning to the gray-haired man, “the less I value your keenness in a business deal despite your reputation. If I’d known Miss Saxton was coming along, I’d have piloted you for nothing.”

And the remark may not have been entirely jocular. Hours later, flying high above the fields of Ohio, Bill Barlow somehow could not develop that devil-may-care feeling that he always had in the air.

He had done his share of stunt-flying and had never known fear of any kind, but right now there was a certain conscious concern within him which he could not analyze. He finally doped out what the matter was.

It was the precious freight he was carrying. Those straight-gazing gray eyes of Ruth Saxton had nearly sunk Bill Barlow.

A single stop was made, at the air mail field at Maywood, Illinois, for refueling; then the flight was continued, and completed without special incident, Bill Barlow making a landing in a field just east of the town of Pampa.

He had never been in the Southwest before, and he was eagerly anticipating the surprise he had in store for Jack Harraden. Two planes in a New Mexico town would be something of a sensation, he assumed.

That day he enjoyed an old-fashioned noonday dinner at the comfortable home of the Saxtons, and telephoned Las Vegas. The city authorities, Saxton had said, could doubtless enlighten him as to the activities of his friend Harraden.

But the news he received proved to be a keen disappointment. Harraden had been flying passengers in Las Vegas, but had hopped off in his De Haviland two days before, saying that he was going to Beaumont, Texas.

“Me for Beaumont, then,” said Bill, “I’m beginning to vegetate already, with nothing to do.”

Ruth Saxton lowered her eyes. She was not the type to be forward. If this good-looking chap chose to hop off for Beaumont, then that was his business, she supposed.

And Frank C. Saxton said nothing. He had liked Barlow on sight, but he himself was in the banking business and this young daredevil would never be satisfied with that. And Bill himself was thinking that he might better have been in some game like banking as the husband of a gray-eyed girl like—

Oh, well, he’d hop off for Beaumont in the morning.

But he did not hop off for Beaumont in the morning. For something happened that night to keep him from Beaumont. As a matter of strict record, to this day he has never seen Beaumont.

II

Barlow borrowed one of Saxton’s cayuses to take a lope into the hills. He would have invited Ruth along, but then he was not sure that Ruth would be interested, and anyhow he realized that he did not cut a very expert figure on a horse.

Hard work, too, this horseback riding. He realized it more and more as the sun gradually sank behind the ridge to the west of the town. He had been walking beside his mount along the trail, but with darkness approaching he decided to try once more to ride, despite his soreness.

Saxton would probably be wondering what had become of him. Dusk had fallen with unexpected swiftness here in the mountains, and he was none too sure of the trail.

It was as he was rounding a curve from where he hoped to be able to see the fork leading into Pampa that he heard a sound that could not possibly be mistaken—by Bill Barlow. He had heard that sound too often to make any mistake about it.

That subdued roar was the pounding of twelve cylinders all right enough. He’d have bet a million dollars on it—if he had had it.

He gazed up into the violescent dusk. The roar was getting louder now, and sure enough, over the ridge from out of the north swooped a great shadow that circled about and made a landing in the hill-rimmed meadow just below him to the right.

“Jack Harraden!” he said to himself, “He must have heard I was in Pampa.”

Bill Barlow forgot all about the trail into town now. He took the first path that led downward, tied his tired beast to a fence-post and started afoot cross-country in the darkness, guided by the roar of the plane’s engine as it taxied along the ground.

He continued on, the soft ground serving as a pad for his feet. He heard the sound of men’s voices after a considerable walk, and he was about to call out when he discovered that the men were wrangling over something. He could not make out the words, but there was no mistaking the intonation.

Some sixth sense caused him to stoop in the shelter of the fence that inclosed a large field with an overhanging hill at one corner it. He could distinguish the outline of the plane there in the gloom, its wings looking ghostlike and mysterious, and from the loud voices he could tell that the men were walking in his direction.

Some of the talk was in Spanish, and he got a word of it here and there. Bill had taken Spanish two years at college—and had become very fluent in football.

He caught the words “Pancho Lopez” and “dinero,” which he knew meant money. Then, to his satisfaction, a new voice boomed out in English:

“Yeh, he’s big chief—down there. But I’m boss up here until this thing is put over, Ramos, and don’t ever forget it!”

There was a sullen response in Spanish, too low in tone for Bill to make it out.

“That’s all right,” came the first man’s voice again. “That third plane stays in the hills. You never can tell what might happen. Them armored cars could pick us off up there in the air with the right breaks.”

Bill Barlow lay prone beside the fence as the men—there seemed to be four of them—passed within a few feet of him. One of them had a holster strapped at his side and wore a cartridge belt.

He seemed to be the leader, and he was raking down the untractable Ramos who had evidently ventured to irritate him with some rash suggestion. His voice trailed off as the group walked toward a dark smudge a hundred yards or so away which Bill thought might be a cabin.

“An armored car!” Could there be any connection? Saxton had told him that afternoon that he wished him to remain in Pampa in order to meet his son, who was coming down with the bullion shipment from Trinidad in an armored car.

Bill Barlow waited until there was no sound from the cabin, if that was what it was, then leaped the fence and crept toward the airplane. No watchman had been left on guard, and Bill believed the mysterious aviators might return at any moment.

On the far side of the plane he risked a flash from his torch, and then snapped it off quickly.

The ship was a De Haviland painted green. In front of the pilot’s seat was mounted a machine gun. Bill thought he recognized the type and that it was synchronized to shoot between the blades of the propeller.

At any rate, it was a weird sight on an airplane in peace time in a New Mexico meadow.

He did not risk another flash, but scurried away in the darkness, and somehow found his way to his tethered horse. When he finally reached the Saxton home it was almost dawn, and he rapped on the window that he knew to be Saxton’s.

In a couple of minutes the banker, pyjama-clad, stuck his head out.

“What the devil’s up?” he asked, sleepily. “Where were you, Bill?”

“I’ll tell you all that later,” Bill replied. “Meanwhile, I’ll ask you one. What time is your son starting from Trinidad in that armored car?”

“Who? Ted? Why, he may have started by this time. First streak of daylight they’ll shove off. Roads’ll be clearer then, and what folks don’t see won’t bother ’em.” Saxton kindled a cigar, and gave vent to his rumbling laugh. “Why? You’re not worrying about that, are you? That type of armored car could stand off an army, boy.”

“I suppose so. But, Saxton, I want you to do something right away. Get Trinidad on the phone. If your son hasn’t started, tell him to wait till tomorrow. Make it emphatic. It may be very important. If he has started, get one of the towns this side of Trinidad, and see that the car is held there. Now do that. Be sure. Will you, Saxton?”

The banker looked at him keenly.

“There’s something up, I can see that,” he said. “But I think you’re getting upset over a trifle. Those armored cars, you know—”

“Yes, I know,” Bill cut in.

Should he mention his discovery to Saxton? He might be on the wrong track entirely. The armed plane might possibly be one of the exhibits from the recent Las Vegas carnival.

At any rate, only he himself could be of any possible service now, if the car had started from Trinidad. No use worrying Saxton and Ruth, he decided.

He waited until he heard Saxton at the telephone asking for long distance to Trinidad, and then grabbing up a rifle and several rounds from a little den-like hunting room which Saxton had furnished off of the living-room, he remounted his horse and galloped along the road to the east of the town, and, just as dawn streaked the sky, reached his plane.

A few minutes later he had turned the horse loose to graze, and had hopped off, the nose of his old Jenny pointed toward Trinidad.

As he sailed along he wondered if he was on a useless quest. He might be.

In the first place, there was a possibility that his suspicions were not well founded. Then Saxton might be able to get Trinidad before the armored car started, and could head it off.

But as he flew along he almost hoped that he was in for action. For that was the way with Bill Barlow. Fellow war aces had said that he “fattened on trouble.”

And, if that was the case, there was enough trouble ahead to make Bill Barlow very fat indeed.

III

Bill flew straight north for awhile and had no difficulty picking up the Trinidad road which wound about the foothills rimming Pampa to the north. After he had skimmed over the hills he swung lower in order to scout the highway thoroughly.

He passed over a couple of little settlements and climbed to a higher altitude, for there was mountainous country ahead. It was after he had climbed high and had sailed over the summit that he made out a low-flying plane ahead.

He used his binoculars—the plane was the green De Haviland of the night before, as he had suspected it would be. But the hawk would wait for its prey in vain if Saxton’s telephone call had been in time. And then, as he zoomed along, he saw that he was in for action.

A turreted car of the type used by banks to transport money and bullion swept around a hairpin turn in the road that hugged a steep bluff, and as soon as the car had swung into the straight road Bill saw a grayish cloud shoot up just ahead of the car. It looked to him as if a bomb had been dropped; and yet it did not seem possible from the position of the green plane.

Bill Barlow put on all speed, and tilted his aërilons to climb. He was planning to get above the green plane and keep it below and in front of him where he would be safe from that machine gun nested in front of the pilot.

In this manner he might be able to take the joy-stick between his knees, get a pot-shot at the pilot, and send the green ship down out of control. It was a long chance, but it was his only one, and Bill Barlow had fought against long odds before.

He hardly believed he was seen as yet, and he nosed up steadily toward a low-hanging cloud. And then, as he climbed, he noticed, backgrounded against the cloud, another plane—a big blue-gray one, that seemed almost to blend into the cloud. This, then, was probably the explanation of that explosion that had taken place in front of the armored car.

The second plane was far above him, and, although his own ship was a good climber, Barlow realized that it would be useless now to try to get above the blue-gray plane. He would have to take one chance and wait until it dived.

The blue-gray plane had sighted him now, and he maneuvered as it started down after him. The man at the machine gun was trying to get Barlow from the rear; but that game was only too familiar to Bill.

His mind went back over ten years to glorious jousts above the lines, and almost instinctively he changed his course by a sharp turn to the right. The blue-gray plane followed him, its pilot still trying feverishly to get Barlow in front of him—which is just what Bill Barlow had no intention of letting him do.

Since he himself had no machine gun, there was no offensive advantage in getting to the rear himself, but there was a strong advantage defensively. If he kept on the tail of the other machine he would be able to spike that machine gun.

Around and around circled the planes in this carousel of death, for that was what it was, Bill Barlow knew, although just at present there were no wars nor rumors of wars. Below them on the slopes cattle grazed peacefully, but here in the air was the seed of death.

He must not let that gray plane take him from the rear. Both of the ships were steadily losing altitude, but Bill knew the possibilities of his own plane, and he might lure the enemy until it got too low to maneuver, and it might crash.

He was pretty low himself now, as he circled about. He started to dash and zig-zag—anything to get out of the path of that machine gun. And yet he had to get out of the circle to climb. He’d try it.

It was a few minutes after this, just as he had reached a safer altitude and once more tried to get on the tail of the gray, that a spray of machine gun bullets pinged against the wires of his ship. But he was in the strategic position that he wished now. With the joy-stick between his knees, he flew slightly above the enemy plane and shouldered his rifle. It spoke, and the pilot of the gray plane let go of the joy-stick and placed his hands to his side. Then the gray plane seemed to leap and swerve and turn, fell into a nose dive and went out of control.

As he tried to bank and make now for the green ship, Bill Barlow realized that he had not escaped unscathed. His own plane careened sharply, and at first he feared that his control wires had been shot away. Probably not, though—the ship still took direction, if rather awkwardly.

He could still make a landing if he kept the ship’s nose up, although he knew that now he had been put out of the engagement. Still keeping the nose of his plane up, he sailed along over a little ridge and managed to make a hazardous landing in a cleared space.

As he snapped out his pliers and feverishly tried to repair the damaged wire braces, he was wondering what was happening over the ridge. He heard a couple of explosions, and then the sharper report of rifle shots, probably from the armored car. A few minutes later, while still working on the damaged wire, he heard the roar of the green plane’s engine, and, looking up, saw it passing over him, and a spray of machine gun bullets splashed against the bowlder to his left.