The Project Gutenberg eBook of Storm
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Title: Storm
Author: Leland Jamieson
Illustrator: Paul Lehman
Release date: May 28, 2025 [eBook #76177]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago: The Consolidated Magazines Corporation, 1929
Credits: Roger frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORM ***
STORM
By Leland S. Jamieson
Illustrated by Paul Lehman
A vivid and very real story of airplane adventure--by the
professional pilot who gave us “Altitude” and “Crash Pilot.”
The Rock Springs tornado was followed by the newspapers with credible
accuracy from the time it howled down upon the little isolated village
in the hills until the last one of the injured was laid safely in a
hospital in San Antonio, yet the most dramatic note of the whole affair
was sounded in a way that few people realized.
Rock Springs, being situated upon a low bald hill in a wide valley above
the source of the East Nueces River, offered no resistance to the
shrieking, tearing wind that whipped down from the dusk of a spring
evening and smashed it into ruin. At seven forty-four in the evening, as
tired ranchers were sitting down to their usual late suppers, the air
was calm; at seven fifty-one the storm lashed out of black clouds and
ripped every building from its foundation; at eight o’clock there came a
lull, a period of perhaps ten minutes when not a breath of breeze
flicked at the dust of crumbled stone that lay strewn across the
streets. The murderous force lifted itself back into the heavens,
leaving over Rock Springs the inky blackness of scudding clouds above,
and the far echoes of the whirling wind as it sighed into the distance.
The sixty houses of the town were flattened to the earth when the wind
had left them, and for a moment after the storm died there was no sound,
as though the people who still lived were stunned into muteness. Then,
almost immediately, there arose the cries of terror and anguish and
desperation of two hundred people. Women groped in still fear for their
children, calling names into the thick night, fumbling in delirium
through the ruins of their homes, afraid to hope. Men sought their
wives, sometimes to come upon a huddled form, silent and unmoving.
A breeze stirred ominously and dispelled the heavy air; and shortly
afterward a booming rain whipped down in torrents of black water. The
uninjured struggled on in their search tirelessly, frantically; night
wore itself along, adding, minute by minute, to the suffering and grief.
Lightning thrashed down in vicious tongues of livid flame, and in these
eerie flickerings the search was carried on....
Mary Collins, the telephone operator in Rock Springs, was trying to get
a call through to Uvalde when the storm beat down upon the village. She
heard the Uvalde operator answer; then the line snapped as the sweeping
wind struck it. She was trying to reestablish the connection when she
heard the buildings on the other side of town clatter into fragments.
The next instant her own building was down around her; she was in
darkness as the storm passed on.
Stunned, groping her way out of the debris in blindness and fear, she
heard the cries and shrieks and supplications of people all around her.
With a stab of torment in her mind she scrambled over the debris toward
her home. Her parents--what might have happened to them! She fought her
way, falling over splintered boards and timbers. In the terrible quiet
following the wind she heard and felt the agony on every side of her.
How she got to her father’s house she never knew. She heard a voice
which she recognized as her mother’s, and she hurried in that direction.
By a flicker of lightning she saw her father stretched upon the ground,
unnaturally--her mother bending over him. He groaned.
“Mamma!” the girl gasped in anguish. “_Daddy!_” She was in distraction.
“Oh, what are we to do?”
“Mary?” Dr. Collins asked. “I’m not bad--a timber got me on the
leg--it’s broken.” He did not add that two ribs were splintered and that
he felt himself bleeding internally. He was a doctor--the only one in
Rock Springs. As with most medical men his own injuries caused him no
more emotion than those of other people. He looked at them objectively.
“The town’s wiped out!” cried Mary. “There are no lights--what shall we
do?”
Suddenly Dr. Collins was speaking in his professional voice.
“Mary, you must go for help!” he exclaimed, with remarkable
self-possession. “I’m hurt--we need a doctor quickly. Get to a telephone
and call Uvalde--have them send a doctor. Tell them what’s
happened--they’ll have to get medical supplies from San Antonio--serum
and instruments. These people are suffering terribly! You must hurry!”
“But you--”
“Don’t think of me! I’ll get along--we’ll get to shelter somewhere.
Hurry!”
The girl thought immediately of the car, and a lightning flash revealed
it where it had been standing before the wind struck. But it was not a
car now--it was a heap of metal on its side in the middle of the street.
With a sob of anxiety for them, she kissed both her parents and started
toward the road that led out of town, seeing her way by streaks of
lightning that burned themselves out before her eyes.
The rain boomed down suddenly and beat at her, but she fought her way.
The blinding whip of flying water cut at her face and body; the wind,
rising again, sought to drive her back, but she went on. One mile, two,
three. She knew that the nearest telephone by which she could call
Uvalde was liable to be nine or ten miles down the rocky road. Ten miles
through this storm! Dimly she wondered how far her strength would carry
her.
For countless hours, through a torture of mud and water and driving
wind, she struggled on, following a road that was at times beaten smooth
by the fall of water, and at other times was a raging wash. She reached
the limit of human endurance, and still fought her way along the road;
she came to the time when she thought she would collapse from
exhaustion, but the thoughts of human suffering there behind her goaded
her to greater efforts.
Lightning, sheets and strings and chains of it, thrashed down on every
side of her. Ordinarily she would have been afraid of it, but now it
caused her no concern.
So when a bolt leaped down fifty feet in front of her, at the top of a
hill, she paid it no attention. She passed that point, went a few steps
beyond, and the second bolt struck. Unconscious, she pitched forward on
her face....
At three o’clock in the morning Mary Collins staggered up to a rancher’s
house near Camp Wood and beat feebly against the door. Presently the
rancher appeared, holding a kerosene lamp above his head. He stared at
the apparition in amazement.
“Storm--at Rock Springs!” the girl moaned. “People dead--dying! Get
doctors--medicine! Hurry!”
After that she gabbled to him in delirium. He finally got a few
disconnected facts about the storm. He tried the telephone, and at last
Uvalde answered. He gave his orders quickly.... When he turned back to
Mary Collins she had collapsed upon the floor.
* * * * *
Nick Wentworth, chief pilot of the Air Patrol, in San Antonio, was
called out of bed at four-thirty in the morning by Doctor Wilson, from
the Grayson Hospital. Grumbling a little, and somewhat startled by the
urgency with which the man presented himself, Nick opened the door and
let him in.
Wilson introduced himself in two words. He explained his presence
quickly.
“Rock Springs--wiped out in--a storm! ” he panted. “The hospital is
sending me--my mother was visiting there. It’ll take me five hours to
drive in my car--can you take me, by air?” He asked the question as an
order. “They’ve got to have a doctor--quickly! ”
Nick, dull and heavy-eyed with sleep, considered the possibilities of
getting through. He could not take Wilson in his own plane, because it
was a single-seated affair, built for speed and endurance in the air.
Scott, his assistant, was gone, hence Scott’s plane was not available.
Two of the Patrol’s ships were undergoing motor overhaul. There was only
one plane left that Nick could take--an antiquated Vought, a spare,
seldom used.
“I’ll go,” he decided. “Just a minute till I dress.” Before he dived
back into his room he called the flying-field. After a persistent
ringing, the telephone was answered by a field mechanic. Nick gave him
quick instructions.
“She’ll be on the line tunin’ up when you git out here,” Barnes, the
mechanic, replied. And then, quickly: “Hey, wait a minute! You can’t
take that ship--it’s got a leaky radiator--we just discovered it
yesterday.”
“Can’t take it? I’ve got to take it! You put it on the line, and have it
started when I get there!”
Barnes grumbled something. Nick rushed into his room to dress, and
Wilson paced back and forth in the other room of the apartment. The
Patrol pilot returned three minutes later, buttoning up his coat. He
stopped to get an extra helmet and a pair of goggles for Wilson.
“Let’s go!” he called. “I’ll have you there a few minutes after
daylight--if that ship will fly at all.”
“What is it?” Wilson asked nervously. “What’s wrong with your ship?”
“Nothing that’ll stop us!”
But the physician was not satisfied. “This is important, Wentworth,” he
warned; “if you have any doubts about getting me through, say so, and
I’ll drive my car. It would be better to take a little longer and be
sure about it. Those people must have medical aid--and my mother--I tell
you, I’ve got to get there! ”
“You’ll get there!” Nick declared.
* * * * *
In the Patrol pilot’s car they raced through the dark of early morning
toward the flying-field. Overhead it was cloudy, and the moon, although
almost full, did not show through the bank of heavy vapor. On the road,
as they shot through the darkness at nearly sixty miles an hour, they
ran into a light ground fog, and Nick had misgivings. That light scum of
mist might be the forerunner of a heavier fog as dawn approached.
Twelve minutes after they left the apartment they stopped by the side of
the Vought, on the flying line. In the dim light the mechanics looked
like ghosts crawling up around the motor. The ship had not been started.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Nick snapped at Barnes. “Let’s get out
of here!”
“You’ll have trouble if you take this ship out without gittin’ that
radiator fixed,” Barnes predicted. “That leak’s considerable. I wouldn’t
try it, if I were you!”
In the pale yellow light of the hangar beacon Wilson looked at Nick
inquiringly.
“I promised you I’d get you through,” Nick reassured him. “What if we do
have to land for water once or twice--I can beat driving time by two
hours! ”
Wilson nodded, satisfied.
He took his medical supplies and instruments from the car and passed
them up to the mechanic in the cockpit, who stowed them away in the
baggage compartment behind the rear seat. He was nervous and agitated,
despite Nick’s assurance that they would get through all right.
Nick examined the radiator leak carefully. He was surprised that it was
so large, but felt certain that the plane would stay in the air nearly
an hour before a landing for water would be necessary. He nodded to
Barnes to start the motor.
“Damn a storm like that one!” Wilson suddenly muttered. “You know,
Wentworth, Nature’s a cruel thing sometimes. No telling--”
The motor blurped into a roar, red flame spurting from the short exhaust
stacks and turning blue as it struck the air. Barnes gunned it up to
twelve hundred revs and warmed it quickly.
“What will happen, Wentworth?” Wilson yelled. “What will we do when the
radiator runs dry?”
“You spit on the motor--keep it cool!” Nick smiled grimly. He saw the
look of blank dismay that Wilson shot at him.
Wilson had never been up in an airplane before, much less at night in a
ship that apparently was not entirely safe. But he made no comment when
Nick told him to climb into the rear cockpit.
Nick stepped into the front cockpit and settled himself in the seat. He
did not bother with a test of his motor; he waved the blocks away, and
when the mechanics did not see his hand because of the darkness he
bawled at them vociferously:
“Pull ’em! What’re you waitin’ on?” The mechanics jumped forward behind
the whirling propeller and yanked the chocks away.
Nick buckled his belt as he was taxying down the field. He whirled the
plane around in the darkness and gunned the motor, lifted the tail on
the take-off, and was gone into the night, the blue and red of the
motor’s exhaust flickering away to the northwest.
It was so dark that he could not see the ground when he got into the
air. The ground fog that he had feared had not materialized, for here
and there, sprinkled out over a wide area, were a few lone lights; far
off to the right, dwindling rapidly, was a bright cluster that marked
the location of San Antonio.
Nick did not discover that the clouds were at a thousand feet until he
climbed into them unwittingly--and simultaneously felt the wet mist on
his face and saw the lights wink out below him. That wasn’t so good!
There were hills ahead of him that reared rocky summits into the base of
that thick mat of mist! He changed his course a little, swinging to the
southward to stay away from the highest peaks.
Now and again he held his hand out one side of the cockpit or the other,
his glove removed so that he might feel the stinging spray of water that
whipped up in the propeller blast and spewed back beside the cockpit.
The radiator was leaking more than at first he had suspected! He would
have to land at least twice for water.
As he felt the constant, undiminishing spray come back and wet his hand
he knew that he would be forced down, the first time, within twenty
minutes. The ship wouldn’t stay in the air, from the time of the
take-off, more than twenty-five or thirty. And the thing that worried
him was that it would not be light enough to land for at least
forty-five minutes!
He wished, now, that he had gone ahead with his plans to have
wing-lights installed on this ship. But he hadn’t--he hadn’t thought it
necessary. If he had had landing lights he wouldn’t have given a forced
landing a second thought. But as it was, he did--several thoughts. He
had had a forced landing once when he couldn’t see the ground well
enough to pick out a field. Some of the pieces were still there.
* * * * *
Nick wasn’t greatly concerned about himself. He didn’t care
particularly, for he had been subjected to so many dangers in the air
during the past ten years that he had grown almost immune to fear for
his own life. But he was worried about Doctor Wilson. He had promised to
get the doctor through.
Perhaps he should have let Wilson drive, as the doctor had suggested. He
had been too sure that he would get him through. He was almost as sure,
now, that he wouldn’t! He knew that when this type of plane went to
pieces it went all at once and with astonishing completeness. The wooden
fuselage would buckle up like wheat straws if you put her in hard, and
if the fuselage did break in two there was more than an even chance that
one or both of them would get a longeron stuck through their backs!
He was glad it hadn’t rained in San Antonio for several days--he
wouldn’t have to worry about mud if he got down in a fresh-plowed field.
He turned a little more toward the south, skirting low over the
foothills that he knew were there, although he couldn’t see them. He
tried to think of some way out of the predicament; he considered,
presently, the wisdom of turning back to the landing-field and landing
by the floodlights. But he couldn’t do that; he would be out of water
long before then.
The temperature gauge--the centigrade--did not show a rise for some
minutes after the ship was in the air, for the morning was cold, and
Nick gradually opened his shutters as the water was exhausted. But after
they had been in the air a little more than twenty minutes the rise did
come, slowly at first, then faster; and finally with a rush that sent
the needle whirling up around the dial to the hundred mark, where it
hesitated a moment and plunged back down to eighty. A minute later it
rose suddenly and hit the peg again, only to drop once more. Nick knew
that the next time it came up it would stay--the water would be boiling.
It was time to find a place to land, although the real emergency would
not come until the motor began to lose revs due to the heat. But below,
wherever the ground was, there was nothing to be seen but the black
nothingness of night. In the east there was no light, for the thick
clouds hid the glimmer of the dawn.
Nick was afraid he was still flying over the foothills. He turned
sharply south, hoping that his compass was correct and that he would
find an open field when the radiator forced him down.
Suddenly the needle of the centigrade spun upward and struck the peg
again. It dropped slightly for an instant and then slammed up and hugged
the peg and stayed there. The time had come! Nick heard the faint
metallic knocking of the motor above the pound of the exhaust; he
smelled the stench of burning paint. He cut the gun, and when he did a
piston stuck and the motor froze. They were down!
But where? The first dim light of day was hardly visible in the east;
below, a short thousand feet, the ground looked blank in darkness. It
seemed impossible that Nick could pick out a field down there--and after
he had picked it, land upon it. He muttered, grimly: “I can’t judge my
distance from the ground within fifty feet! We’ll pile up sure as hell!”
He shouted a warning back over his shoulders to Wilson: “Hang on, fella!
Get your goggles off your eyes! We may pile up!” He couldn’t see whether
the doctor did as he was told. He heard a muffled shout behind him, but
the words were whipped away by the rush of wind.
When the flame of the exhaust was no longer in front of him, Nick
discovered that he could see a little; his eyes gradually became
accustomed to the dark. He had lost nearly five hundred feet of precious
altitude, wandering aimlessly, before he picked a field; and then all he
could see was the dark gray outline against an inky background. He
started a broad turn, cutting in sharper as he neared the ground.
“Get your arms in front of your face!” he shrilled at Wilson. “Sit
tight!”
He whipped the plane out of the bank and leveled it out on the last
straight shot into the field. He was coming in too fast for a normal
landing, but purposely, for he meant to “feel” the ship down and let it
settle in after one bounce--provided he hit the field. As he neared the
ground the field seemed to lose its lighter color and blend into the
shade of the darker stuff surrounding it. Nick knew that the dark stuff
was mesquite.
“What if it’s all mesquite?” he exclaimed. “It wouldn’t be the first
time! I’m a prize fool!”
The outlines of the brush and trees weren’t even visible as the plane
slipped swiftly over them. Nick had seen the outline of the field for a
few seconds only; now he was coming in practically “blind.” And he was
coming in at more than eighty miles an hour!
He knew, before he reached the spot where he thought the edge of the
field was, that he was too high to get quickly on the ground. He knew
there was danger of “overshooting” the field--and piling up in the trees
at the end of it. So, without knowing how far he dared slip the ship, he
rolled it up with his ailerons and let it slide. He tried to see the
ground, but couldn’t judge his distance accurately. With a sudden fear
that he had gone too far, he kicked the plane out with his rudder and
continued straight ahead.
Suddenly there was a soft impact against the wheels. The tires seemed to
sink deep; the plane shuddered at the strain. It bounced high into the
air, and as it settled back to earth Nick pulled the tail down.
But he still could see little of the ground. He couldn’t even see the
horizon in front of him! There were no lights near by, and he didn’t
have time to look at the instruments in the cockpit. A wing went down,
and although he could feel it, he couldn’t get it up before they hit the
ground again--on one wheel and the wing-tip! The tailspin skid bit into
the soft sand, the ship spun around crazily, and for an instant it
seemed that it would cartwheel and go over on its nose. But Nick
prevented that; he fought the controls and whipped the wing up out of
the dirt.
Doctor Wilson, ignorant of the narrowness by which Nick had prevented a
serious accident, asked, unperturbed:
“What’s wrong--out of water? How long will this stop take?” It
apparently did not seem strange to him that the ship was safely on the
ground, even though he could not see across the field because of
darkness.
“Yeah. Get out and see if you can find a windmill near here, or a
farmhouse. I thought we’d get a lot farther than this before that
radiator ran dry,” Nick replied.
* * * * *
Wilson jumped to the ground and struggled out of his parachute, then
hurried off into the darkness. Nick got out and looked at the damaged
wing. He tore away the portion of the fabric that was ripped open and
would start a larger rent when the ship got into the air again.
If it did! The tires were sunk deep in the soft sand of the field--clear
up to the rims of the wheels. Nick had been lucky to find a field at all
in the darkness before dawn, but he had put the Vought into a place
where the sand would suck the ship down when the take-off was attempted.
He wasn’t sure that he couldn’t get into the air again, but he knew that
the odds were all against him. He wished, fervidly, that he had allowed
Wilson to make this trip by car.
And another new problem, which he had not foreseen before the take-off,
had arisen when he learned that the radiator was good for less than
thirty minutes in the air: Between the point where he had landed, and
Rock Springs, there was an area of perhaps ninety-five miles of nothing
but hills and tortuous creek beds. Nowhere in this area was a landing
possible without completely wrecking the plane. And with the radiator as
it was, the Vought could remain in the air only half long enough to
cross these hills! Suddenly Nick heard the doctor’s voice in the
darkness, across the field.
“House over here!” Wilson yelled. “Over this way.”
Nick ran in that direction, his shoes sinking deep into the sand.
“There’s a light off through the mesquite,” the doctor declared, when
Nick reached him. “I think it’s a farmhouse.” He led the way.
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.]
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