CHAPTER IV
According to instructions, Apperson awakened him at eight o’clock. At nine they had consumed coffee and bread, and were ready to take off.
It was a delicate job on the rolling field, but again it was accomplished safely, and the ship cleared the surrounding trees by a good fifty feet. As it roared out over the forest Hemingwood held it low, pointing for the little schoolhouse where Gail presided. It was on the outskirts of the mountain settlement called “The Hollows.” As he passed over it he jazzed the throttle twice. He saw Gail thrust her head out of a window and wave her handkerchief. He returned the greeting with his free arm. There was a pleasant warmth in his heart as he circled back and left the schoolhouse behind.
The ship was barely three hundred feet high, so he nosed up in a steep climb. His right arm was draped carelessly over the side of the cockpit, and his eyes swept the ground idly.
Suddenly he felt a jerk at his ankle. He dropped his eyes, and in utter surprise saw a clean gash on the inner side of his right boot sole. He moved his foot slightly and saw a hole in the wooden flooring of the cockpit. The next second he saw gas jetting forth from a jagged hole in the small copper tube which was the gasoline feed line between main tank and carburetor. The Liberty’s roar died away into sputtering, and then silence. And down below there was nothing but impenetrable forest into which to crash.
Hemingwood reached automatically for the mainline petcock, and turned off the gas. Then he turned on the petcock which released the gas from the emergency tank, holding the ship in a dive to maintain flying speed.
For agonizing seconds the motor did not catch and the ship was diving like a comet for the earth. Hemingwood cursed steadily, fluently. He had been shot at from the ground and, by dumb luck, they had hit the fast moving target. There was nothing for it but to crash. What the hell was the matter with that gravity tank? If he could get his hands on the blankety-blank marksmen!
Then he saw them. There were five of them, partially hidden, and they were still shooting. He could see the smoke from their rifles. Unseen and unheard above the whining wires, there were bullets zipping through the air around him.
There was two hundred feet of altitude left. With his usually boyish face suddenly grim and hard, Hemingwood swooped around and made the dive more steep. Might as well use that last little margin to teach those birds a lesson!
His finger was on the machine gun control as he pointed the ship at them. And at that second the gravity tank got working and the motor cut in. There was thirty minutes’ gas in that tank, plenty to get back to the field with.
Hemingwood came to himself. Even his unemotional soul revolted at the thought of pouring a hail of death on the five would-be murderers below. But he did dive down at them, carefully aiming a bit beyond them, and his machine guns spouted fire and a hail of bullets which ripped up the trees a few dozen yards away from them.
He barely brought the quivering, strained ship out of the dive in time to clear the treetops. He turned again, and for the next five minutes terrorized the hiding mountaineers with showers of lead all around them.
“Now let ’em see whether they’ve got any stomach to keep fiddling around,” he grinned, as he swept back toward the field.
His rancor was all gone, now that he was safe. It was something of a game to him.
They fixed the mainline by means of a spare rubber connection they had brought along, and got in a good five hours of work, landing shortly after two o’clock. Apperson, seemingly entirely unshaken by the events of the morning, had a suggestion to make. He led Hemingwood to one side, so that Mumford, there with the gas, could not overhear anything, and said:
“Let’s dispense with lunch, sir-r-r. This is bonny weather. And it may be the mornin’s events’ll scare ’em off, or maybe they’ll try again. So the queecker we get through the better, to my mind.”
To which Hemingwood assented. There were but a few onlookers this time, and seemingly the sound of the shooting had not been noticed. Mumford did not mention anything about the events of the morning, either, so Hemingwood decided that it was a secret between himself and those five men on the ground. Which was just as well, he reflected. He did not particularly care for the news to spread that he had attempted to shoot up five mountaineers.
They worked until after four o’clock, and once again Mumford was waiting with a new supply of gas. He seemed a bit more openly friendly now, and announced that Mrs. Mumford and Gail would again oblige with supper.
They arrived in due time, along with Pegasus, the buckboard, and a big basket of provender, but left almost immediately after the meal was over. Mrs. Mumford, it appeared, was president of the Mental Improvement Society of East Point, which was to meet that evening to weigh the merits of English poetry from Chaucer to Masefield, and Gail was to sing.
Hemingwood did not mention the incident of the morning to Gail. There was nothing of the grandstander in him and he did not want her to worry about it. After they had gone he and Apperson smoked and talked and watched the moon come up. At ten o’clock Apperson, who was to take the last watch again, was knocking out his pipe preparatory to retiring when Hemingwood became aware of the fact that a horse was undoubtedly galloping toward them, and coming fast. They waited by the fence, hands on their guns.
It was Gail Morgan, and Pegasus was a badly winded steed as she guided him up to the fence.
“Did you shoot anybody this morning?” she asked breathlessly.
Hemingwood, a tingle of excitement running up and down his spine, told her briefly what had happened.
“You hit Jim Calley!” she told him. “He must have been one of those men—they’re all Calleys over there. Jim must have been a little away from the others so that you got him. Anyway, they are coming over tonight to get you!”
“May I ask how you know?” Hemingwood asked easily.
Apperson was listening quietly, his empty pipe upside down in his mouth.
“Mrs. Tuttle, a woman I nursed when she was sick, sent her little boy to tell me. To these people, the fact that you and I have been friendly means that we must be sweethearts, so she wanted to warn me. She isn’t a Calley herself, although she’s kin to them.”
Gail was talking with breathless speed, as though laboring under almost unbearable tension. She went on: “I came right up, without telling a soul. You’d better start for East Point right off.”
“No, I guess we’ll have to guard the old ship, Gail.”
“But you don’t know these Calleys! They’re bad! What chance will you have against six men? I didn’t know what to do. All the men in East Point are either with them or afraid of them. It would be suicide for anyone like my uncle to take a hand in it, Lieutenant Hemingwood. But you could come down to East Point for the night, and—”
“No! We’ll stay. And there’s nothing to worry about,” declared Hemingwood. “Gail, you’re a brick. You’re a whole mansion of bricks. Now you turn right around and gallop home before you get mixed in it yourself. I’ll thank you later.”
“You can’t stay!” she said, the hint of a sob in her voice. “I tell you those Calleys—”
“Please run along, Gail. And I tell you we’ll be all right. If I didn’t think so. I’d light out. I’m not hankering to commit suicide.”
Finally, after Hemingwood had outlined his plans, she did go, but not before she had exhausted every means of persuasion at her command. Hemingwood had a hard time to keep her from staying nearby to see what happened and then she announced that she’d tell her uncle and that they would both be back, which Hemingwood likewise vetoed.
“Please be careful!” she whispered finally, leaning over a trifle. “And if there’s any way you can, will you let me know that everything has come out all right? I couldn’t close my eyes until I know—”
“Sure. Now for the love of Mike, pretty lady, beat it!”
She had not disappeared from sight before Hemingwood and Apperson were busy. A big rock, protruding two feet above the ground, was the cornerstone of their defense. The ship was standing by the fence, the tent thirty feet away from it and ten feet from the edge of the forest. The rock was in a corner of the field nearest the road, perhaps forty feet from both tent and ship.
They worked with breathless haste, carrying the fence rails over to the rock and constructing their barricade. In a half hour they had a small, three sided fortification of which the rock formed the apex facing the tent, where Hemingwood figured most of the action would take place, if any. The machine guns were useless—there was no time to dismount them.
He was right about the scene of battle. Less than half an hour from the time they had ensconced themselves in their shelter, lying flat on the ground, they heard a rustling in the bushes behind the tent. Although the moonlight was flooding the world in silver radiance, they could see no signs of the men they knew were there.
For taut minutes there was utter silence. Hemingwood wondered whether the low structure of rails and rock behind which they were hidden would catch the marauders’ eyes and scare them off. He hoped it would, but the chances were against it.
It was fully ten minutes before six ghostly figures, long rifles in hand, slipped out of the bushes and started to surround the tent. Hemingwood acted before any of them went out of sight behind it.
He shot his Colt in the air, and shouted, “Drop your guns! Hands up!”
“Quick!” bellowed Apperson, to let them know there was more than one gun trained on them.
For an instant six men, vague in the moonlight, stood like statues. Hemingwood shot again, shouting at the same time: “Next shot I’ll get someone! Drop those guns!”
The utter surprise of it and the terrifying effect of those two shots from unseen marksmen did the trick. The mountaineers were a bit too far from the shelter of the forest to risk a break for it against unknown odds. Their rifles dropped to the ground and six pairs of hands thrust slowly into the air.
For a moment Hemingwood was up against a problem. He knew in his heart that if those mountaineers had the nerve they could make their escape against two Colts. The darkness and the distance between the opposing factions made accurate shooting almost impossible. The most sensible procedure was for either him or Apperson to go out and make sure they were thoroughly disarmed, though the presence of one or the other in the vicinity of the six silent Kentuckians meant that the other man could not shoot without risking the wounding or killing of his ally. But it was the only possible chance. And which part should he take? Should he approach them and leave Apperson to cover him, or vice versa? He was a better shot than Apperson—and possibly the Scot might hesitate to shoot.
He put the matter up to the sergeant bluntly. Apperson silently climbed out of the barricade and circled widely to approach the line of captives from the rear. If they were unarmed, except for their rifles on the ground, he and Apperson might get away with it, Hemingwood reflected. Then a thought occurred to him, and he called Apperson back. He heard whispers pass between the mountaineers.
“Keep quiet! No talking!” he called sharply. Then: “If they make a move, drop to the ground so I can shoot!” he told Apperson. “Wait a minute! Get in here! I’m going out there myself!”
Afterward Hemingwood figured that the mountaineers, sure that they were opposed to only two men with revolvers, got the courage from the fact to make a break for liberty. As always among the mountain people, they were undoubtedly desperate at the thought of capture. For, just as Hemingwood was climbing out of the barricade the six men made a concerted leap for their rifles. Like a flash Hemingwood dropped, and both Colts barked in a fusillade of shots. The flyer saw one man drop, and another screamed with pain. A hail of bullets poured from their rifles, and he heard Apperson groan.
“They got me!” he said weakly.
Hemingwood shoved another clip into his gun and emptied it into the woods wherein the Kentuckians had disappeared. He could hear them running through the undergrowth. When Hemingwood was really mad it was a sort of cold, calculating fury. That was his condition as he examined Apperson. It was a rather nasty looking wound in the hip, but apparently it was only a deep flesh wound. As he bound it with handkerchief and belt he said tersely: “Think you can move at all?”
Apperson tried, winced, and said: “I could hobble in an emergency, sir-r-r. What’s in your mind, may I ask?”
Hemingwood explained quickly. If there was a way to get those men he’d do it, and he did not figure the odds against him.
The self-starter worked the second time he spun the booster magneto. The ship was already in position for the take-off. With utter recklessness he shoved the throttle full on and the ship hurled itself toward the dense blackness of the trees behind a cold motor. At the last second he zoomed the De Haviland across the menacing wall, and the matchless Liberty did its work. Half a minute later he had spotted the fugitives below, like ghosts slipping through the shadows.
He gave them one chance. The first burst from his guns was close to them, but not aimed exactly at them. Then he swooped so low he was scraping the tops of the trees, and motioned them back toward the field with his arm. They must realize that he held their lives in the palm of his hand!
They did. He saw them ostentatiously drop their guns and, with their hands in the air in token of surrender, start walking back toward the field. Apperson was waiting for them. Hemingwood rode herd on them from the air while he watched the crippled Scotchman supervise while one man tied up his fellows with safety wire from the ship.
They knew that the best they could do would be to kill Apperson—and then all succumb themselves to that withering blast of death from the air.
For the next thirty seconds Hemingwood flew as he never had before. It was a rare feat of airmanship to land his De Haviland in the darkness on that field, but he did it.
He climbed out and looked their captives over. One of them was a gaunt old man, with a gray, tobacco stained beard. Three of them seemed to be middle-aged, and there were two young fellows. One who had fallen seemed little more than a boy. Apperson was binding his wound. The bullet had drilled through his thigh. Another man was wounded in the shoulder. Neither wound was mortal.
Hemingwood was thinking hard as to his next step. Apperson’s wound was practically negligible, although he had to hobble on one foot and it drew a sigh from him every time his other foot touched the ground. Keeping those men prisoners meant a good deal of trouble and red tape. Probably the whole clan would descend on the flyers to revenge themselves if they stayed in the mountains, and very possibly there would be complications of considerable difficulty in even incarcerating them. Besides, his business was to get those pictures.
Apperson was lying on the ground, to relieve his pain. Hemingwood looked down at his captives for a moment in silent appraisal. They darted quick, fearful glances at him, like trapped animals.
“Listen, you Calleys,” he said conversationally. “You’ve tried to kill us twice. Once it was because you were afraid we were after you. That shows you’re up to something. I could have killed you all then; I wounded one of you by accident, in trying to scare you. Then you pull this. I could have killed you all again. You know that.
“Now get this. I don’t give a damn about you. I’m here to take pictures. I don’t want trouble. I don’t care whether you’re making moonshine enough to float the British Navy. I’ve got you now. To show you that I don’t want to bother with you, I’m going to let you take your wounded and vamoose out of here. Go home, lay off me, and behave yourselves. We’ve sniped three of you in exchange for one little wound, and by God, if you lift a finger at me again I’ll mow you all down! Get anywhere near this field and those machine guns’ll start working from the ground.” They wouldn’t know that the guns on the ship were useless on the ground unless dismounted. “And get funny while I’m in the air and the same thing’ll happen. And if you snipe me off some night while I’m here, you’ll have enough of the United States Army combing these woods for you to run you down like rats. All the dope will be mailed in tomorrow, including who you are and what you’ve done. Now I’m going to spank you and send you home like the bad boys you are!”
A long sigh came from the astounded prisoners, followed by a deep chuckle from the old man. Apperson showed no surprise. Hemingwood released them, and they got to their feet slowly. The old man smiled slowly, and it made a great change in his fierce, hawk-like face.
“Yuh can think o’ the Calleys as yore friends, stranger,” he said slowly. “C’mon hyar, you!”
Carrying their wounded, they marched silently off into the forest.