Perk grinned and nodded his head cheerfully.
“Had a heap o’ fun, old boss, an’ got loads o’ thrills out o’ it. Mebbe now you noticed some sort o’ crate just vanishing among them clouds off toward the east as you breezed along?”
“Thought I did,” came the immediate reply, “but the visibility was getting poor, and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a buzzard, or even an eagle ducking in and out. What’s it mean, Perk–was he kicking up a mess around here?”
“You said it, partner, an’ his name was sure Oscar–Oscar Gleeb, ’cause he got mad as hops when I asked him, an’ told me that wasn’t any o’ my business. But we sure did have a nice hot spell, Oscar’n me.”
“Yes, and I reckon now you got your old right ear touched up again, Perk, for I can see streaks of half-dried blood running down your cheek.”
“Yeah, he nicked me okay, an’ if this keeps on much further I’ll soon be taken for the Manassa Mauler, ’cause it’ll gimme a cauliflower ear. Who are these two lads, Jack–look like they might belong to the Coast Guard.”
“Just what they are–meet Tom Cairns and Red McGrath, who have been sent along with me to take charge of this contraband and hand it over to Mr. Philip Ridgeway, temporarily in charge of the Treasury Department interests along the West Coast here, with headquarters in Tampa–this is the fine pal you heard me speaking about a few times, boys–Gabe Perkiser, commonly known simply as Perk, a veteran of the big scrap over in France where he flew one of those sausage observation blimps, and was later on considered something of an ace in our flying corps.”
So Perk gladly shook the hands extended to him, grinned in his genial fashion, and from that moment on they were as brothers all.
“While we’re stretching our legs, after being cooped up in that cramped cabin for some hours,” suggested Jack, whose curiosity had naturally been aroused by the multitude of signs all around indicative of a warm session, “suppose you sketch your little adventure for us, Perk. And I want to say that Oscar was pretty much of a fool if he reckoned on snatching this boat away from an old fighter like you, when you had a nice new machine-gun to back up your claims.”
“Shucks! he showed the right stuff for a scrapper,” expostulated the honest Perk, anxious to give credit where credit was due. “We stopped the barrage at one point to have a little chin, but unable to agree, we jest started all over again. An’ I kinder guess I must’ve notched the critter some, for he hauled off an’ skinned the cat by kickin’ out. I was jest tellin’ myself it sure turned out to be a good thing he didn’t have any Chinks aboard at the time, ’cause they might’ve lost the number o’ their mess in the racket–I’m willin’ to stop the yeller boys from crashin’ Unc’ Sam’s gates, but I don’t crave the job o’ sendin’ the poor dicks along to their worshipped ancestors, not me.”