“Some hours off yet,” ventured Perk, whose lips were indeed trembling, as if the chill was beginning to get in its work—perhaps all that recent excitement was helping to make him shiver, as it often will, even in the case of the most valiant of men.
Jack noticed this fact, even though he himself experienced nothing similar, for some reason or other.
“See here, Perk, you ought to have a chance to sit alongside a warm fire and dry off; the rain must have got under your slicker, and I reckon now you’re slopping around in water back there. Something’s got to be done about it.”
“Shucks! boss, don’t bother ’bout me; I’m a hard-shell you must know, an’ a little dampness ain’t agoin’ to do me any harm, Jack.”
“Just the same we’ll try and make a landing,” continued the other, “if there’s half a chance; all I’d want would be to stack up against a level stretch of upland, where the drainage had carried off all that flood.”
“Yeah, that sounds all to the good, boy but what difference will it make, I want to know? After such a storm it’s bound to be some cold even away down here along the Texas-Arizona line; they call them Northers, jest like I’ve heard they do down in Florida. Forget it, partner—I’m a tough guy, an’ ain’t wantin’ to be coddled like a baby.”
“Just the same I say we’re going to land, if half a chance shows up,” affirmed the pilot, in that set way of his. “We’ll find the stuff to build some sort of fire, Perk, where you could make a pot of hot coffee; which’d do you more good than a switch of hard liquor. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Perk remained silent for almost two whole minutes, during which time no doubt he was revolving in his mind what Jack had proposed—in imagination he could almost smell the delicious aroma of the coffee, boiling so merrily over the red coals and even feel a joyous sensation of warmth stealing through his chilled body.
“Okay, Jack; you win, hands down. Me for the coffee every time, to be followed by a quiet smoke o’ my fav’rite brand o’ tobac. Have your own way about it, partner.”
“Then get ready to try and make out what sort of ground we’ll soon be passing over,” added Jack, as he turned the ship earthward, and slid down on a long glide, with the motor clamped shut. “We’ll skim along close enough for you to get a good idea as to how matters stand, and yet giving enough distance to keep clear of any clump of trees, or little bald knobs of rises.”