“What do you mean?”
“Mean? I mean you got up so early a respectable milkman wouldn’t think of being up, and with your brain a bit foggy you thought what a clever idea it would be to hide my English uniform and give this gang of Indians another day of pleasure. What’s the big idea?”
McGee shook his head. “I never touched your uniform, Buzz. Come to think of it, though, I don’t remember seeing it this morning while I was dressing. Did you see it last night?”
“See it last night!” Larkin snorted. “How could I? We couldn’t find the candle and it was so blasted dark 182that I hung my shoes on a chair and my pants on the floor. Quit foolin’, Red. Where’s that uniform?”
“I don’t know, I tell you. But if I were you I’d go ask Yancey that question.”
Larkin’s eyes snapped. “That’s the bozo! That Texas longhorn is just before meeting up with a real cyclone.”
“Better go easy,” Red warned. “He’s used to cyclones, and I’ve always had a sort of feeling that he could take care of himself in heavy weather.”
Nothing daunted, Buzz went bowling off in search of Yancey, and McGee crossed the ’drome to Cowan’s headquarters.
The excited enthusiasm with which McGee began his report to Cowan was quickly cooled by the Major’s expressionless indifference. Throughout McGee’s narration of the events of the morning, Cowan continued studying a sheaf of papers lying on the desk before him, now and then penciling thereon some memorandum or brief endorsement. That part of the report dealing with the actions of the lone Nieuport, which seemed to have a system of signals to insure safe passage over the lines, brought from the Major no more than a throaty, “Hum-m.” It angered McGee, and brought from him a heated charge which under other conditions he would have hesitated to make.
“And the man who was piloting that plane is a member of this squadron,” he blurted out.