A BOMB-DROPPING EVENT
“I say, Davis, have you got anything to do with that queer layout yonder?”
“Dallow and Hardy have, I think.”
“What’s the stunt?”
“You’ll have to ask them.”
The questioner was named Burr Rollins, and he was the one aviator on the field for whom neither Mr. Davis, Bob nor Ben, nor in fact anybody else at the meet, had much use.
The only merit about the man was that he was unquestionably a fair aeronaut. He had a small, but good machine, and he knew how to handle it. He was surly, suspicious, and on occasions an ugly customer, quick to resent fancied wrong, and harboring resentment in a vicious and sometimes dangerous way when any one crossed his path.
He considered John Davis to be the big stumbling block in his career. This was because the old aviator, through his cool, courageous ways generally discounted his brilliant but erratic flights with a coherent record.
“Rollins hates me because I have beaten him in the test flights,” Mr. Davis had observed to Ben and Bob one day. “He is afraid of me, though, because he knows I am right. I am holding him up to a fair, square-dealing programme. He doesn’t altogether like that, for he is a resourceful man, and full of slippery tricks. I’ve made him respect me, though, and some day he may learn to drop those grouches of his and act like a civilized being.”
“That helper of his, the young fellow he calls Dick, is about as gruff a customer as you meet,” Bob had observed. “Ever run up against him, Ben?”