Next day Hal Dane’s sturdy constitution asserted itself and yanked him out from any lazy coddling between the sheets. His scalp might still show some split skin from bucking a wire strut, and bruises the size of plates and saucers decorate him here and there, but he’d better be thanking his stars he wasn’t disabled. And Hal did thank ’em! His work was needing him too. The truck that earned the family living was idling up there in the pine woods.
Need to get back to work rested heavily on Hal’s shoulders, but worse than that was a worry burden that weighted down his heart.
As Hal, cap in hand and a bag of tools thrust under one arm, tiptoed down the long hall whose once beautifully plastered walls now gaped in ugly cracks, he paused before the room Rex Raynor was in. The door swung half open in the summer breeze. Hal stepped in, stood uncertain, twisting his cap into a knot. He opened his mouth once or twice as if he were trying to speak and couldn’t. Then finally he blurted out:
“Mr. Raynor, I—it’s awful that I smashed your plane—I, oh—some day—I’ll try—pay—”
“Huh!” snorted the recumbent Raynor, slightly raising his head and glaring with fiery eyes beneath beetling brows. “Huh, come here!” His injured left arm, grotesquely enlarged by bandages, lay on a supporting pillow. But with his right hand, he beckoned imperiously.
Hal came to the bed.
“Did you ever fly a sky bus before?” questioned Raynor.
“Not—not a real plane,” answered Hal. “I’ve got books and—”
“Boy,” said Raynor, reaching out his good hand and pulling him close, “boy, you’re a wonder. You brought us down alive—in the night. More’n some trained pilots can do. Wing sense must have been born in you. And say,” Raynor’s brows drew up fiercely again, “get that pay idea off your chest. I owe you more than you owe me. If you hadn’t been a plucky youngster to go up with me and bring down my wind bus by book learning, I’d—I’d have crashed to a dead one. That’s sure!” Raynor shut his eyes.
Hal eased out of the room. His head and his heart felt suddenly, gloriously light and tingling. He hadn’t known what a burden he’d carried—until now that it had lifted. His spirit was free again.