That night he mailed a letter to the Rand-Elwin Flying School. Days later the answer came, stating that he could still have the work and the tuition in that organization that he had applied for once before. Hal was both surprised and pleased to read that Rex Raynor was now one of the flying instructors in the school.
With the chill of winter beginning to creep over the great southern stretches of Texas, the season of country fairs and carnivals came to a close. Maben was anxious now to get home for a short visit with his family. After that he meant to try for some practical, year-around work—the air mail, or forest ranger air service. And Hal had his own ambitious plans burning within him.
At the Louisiana-Texas border town of Aldon, he and Maben parted company. It was a wrench for both of them. But then they could cheer their hearts with the knowledge that the science of flying was making the world smaller every day. All through life, he and Maben would likely enough be meeting at various landing fields—to “ground fly” and joke about their lurid carnival past.
Barnstorming might have been the slap-stick life, but both Hal and Maben could be thankful for their period of buzzing a plane above country fairs—their work had brought them in enough money to keep their families comfortable for some months to come.
Hal was also ahead an additional five hundred from the sale of his old plane. He could embark with an easy mind on what promised to be the greatest adventure, so far, in his life.
CHAPTER IX
GROUND WORK
Before Hal Dane lay the great unknown—the three thousand parts of a dissected D. C. engine.
“And I’ve got to get ’em together,” he moaned. “Gosh, was it to assort engine-hash that I went through all I’ve stood lately?”
Hal Dane had been on a strain, of a sort.
As soon as he landed at the far-stretching, smooth acres of the Rand-Elwin Field, bounded by hangars, barracks, instruction halls, he had passed the inspection of Mr. Rand at the office, inspection of short, dark, imperturbable Major Weston, primary instructor, passed test-inspection for every ailment in the world—or so it had seemed.