During those years since he had met Jennie that last time in the moonlight of a Carolina night Billy had flown early and late, in season and out, every trace of the old fear gone. And never a scratch to show for his pains. He had run chances that woke the headlines of a continent into vociferous black. He had flown ships that no one else would, or could; strange outlandish maunderings of the engineer’s intemperate brain. He had been lost in the Black Hills of the Dakotas; he had landed with a stalled engine in the peaks of the high Sierras; he had drifted through a night of tempest in the Caribbean. But he had never spent a day in the infirmary to pay for his venturing. Death had stacked the deck against him many times—and he had won regardless. The air that needed men like Billy Cobb was clinging to him.
This summer he and Norris were wearing two bars on their shoulders and rooming together again. Billy was at his old grind of propaganda hopping mixed with engineering, up at dawn and to bed just ahead of the first cock crow. He was gaunt again, but not haggard; weary, but not worried.
Norris was worried, though.
“Listen here, Bill,” he said, one early August night with the crickets singing a sultry chorus outside the windows, “you’ve got to let up, bird. You may not know what I know, but you’re killing yourself. That high-altitude work you did last summer with the Kite weakened your heart plenty. Weyman told me so. He had to stretch a point to let you by when he gave you your last 609 in February, down at Douglas.”
“So?” said Billy, thoughtfully. “He kept that from me. Just mentioned something about going easy, that was all. But I can’t go easy, John. When I slow up I think too much about Jennie.”
“Well, you face another 609 in three weeks. It’d be worse than going easy if you were thrown out entirely, I guess. Better think of that and lay off. Give yourself a chance.”
Billy smiled a queer haunting smile and peered at Norris.
“John,” he said, “if I were a praying man I would pray morning, noon and night that Weyman might throw me out the next time.”
“The hell, Billy! You⸺”
“Listen, John. Do you remember what I told you about seeing Jennie? And what she said? She’ll be waiting. I haven’t a doubt about that. And all I’ve been asking for in the last three years is a crash. Not deliberate, you know. A real one. The sooner it comes the better. But I know it won’t come until the air is done with me. If I disqualify when Weyman gets at me it’ll be the end. I haven’t an idea how it will happen, but I know it will. What was that you told me once—about things being arranged? Well, that’s all arranged. Jennie promised me. At least, I believe she did. ‘When the air is done with you,’ she said—‘at the last crash.’”