The wreck would have been a total, soul-satisfying and complete catastrophe, of course, with four tons dropping a few thousand feet out of control. Fire would have been inevitable, and the chance of ever discovering, from two heaps of bones, that we had been shot would have been negligible. By the time it was decided the two flyers would have been safely away, anyhow.
They might have reported the wreck themselves, or landed, looked over the bones, and made certain that any tell-tale signs of bullets had disappeared before they did anything about reporting it. Any farmers around would have known nothing whatever about such technical matters, and guns can not be heard above the roar of motors.
On my way back to Langham, and for several hours before I started, I had a good chance to think over all that Marston had done. Desperately wounded as he was, he had had to climb from his cockpit over into mine, get the ship under control from the seat alongside me, leaning over to grasp the wheel, and then unbuckle my belt and heave me out of my seat.
Then he had probably slid into my seat himself, and in some way pulled my far from minute body up beside him. He had flown the bomber back into Cleveland, amateur as he was at airmanship, and stanched my wound and let his own bleed.
When I arrived at the field all the gang were there. The leading flyers of the border, the California fields and even from Panama, Hawaii and the Philippines, were on the job practising for the big chance. And Marston was still the hero of the field.
I got my flight back, and went to see him right away.
“Thanks, Marston,” I said as we shook hands.
“Don’t bother yourself, Lieutenant,” he returned in his rasping voice.
The sullen look was gone, but otherwise he was the same. He wasn’t any chunk of soft-soap by any means. But his grudge against the Army in general had disappeared, anyway. A little adulation will go a long, long way.