“A few crashes mean nothing to you, eh? Well, they mean something to me, right now. Hard-boiled egg, are you? Well, I’ve got no time to take that out of you down here. You’ll have a chance to alibi your transfer in just about a week!”
Moran stood there, for a moment, like a dumbly suffering dog. Then, abruptly, curtains seemed to close over his eyes. They were muddy and opaque as he saluted stiffly, and stumbled blindly toward his tent.
He was to be transferred. The subconscious admission that his arraignment had been justified made matters no better. Dumpy Scarth again—
He lay on his cot, forgetting to go to lunch, and gradually his aching misery gave rise to unreasoning hatred for the cocky little flyer who had been his Nemesis.
As the taut days passed, the feeling grew in strength. He was utterly alone, brooding in his tent when he was not forced to appear in public. Dumpy, the irrepressible, had been hurt by his public tonguelashing, too, and he lost no opportunity to razz the black-browed Moran on his landings, which were still far from perfect. Moran rarely answered the taunts of the younger man, but often his eyes were not good to see.
He flew regular patrols, each one a nightmare. That they would soon cease, for him, was only part of the reason. Since that unforgettable landing he had lost all confidence in the De Havilands. A vibrating wire, or a momentary miss in the motor, caused by an air bump, made him tense and uncertain. He was afraid of those big ships which he could not control, as yet, and the memory of his escape from fire awakened him nights, his body covered with sweat and his brain numb.
The occasional efforts of some of the flyers to be sociable, he met with brush rebuffs, and they soon ceased. Every man of them was laboring under a strain. Five, sometimes six, hours of nerve-racking flying each day was their portion, and the waiting for something to break along the Border put the finishing touches on their overwrought condition. Moran, a veritable skeleton at the feast, was relegated to the role of “sorehead,” and he knew it. He knew, also, that he was deliberately making his own lot harder, and perversely increasing his own unpopularity as he waited for the ax to fall.
It was not in him, however, to do anything but suffer by himself, and no torture could have dragged a word of admission from him. He lived through the days in dogged silence, masking his bruised spirit behind an impregnable armor of hard self-sufficiency.
It was just before dawn of the fifth day following his wreck that he awakened to find the light on in his tent and Captain Kennard shaking him by the shoulder.
“Listen, Moran,” Kennard barked rapidly. “We just got a call, and I’m taking five ships down toward Laralia. Big gang reported coming over the river an hour ago. I’m leaving you and Dumpy Scarth here and taking all the others. Patrol in turn, one of you at the phone all the time. Get up—we’re taking off, pronto!”