The Sky Sheriff
The Pioneer Spirit Lives Again in the Texas Airplane Patrol
By Thomson Burtis
Illustrations by B. J. Rosenmeyer
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 1923 issue of Blue Book Magazine.]
Sure enough, there was a mounted man crossing a tiny clearing, two or three miles to the westward
The blazing sun of a Texas afternoon turned air and drab brown earth to gold. Not a breath stirred the huge white stocking that served as a wind-indicator on the airdrome of the McMullen Flight of the Air Service border patrol.
Seven men were standing in a line south of the airdrome. Six of them were tanned young chaps with the look of the open in their steady eyes with tiny sun-crinkles at the corners. The other man wore a flowing gray mustache, a sombrero that dwarfed the others’ Stetsons, and ornately embossed cowboy boots. He was known from one end of the Rio Grande to the other as Sheriff Bill Trowbridge.
A low drone came to the ears of the group, and far in the distance they glimpsed the tiny form of a ship, diving with motor on for the airdrome. Hickman looked up at the plane.