The lean-faced, square-jawed commanding officer was wrestling with some of the problems that his new detail had brought him. Transferred from the engineers a few months before, he had found that flyers bore little resemblance to the correct young West Pointers he had known in the infantry and the engineers. And his first detail as a commanding officer, he admitted frankly to himself, had him guessing.
“I ain’t been around the border cavalry since Washington crossed the Delaware for nothin’,” the Sheriff advised him. “Cap’n, in my judgment, you got to figger this here Air Service as different from any other. Course, I may be jest a foolish old-timer which ought to o’ passed out quiet and decent a matter o’ ten years ago, but this here bunch o’ yours, and the other boys from down Laredo and Marfa way that I run into, have kinda sneaked under my hide. By and large, the idee o’ these planes spannin’ the border from California to the Gulf o’ Mexico, risin’ out o’ little cleared spots in the Big Bend and out there in Arizona, and these boys flyin’ ’em over them El Paso mountains and the deserts and this Godforsaken strip of mesquit, riskin’ their lives every minute they’re in the air—it’s kind o’ doggone romantic to even an old sand-rat like me.
“And rememberin’ the times when fellers like Sam Edwards, which is now fat and a mayor and washes his neck regular, was r’arin’ youngsters ridin’ down main streets drunk and shootin’, and rememberin’ what true-blue buddies and real hombres they was, makes me judge your boys in the same class.
“And listen, son: the old days in this country meant that a man had to have guts or go under. Because they was men ridin’ the range and maintainin’ their necks as good as new by their own gun-play, the same red blood which showed in them things was responsible for what’s known now as the old ‘wild West’ stuff.
“I reckon your boys are pioneers, Cap’n. To my notion, any man that picks this here flyin’ as a profession ain’t ever goin’ to get no kick out of a ten-cent-limit poker game. Where would yore Air Service be if the men in it was playin’ things safe?”
He raised his voice at the last words, for the brooding silence of the night was shattered by the rolling explosions of a motor.
Spear’s battered roadster shot down the road, its huge headlights probing the darkness. It swooped around the sharp corner with breath-taking speed, stopped with startling celerity, and died into silence. The flyer strolled toward the porch, peering briefly at the two occupants thereof.
“Hello,” he greeted them briefly, as he sank on the steps. “I want to inquire about the ringleader of that Barnes City tar-and-feather party I saw get off the train yesterday afternoon. Tall, hungry-looking guy with a long mustache.”
“Name o’ Buchanan?” asked Trowbridge interestedly.
“I don’t remember his name, but it wasn’t Buchanan then—at least, not in his home town. He must have just got out of the lock-up.”