The air splasher
Date: 2025-01-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; Air pilots -- Fiction

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Title: The air splasher

Author: Richard Howells Watkins

Release date: January 15, 2025 [eBook #75112]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1929

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AIR SPLASHER ***

A Dare-devil of the Clouds Performs the Most Hair-raising Feat of His Life to Prove that He Is a Safe Pilot.

THE AIR SPLASHER

By Rickard Howells Watkins

Author of “Full Throttle”

“LA-ADIES and gentlemun!” bawled Sam Smith, rotating his fat body on the creaking box. “The next feature on the program will be an exhibition flight by King Horn, the wild man of the air! Horn has crashed no less than twelve ships in the course of his death-defying career as ‘Ace of Deuces’—an’ maybe he’ll make it thirteen before your eyes this afternoon!” Sam paused to gulp air with savage intensity; then bellowed on:

“He promises nothing—the Tennant Flying Circus promises nothing—but watch him fly! He’s wild—wild—wild! Watch him fly! He’s as crazy as our passenger-carrying pilots are sane; he’s reckless as they are careful! He’s a cuckoo among eagles! Horn will now take the air and show you how not to fly a ship. No other Tennant plane will leave the ground while Horn is in the air. He’s wild—wild—wild!”

Sam waved an eloquent hand toward an ancient crate that stood apart from the other ships on the field, and sank down onto his box to imbibe more air.

A thin, youngish, carefully dressed man with large and reflective brown eyes, who stood beside the stunt ship, chuckled quietly at Sam’s oration.

“Ta-ra! Tara—ta!” he muttered with a burlesque flourish of his walking stick. “You ought to wear pink-silk tights and learn to curtsy, King.”

King Horn, an agile, long-limbed young man with light-brown hair that in the sun verged on the shade of gold, had already climbed into the rear seat of the old ship. He revved up the motor briskly, but paused to grin at his irreverent friend. It was an honest grin, as broad as a wide mouth would permit, and his eyes joined in it, crinkling at the corners. It was obvious that, whatever else King Horn thought about himself, he did not consider himself an artist.

“You teach me to curtsy and I’ll teach you to fly!” he shouted against the beat of the motor. With a quick, impatient hand he cinched on his helmet. “Want a lesson now? The ship’s sort of loose today.”

Franklin Cross shook his head. “I’ve got to get back to the Era office to write your obit,” he said. “It’s a nuisance, but I’ve got to have it ready.”

King Horn grinned again. “You gave me this reputation as a crasher, Cross,” he said. “It’s only fair to throw in an obituary notice to sort of round it off. ’By!”

He gunned the plane with a lean and confident hand.

Snarling like an unwilling beast, the ship surged ahead and, at the pressure of King’s hand on the control stick, leaped into the air. The motor was hot and the field—part of the broad Hempstead plain that makes Long Island popular among airmen—was flat and free from obstacles. King did not bother to go after altitude; with thirty-six inches of air between his landing wheels and the ground, he started work. He had a reputation to sustain and a pay check to earn.

Giving her all the gas she would take, he set her on end. One wing cut toward earth. The ship spun around in a tight circle with the wing tip always threatening to graze the turf and yet never touching. The slightest contact would have set the ship cartwheeling, a splintering, disintegrating wreck, across the field, but King held every inch of his scant altitude.

Then, fishtailing wildly, he headed for the fence. He zoomed over it, cut back and dived at it, cleared it, seemingly by a miracle, and let his wheels swish through the grasstops. Then he zoomed again and this time went after altitude.

His face, as he handled his ship, held quick, ever changing expressions. He frowned, grinned, looked sad, alert, scared and triumphant. King Horn was living fast as he sent his ship flickering about in the danger zone just above the earth and in a single minute his countenance reflected in its mobility more emotion than he expended during an hour at any other time.

As he climbed away from the ground that had so closely menaced his wings and wheels, his face smoothed out, becoming less the face of a hard-pressed, nervy fencer and more the face of a pilot. He relaxed, sat back in his seat and loosened slightly his grip upon the stick. His eyes swept the horizon automatically, then dropped to the fields round about the one he had risen from. He did not bother to look at the crowd he was thrilling. Thousands of men and women, millions of kids—the crowd was always the same. Tennant’s circus was by no means the only outfit operating on that warm June Saturday afternoon. There were ships in front of a score of hangars near and far, and more ships in the air. His eyes roved among them.

Abruptly, with a jerk of his head, he dismissed other ships and devoted himself to his own. It was time to thrill the spectators again. He flung the plane into a quick medley of contortion—loops, rolls, Immelmans, a whipstall, spirals and dives. And steadily throughout the maze of air splashes he let the ship drift earthward, so that what had been mere routine stunting at a reasonable altitude began again a grim, breath-taking challenge to gravity and death. Again a wingtip flicked over the grass; again the wheels seemed about to plow into the hard surface of the field.

At last, after long, hazardous seconds, King Horn climbed for his final stunt. At less than a thousand feet he pulled the ship’s nose higher and higher, until it stalled. Then he kicked over the rudder. The ship reeled downward in a tail spin. When it seemed certain that nothing could save the gyrating ship from plunging into the ground, King Horn got it out. That was his business, getting ships out of impossible positions, he reflected, with a grin, as he felt the diving ship responding to his insistent, steady hand on the stick.

Out of the spin, with the earth a few feet below, he ruddered the ship around into the wind, throttled and leveled off. The work was over. His wheels had already bumped once when, dead ahead, a small boy with a camera apparently rose out of the ground.

King Horn could have dodged the youngster easily enough, but out from the edge of the field there raced half a dozen would-be rescuers. They strung out in a human barrier ahead of the ship that had virtually lost its flying speed.

With an imprecation King Horn gunned his ship. It hung sluggishly in the air, wheels still reaching for the ground. King flung it over in a quick bank to avoid the men ahead. The ship reeled sidewise. Then the thing that King Horn had risked several times that day happened. The wingtip scored the ground.

King’s leaping hand snapped off the ignition switch. The ship, swirling like a curving knife over the heads of the people below, hit the ground. The wingspars went to pieces first; then the landing gear and prop in a volley of splintering sounds. The heavy motor in the nose of the fuselage ended the tune of the cracking wood with its ponderous thud. The pilot felt his safety belt cut into his middle as he was flung about. Then came sudden stillness.

King Horn jerked the fire extinguisher out of the bracket below the instrument board. Then he climbed out of a thoroughly wrecked ship. He was somewhat groggy from the jolt and something had got him in the left arm, for the sleeve of his gray shirt was ripped from wrist to shoulder, revealing bloody flesh.

Training the extinguisher, he sent spurt after spurt of fire-killing liquid on the hot exhaust pipe. He was still at this when Franklin Cross, pale of face, big Walt Tennant, the boss of the circus, and a wave of pilots and mechanics reached him.

“That was a quick one,” Walt Tennant commented. The circus boss inspected his pilot and his plane with the same equanimity. The wreckage did not distress him, for he knew that the story which Franklin Cross and other newspaper men would write would bring greater crowds to his field in the days to come.

“For a moment I thought I was going to lose a few cash customers, King,” he added.

“For a moment I thought you were going to lose a damn good pilot, Mr. Tennant,” said Franklin Cross sharply. He seemed thinner, more insignificant than ever as he turned his white, wrathful face on the tall boss of the circus.

“Losing a pilot is all in the game, Frank,” King Horn interposed, flashing his quick smile upon his ruffled friend. “Nobody’d kick about one less—the sky is crawling with ’em.”

King handed over the fire extinguisher to a mechanic.

“She isn’t apt to flame up now,” he told the man. Nodding to the others, he added: “I’ll be moving up to the shack to get Miss Lyle to put some soothing sirup on this scratch.”

“I’ll go with you,” Franklin Cross declared.

King Horn laughed quietly as they walked together through the crowd on the edge of the field. He was paying no attention to the stares and sporadic cheering that greeted him.

“Thought you had to get to the office to write my obit?” he prodded Cross.

The aviation editor of the Era turned very red. He struck out vigorously with his stick at a dandelion.

“That will wait now,” he said. “I guess you’re good for the day, since you’ve come through a crash.”

“Thanks for the respite,” said King Horn politely. “I certainly appreciate the way you hang around the Tennant outfit just to do press-agent work for me. That’s what you do hang around for, isn’t it, Frank?”

Franklin Cross, still very red in the face, consigned the other man to the conventional place and switched more mercilessly than ever at the grass. As they drew near the small operations office that cowered beside one of the big hangars, he stopped suddenly, his eyes fixed upon the doorway.

Lyle Tennant was standing there. Her hands were hidden behind her back, but Cross could tell by tiny, jerky movements of her arms that they were intertwining and clutching at each other. Her lips were compressed and her face was no less pale than the white throat revealed by the small V of her dress. But all this seemed to accentuate her fragile beauty. Her eyes, the blue, scintillant eyes that Franklin Cross had studied so earnestly since the Tennant circus leased this field, were not upon him, but upon King Horn.

“Here I am again, Lyle!” King greeted her cheerily. “I’ve bust out in a new place—left arm. Are you all out of iodine and sympathy?”

“I’ll wait here,” Cross muttered and veered toward the corner of the hangar.

“Come in,” Lyle Tennant said in an even voice to King.

Inside the cramped little office the girl made him sit down in a chair beside the desk. Silently she set about cleaning the long, shallow wound.

King Horn found himself oppressed by her wordlessness. He realized that it had been some time since she had last urged him to be more careful.

“This really wasn’t my fault,” he explained, with a laugh that didn’t sound right even in his own ears. “I was all through the stunt stuff when I cracked.”

“I saw what happened,” Lyle Tennant said. She bent closer over his arm with her cotton swab. “I saw the whole flight.”

King Horn moved uneasily. Of course, he had been pushing the ship a bit that day.

“That confounded kid!” he grumbled unconvincingly. His eyes rested upon the back of her neck, with its tendrils of curly, fair hair.

Lyle Tennant worked on. Her fingers were cool—very cool—on his arm. She used the swab gently but the iodine stung like a tongue of flame.

In silence she bound up the arm. The cut jumped from the forearm to the bulge of the biceps, so she made two bandages of it, leaving his elbow free.

“If you’ll wait a moment I’ll sew up your sleeve,” she said tonelessly.

“Thanks, Lyle,” he said, as she finished knitting the bandage. He fumbled at the torn shirt. “Never mind this. I’ve got some other shirts. If I keep on cracking ’em up like this your dad will run out of planes before I run out of shirts.” He grinned at her hopefully, alert for the first symptoms of an answering smile in the corners of her mouth.

Suddenly Lyle Tennant flung the roll of bandage onto the desk. Her eyes raised suddenly to meet his. They blazed at him as she lifted her hands in a single gesture of despair.

“Oh, I can stand a fool so much better than a man who plays the fool!” she exclaimed. She dropped into the chair that he had sat in and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with sudden, uncontrollable sobs.

Startled, utterly bewildered, King Horn stared at her. She looked so much smaller than usual in that attitude of complete abandonment to grief. He touched her on the shoulder feebly, humbly. “Lyle,” he muttered. “Lyle!”

“Go away!” she gasped, recoiling from his fingers. “Go away!” She covered her face in her arms on the desk and continued to weep.

Every word, every frantic effort King Horn made to soothe her merely intensified her grief and his alarm. Finally, in response to one of those choked commands, he rushed out of the office. Unseeingly he passed Frank Cross at the corner of the hangar, pushed through the crowd and made for the road. He walked down the concrete much more dazed than he had been when the ship had cracked up.

Obviously this required thinking out, and yet he didn’t seem to be able to think, except in snatches. Was he in love with Lyle Tennant? Certainly not. He saw her nearly every day and enjoyed seeing her, and felt vaguely uneasy when she did not come to the field. But that wasn’t love—it couldn’t be.

Was she in love with him? That was absurd. She was fond of him, of course, just as he was fond of her. Theirs was a pleasant companionship in the rough and not always pleasant business of working for a flying circus. Probably it was just the shock of his crash that had brought from her that emotional outburst.

He reflected that she had called him a fool; then he remembered that she had not. She had said that she could stand fools better than she could stand men who played the fool. Played the fool! Well, in a way that was just. He hadn’t thought of it in that way, but certainly a man who could fly a ship with the best of them was a fool when he flew like a crazy kid or a drunken sot. And yet, he had been the exhibition pilot for this circus not for the applause or the notoriety or the money in it, but simply because none of the other pilots were so adept at the stick or in the least eager for the job. He understood their viewpoint and sympathized with it. They preferred the dull round of passenger carrying; he had been willing enough to sling a ship around a bit to attract a crowd and win the circus a decent notice in the newspapers.

“I guess lately I’ve been sort of reckless,” he muttered. “Since we leased this field—since Frank Cross and the other newspaper men have been doing that stuff about me being the Ace of Deuces—the ‘King of Crashers’—well, I guess I must have been trying to outdo myself.”

He nodded his head. “A man can’t compete against himself and win,” he reasoned. “That way the flying gets wilder every day. Then some time gravity steps on you or you get a puff of wind when you aren’t wanting a puff, and you lose.”

He thought some more. Most—in fact, about all—the circus stunt pilots, wing walkers and crowd catchers of every sort that he knew were avid for admiration, applause, hero worship. That was what kept them going—the sort of stuff about defying death that Frank Cross wrote about him.

“Can’t say I’m crazy about having a crowd’s eyes pop out as if they were on sticks at the sight of me,” he told himself. “And I certainly don’t get anything but sort of an ashamed feeling out of reading about myself in the newspapers. What am I doing this stuff for, anyhow? To please Walt Tennant and the rest of the bunch, I guess.”

He swung around suddenly and headed rapidly for the field again. “When little Lyle gets as upset about me as all that, then to hell with what the rest of ’em want!” he growled. A surge of tenderness swept over him. Lyle! What would the Tennant circus —the rest of the world—be without Lyle? Nothing! He had seen so much of her that he had not realized how much she meant in his life.

“I’m in love with her—in love!” he muttered. “I’ve been in love with Lyle a long, long time. And—maybe she’s in love with me! What a dumb fool I am!”

For King Horn the time to do things was always now. He broke into a run. Overhead, the ships of the circus were circling on ten-minute hops. Sam Smith had made it plain to the spectators that these pilots, unlike King Horn, were safe and sane.

Back at the field, King cut a straight line through the crowd to the office. But the little room where he had left Lyle was empty. The roll of bandage was still on the desk. The sight of it made King feel strange. He laid a hand gently on the arm she had bound up.

King sought her on the field, but she was not there. Walt Tennant was, however. The boss of the circus stood just inside the ropes, slowly chewing an unlit cigar. He kept a keen eye upon the knot of waiting customers who had already bought tickets for flights, but he did not fail to see King Horn as the stunt pilot walked toward him.

“Fixed up?” he asked, glancing at King’s arm.

“Sure. Look here, Walt—I’m quitting.”

Walt Tennant transferred all his attention to his pilot.

“You? What for? Somebody been telling you that flying’s dangerous?”

“My kind of flying—yes. I’m quitting the rough stuff, Walt. How about a job carrying passengers?”

Tennant laughed. “I’ll bet Lyle’s been talking to you.”

King Horn ignored this and looked away in some resentment when Tennant’s keen eyes probed his face. He didn’t want to talk about Lyle to anyone—not even to her own father.

“D’you think you could put me on carrying passengers?” he repeated.

Walt Tennant continued to appraise the younger man. “You?” he said at last. “You carry passengers!”

King Horn looked at his employer, puzzled by his tone.

“Why not?” he asked. “You’re not trying to tell me you think I’m a poor pilot, are you?”

Walt Tennant clapped King suddenly on the back.

“The best in the world!” he declared heartily. “The best—bar none, otherwise you’d have killed yourself in a crash long ago instead of just cracking up a few ships.”

“Well⸺” King paused questionings.

“How could I give you a job as a regular pilot when your friend Cross and these other newspaper men have got you labeled all over the country as the craziest, crashingest pilot in the game?” Walt Tennant demanded. “How many customers would come near this circus if they thought they might draw you to take ’em for a ride? You—a man that’s crashed or cracked thirteen ships! How long would I have a circus, do you suppose?”

King Horn was stunned by this volley of questions. He had never doubted his own ability as a pilot and none of the other airmen, he knew, had ever denied his skill at the stick. He had proved that often enough and in ways that no other pilot would follow. But the public—he saw Tennant’s point.

His reputation had not only pressed him into taking more and more risks every day. It had also cut him off from the chance of earning a living in any other way than by continuing to take risks. He was a pilot apart—a specialist in the air who was being pushed steadily toward death by his specialty. There was no job for him with the Tennant circus but the job of flying fool.

And right now, he realized, he needed a job more than he had ever needed one before. Unless Lyle put up an overwhelming defense, she was going to marry him. But she wasn’t going to marry him while he was still a crasher. He’d see to that and so—he grinned rather ruefully to himself—would she.

“I understand how you’re placed, Walt,” he said to the boss of the circus and contrived to smile as he said it. “No hard feelings about my quitting suddenly, I hope?”

Walt Tennant laughed. “I always figured you’d quit sudden—one way or another,” he said. “If I can’t keep you, I can’t. And anyhow, a young fellow that sort of fancies the way he throws a ship around has been plaguing me for a job.”

King Horn flushed at that last sentence. He did not notice that Tennant was surveying him keenly from under his thick, black eyebrows.

“It’s easy to fill a fool’s job, I guess,” King said slowly. “They’re sort of plentiful. Well, see you later, Walt.”

“So long,” Tennant replied. “Any time you change your mind, King⸺ There’s nobody that can throw thrills and chills into a crowd like you.”

King Horn took another turn about the edge of the field, just to make sure that Lyle had really gone. While he searched he came upon Franklin Cross glumly punching holes in the ground with his stick.

“Frank,” King Horn greeted him grasping him by the arm, “please forget about this last crash of mine, will you? And get those other reporters to drop it, too, if you can. I’m through being a fool.”

Cross looked up. The aviation editor’s thin face was full of lines—lines that made it rather harsh and old.

“What made you decide that?” he asked.

King Horn remembered that less than half an hour ago he had twitted the newspaper man for spending time about the field so that he could see Lyle. It had seemed funny to him, then. Half an hour! And now he was in love—had realized he was in love—with Lyle. That made him Frank Cross’ rival.

“Lyle did,” he said frankly. “She called me worse than a fool. And—well, I found out somehow that I cared about what she thought of me.”

Cross nodded. “All right,” he said emotionlessly. “I understand. I can’t suppress your crash. Thousands of people saw it. You’re noted for that sort of thing. It’s news. Can’t suppress it. But I’ll say you’ve quit.”

Syd Scoggins, second in command of the circus, and a flying man himself, came up to them.

“King’s quit, Scoggins,” Franklin Cross told him.

“Quit!” Scoggins repeated. He shook his head at King. “That’s good. I was thinkin’ of borrowing a gun and shootin’ you full of holes, King, just to save your life. You’ve been headed for hell in a hurry quite a while, now.”

“All I’m headed for now is a regular piloting job,” King Horn said. “Know of any?”

Scoggins shook his head. “Not for you,” he said. “Nobody who’d ever read a newspaper would trust you to push a baby carriage full o’ bricks across a quiet street, let alone flyin’.”

King Horn nodded somberly. “That’s what I’ve been finding out—suddenly, Syd,” he said. “But I’ve got to get a job, somehow. And I’m not good, for anything but flying.”

He stared across the field at a ship gliding in for a landing.

“I’ve got to get a job, somehow,” he said again, rather desperately. “I’ve got to!”

“Sorry for what I’ve done to spoil things by writing those wild-eyed stories about you,” Frank Cross muttered. He had gone back to prodding the ground with his stick.

“I didn’t mind ’em—they helped the circus. But things are different now. And I’ve got to—”

Scoggins, who had been thinking hard, nodded toward the huge field that lay to northward of them.

“Try the Grand Trunk Airway,” he suggested, though his voice was not hopeful. “They’re just startin’ in—lots of cash an’ no sense. My brother Nat’s got a job with ’em—a guy named Winship, old enough to ha’ promoted horse cars, give it to him. Nat’s a God-awful pilot but he looks like one and he’s put in a lot of hours.”

“Winship’s a big man in Wall Street,” Cross commented. “He’s just been bitten by the flying bug, like a lot of them down there, and he’s running things himself.”

“Of course—they prob’ly ha’ heard of you, King,” Scoggins said haltingly.

“They probably have,” King Horn agreed. “Well—thanks, anyhow.”

He smiled at them, jerked a hand in farewell and strode away. Since he needed a job, now was the time to go after it. He caught a taxi and drove to the field which the Grand Trunk Airway had leased. There was nobody around the hangars but three disgruntled mechs.

“The big boss will be down for a hop tomorrow,” one grease monkey told him. “Nothin’ doing around here today. No orders or nothin’. We only got one ship anyhow—a three-motor job—an’ no organization. This here airway is hind end to.”

That afternoon King tried another barnstorming circus, two air schools, a plane-building company and an outfit that did a growing aerial-taxi business. Everybody was glad to see King Horn. They had cigarettes and conversation for him, but no job. That night he went to see Lyle Tennant at the little hotel near Garden City where she stayed with her father. She was out. At least he was told that she was out.

In the morning in his boarding house King looked at the Sunday Era. His exploit of the previous afternoon was on the first page:

KING HORN CRASHES THIRTEENTH AIRPLANE
TO SAVE SPECTATORS

Aerial “Deuce” Wrecks Ship at End of Wild Flight

SLIGHTLY INJURED

All Through with Stunts, He Asserts.

King Horn is through. Rising from the wreckage of his thirteenth crashed plane yesterday afternoon at the Long Island field where the Tennant Circus is operating, King Horn announced that never again would he tempt death.

The pilot, whose whirlwind flying has won for him among airmen the title of “Ace of Deuces,” had survived a stunt flight that turned hard-boiled brother pilots pale as lilies. Then, just as he was about to land, a boy with a camera ran into the path of his machine. In saving the boy and some spectators who rushed after the lad, Horn was forced to wreck the plane in an effort⸺

The story went on and on, and recounted former exploits. King dropped the newspaper to the floor in disgust. Then he picked it up again, and read it through. Franklin Cross had kept his promise to announce his retirement, but the story he wrote was a story of recklessness and folly. It was a just story, King conceded even while he frowned at it. Cross was playing fair. The story wasn’t wrong; it was King Horn that was wrong. He read the other bits of news of Long Island flying activities with careful concentration.

After that he arrayed himself with great care in what is generally considered the conventional attire of a civilian aviator. He wore his only pair of whipcord knickers, with high Cordovan boots, a gray-flannel shirt and a leather coat. It was the first time in a long while that he had been so perfectly habilitated.

He worked grimly on the details of his attire. Looks had become important. He had tried the smaller air outfits and failed; now he must tackle the larger companies—the gilt-edged concerns that carried on a transport business, with mail contracts and regular routes. It was Sunday, of course, but there was plenty of action on Long Island even on Sundays during the summer. For example, Winship, the boss of the Grand Trunk Airway, was to be down.

He decided to try the Grand Trunk first. There were jobs there to be filled, anyhow, and he felt that he needed a job so badly that it would take a lot of refusing to keep him away from it.

When his taxi stopped at the spacious field leased by the new company, he heard the throb of motors turning at idling speed. The great three-motored monoplane was out on the line in front of one of the hangars. Its broad wing glistened like the path of the sun on smooth water. King Horn eyed the ship respectfully but wistfully. Then he forgot all about it.

There were, besides the fussing mechanics, four people standing in front of the ship. Two of these were Franklin Cross and Lyle Tennant. They were together.

“Maybe I don’t need that job so badly after all,” King muttered to himself. His heart was jumping.

As he walked toward them, Lyle Tennant saw him coming. And quite suddenly, as her eyes spoke to him and his eyes spoke to her, King Horn realized that he did need the job. She knew—and he knew.

Lyle came toward him, and Franklin Cross came with her. There was no greeting.

“That’s Winship talking to Scoggins, the pilot,” Cross said rapidly. “Come over with us and let him get a squint at you in that rig.”

“Frank—Frank’s helping, King,” Lyle murmured.

“Wait and see,” the aviation editor of the Era retorted.

Winship was a tall, spare old man. In his pale, gaunt face his eyes seemed incongruously large and black. He was carefully adjusting a flying helmet while he catechized Nat Scoggins, Syd’s brother. Scoggins was not happy. He was answering volubly, but his eyes were uneasily dwelling upon his employer, who stood within three feet of one of the whirring wing propellers.

As King Horn, in his impeccable flying kit, approached, Winship stopped talking and peered at him with keen interest.

“A friend of mine—one of the best pilots in the business, Mr. Winship,” Franklin Cross said.

“Hope I’m not intruding, sir,” said King Horn politely as Winship nodded. He smiled at the nervous pilot. “Hello, Nat.”

Nat Scoggins grinned back, a trifle sheepishly.

“’Lo,” he said.

“You ought to wear that type of knickers, Scoggins,” declared Mr. Winship suddenly. “It is very smart.”

“I can fly withou⸺ Yes, sir,” Scoggins said.

Mr. Winship turned to King Horn with a benevolent smile.

“I am sorry I cannot ask you and Miss—ah—the young lady to join us on this flight over New York, but with Mr. Cross the ship is full,” he said. He waved a hand back toward the fuselage. “I am giving my board of directors a baptism of air.”

King Horn looked toward the cabin of the ship. Through the windows he caught a glimpse of several heads, white, grizzled or bald, bobbing about a trifle apprehensively. One, like Winship, sported an unnecessary helmet.

King smiled reminiscently at Winship’s elaborate regrets. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been over New York.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said Mr. Winship. “We old-timers are children at all this.” As if to prove it, he cinched on his helmet, turned and gravely walked directly toward the twirling, half-visible propeller.

With a howl Scoggins jumped for him. King Horn jumped, too, and faster. Together they pulled the startled financier away from the man-killing club.

“What—what” stammered Winship. Then he stopped. The unfortunate Scoggins, in voiceless agony, was bent over and walking a few steps this way and that. His left hand clutched his right. His teeth were clenched and his face contorted in agony. The idling prop had tapped him on the arm.

“Broken!” he gritted. “Broken!”

Lyle went to him, and he permitted her to touch his arm. “It is broken; we must find a doctor,” she said. Her voice was full of pity. “Hold it like that.”

Scoggins supported his arm. His self-possession came back to him. He turned to Winship.

“Can’t fly for a while,” he said tersely. “Sorry.”

“You must have my car,” the old man replied. “Smithers will take you to Garden City.” He motioned to his chauffeur, who stood at a discreet distance beside the hangar. “I appreciate what you have done for me; you’ll not regret it, young man. Meanwhile, full pay during your disability.”

Scoggins, brusquely declining offers of company, moved toward the car. As he passed King, he let his left eyelid flutter. It was apparent that Mr. Scoggins had recovered from the jolt of the fracture and was now privately rejoicing that he did not have to take the impressive board of directors on the flight over the city.

The door of the plane opened and one of the uneasy directors looked out at Winship.

“A mishap,” the old man reported. “I am afraid that⸺”

He turned suddenly to King Horn.

“You are a pilot; are you—ah⸺”

He switched his gaze suddenly to Franklin Cross.

“He’s one of the best in the business,” the aviation editor assured Winship. “I’ll be delighted to ride with him, for one, if you intend to carry on.”

“Glad to take you over, if you want,” King Horn said. His heart was thumping, but he kept his voice as casual as he could. “You understand I’m not gunning for Nat Scoggins’ job.”

Winship looked at him again. Obviously this young man was a pilot. He certainly looked like one and the aviation editor of the Era said that he was a good one. Moreover, he had acted quickly in the recent emergency—even more quickly than Scoggins, who had been nearer to him.

“We will carry on,” Winship decided. “That’s what men do in aviation—carry on.”

“Right!” said King Horn. “’By, Lyle.” He looked at her. “I’ll be back.”

He scrambled aboard in a hurry, lest Winship should ask his name. From behind, the nervous board of directors looked at him apprehensively as he slipped into one of the control seats in the open operating cockpit.

King Horn looked over his instrument board while Winship took his seat in the cabin and Franklin Cross came forward and sat in the other pilot’s seat, beside him.

“D’you understand all these dinguses?” Cross asked, a trifle nervously, as he saw the array of instruments.

“Certainly,” King Horn answered. “Don’t need most of ’em except for flying blind through a fog or night.” He leaned over and caught the eye of the nearest mechanic.

“All set, sir,” said the young mech promptly.

King Horn opened his throttles at once. If these old birds were kept waiting much longer he was confident some of them would blow up or melt away.

With the three motors hitting in concert he held the ship on the ground until he had something more than flying speed. Then he eased it off and, still flying straight upwind, went after altitude. There was no need to circle the field; for already another field was under his wheels. He decided it would be safer—since he was now playing safe—to get some air under this ship before he tried turns.

Franklin Cross was peering backward over the side.

“There’s a man back there waving at us,” he reported uneasily.

“It’s either fleas, St. Vitus or we’ve left a member of the board behind,” King Horn answered. “The mech gave me the ‘all set’ and the motors are ticking over fine. Take a look at our wheels, though.”

Cross looked over the side. “They’re all right,” he reported. He turned backward again. “Lyle has left. Maybe she’s in a car that’s heading for Tennant’s field at quite a clip.”

King Horn nodded. He was enjoying himself. After the obsolete wrecks he had been coaxing and hurling through the air, it was like sitting on a comet to ride this new ship. He had power—terrific power—at his fingertips, and the ship rode the infrequent puffs like a sentient thing. He found the stabilizer adjustment and moved the crank a trifle, until she roared along with no pressure needed on the wheel.

The city, an unconvincing array of tiny red buildings and black roofs, with here and there an eruption of newer white towers and spires to break the monotony, floated into sight below them. Even at the comparatively low elevation of two thousand feet it didn’t look at all like the mighty metropolis or man-crushing monster that may be read of in books. In fact, when King Horn looked at it, it reminded him of warts.

He swung northwest, hopping over the East River near College Point, crossed the broad and unimpressive Bronx and swept up the Hudson a few miles to give his passengers a look at the Palisades. Then, clinging to the smoother air above the river, he came southward again. These birds, he knew, would like a close view of the financial section, so that they could bore their friends about it next day.

“It don’t do to let ’em see that Wall Street’s no bigger than a flyspeck,” King shouted to Cross. “I’ll have to come down to where these buildings size up a bit.”

The aviation editor nodded.

King Horn throttled down and put the ship into an easy glide. One of his automatic glances around the sky suddenly encountered something more than vacancy—a ship coming from Long Island. Its wings were knifelike, for it was headed straight toward them.

Absorbed in his maneuvers about the lower end of Manhattan, King Horn gave the other ship only cursory attention. Suddenly, as they circled above the Woolworth tower, Cross touched him on the arm.

The other ship was almost above them and circling with them. It was a black-and-white biplane—King recognized it instantly as one of Tennant’s circus; then, with narrowed eyes, he noted that it was the ship that Syd Scoggins, Tennant’s lieutenant, usually flew. He stared hard at the figure in the forward cockpit. Undoubtedly that girl was Lyle Tennant.

Syd Scoggins was waving vigorously and closing in on them. Frowning, King Horn waved back. Syd Scoggins was not one to go in for hand waving without cause.

In answer to King’s upraised hand Lyle, in the front cockpit, lowered something over the side of the biplane—a bulky thing that seemed to tax her strength.

It was a five-gallon gasoline can, and by the way it hung in the wind at the end of the rope, it was a full can.

King Horn’s eyes leaped to an instrument beside his seat that he had not thus far consulted—the gasoline manifold installation, with two visible-type fuel gauges. They told him at a glance that one tank in the big wing above him was empty and the other had in it about two gallons of gas—enough for about three minutes more in the air.

The mechanics at the Grand Trunk Airway field had sent him away with almost empty tanks. Another hand touched his shoulder. He looked around. Mr. Winship had left his seat and come forward.

“I—that other machine reminds me that we were waiting for the gasoline tank wagon when—when the accident occurred,” he said.

“Thanks,” said King Horn, somewhat grimly. “Please go back and sit down. Keep your friends sitting down, too.”

He encountered Cross’ agitated eyes. “Th-that mechanic certainly t-told you the ship was all set,” the aviation editor stammered. “I—I remember now—-”

He glanced distrustfully over the side. The city looked much more solid and stony than it had before.

King Horn shook his head. “It’s up to me,” he said tersely. “I was too quick getting away before somebody blurted out my name.” He was already throttling down and heading the ship into the south wind, toward the bay. He adjusted the stabilizer control for a flat glide, with idling engines.

As he prepared, he was wishing that he had aboard no cargo of old men, too brittle-boned to stand a rough, forced landing and too likely to drown or to catch pneumonia if he picked the bay. A mere mishap for youth would be a certain tragedy for them. Unless⸺

Glancing up at the biplane, which was behind the bigger ship. King Horn motioned Syd Scoggins to come on.

“Look here,” King said rapidly to Franklin Cross. “I know you’re not a pilot, but now’s a healthy time to learn. Sit at that wheel. If she dives pull the wheel an inch or two toward you; If she shows less speed on that air-speed meter than is there now, push the wheel away a bit. That’s all. If she should sideslip—never mind that. Remember! Dive—pull! Stall—push! Get it?”

Franklin Cross nodded. His tongue was busy moistening his lips.

King Horn stood up. “If I go—let her glide as she is,” he said.

The wind tugged at his leather jacket and drummed upon the earflaps of his helmet. He paid no heed. All his attention was upon the biplane above. The tip of Manhattan Island drifted under them.

The circus ship drew closer overhead. Under it, swinging in the puffy air above the city, dangled the five-gallon can of gas. King Horn pulled out his pocket knife, opened it and gripped it between his teeth. He waved again and the biplane, gaining slowly on the idling monoplane, drew down so close that the heavy can seemed almost to menace the ship below it.

King Horn suddenly jumped upon his seat, planted one foot on the rim of the cockpit and scrambled up onto the thick wing of the monoplane. There was not a single grip for hands and feet on the top of that rounded and sloping plane, but King Horn, crouching on hands and knees, transferred his knife to his right hand and leaned into the wind and waved Scoggins on again.

“Come on!” he muttered. “Pass me that gas!”

The biplane dipped lower and the bulky can swung like a giant pendulum toward King Horn. He leaped to his feet and met the sweep of the can with his chest. His left hand whipped around it while his right slashed savagely at the rope that bound it to the biplane. He felt his toes lifting on the wing.

An instant later he was flat on the plane with the can clutched in his arms. He looked up, as the biplane veered hastily away from the giant ship down below.

Lyle Tennant was leaning far over the edge of her cockpit with her frightened eyes upon him. He grinned up at her reassuringly. She essayed an answering smile; then with a mighty effort lifted another can into his view. King Horn nodded. His hands were already unscrewing the cap of one of the wing tanks. He looked down again, into his own control cockpit.

Franklin Cross sat there, rigid, immovable. His hands rested upon the wheel as if they held a very fragile egg. The ship was still in the glide. The motors still turned on the last of the gas. The water of the bay was much closer than it had been before.

“Doing fine!” King Horn shouted at the aviation editor. “Once more and we’re set!”

He upended the can and sent the five gallons of gasoline gushing into the gravity tank. Five gallons—good for seven and a half minutes’ time at cruising speed!

“Just once more, Lyle!” he muttered.

The biplane was drawing in again. King dropped the empty can. It was whisked off the wing by the ceaseless blast of air and spun astern, dwindling to nothingness as it fell.

King steadied himself for another effort. Again Syd Scoggins jockeyed the biplane closer. Again King’s eyes followed unwinkingly the sway and jerk of the suspended can. Then the vagary of the wind and a touch of the biplane’s throttle sent it suddenly swooping toward him.

Facing backward, he met the swinging can with his chest again. But this time it was coming like a projectile. It thudded on his ribs and he felt the wing disappear beneath his feet. For an instant, with both desperate hands gripping the can, he was in free air. Then, with a crash, he fell upon something solid.

He writhed about; found that the can had knocked him off the wing into the cockpit. He had landed half upon Cross and half on the empty seat. The can was still there. Lyle had cut the rope at her end. If the can had swung a bit harder or if it had not been released it would have knocked him overboard or into the propeller of the center engine.

But it hadn’t. King pulled himself up. The ship was diving earthward now; his fall had flung Cross against the wheel. King grabbed the other wheel and pulled it back.

The water of the bay seemed leaping upward, catching at their wheels, but the ship’s nose raised and the defeated bay dropped away below them. King slipped into the seat, revivified the congealed Cross with a triumphant smile and went after altitude.

With a thousand feet under them, he gave Cross the wheel again, mounted the wing and poured the other can into the tank.

Then he turned the plane toward Long Island and safety. The biplane winged on ahead. King followed slowly. He had to stretch that gas and slow speed was the only way to do it. Once, remembering his passengers, he turned around to smile reassuringly into the cabin where the board of directors sat. One of them was unconscious; two others ministered to him, but Mr. Winship met King’s eye.

The dignified financier shook hands with himself in most fervent pantomime. King Horn looked sideways at the still blanched countenance of Franklin Cross. Cross had been game enough in the pinch but now he was not far from fainting.

“This transport business is great stuff,” King Horn confided, “but I don’t know that my nerves will stand it.”

“Great work,” Cross said with a shiver.

King Horn grinned. “Sinful recklessness,” he declared. “I’d have risked a forced landing if I’d still been in the stunt business.”

“You aren’t in the stunt business.”

“Think the old man will give me a job?”

Franklin Cross nodded stiffly.

“He will tomorrow, if he doesn’t today,” he said.

“You mean—we’d better have an ambulance handy when he hears who he’s been flying with?” King asked.

“Not just that,” Cross answered. His eyes glistened. He seemed to be thinking about something.

At the field Lyle was waiting—a pale-lipped, trembling Lyle in need of comfort and reassurance.

It was not until the next day that King Horn understood what Cross’ reticence had meant. King and Lyle were very busy talking to each other the rest of that Sunday, nor did King read the morning newspapers next day before seeking out Lyle again.

Consequently it was the thin little aviation editor who brought the Era’s story to King Horn’s attention. Swinging his stick with a casual air, Franklin Cross walked across Tennant’s field and bowed with a certain awkwardness before Lyle.

“My wedding present,” he mumbled and handed her a paper. “And my reparation for the other stories,” he added, looking at King. Then he walked away across the field, trying to swing his stick with a casual air.

There was in the Era a story—a front-page story. But it was not about the Ace of Deuces—the wild man of the air. It was how Winship, the great financier and keen judge of men had entrusted his life and his associates’ lives to an unknown pilot merely on his looks.

It told of a mechanic’s blunder and the pilot’s desperate and successful fight to save his passengers in the closed cabin from death by a crash landing or by drowning in the bay.

And it concluded:

The man who stood upright upon the wing of a pilotless plane and snatched fuel from the sky, saving lives with a mixture of courage and skill that would be hard to find even among transport pilots, was King Horn. Horn has crashed thirteen ships without injuring or endangering anyone but himself. He was keeping his record unstained.

There was no further question of King Horn’s future as a transport pilot.

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 7, 1929 issue of The Popular Magazine.

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Table of Contents

- THE AIR SPLASHER

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE