# The Popular Magazine/Volume 74/Number 1/'Slim' Learns Something

Extracted from Popular magazine, 1924 Oct 20, pp. 96–111.
“Slim” Learns Something
By Thomson Burtis
An airman tells the whole truth. The story of a high adventure and a near-tragedy on the Mexican border.
The United States, as some sapient surmiser has observed, is a large country, and full of people. Around a hundred and twenty million, more or less. Inasmuch as all but a hundred or so of these inhabitants are unacquainted with me, you may be one of the majority. Therefore, I hope you'll pardon me if I introduce myself before diving into this yarn of battle, murder and sudden death, mixed with charming damsels, dashing heroes, and deeds of derring do.
I want to tell it, because I got most of the public credit, and didn't deserve it. That was principally because I have the onerous job of upholding two shiny silver bars, one on each shoulder, whereas my illustrious colleague in the uproar, Albert Harburg, is a sergeant. I am fully aware of the fact that telling the truth is often a mistake—it holds one down too much. But in this case, it seems as though I can't dodge it.
My name is Evans—John Evans—usually called “Slim.” My present method of making a living consists in flying De Haviland airplanes for the army air service up and down the Rio Grande, on the border patrol. I've always been called Slim, and I suspect that the reason for it is that I'm six feet four inches tall, and constructed in a peculiar manner. The only bulge which spoils the straight-line effect from head to toe is my Adam's apple, an acrobatic appendage which climbs up and down my neck like a monkey on a stick.
I didn't plan to go too far with this truthtelling, but I might as well make it an orgy, now that I've started. I am not a candidate for screen honors, nor easy on the eyes, which disqualifies me as a hero right away. I think automobile manufacturers got the idea for balloon tires from my oversize feet, and my nose—there, gentlemen, is an awesome appendage which makes me unique among my fellows. It is truly a prodigious proboscis, worthy a place beside the famous feature of Cyrano de Bergerac. My father, just before he died, let me in on the fact that I was not the answer to a maiden's prayer. I was sixteen, and he caught me in front of a mirror preparing to call on the charmer with whom I was in love. She was a forty-year-old waitress in the railroad restaurant, built on opulent lines. Dad observed me greasing my hair, and told me to lay off.
“Don't make any bets on your looks, Johnny,” he told me cruelly. “There's no sense in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If you had your nose full of nickels, you could retire—so cultivate your inward virtues.”
With this fatherly advice ringing in my ears, I have never been under any illusions regarding my fatal beauty. After he died I drifted around—cooked for a cow outfit in Utah, hoboed, got in the Mexican-border trouble as a private, blackjacked my way into the air service during the war by the aid of an uncle of mine who was a senator, et cetera. I had some fun in France—got credit for one plane I didn't get and got one Hun I didn't get credit for, leaving me a net of one boche. I wasn't up there long—I fought the war in Paris mainly. After getting back to this country I drifted from field to field, and ended up at McMullen, Texas, the eastern terminal of the border patrol. The border patrol flies two trips a day, covering the Mexican border from Brownsville to San Diego, and has considerable fun with the smugglers, outlaws, rustlers and other gents who infest that country.
On this particular balmy afternoon in April I felt like the change of a nickel. As was the daily custom of the McMullen flight, all the loose flyers and observers were gathered on the porch of the recreation building, in various attitudes of ease and laziness, talking about nothing of importance. I had a hangover—and a patrol to make. The night before I had escorted Major Searles, our dried-up little flight surgeon, over to Matamoras, Mexico, for an evening of wassail and debauch. Sheriff Bill Trowbridge was along, likewise. We fed the little medico a bit too much of that dynamite they sell, and he went hog wild. He once played the tuba in a high-school band, and still cherishes the thought that he has the makings of the world's champion tuba tooter. He insisted on joining the band in one joint, and ended up by mistaking the reflection of Trowbridge's Ford in a store window for the real car and breaking said window trying to climb into the boat. It was a great night but, to use one of my favorite expressions, I felt that afternoon as though I was sliding rapidly down the balustrade of life into the ash can of eternity.
The porch faced the small, sandy airdrome, which was flanked to east and west by corrugated iron hangars. My De Haviland was being warmed up on the line in front of the eastern hangars under the careful hand of Sergeant Albert Harburg, chief mechanic. I was to make my two-hundred-mile trip west alone that afternoon on account of a temporary shortage of observers while “Pop” Cravath recovered from a recent wreck and George Hickman kept asking for extensions of leave.
Four or five mechanics passed along the side of the recreation building, sweating profusely in the flooding sunlight. It was hot! The McMullen section of the border makes hell sound like a summer resort.
“If that Belgian bozo don't quit runnin' me ragged I'll kick 'im back where he come from!” came a loud and raucous voice from around the corner.
It was young Frank Harlow, a private who had recently joined the outfit.
“The trusty sarge doesn't stand in so well with his minions, does he?” I remarked.
Captain Kennard, our stocky, bow-legged little C. O., chuckled.
“He makes 'em toe the line, and some of 'em hate it. I swear he makes me ashamed of myself sometimes—and as for you useless specimens, I don't see how you can hold your heads up in the presence of a man who really works!”
“Sleepy” Spears, who never wakes up until nightfall unless the sun passes behind a cloud, yawned.
“I think he's crazy,” he remarked. “Any man who really works——”
“I know what you're going to say,” Kennard interrupted. “I guess Harburg's getting along all right, though. Of course I raised him pretty fast, from buck private to line sergeant, but the old-timers respect him and the others'll come to time. You can't keep a good man down.”
“He's a whiz of a mechanic, all right,” “Tex” MacDowell admitted. “But he's a bit balmy, I believe. I was talking to him the other day, and gave vent to a few disgusted remarks about the foolishness of any man risking his neck flying over this mesquite-ridden, flyspecked, sun-baked pimple on the face of the earth, or words to that effect, and he got hurt! He thinks the border patrol is the greatest outfit in the world, and he talked about the romance of it and all that——”
“He must have been reading those magazine stories,” I told Tex.
“He reads everything,” nodded Pop Cravath, his crippled leg resting on a chair.
“Maybe Belgians are funny that way,” I said as I got up and picked up my helmet. The Liberty was roaring away wide open on the final warm-up. “I've got a notion to take Harburg along, just for company. How about it, cap'n?”
“Go ahead. He's always willing to fly, even if he is scared to death. The men know it—he doesn't try to hide it—and if we can fly his fear out of him, he may pull stronger with 'em.”
I broached the subject to Harburg, and he grabbed at the chance. He was a stocky, powerfully built chap of about thirty-five, I should say, with blond hair and a broad, clean-cut, square-jawed face which was tanned to a golden brown. I liked the man, what little I knew of him. As a mechanic he was one of these birds that can take a cracker box, some old iron and a wrench and build a ship out of it. Harburg would listen a moment to a laboring motor and then announce that the fourth wrist pin was pitted or the bushing on the third main bearing was worn out. He was an intelligent cuss—read everything. And what a hound for duty! I'd had a few talks with him, in a casual way, and I knew. When the United States, its army, navy, insular possessions or inhabitants were mentioned, you could see those blue eyes of his commence to glow. He was one man who was crazy about where he lived, all right.
While he was getting his helmet I ran up the motor to fourteen hundred revolutions a minute. The four-hundred-and-fifty-horse-power Liberty sang along as sweet as a thrush. Oil pressure, air pressure, temperature, and the million-and-one other things which have dials to tell their story were all correct. The dust rose in a cloud behind the ton-and-a-half bomber, and the mechanic on the tail leaned against the propeller blast. After Harburg got set in the back seat the wingmen pulled the blocks and helped me turn the ship around. I gave it the gun, pushed forward on the stick, and we started galloping across the sand. The air was thin, but I rocked her off the ground in time, cleared the hangars and started west.
It was a monotonous trip to Laredo, even though the air was cool at five thousand feet. The Rio Grande was a few miles south of us, and northward there was a limitless sea of gray-green mesquite which extended to the horizon. I hunched down behind the wind shield and left it to Harburg to watch for any suspicious caravans, herds of cattle, or other matters needing investigation. Anything he missed my bleary optics wouldn't catch—I was well aware of that. Occasionally I looked around at him. He was under a tremendous nervous strain and, as always, he held himself tense in his seat. He admitted that he had never gotten over his fear of being high in the air in a frail linen-and-wood ship, but nevertheless he flew at every opportunity in an effort to overcome his nausea while cantering through the ozone. He conceived it to be his duty, I presume.
I picked up the Laredo ship, which took the next three hundred miles west, and turned around. Obeying a sudden impulse, born of the monotony of the flight, I nosed down and sent the De Haviland hurtling earthward at something like a hundred and forty miles an hour. When I got close to the ground I made for the river, and started flying all the turns, keeping the ship about ten feet off the water. It kept me awake anyhow.
I know I shouldn't have done it. There was little more danger than there was in flying high, because in that country it's rarely there are any fields which are possible landing places, anyway. But a patrolman can't peer at as big a stretch of country from ten feet as he can from five thousand, and peering is our business, so to speak. However, I did it, and that's that.
I left the river very shortly, and started hedgehopping over the ground, just clearing the mesquite, dropping close to the ground over the small open fields, and zooming over the occasional isolated cabins which scared spigs occupied.
I was about two miles north of the river, and possibly a hundred miles from McMullen, when I spied a girl on a horse, galloping along a trail through scraggly mesquite. I waved at her, and she pulled up her steed and waved back. The ship, running wide open and leveled off, was making a hundred and twenty miles an hour, and the motor was bellowing away like a chorus of devils in full cry. A ship is a poor thing to flirt from.
I am not a ladies' man, but had I been a combination of Henry the Eighth, King Solomon and all the other suckers for women since Adam fell for Eve, the damsel on the ground would have speedily left my mind. The Liberty commenced to spit and miss. With that mesquite ten feet beneath me, I saw the devil waving an inviting pitchfork at me.
One bank was out completely in another minute. On the brink of the river there was a big field—and the only house in sight. I jazzed the throttle desperately, but the Liberty high-toned me. It popped and spit and snorted uselessly.
Fifty yards ahead was a long rough narrow clearing with a few odd stumps in it. I tried my best to keep the ship in the air until it got to that clearing. It was wabbling already, through lack of flying speed, but for a moment I thought I was going to make it. The edge of the chaparral was only a few feet ahead when the D. H. gave up the ghost. I nosed down in one last effort to tear through the barrier of scrubby mesquite, but I hit a snag. I could feel the drag of the limbs against the undercarriage. The tail swung around over my head, and for an instant I looked upward at the earth. The next second, as the earth and I collided, { looked at a beautiful galaxy of shooting stars. Then I checked out.
I came to, in a heap on the ground, and my first reaction was that I had sneaked into heaven by the back door and was interviewing one of the sopranos in the choir. What I facetiously refer to as my mind was only turning over at idling speed but I finally decided that angels didn't wear riding breeches. Nightgowns and angels have always been vaguely bracketed in my mind, with haloes instead of hats and harps for vanity cases.
She didn't say anything, but helped haul me out of the wreck. Evidently she had unstrapped my belt, for I was free. Struggling up with some difficulty, I saw Harburg in a heap at one side, which brought me partially to myself.
“Is he—badly hurt?” I asked her, swaying dizzily on my feet.
“Just stunned, I think, like you were,” she replied, and there was a laugh in her gray eyes. “Do you always come down that way?”
“It's not done in the best circles, but it seems to be my favorite method,” I told her.
My head was thumping from its recent attempt to knock the whole world for a mess of Mesopotamian mud turtles but nevertheless I was fully able to appreciate the young woman before me. It was the second time in my flying career, which includes wrecks from France to California and most places in between, that I had been stranded in the same county with a good-looking girl. And the first one didn't turn out so well.
As she looked at Harburg I sized her up with growing admiration. She was dressed in khaki riding breeches and flannel shirt, with a huge sombrero pulled low over wavy-brown hair. She was not beautiful exactly but she had a pair of laughing gray eyes and a wide mouth that could broadcast a slow smile. She had a small gun in a holster at her belt, and she was a competent-seeming woman. Most Texas girls are, out in the sticks. There was a lot of strength in her rather slender body, too, for she helped carry Harburg into the shade without turning a hair.
He came to immediately and looked up at her in utter surprise.
“I am sorry to have troubled you,” he said with that quaint, slightly accented Old woos speech which was a characteristic of his.
“I thought that perhaps after you waved at me you staged this for my benefit,” she laughed, fanning herself with her sombrero. “I didn't see it, but the crash scared my pony half to death. How do you feel?”
I liked her calm acceptance of the situation. Hysterics or gurgles of horror and sympathy were what I would have expected, but she was as matter-of-fact as flyers at a field would have been.
“I'm close to normal again,” I told her. “That's a fine wreck, isn't it? There isn't a piece of linen left undamaged big enough to make a handkerchief.”
“How did it happen?” she asked, still fanning herself; and suddenly it seemed to me as though those wide clear eyes were looking right through me. “Were you planning to land anyway?”
“No indeed,” I told her. “I was flying low to entertain myself. It happened because I was up ten feet and tried to dive twenty, I presume.”
“You must have landed fast,” she said, shifting her eyes to Harburg. He had been looking at her steadily, “Ordinarily it would have simply gone on its nose—am I right?”
“You seem to know quite a lot about airplanes,” I remarked.
That was a strictly technical expression she had used.
“I've seen them around in various places, and I know some aviators,” she said quickly, and her face flushed a trifle.
“May I ask whether that is the ancestral mansion, over by the river?”
“At present,” she laughed. “Why?”
“I fear that inasmuch as we're some distance from a town we'll have to beg your hospitality until the wrecking truck arrives. Have you a telephone?”
“Ye-es.”
It was said slowly, and her eyes were resting on the ground. She was not exactly cordial. Finally she looked up at me.
“Are you sure you can both walk over there?” she asked. “It's nearly two miles.”
We assured her that we could.
“I'll ride ahead then, and let dad know you're on your way. How long will it take for the truck to get here?”
“By morning,” I replied. “And we'll all be gone by noon.”
That slow sunny smile spread over her face and she swung up on her horse.
“Adios!” she called. “Take your time!”
We watched her ride breakneck through the mesquite, swaying in the saddle to avoid the low branches. She was a picture of grace and effortless skill as she disappeared through the trees.
“Well, we're in luck, even if she didn't seem pleased to death,” I told Harburg as we tramped over the sand. “I don't believe it would have killed her if we hadn't suggested visiting the house.”
“She is more beautiful even than most American girls,” Harburg said slowly. “And not so bold as some.”
“Don't fall in love, sarge,” I grinned at him. As a matter of fact, she had made a profound impression on me, as well. There was something wholesome and sweet and frank about her which I liked. “Well, we butted into her life with a bang, as it were. I don't suppose this dumb wreck will be a good thing for you, Harburg, and I'm sorry. I know you aren't keen for flying anyway——”
“It will make no difference,” he said, brushing his damp blond hair from his forehead. “Wrecks I do not mind. It is the height. Why can't I overcome that?”
The last question was asked with a sudden vicious passion which surprised me.
“Many a man is in your condition, or close to it,” I told him. “It'll leave all of a sudden.”
As we crossed that single big field which surrounded the house on three sides we got a better view of the ménage we were visiting. There was a small house, one tremendous shed, one barn, and a corral. The house was on the bank of the Rio Grande; and there were two men and the girl waiting on the small porch.
I sized them up quickly as we came closer. The older man, who was standing with one arm about her waist, was tall and thin, with a white goatee and flowing white mustache. His hawklike face was deeply tanned and his eyes were puckered below prominent white eyelashes. His face was rather fierce and forbidding, I thought, and he watched us approach with suspicion in his half-closed eyes.
The other man was a young chap of about my age—thirty—and a very arresting figure. He was tall, well built, powerful-looking. His hair was black and curly and he had a rather narrow, olive-skinned face which on first glance was about as good-looking a frontpiece as I have seen recently. His features were almost too regular, and at closer view the attractiveness of the ensemble was spoiled a bit by a rather sneering expression about the mouth.
Harburg and I strolled up to the veranda without haste. I felt a bit uncomfortable under their steady scrutiny, and was suddenly conscious of how dirty and oil grimed I was. Somehow there seemed to me to be a queer tension in the air, as though those people were waiting for something they dreaded.
I opened the ball.
“I'm sorry to impose on you, sir,” I said to the old man. “I'm afraid I'll have to ask the use of your phone, and perhaps a shakedown for the night, until the wrecking crew arrive.”
He unbent a trifle and smiled a smile which did not seem to extend to his piercing eyes.
“Certainly, suh,” he drawled. “You are border patrolmen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You—uh—did not intend to land, my daughter tells me.”
Once again that camouflaged eagerness, I thought. There was anxiety in that question, even if he did try to make it casual. I noticed the younger man's coal-black eyes fixed on me, and there was a flame in the backs of them.
“No, sir. Forced landing.”
“Did she cut out?” asked the young fellow.
“One whole bank,” I nodded.
“That's tough sledding,” he nodded, and I did not give verbal indication of my surprise at his apparent knowledge of airplane motors. “D. H., I suppose, with a Liberty motor?” he went on.
“Yes.”
The girl was still standing close to her father, her eyes flitting from him to me. There seemed to me to be a shadow in them, as though they were dark with worry.
Right then I commenced to wonder and a tiny germlet of suspicion began crawling in the back of my mind. Now please don't get me mixed up with these fiction sleuths who look at a man's vest with a magnifying glass, spot a dab of oil, learn that he enjoys tea in the afternoon and connect him with the Teapot Dome affair. I am nearly as dumb as the bird who thought the Mann Act was a male quartet, and I cannot lick five husky men while suffering from paralysis and dandruff. But I was a border patrolman, the patrol had made an enviable record against the lawbreakers on the border, these people were worried because I was in their midst, and they were living in a perfect place for some low-and-lofty, catch-as-catch-can machinations of an illegal nature. It took no intellectual prodigy to decide that there was just a dim hint that I should keep my eyes open.
I got the field on the phone and soon had the wrecking truck and crew started on its way. The old man was with me all the time and seemed to be listening closely. Likewise, he was considerably relieved when I had finished talking and he found out that the crew would arrive about dawn and be on their way home by noon. He unbent amazingly and brought out some excellent liquor while his daughter was cooking dinner. He introduced himself as Witmark, the young fellow as Deems—and his daughter's name was Margaret. He called her Peggy.
She presided at dinner in a fresh white frock, cut low in front, and her hair piled high on her head. She was an eye-filling sight, and furthermore she had cooked a stomach-filling meal. I was ashamed of my suspicions, because both Witmark and Margaret were very friendly. Possibly it was the liquor, but the old man, particularly, expanded in fine fashion. Margaret inserted a word here and there, laughed frequently, and seemed to be enjoying herself. She made us feel, then, as though it were a treat to have us there. Which was in marked contrast to her attitude at the start.
Deems said little, but ate methodically. He alone seemed still to resent our presence. Harburg, who had refused to drink, was very quiet at first. He was rather an impressive guest, in a way, and he handled himself as though to the manner born. Witmark's conversation ran largely to Mexico, where he had spent the last several years. He gave us to understand that he had gotten out of the country under duress when the revolution against Obregon started. They were living there on the border for a short time, he said, waiting for things to settle down. Harburg eventually got started, and to my surprise revealed an extensive knowledge of Mexico. Although he talked with the curious preciseness of the educated European he was an interesting conversationalist. He and Witmark, with occasional laughing interjections from Margaret, fanned along at a great rate. Here and there Harburg indicated a very wide range of reading and an accurate knowledge of all that was going on in the world. His summary of the part oil had played in the game of foreign nations in Mexico was a treat in itself. Margaret listened to him with absorbed interest, and Witmark seemed to enjoy it as well.
Finally we got started on the border patrol, and the old man had a lot to say in his flowery manner about it. “You're twentieth-century rangers, suh!” he told me. “Direct spiritual descendants of the old-time sheriffs and rangers who fought the battles of the border. It's amazin', suh, to an old man to see you boys ridin' airplanes along the Rio Grande—and doin' your job as you do!”
We talked of some of the achievements of the patrol, like Tex MacDowell's victory over Dave Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick had run the smuggling along the border for years and was strongly intrenched until Tex got him. I was truly amazed at Witmark's blistering denunciation of Fitzpatrick.
“He ruined many a man's life with his slimy underground methods of gettin' a man he could use in his clutches,” he told me, “and hangin'd be too good for him!”
When he finished his chin was quivering a bit. He had worked himself into a passion, and he subsided weakly. Margaret put her hand over his silently, as though to soothe him without using words. They seemed to understand each other perfectly.
After dinner I helped Margaret with the dishes, my job being to wipe them. Harburg and Witmark were talking on the porch, and Deems had disappeared. We kidded back and forth and she seemed to get a lot of laughs from my conversation anent some of the funny things that happen in the air service. We got real friendly, and I admit that it was mighty pleasant to be around her. She didn't flirt or try to put on any dog or cheap stuff of that kind. She was just natural and taught me what real sport swabbing plates with a towel can be.
I strolled into the small shabbily furnished sitting room, while she cleaned the sink or did some other necessary duty connected with making a kitchen prophylactic, and idly picked up an old copy of the Bible which lay on a table. On the flyleaf there was written the name, “Judson Stanton.” And on a page set aside for the notation of births, marriages and deaths, was the entry, “Margaret Stanton, born October 22, 1899.”
As I laid it down I was busy wondering whether my host had deliberately given me an assumed name. As though some ironic member of the high gods was lazily pulling strings to give himself a laugh, I heard the noise of a horse's thudding hoofs outside, and then Deems' rather harsh voice.
“He's a little lame, Mr. St—Witmark—but nothing serious. Id better use the black to-morrow, though.”
He had started to call the old man by some name which sounded as though it might be Stanton.
Margaret came into the room, and stood in the doorway leading to the porch.
“What a glorious night!” she said, and stretched her arms out luxuriously.
It was, with a full moon to garnish it. I suggested a walk, she countered, like a Texas girl, with a ride, and so we compromised by mounting two wiry cow ponies and making off. We were gone two hours, and I'll swear I don't know what we talked about. I guess I did most of the talking—I must have, or the time wouldn't have flown by so fast, nor would I have forgotten so completely everything but the girl beside me. Almost any girl understands that if she lets a man talk about himself continuously, interspersing his discourse with short exclamations such as, “You've had such an interesting life!” or, “Isn't that wonderful?” he'll have a good time. But it was something more than that, honestly. She was utterly natural, without the slightest tincture of posing. I liked her love for her father, her obvious whole-souled devotion to him; and in intervals, when he was the topic of conversation, there was a subtle note of sadness in her which I could not fathom, but which helped to interest me, I think.
Anyhow, as we pulled in our horses at the door of the barn I said impulsively:
“I hope that I may see you often, Margaret.”
She did not seem to notice my unconscious use of her name, but for an instant she hesitated. Then she looked at me frankly, and smiled—a smile with more than a hint of melancholy in it.
“I—I hope so, too,” she said, a bit breathlessly. “But——”
She didn't finish the sentence, and I wondered.
Next day, while supervising the wrecking crew, I thought things out. Perhaps you'll despise me for the two differing facets in my decision, but I'll be frank about it. I wanted to see Margaret again—and I wanted to solve the annoying riddle which I sensed in that household. Call it abuse of hospitality, or anything you like, that I should hide behind the girl's skirt with the vague idea of butting into what probably was none of my business, but the unadorned facts of the case are that when I was shaking hands with Mr. Witmark I said frankly:
“I appreciate your hospitality, sir, and I hope you'll allow me to come to see you—and your daughter—again.”
He seemed taken aback, and Deems, although his expression did not change, seemed to be waiting tensely. Finally the old man cleared his throat sonorously.
“Call us up before you come, sir, and we shall be honored! And bring Mr. Harburg. I enjoy talking with him. He's a man of parts, suh!”
Which I speedily found out to be true. In the course of the next week, during which we flew down for an afternoon with the Witmarks, Harburg and I became good friends. He read magazines devoted to literature and current events that I had barely heard of, and was intimately informed about what was going on in the world. He made me ashamed of myself. My knowledge of politics and international affairs was restricted to what I could learn from a running perusal of newspaper headlines on my way to the sporting page. Occasionally, during our talks, the stocky serene Harburg, with his high forehead and dreamer's eyes, would bubble over. One of his favorite subjects for scathing comment was the manner in which we Americans rail at the shortcomings in our government, local and national, when millions of us do not take the trouble to vote and additional millions of voters are about as intelligently informed on public questions as so many sheep.
It was a tonic to me to talk to him, and I shamefacedly commenced to gumshoe through divers papers, magazines and tomes. I didn't like the idea that I was so ignorant. Gradually I got into the habit of having long talks with the rather serious-minded, precise Belgian, and enjoyed them. Finally I got so that there were one or two things of national interest about which I really could give birth to an intelligent sentence.
Just before our fifth trip to the Witmark homestead—a week-end affair it was to be—I took occasion to notify Harburg of the junket, and to say:
“Listen, sarge. On the reservation I'm a lieutenant and you're a noncom. Consequently salutes and “sirs” are in order. Down there we're just two guests, and that stuff is out. Get me?”
“Yes, sir,” he said formally. He was an impeccable soldier.
We were standing on the line, and he stood stiffly at attention. For a moment he seemed absorbed in thought. I watched him curiously. He raised his eyes to mine, finally, and all of a sudden pain was reflected in their depths.
“I do not think it is wise for me to go with you, sir,” he said with an effort.
“Pshaw! Why not? Don't you enjoy getting away?”
“Yes, sir, very much. But, sir—I am in love with Miss Witmark. Under the conditions——”
He stopped there, and instinctively I knew the reason. During our other trips down there, Margaret and I had been inseparable, and in a flash I understood that Harburg figured I was in love. There was something stunning in the idea—and in his stammering confession, which must have been so hard to make to me. He felt, probably, that it would be unseemly for the two of us to strive for her favor—perhaps that he had no right to aspire to her—a thousand things.
I pulled myself together, although I was in a mental tail spin.
“Harburg, forget it! I'm not saying anything except—a fair field and no favor. Understand me?”
“Yes, sir. And thank you. I did not intend to say what I did, nor to presume. But I am glad.”
All that day there were various things stewing in the back of my mind, and late that night I went for a long walk. At the end of it I was no better off. I couldn't decide. All that I knew was that somehow Margaret Witmark—or Stanton—was a girl who stood apart in my experience; that I had rather be with her than any living being I knew; and that it was strangely pleasant—and disturbing—to think about her.
I was in a badly scrambled state of mind, for several reasons. One was that the thought of her was inextricably entwined with my instinctive feeling that there was something wrong with the Witmark ménage—and that was not pleasant. The other thing was that I was scared to death at the idea of being in love, I think. My roustabout life had been totally unaffected by serious mix-ups with women—and somehow I was like a wild horse shying at the noose.
I had not mentioned my suspicions regarding the Witmarks to Harburg, and after his amazing confession I was glad of it. Saturday morning, before we left McMullen, I held converse with Sheriff Bill Trowbridge. Gargantuan old-timer who knew the entire border as you know the way around your bedroom. I asked him if he knew a native Texan named Witmark, and he had never heard of the man. When I asked him about Judson Stanton, he started mental convolutions which resulted in my learning that a Judson Stanton had been a member of the Texas legislature years before, had become involved in some trouble and been accused of accepting a bribe, but that the matter had been hushed up and Stanton had disappeared into Mexico.
You can imagine the state of mind I was in during that week-end—there to see Margaret, afraid that I loved her, and yet perversely trying to uncover something which would give me the key to the household's fear of the border patrol. At the time, I was not afflicted by any highfaluting ideas regarding my duty. It was my lifelong habit of searching for excitement, poking into outré and bizarre things that promised action, which was responsible for my curiosity, I think.
I had come across nothing, since my discovery of that Bible, which I could put a finger on. This I knew—that the sneering, unemotional Deems resented our presence there, without equivocation, where the Witmarks seemed to want us, and yet be afraid of us. Particularly me. I don't think they considered Harburg at that time.
Saturday night, after a long evening during which Harburg and I had talked of many things with Margaret on the moon-flooded porch of the house, I went for a stroll before going to bed. At the back of the house I heard voices. Hating myself for a sneaking eavesdropper, and yet impelled irresistibly to follow any clew, I crept up to the back porch and strove to catch what Witmark was booming forth inside. I heard Deems' rasping voice briefly; and then Witmark, apparently closing the discussion, laid down the law as follows:
“All her life, on my account, she has been debarred from the associations and opportunities which were rightly hers, suh! And by God, until I see better reasons than I see now, she shall not be deprived of possible prospects for future happiness!”
He stamped out of the kitchen, where they had been talking. My idea was that Deems had been objecting strenuously to our frequent visits and that Witmark, considering me, and perhaps Harburg as well, as eligible suitors for his daughter's hand, was defending our coming.
Partly happy, and some of the time as unhappy as I have ever been, because I despised myself for the thoughts in my mind, I continued to spend all the time I possibly could with Margaret. And I could learn nothing. Even the taut moments of suspicion seemed to have disappeared, and all my Machiavellian plans to find out something went for naught. I could not understand Deems' position in the establishment, and was unable to find out anything more than Witmark's explanation that he had been his right-hand man in Mexico and would be when they returned. I thought possibly they were doing some gun running to the Huerta rebels, but could find nothing to bear this out.
Harburg and I fought a fair battle for Margaret—sometimes he won a skirmish, sometimes I did, and oftener we were with her together. He seemed warmer and more human, now, although he was frequently tongue-tied and reserved in her presence. His eyes gave away his secret, always. There was utter adoration in them when he looked at her. As for me—I decided that I was in love. No, I won't say that. I did not go so far as to admit it, even to myself. Often, when that touch of sadness, which seemed to be a part of her so frequently, was discernible, avowal was on the tip of my tongue. But I resisted it, and deep down in my heart I knew that I would hold myself under wraps until I could shake off the problem which was ruining my self-respect and peace of mind.
Twice, when I telephoned to ask permission to call, I was told that they would be away for the day, and in both cases there was considerable agitation in the old man's voice. Which kept the fires burning dimly within me. Finally, along about our tenth visit, things started to break.
I had always wondered a bit about that tremendous shed, which was always padlocked securely. Deems had explained indifferently that they had never tried to get in it even—it had been on the place, they had no key, and that was all. On this particular Saturday afternoon Harburg and Peggy were riding. It was terribly hot, and I had deliberately checked out on the trip. I had been monopolizing her time, more or less, and I felt sorry for Harburg, in a way. There had been a beaten look in his eyes, of late, and I decided to give him a chance with her alone. I was not enthusiastic about a canter through the sand and mesquite under that Texas afternoon sun, anyway. Witmark was taking a siesta, and Deems had ridden to Grangville, fifteen miles away, that morning.
I took a turn around the shed, as I had done before in a casual way, and made my 'steenth effort to find a peephole through which I might look. I did not really expect to find one, or to see anything if I did. I had about decided that the old man was still afraid his past might come back to roost—and I wasn't interested in his early career. However, there were just enough other facets in the situation—Deems' obvious desire to get rid of us, for one—to keep me on the qui vive.
Finally I found a tiny crack in the back of the shed. I stooped down, and looked through. For a while the dim shadow of the shed hid anything which might be in it. Gradually, as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could see a formless outline within it. Then my astonished eyes took in some of the blurred details. There was a tremendous airplane inside that shed. I could not accurately judge its type, but it looked to me like a “Transport”—a single-motored ship, rather slow, which with one Liberty can carry eight passengers besides a pilot in its closed fuselage.
That explained the familiarity of Deems and Margaret with the technical terminology of the air—and their fear of the border patrolmen. I glued my eye to that tiny crack and tried to find out more about the contents of that shed.
I was so intent on the thing that I did not hear a cantering horse until it was close to me. As I straightened up Deems came riding around the corner toward the corral. In a second his expressionless black eyes took in the tableau, and he swung down. He was very cool and collected, but his mouth was drawn in tightly and that handsome face of his was like a mask.
“What're you doing out here?” he inquired.
“Saw a crack and was taking an idle peek inside,” I answered casually. “Couldn't see anything, though—too dark.”
He looked at me for a long five seconds, and I stood the scrutiny fairly well. Then he said abruptly:
“Evans, I'm going to come clean with you. I don't want you down here any more. Because Margaret is marooned, for the present, I haven't said a thing. Her father wanted her to have all the company she could—and so did I. But she and I are engaged to be married now, and by God if either you or Harburg continue hanging around there'll be trouble! This is your last visit. Get that? I'm going to see Mister Witmark right now and warn him that a bullet'll greet you next time you're around.”
He left his still saddled horse grazing and strode into the house. I was in a daze. I sat on the porch, and watched Harburg and Margaret approach. His face was glowing warmly, and there was a sparkle in his eyes and a smile on his lips that made him seem ten years younger than usual. Margaret's face was flushed from the ride. and she looked like a supple goddess with the sunlight in her hair. Inside the house I could hear Witmark and Deems talking in low tones. I went up to my room to think things out. I was in no mood for talking with Margaret or any one else at the moment.
For the moment the numbing thought of her engagement to another man was secondary to the absolute surprise, amounting to disbelief, which I felt at the idea of her being in love with Deems. There had seemed to be a total lack of personal interest between them. Deems was apparently a stoical silent jeering chap who did not mix particularly with either of the Witmarks.
I heard Margaret come in, and the noise connected with Harburg's unsaddling the horses. I was in a sort of stupor, and couldn't get my massive brain functioning in a fluent and consecutive manner. I don't know how many moments passed before I heard my name called in Witmark's reverberating tones.
“I should like to see you, suh!” he called, and there was a quaver in his voice.
I found him, Harburg, and Margaret in the living room. For an instant my eyes rested on him, and I was amazed at the mixture of ferocity and—was it fear?—in his bloodshot eyes. His chin, with its white goatee, was quivering a bit, as though he could not control himself.
It was Margaret, however, who held me longest. There was stark tragedy in her eyes, and all of her buoyancy and joyous delight in life seemed to have left her. Her face was drawn with pain, and she held herself rigidly, as though she was under a tremendous strain. Harburg seemed puzzled, but there was a glow of happiness discernible in his face. Deems was not present.
“I am sorry, gentlemen, but I must ask you to leave,” Witmark said steadily. He pulled at his goatee with a quivering hand. “I personally have been glad to call you friends, and to entertain you. So has my daughter. It is lonesome for her here. However, she has consented to become the wife of Mister Deems. Under the circumstances it seems that he is right in objecting to your presence. I do not know what trouble has arisen between you, but he believes that one, at least, and probably both of you are interested in his fiancée. That has been obvious, I think. I regret his insistence that you do not visit us any more—but lovers must be excused, I reckon!”
That last attempt at deprecating humor was pathetic, almost repellent under the circumstances. I shall never forget Harburg's face. Utter unbelief first, then almost madness. His face purpled and he started to speak. I could swear that a message, as plain to me as though it had been spoken, flashed from Margaret's eyes to his, and he dammed the torrent of words which I am sure was about to pour from his lips.
“I understand, sir,” I said quietly. “If you do not object, we will leave now. It would not be pleasant to remain, under the circumstances. I hope that at some later time we may see you all.”
There were half-hearted remonstrances on his part, but we left for Laredo that afternoon. The last thing I remember, as I sat in the front cockpit, was Harburg shaking hands with Margaret, Deems and Witmark standing back on the porch. She was biting her lip as she came over and shook my hand. The motor was idling softly, so she put her lips close to my ear as I bent down.
“I'm so sorry—but some day you'll understand!” she told me, and turned away.
Harburg and I got drunk over in Nueva Laredo that night. I was surprised to see him drink—he had always refused liquor theretofore. Then I happened to think that he had refused them on American soil. Which would make a difference to Harburg. I felt curiously ashamed of myself as I saw him imbibe with every symptom of enjoying it to the hilt. He was an experienced two-fisted alcohol inhaler, by his actions.
It was in a little private room in a hotel on the outskirts of that squalid Mexican town that I decided to open up and tell him all I knew. He listened in amazement, but his broad, high-cheek-boned face did not change.
“They have an airplane; they're afraid of the border patrol; I believe that yarn about Deems and Margaret is a lie to get rid of us because I was snooping around—and I'm afraid they're smugglers of some kind, Harburg!” I ended up.
He got up wearily, and paced the floor with slow strides. He seemed much older, somehow.
“I know they lied,” he said slowly, in that formal, precise, careful way. “Miss Witmark, or Stanton, as you say, promised to marry me this afternoon, and just as we left she told me to trust her—that everything would happen for the best!”
For some time I remained silent. During the trip down to Laredo I had figured things out on the basis that Deems really was engaged to her. Call it sour grapes if you will, but I had honestly decided that the hurt in my heart at the thought of Margaret's belonging to another was partially pride. It was not easy to think of losing her—and yet there was a tiny feeling of relief because the die had been cast, too. I thought of her as some one infinitely wonderful and desirable—but now I know that there would have been no hesitancy on my part had I really been head over heels in love. I'd have known it, I guess. But nevertheless, it was not easy to adjust myself.
And the thought of what was ahead was no less repulsive. I'll admit frankly that, as Harburg and I talked, I was playing with the idea of warning the Witmarks and letting it go at that. I was just a big country boy, all snarled up in a tangled skein. It was Harburg who said simply, knowing in his heart that he was putting behind him his hope for happiness:
“They must be watched, and when the time comes—caught!”
Looking into his haggard face as he said that, suddenly many things became clear to me, and I was aware of a vast contempt for myself. I honestly think I would have eventually carried on, anyway, but there came a moment of complete mental clarity. I had drifted through my army career, and the section of it I had spent on the border patrol, with no particular consciousness of my position. I enjoyed flying and the kicks it gave me, and had been a pretty fair officer, I think. But Harburg had been teaching me, unconsciously, and now was finishing the job. For the first time I thought of duty as such, and for the first time conscious pride in the patrol surged through me. It meant something to be a member of the picked band who were charged with overseeing the most tempestuous section of the country, watching it and helping to protect the vast empire which stretched northward. I had woven the net around the Witmarks and Deems without definitely realizing what I was doing—simply driven by the love of excitement within me which has been responsible for the useless hobo's life I have led. For the first time since I had known Margaret and her father I saw my course clearly ahead.
The end came next day. It would have come later, anyway, and been easier to accomplish, for the Witmarks would have been watched, and pounced on in force when the time came. Fate arranged that it should happen by accident.
It rained pitchforks and hammer handles all day Sunday, and continued until within an hour of the swift Texas twilight on Monday. Then it stopped, although the clouds were very low. Harburg and I decided to attempt to make McMullen.
We had to fly very low, on account of the clouds. We were about halfway home, and within a mile of the Witmark ranch, when the twelve-cylinder Liberty started cutting out. I knew the motor was pumping a lot of oil, and it was almost a cinch that the spark plugs had been fouled. I found a field, and we landed. It was after dusk when Harburg finished cleaning the plugs. I tried out the motor then. It ran perfectly on both switches, or the right-hand switch alone, but there were three plugs still cutting out on the left-hand switch.
“Clean the rest to-morrow, when it's light,” I told him. “I guess we're due for a night out here in this God-forsaken——”
“Listen! A ship!” he warned me.
Sure enough, it was. Finally, coming up from Mexico, we picked up the flame from exhaust pipes. A minute later a big ship, simply a black mass against the breaking clouds, landed just west of us.
“At Witmark's!” I told Harburg, and he nodded.
“It must be that Deems flies whatever cargo they have northward,” I said, thinking aloud. “We'd better have a look!”
He agreed, and we set off through the mesquite at a lope, our pistols in our hands instead of their holsters, to make running easier.
We did not get far, however. The noise of motors came to our ears, and we stopped. The clouds, which break fast in that country, had now frazzled off until there were patches of stars. We saw two airplanes rise into the air, and one went south and the other north.
Instantly there leaped into my mind the only possible procedure. All border ships have machine guns on them, and a De Haviland can make two miles a minute where those Transports' limit is ninety an hour at best with a load.
A minute later, without bothering to warm up the motor, I was giving the D. H. the gun and it was rocking across the hummocks of our water-soaked clearing. For a second I thought we were going to smash into the mesquite, but I rocked the wheels out of the clinging sand, risked a desperate zoom that barely cleared the treetops, and we were off. I fought the ship away from the branches and picked up speed enough to climb. Then I looked around at Harburg. Below his huge goggles his face was as grim as death, and his eyes were shining like a cat's. I wasn't comfortable myself—but I knew that my suffering was as nothing to his.
We caught the fugitive ship within five minutes. I had figured it out that because we had been flying so low before we landed, Deems had had no idea that a patrol ship was in the vicinity. I was curious about the cargo the Transport was carrying through the night. If it was drugs—they are worth sixty dollars a pound in Mexico and seven hundred in San Antone—there was a huge fortune in that ship.
I do not believe any one saw us until I slid the De Haviland in close to the Transport. To my astonishment I saw it was filled with rum. The next second there were flashes of fire through the windows of its fuselage.
In a trice I had the solution. Since the passing of the three-per-cent immigration law there had been a sporadic traffic in smuggling aliens into this country. The patrol nabbed two gangs—one bunch of chinks and one of Italians—some time before my arrival on the border. A thousand dollars apiece, delivered into some city in central or northern Texas, was the price—and I had stumbled upon an organized traffic.
I thought of this while I was diving and zooming around to make the marksmanship harder. A ship is a poor target from the ground, but two ships in the air going at the same speed can do a lot of damage to each other with bullets. I cavorted over the shadowy earth as though I was a crazy man driving a drunken ship, and they fired steadily. Finally I shot three bursts from my machine guns, to warn them back. I meant to let them in on the secret that I could shoot them to hell if they didn't turn.
I was just easing away, to see whether they would turn, when another hail of bullets zipped through the ship. The next second my D. H. was missing like mad. I looked at my instrument board—the tachometer read only a thousand revolutions! We would have to land in that black mass of mesquite below, I thought hopelessly, even as I gave vent to a string of vituperatives that would have done credit to Captain Kidd in his most fluent days.
Some bullet must have damaged the motor!
I turned my head, and could scarcely believe my eyes as I saw a pair of hands on the side of my cockpit. A thousand feet in the air, Harburg had climbed out of the rear cockpit, and was inching himself along the side of the ship by his hands, suspended over nothingness. And he was afraid of the air!
I never went through such awful moments as those, waiting for him to drop. His face was terrible as he went through the ordeal, but he never faltered. He got to the wing, and pulled himself forward by the center-section struts. The motor picked up and I pulled out of the glide into which I had been forced to keep flying speed. Harburg had surmised that the right distributor head had been shot off, or at least loosened, and had come forward on the chance that it had not been entirely ruined.
By the time I was getting close to the Transport again, which was still thundering northward, he was on his way back. Evidently a bullet had simply loosened the mechanism from the clamps which held it tight against the block.
One more burst from the guns put the fear of God into that ship, and it turned around. I kept at a safe distance from it, throttled way down, to escort it. Then another thought hit me. I had just over an hour's gas left, and the only way to keep that mob on this side of the river so they could be captured was to stay in the air and ride herd on 'em with my guns. I had to radio for help, some way, and the radio outfit, as was customary, was in the back cockpit where the observer could use it. And wireless was one of the few things in the world Harburg knew nothing about.
The only thing to do was change seats. It was a desperate expedient, but I figured that we had gone so deep into desperation already that a little more or less would make no difference. We were up against it any way you looked at it, what with the moonless night and the gun-toting air pirate we had taken on for a finish fight. To land was out of the question. I considered that possibility an instant, weighing the chances of overtaking our quarry if we abandoned it for the five minutes necessary to reach the ground, switch positions, take off and gain altitude again. I no sooner considered this course than I rejected it. On a moonlit night a ship without lights is scarcely visible at five hundred yards. In five minutes, were we to abandon her, the Transport would be able to put more than five miles between us—and in any direction she chose. Short of a miracle, we should never see her again if we left her to her own devices for three minutes—let alone five or ten.
No, I decided. It couldn't be done. We had to stick by her or lose her certainly. And the seat changing must be done while we held the air, dogging her tail.
I motioned Harburg to lean forward and shouted my proposal in his ear. He answered, “Right, sir.”
“Think you can hold a flying line while go back?” I questioned.
“Yes, sir. Think so,” he shouted.
“All right,” I said. “Come ahead.” And, unbuckling my belt I contrived to rise, throw my legs outboard across the coaming, and hang there, clinging to the rail with one hand and making a long arm to hold the stick. That left the rudder bar free, of course, and the D. H. began to swing and skid crazily. Too much of that, I knew, and we'd skid into a stall and a spin. I gritted my teeth and hung on, watching Harburg's mad antics as he scrambled forward, fell into the seat and got hands and feet on the controls. I don't suppose the whole process took twenty seconds, but it seemed to me like twenty hours.
For a man who had never done any flying on his own, Harburg handled his end very well. He caught the stick, nosed down a bit—which was just the thing to do—checked the skidding with the rudder bar, and, by the time I was tugging at the controls in the back seat, had us on a straightaway run, with the Transport urging the pace just off our left wing and maybe a hundred yards ahead.
So far so good. Now the problem was to hold our prisoner. It worked out far more easily than I had anticipated. I throttled down long enough to yell instructions to Harburg. In an instant the staccato blatting of the machine guns began and I could see the intermittent tracers shooting ahead through the dark to bracket our fleeing target. Harburg released the burst while I did the aiming, swinging the D. H. right and left between bursts and being careful not to make any direct hits—not quite. It was a nice job of coördination to do the aiming while another man pulled the trigger coil and I take no credit to myself for the fact that we made our capture with all hands alive and wriggling. Luck was certainly with me pretty nearly every way that night.
Besides, the shooting didn't last long. A dozen bursts convinced those bozos, and they made for the Witmark ranch and landed. Then while we zoomed around them in the air, spiking their attempts to scatter by bursts of fire that plowed the ground up all around their ship, I unreeled the antenna and tapped off a call for supporting ships from the fields at Laredo and McMullen.
Then I flattered myself that everything was set for the party and all we'd have to do would be to ride around through the night until the reserves came up. I figured it would take them about an hour for the get-away and the flight to Witmark's place. But there I was wrong. It took them about an hour and a few dramatic minutes more.
So that when our gas ran out we were in a pretty pickle. There was nothing for it but to land on the Witmark field and let the pirates have their way with us. I figured that the worst they'd do would be to hog tie us until they made their get-away. They might have murder in their hearts, but I doubted if they would take such a chance. Smuggling is one thing, but murder—— I didn't think Deems was a murderer. And so I decided that as against risking a crash in the mesquite and risking the vengeance of Deems and his crowd, the latter was the lesser of two evil choices.
I did take the precaution of landing as far away from the Transport as possible, aiming to make a break for it, if opportunity offered, and take cover in the mesquite before they sized up the situation and came at us. There was a good fifty-yard space between my ship and Deems' when I eased in and by a stroke of fool's luck contrived a very passable three-point contact, using the light in a window of the Witmark house as landing mark. We hit a smooth stretch and I must have nosed in pretty fast—much faster than I suspected—for we rolled and guttered along at a terrific rate, and when the ship came to a halt we were almost up against the house, with the lighted window shining full in our faces, making us blink.
Apparently our coming in had startled Deems and his men into uncertainty. They could not be sure that our landing had been forced, and so they half suspected some sort of trick. Consequently they were hanging back. Out of the corner of my eye, as I snapped off my belt and straddled the cockpit, I could see a blur of figures gathered round the Transport. But I didn't have long to contemplate them, for as I let myself down to the ground and turned toward Harburg, who was coming overside from the front seat, the door of the Witmark house was flung open and Witmark hurried toward us, something glinting ominously in his right hand.
I yelled a warning to Harburg and pulled my gun to cover him. Suddenly another form showed in the lighted doorway. It was Margaret. And in the brief instant while her figure was illuminated I saw that she was carrying an ax. Then she had dashed out, slipped past her father—who came on deliberately, like a man in a daze, or a sleepwalker—and was rushing at us. I knew at once what her purpose was. Not knowing our plight, she was taking no chances. She was going to smash our wings with the ax—if she could.
A moment I stood paralyzed. What could I do? My gun was useless against her. And it never occurred to me to meet her in physical combat. It was Harburg who did the quick thinking. He had seen and registered all that had come to me. With a grunt that was more like a moan of despair, he came down the fuselage, ducked and rolled under the wing, and, as Margaret came up, confronted her. She was on him, the ax poised for the first savage cut at the wing. He leaped and reached for it. But he must have missed his spring, for the ax came down in a swift arc, gashed our leading wing spar, and then bounced on across the wing to fall at my feet.
As for Margaret, she pitched headlong toward the plane as the ax left her hand, and crumpled to the ground where she lay without sound or struggle—a pathetic little figure in the gloom. What had happened to her we never quite knew, but it is pretty certain that she tripped against Harburg as he sprang at her, and in falling struck her head against the propeller of the D. H.
Anyway—there was the tableau; Witmark and I standing stupidly, one on either side of the ship, clutching our guns, Margaret lying unconscious on the ground, and Harburg kneeling over her, oblivious of everything, and muttering agonized plaints in a strange language. How great must have been his grief you may judge when I tell you that never before or since have I heard him revert to his mother tongue.
I registered this picture in a sort of daze. Then I came awake to the reality of our situation. It was the sound of thudding footsteps that brought me to my senses. The Transport gang had sized up the situation at last; and turning I saw them heading in an irregular V across the field in our direction. Somebody—Deems, I suppose—was shouting, “Hold 'em! Hold 'em!”
Suddenly I grinned to myself in the darkness. For above Deems' shouting and the thudding of running feet I heard a familiar singsong roaring, near at hand. A ship swept overhead, and I fired three shots, to let them know by the blaze of the gun that something was doing down on the Witmark ranch. In another five minutes De Havilands in bewildering profusion—three of them on their backs—were parked all over the Witmark field and the business of rounding up the gang was proceeding merrily athwart the chaparral and mesquite.
But Harburg and I were not exactly merry. You see, we liked old Witmark and we liked his daughter. She had been glorious, charging to the rescue, for her father's sake. She had recovered from that little knock on the head quickly enough. But would she ever recover from the sequel to our actions that night? Thinking about that aspect of the business, I know I was in purgatory. As for Harburg—I could not bear to rest my eyes on him. His face looked as though he were wracked with physical agony.
It came out fairly well in the end, at that. I had a heart-to-heart talk with Sheriff Bill Trowbridge and Captain Kennard, and it was hushed up quite a bit. Deems came to bat in a confession absolving Witmark—or Stanton, rather—from all complicity in the smuggling, but the old man would not have it so. His direct story to Trowbridge was enough, however. He had been framed back in Austin years before and the unmerited disgrace had followed him everywhere he went. Finally, penniless and hopeless, he had fallen for an offer to mix into a vast immigrant-smuggling scheme. He was valuable in Mexico, and likewise through certain political affiliations at the State capital. He was just a broken old man, and he went free with few people in on the true story.
Margaret had not known much about the details until that night, when her unswerving devotion to her father had caused her to do what she did. She told her husband, the illustrious Sergeant Harburg, all about it. He's making a hundred a week in an automobile factory in Detroit now, and is on his way toward becoming a big man in that flourishing village, I have no doubt. He writes me that they are very happy, and that he's going to see to it that Deems gets a good job, like delivering mail to the Statue of Liberty or something, as soon as he gets out of jail. Margaret had acquiesced in the yarn that she was engaged to him, simply out of loyalty to her father, who represented that it was the only way to get rid of us and avoid possible detection. It was pretty white of that jeering outlaw, Deems, to take all the blame, at that. He was just one of the pilots, but he knew a lot about the whole scheme and his evidence was largely instrumental in cleaning up an aërial highway for smugglers which extended from Vera Cruz and Mexico City to Dallas and San Antone. I remember him with considerable pleasure—I don't believe he'd turn a hair if he saw Queen Victoria ride into his cell on a high bicycle.
As for me, I'm still cavorting around as per usual—a border patrolman. Margaret still has, and will continue to occupy, a niche all her own in my memory. Same goes for Harburg. Once in a while I get sort of fed up and envious, but what of it? I'm better off the way I am, I guess.
Oh, one thing more. I finally decided that I was a fine specimen to climb virtuously up on my first lieutenant's bars and chase smugglers—so I haven't had a drink of bootleg booze since our soirée on the river. Now laugh, dog-gone you!
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1971, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 53 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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