Adventure Magazine Cover, June 18, 1921 — page 36: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

26 the most deserted and dangerous strip of the border. They were flying at eight thou- sand feet, nearly a thousand feet above the high-piled, snowy cumulous clouds that hung seemingly motionless in the air. They splotched the green of the endless mesquite, which covered the rolling mountains that were lower here than farther west, but nevertheless wild and forbidding. South- ward the river twisted and turned in a tiny silver thread. ‘There were isolated shacks visible, whether inhabited or not no one could tell. Soon the airdrome at Sanderson, spread at the foot of the mountains, came into sight. After they landed Tex and some mechanics looked over the motor carefully and ran it wide open for a moment while husky mechanics sat on the tail and held the wings to keep the powerful bomber from leaping the blocks on the wheels. “Listens to me like a little error in the timing,’’ stated Hub Chester, the engineer officer, and his chief mechanic nodded. ‘“‘We can check her up, if you like, but you can’t make McMullen tonight unless we’re lucky in finding the trouble quick.” “T think we'll jazz on,” decided Tex. “She'll carry us back all right and we’ve been held up two or three days already on account of that review down at Fort Bliss. They need us back in McMullen.” “She'll go all right,’ agreed Chester. “Just a little more vibration due to the un- even firing.” : But the engineer officer was wrong. For a while the great ship carried on and at six thousand feet appeared to be making nor- mal speed. The vibration was bad, but there was no miss. Without warning, ex- cept for a sudden splutter, the motor simply quit firing. The sudden silence was a shock. With a heartfelt curse Tex nosed down to keep up speed, and surveyed the landing prospects. The river—that meant a sure wreck, possi- ble crippling of one or both. That was bet- ter than the mesquite, however. With straining eyes Tex strove to find some tiny cleared space, and could not, until finally, his ship down to three thousand feet now, he decided for the river. As he headed toward it his eye caught a very long, extremely narrow field that had looked as if it were mesquite. It was on the Mexican side of the river. As he dived ‘closer it looked as if that cleared space was Adventure covered with low brush instead of mesquite. There was no shack visible, but the field, if it was a field, was four hundred yards long. With leaping hope Tex gathered himself together to shoot for it. “Throw up your goggles—we may crack!” he yelled to Ransom, whose drawn face was set and white. The observer obeyed quickly and then hunched down behind the wind-shield in the back seat to save his eyes. With an expert eye, as his ship dropped to fifteen hundred feet, Tex surveyed his prospective landing-place. It was better than he had thought, unless there were hid- den ditches in it. He spiraled down to eight hundred feet, at which point he was about over the river, headed for the field, which ran north and sotith, one end being about three hundred yards from the river- bank. The slowest possible landing was advis- able—no telling what those low, tangled bushes hid to ambush a ship going seventy miles an hour. As slowly as possible he forward-slipped for the field, and fifty feet back and a hundred feet high he drew the nose up level and started the skilful stall- ing for which he was famous. He kept the ship dropping level by consummately deli- cate control, literally foreseeing what the ship would do. Being without flying-speed, it was on the verge of dropping off into a spin or a nose- dive at any given moment. In a few sec- onds, dropping faster and with only slight forward speed, the landing-gear hit the ground just as the nose was about to drop. The dragging brush kept it from bouncing very high, but both tires burst with a loud report. It came to rest not twenty-five yards from the place it had hit, undamaged save for two useless tires. Tex unstrapped his belt and perched him- self on the fuselage. “Talk about luck!’ he remarked as he rolled a cigaret. “And flying,” added Ransom grudgingly. Inexperienced as he was, yet even he could realize that had it not been for that superlatively skilful stall landing the tan- gled weeds would have caught the landing- gear and turned the ship upside down. What would have happened to the occu- pants in that event was a matter of con- jecture, but anything up to death itself would be a good bet. COMIGHOO ZN ) CO