Adventure Magazine Cover — page 130: what you’re looking at

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

128 be sitting up—and in the coop—within a week.”’ You might think that that’s a lot, but it makes a fellow feel great to get out so light when he really expected to wake up dead. Being under arrest was the least of my worries. I hadn’t worked for weeks and had no place to go; any time I refuse free meals in a nice white ‘“‘can”’ sych as Bakers- field’s—something’ll be wrong! So that’s how I happened to be in Bakers- field when, a week later, “Loop” Murry and his flying circus arrived in town. Loop’s aggregation hardly amounted to a crowd; fact is, they were four. The Loop, a girl pilot called Aerial Blue, a stunt-man, and one grease-monkey who serviced the planes. The circus boasted two very old planes. Loop is a pretty good head. He’d play aviation straight—if there was anything in straight aviation. As a next bet, he barn- storms from town to town and strives to please in the fickle furnishing of aerial thrills. The girl pilot, Aerial, was well known on the coast. Just why she monkeyed with aviation is beyond me. There was nothing rough or “sporty” about her. She was a sweet kid, eighteen, and her own woman— allthe way! Young “Bugs” Tedder, twenty or thereabouts and as blond and wiry an Adonis as ever filled a bathing-suit and broke hearts, was billed as their stunt-man. Changes from plane to plane, wing-walking and parachute jumping was his idea of an easy way to avoid work. The stuff they pulled was insane, criminally insane. On Saturday, learning that I was in the hospital, Loop came over to borrow a helmet and goggles; show me a circus flyer who doesn’t want to borrow a helmet and gog- gles, and they’re on me! “Well, dare-devil, what thrill have you salted for tomorrow?” I asked. “Just a “chute jump from ten thousand— if I can get the old crate up that high,” Loop answered as if the world were drab. ““Who—Bugs?”’ “No; Aerial. I can’t work the kid at all. He’s taken an awful crush on Aerial, off his feed, pie-eyed and all the symptoms. I don’t trust the —— fool off the ground at all. She doesn’t seem to be able to fall for Bugs—can’t see him. On the level—I’m afraid he’ll pull a suicide. We’ve got tomake this ’chute jump or stop eating—there’s twenty-five bucks in it forus. She’smadea few jumps before—says she has, at least.” ANDREW A. CAFFREY “You big-hearted, generous devil,” I shot at him, “letting this girl risk her neck to earn your daily bread.” ) “Easy with the whip,” Loop pleaded. “T have troubles enough right in the family. Bugs was going to beat me up for letting her do it; I had to spank the kid. He’s been yelling blue-murder for two days. Going to tear my heart out if I don’t put him back to work, says he’ll put me over here in the next bed to you—” he started for the exit— ‘‘so, 1f you see the meat-wagon back up at the door, have your male chaperon turn down the covers. It’ll be me.” “Deputy,” I said, and wasn’t kidding, “that’s the bird you should ride herd on. Those nuts kill scores every year—and get away with it.” ‘‘Ain’t it the truth?” Deputy Cole mused. Sunday afternoon, when Loop took off and got above the houses, I could watch his plane from the northern windows of the hospital. For three-quarters of an hour, in the intense heat of the San Joaquin, pop- ping and missing, his old plane weaved back and forth above the city, and slowly silenced as the climb increased. That type of decrepit, low-powered plane wins alti- tude slowly; you have to fight it all the way. Finally, he had perhaps eight thousand feet, Loop’s climb ended. The far-off, splutter- ing drone of the motor ceased—he had throttled to slow up for Aerial’s jump—and we saw something long and white stream out from the landing gear of Loop’s plane. It was the parachute—Aerial was dangling at the end of its shroud-lines—but it never left the plane. Deputy Cole’s grip on my arm proved that he was an air-man; he got it right away. The parachute had become fouled in the wires of the landing gear. ‘“‘She’s a goner,”’ Cole mumbled; “‘he can’t land with her there—she’d be dragged to death. And she can’t climb back against that wind; a strong man could hardly do it —the kid’s done for!’’ The deputy was right. A hand-over-hand climb is the fatiguer of athletes. Add the windage caused by the plane’s seventy- mile speed and the strongest, I’d gamble, would fail. Desperation might, now and then, cause one to accomplish the impossi- ble, but as we watched, that poor kid showed no such break of luck. She just dangled, twisted and turned—and dangled. And time was going on; that was the——of it! Go NOOK ANIC (C@