Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

90 BILL BARNES to Skip. The heat of conflict, of pos- sible disaster, never failed to warm him. This hunger for hazard had_ sky- rocketed him through an army aviation course. That he had eventually landed as an inspector in the aéronautics’ divi- sion of the department of commerce, with a roving assignment, was only natural. For Skip had an instinct for trouble and a flair little short of genius for sur- mounting the difficulties which beset his eager steps. And his job provided him with the danger he craved. Aviation, like other lucrative enter- prises, had attracted the hungry atten- tion of illegal and predatory gentry. Skip, almost single-handed, had carried on the warfare against them, with a degree of success that kept certain gentlemen in Washington in a sweat between back-slapping exultation and heart-sickening anxiety. Now, his fearless blue eyes roving over the myriad dials that glowed on his bronzed young face from the instrument board, Skip tooled the huge trimotored ship blindly through the night. He was not Inspector Skip Davis now; he was Transport Pilot Davis of the air mail, to all intents and purposes. Wind whistled through the rigging. The three radial Hornet motors throbbed rhythmically. They were two hours out of San Francisco, bound for Reno, with two thousand pounds of air mail in the big compartment behind the dual pilots’ seats. Skip grinned hopefully at the thought of the air-mail cargo. It accounted for his presence in the night-flying mail ship as pilot. “Four sacks of registered air mail for the Chicago Bank and Trust Co.,”’ Skip muttered to himself. “Tf that’s what I think it is, we'll have excitement some time between here and Reno, or I miss my guess. Four sacks of registered mail for that bank means plenty of you-know-what. No doubt of that. And the gang that’s been working this route seems to have inside informa- tron on cargoes like that, according to Kent Lambert. He’s the operations’ manager; he ought to know. I'll bet a month’s pay hell will bust loose and barge all over these Sierra Nevadas yet to-night!” He shrugged carelessly, feigning elab- orate absorption in the functioning of his motors. “Listen! What’s that?” Nunn’s voice stabbed through the roar of the radials, high-pitched with excite- ment. The co-pilot sat bolt upright, wide-awake now, his body tensed for- ward in a listening attitude. His cryptic eyes were feverishly bright. “What is it?” Skip demanded, blue eyes sparkling. He strained sensitive ears futilely. He had heard nothing. He doubted very much if his co-pilot had either. The throb of the three motors and the scream of the wind through struts and guys would drown out any ordinary sound, Even the drone of another airplane. But too evidently there was something out in the impenetrable darkness. The flesh at the back of his neck was creeping. He knew the feeling of old. It reeked of danger. Skip grinned happily. Nunn mistook the smile for disbelief. “Don’t you hear it?” he shot out, his high-pitched voice cracking. Fiercely he gripped Skip’s arm. Skip continued his assumed indiffer- ence. It might cause Nunn to reveal something. —Cut it; fe chafied, “Youve sot static. I don’t hear a thing. This night flying over the hump’s got your nerve. It’s affected your hearing. I’m new on this run and not yet used to your local Sierra sounds.” Face expressionless, he stared ahead owlishly. But his brain was seething. What was out there in the jet blackness that Nunn had sensed? expected it? (C© Ghook Or had Nunn. CO