Battling the Clouds Part 7

"The first dividend was five thousand dollars, and grandfather took it and looked at it and then shoved it over to his oldest son and commenced to talk. That is, Lee said he spoke _one word_ in the Indian language.

It meant the-car-that-runs-by-itself. He wanted an automobile! Well, his son went off and got him the biggest he could for the money, and now the old gentleman is quite satisfied.

"When he isn't riding around the country he still sits and watches that old gusher keep gushing. He gets about two hundred dollars a day out of it."

"That's nothing!" said Horace Jardin.

"_Nothing?_" repeated Bill. "Well, it would mean _some_thing to me, I can tell you!"

"Nothing?" cried Frank in a tone filled with real pain. "_Nothing?_ My soul! It would be six hundred dollars every three days."

"Why pick on six hundred dollars?" asked Bill. "Why not fourteen hundred a week? Those old wells go right on working on Sunday, you know."

Frank slammed down his fork and shoved his chair back from the table.

"Oh, it is a _shame_!" he cried bitterly.

Both boys looked at him in surprise.

"What ails you, anyhow?" asked Bill.

"Nothing," said Frank.

CHAPTER VI

Jardin left the following week and the two boys tried to settle down into the old groove. Bill spent a great deal of time with Frank, watching the manoeuvers on the Field. Frank kept up the study of aviation with surprising earnestness. He had a special gift for it and was really a source of great pride to his instructors. Of course his father forbade long or very high flights, but Frank soon was able to execute any of the simpler stunts that make the air so thrilling.

Bill, who refrained from any flying even as a pa.s.senger on account of his mother, tried to absorb as much as he could from the talk and from a couple of the airmen who took a great fancy to the quiet, handsome boy who asked such intelligent questions and who so soon mastered all the technicalities of the monster dragonflies.

With a small maliciousness that surprised even himself, Frank had dropped a hint here and there that Bill was afraid to fly, and the two airmen, Lem Saunders and Chauncey Harringford, who were his special friends at the Field discussed it between themselves. One day they stopped Lee and asked him if it was true. Lee flushed under his dark, swarthy skin, and his small, black eyes flashed angrily.

"Who says it?" he demanded.

"I don't know how it started," answered Lem. "I don't know as it matters whether the kid is afraid or not, but it doesn't seem just like him; and I sort of hate to think there is a grain of yellow anywhere in that good body of his."

"I will bet all my month's pay that there isn't," affirmed Chauncey. "I _know_ there isn't, but I wish I knew how the report started. It makes it sort of hard for him. The fellows guy him."

"I wish _I_ could be there when they do. I know one soldier who would have a ticket for the guardhouse for fighting in about ten minutes."

"It is not as bad as that," said Chauncey. "The fellows don't mean any harm, only young Frank is such a whiz and even that green little sprout of a Jardin flew like a swallow. And here is Bill, by far the best of the three, won't go off the ground but just shakes his head and grins if you ask him why not."

"I know the reason," said Lee firmly. "It is a good one, too. Do you know his mother? No? Well, she is more like an angel than a human being." Lee took off his campaign hat as he spoke, as though he could not talk of Mrs. Sherman while he remained covered.

"She is perfect," he continued. "So gentle, so sweet; and such a true friend! But she has a very weak heart. There is something wrong, very wrong about it, and Major Sherman has told me that a shock might kill her. And what greater shock could there be than something happening to her only son? Major Sherman told me that he had explained it to Bill, and that Bill never did one thing to worry his mother. If he says he will come home at a certain time, he gets there. When he is away, at Lawton or Medicine Park or any place like that, he telephones her a couple of times to let her know he is all right. That boy is a peach, I can tell you! There are dozens of things he doesn't do on her account.

And he never complains. He doesn't wait for her to ask him not to, either. It is awfully hard on him, I can tell you, because he is the most fearless and daring boy of his age I have ever seen. He wants to try everything going." Lee looked wistful. "I wish _I_ could hear someone say Bill is a coward!"

"They don't go as far as that," said Chauncey soothingly. "They just guy him a little."

"They will stop guying if _I_ hear them," said Lee doggedly. "The boy has every kind of courage that there is and some day will prove it. But never, never if it will distress his mother. He will bear all the slurs and insults in the world rather than hurt her."

"Jimminy, old fellow, you take it too hard!" said Lem, laughing. "All the fellows do is guy him, and we will see to it that they stop that, you can bank on it. Chance here and me will never see the kid abused. I am some sc.r.a.pper myself, if it comes to that!"

He pounded Lee cheerfully on the back and that young man smiled in spite of himself. Turning, he caught Lem, a six footer and heavy, and with what seemed a playful little clasp raised him from the ground and tossed him over his shoulder where he hung balanced for a minute before Lee gently eased him to the ground. Chauncey was round-eyed with amazement and Lem sputtered, "Lee, you wizard, you! How in the world did you do that? Why, I am twice your size!"

"Just a little Indian trick that I learned a good while ago when I used to visit some cousins of mine. There were two young bucks who used to wrestle with me, and I learned a lot from them. I have been teaching Bill, and he can almost beat me at my own game. You don't have to be big like you, Lem. Do you want to see me throw you twenty feet over my head?"

"Why, you loon, I should say not!" said Lem, backing off.

"Oh, be a sport, Lem, and let me see the fun!" cried Chauncey.

But Lem refused to be obliging. For a man who did not care how high or how far he flew, he was strangely unwilling to let himself be tossed out on the prairie to amuse Chance or anyone else.

Lee walked off laughing. The others stood looking after him.

"The only Indian thing about him is his color and his walk. Do you notice how he puts one foot down right in front of the other as though he was walking along a narrow trail?"

"He is one of the straightest fellows I have ever known," said Lem, feeling of his neck and waggling his head to see if it was all right after its late experience with Lee. "I am glad to know about Bill. He understands every last thing there is about a plane, and it did seem so funny that he would never leave the ground. It is a wonderful chance for those kids to stand in over here, you know. They are getting the best training in the world in the flying game. I had commenced to think Bill was a perfect sissy. That little automobile of his is a wonder--a regular racing car on a small scale--and yet he goes crawling along at fifteen miles an hour. Well, I am glad to know how it is."

Lem fished in his pocket and found some chewing gum which he offered to Chauncey. They strolled away in the direction of the hangars and Lee hurried over to Major Anderson's quarters, where he found the two boys sitting on the wide, screened veranda.

"Just waiting for you, Lee," said Bill, looking at his watch. "We must be getting along. Do you know what I am doing these days?" he asked Frank, who was moodily staring at Lee. "I am packing up for school."

"Why didn't you begin last Christmas?" asked Frank, coming out of his dream.

"There is always such a lot of things to attend to at the last second and I am getting all my traps in shape."

"Mother is packing for me," said Frank. "I wish we didn't have to go. I will be all out of practice with the planes by the time we have a chance to fly again. I wonder where Jardin is going to school?"

"Have you heard from him lately?" asked Bill.

"Not a word since he went away. Mother thought it was funny he didn't write her a note to thank her for entertaining him. His father wrote her instead."

"Did Jardin know where we are going?" asked Bill.

"We didn't know ourselves when he left, and I can't write and tell him, because for all I know he may be in Europe by this time."

"_I_ am just as well pleased," said Bill. "You know I never did have any use for him, and I think we will get along a good deal better with the other fellows and with the teachers if he is not there as a friend of ours."

"You were always down on him and for nothing," said Frank. "I think he is all right. And he has the money, too."

"Well, you don't want to sponge, do you?" asked Bill.

"Of course not!" said Frank, flushing. "You are such a nut about things!

Of course I don't mean _sponge_, but money is the only thing that will put you in right at school or anywhere else."

"That sounds just like Jardin," replied Bill. "Well, if that is so, what do you suppose I am going to do on about nine cents a week? What are you going to do yourself?"