Medium Boiled
The big De Haviland bombing plane was a little more than eight thousandfeet high, and “Shag” Moran, its pilot, had an excellent view of aconsiderable portion of south Texas. His big body was hunched deep intothe front cockpit to avoid the terrific airblast which swept back fromthe propeller, and his black eyes alternated the maze of unfamiliarinstruments before him and the unending desert of mesquite below. Inlong, gray-green waves the chaparral billowed away to the horizon onevery side, and there was not so much as a wisp of smoke to indicatethat a living thing inhabitated that trackless waste, a mile and a halfbelow.
It was a sight calculated to make any pilot concentrate on his motor,for there was no possible landing field below, in case thattwelve-cylinder Liberty ahead should start to miss. To Shag Moran,however, the very ugliness and desolation of it was a pleasant thrill—aconstant reminder of where he was going, and why. Even the thought ofhimself, alone in a world of his own, was delightful, for the timebeing. It was the visible evidence of the fact that he had attainedcombined objectives for which he had dared not hope, three monthsbefore.
“First Lieutenant John Moran, of the McMullen flight of the Borderpatrol—” He mouthed the words with leaping heart us his eyes swept thewastes below him, which seemed to epitomize all the romance and dangerof the job he was on his way to do. He was bound for the border. Morethan that, he was to be a member of the blue ribbon outfit of the ArmyAir Service, the Border patrol. And as the last ingredient of what heconceived to be flyer’s paradise, he was to be one of the McMullenflight of that patrol—the flight with the finest record along the RioGrande.
The miracle—for miracle it was—was still unreal to him. Of course,they were ordering extra men to the patrol. The underground gossip,which was running like wildfire through the Air Service, was that ⸺was due to pop along the Border. The smuggling in of aliens had reachedtremendous proportions, and the guarded conversation of higher officeswas to the effect that one of the largest, nerviest and wealthiest ringswhich had ever operated in Texas was due for a roundup.
But that Shag Moran had been picked to go to the patrol was purely amistake. Moran admitted that. Some slip-up in Washington. Why, he’d onlygot his wings a few short weeks before, and had scarcely two hundredhours in the air. Not enough experience for border service, hereflected. But he’d bluff it through, and cut out his tongue before helet anyone know what an amateur he was. And he’d fly with any of them.
He grinned to himself as he thought:
“Boy, what they’d say if they knew that I never flew a De Haviland in mylife before today! But I got this baby off the ground at Donovan andnobody’ll ever dream I never flew one!”
No more than they’d dream how much his wings and flying meant to him.The dogged, heart-breaking fight he had waged to drag himself from thepoverty-stricken slime of his boyhood, through school, and then to anofficer’s commission. The ambition of terrible years was fulfilled forShag Moran. And nobody suspected that there had been tears in his eyeswhen he got his commission. Big, hulking, shambling Shag Moran wassupposed to be hard-boiled. That’s what the carelessly competent youngfliers thought about him, and he was glad of it. He would have cut offhis hand rath