Chapter 3 Back To The Field
A bright red gasoline pump stood in front of it, and a rolling oil tank. Four old men were in conversation in front of the store, and there was a group of younger men whose meeting place was evidently the garage. A few wagons were drawn up along the stone sidewalk, the horses tied to hitching posts. Evidently all the available cars had been driven out to the field.
As they drew up in front of the store the fat driver offered to wait and transport Hemingwood back to the field, which offer the Bostonian accepted with thanks.
He went into the crowded little store and looked around at the counters.
“Mumford sells everything from pills to plows,” he soliloquized, and then spotted a short, broad, baldheaded man emerging from a cubbyhole in the rear. It proved to be Mumford.
Hemingwood introduced himself, explained his need of a hundred gallons of gas delivered at the field every flying day, and learned that Mumford owned a truck with which it could be delivered. The storekeeper also opined that he could undoubtedly find a place for the flyers to live if they would wait for definite information until the afternoon.
The flyer studied his man a bit, and decided to take him into his confidence to a slight extent. He told him about the casual meeting with his niece that morning, and went on to say: “I came down here with Ballardson. He wanted this gas business, so to keep him from being sore I told him that I had made arrangements in advance with you. I don’t know anything about East Point, but I figured it might save unpleasantness. Will you bear me out in my story, if necessary?”
Roundfaced Mr. Mumford chuckled.
“How come you figured Ballardson that way?” he enquired.
“He didn’t seem particularly friendly,” Hemingwood returned.
“If there’s any unpleasantness, prob’ly he’ll have something to do with it,” stated Mumford. “These mountain people are funny, you know.”
On the way back to the field Ballardson’s questions and something in the attitude of both men showed plainly that they were not satisfied as to the precise purpose of the pictures Hemingwood was to take. There were fifty or sixty people in plain sight near the ship, and as many more men, women, and children lurking half-screened in the surrounding forest. They watched the transfer of thirty gallons of gas with consuming interest.
Knots of roughly dressed men conversed in low tones, while other more conventionally arrayed, made no mysterious motions. Hemingwood caught a phrase: “The control wires go through the fuselage hyar, and work these hyar elevators.” He looked around—he was up on a wing, holding the funnel over the main tank—to find out who knew so much about airplanes in that benighted town. It seemed to be a scrawny, red-headed chap wearing a nondescript felt hat, hickory shirt, and overalls. A moment later Hemingwood noticed Ballardson in conversation with him.
The slow job of straining the gas through the chamois was about over when the flyer heard voices raised in anger. He looked around and saw two men standing close to the tail surfaces of the ’plane, surrounded by a half dozen others, including Ballardson and the airplane expert.
“I say you’re a liar!” shouted a gaunt, rawboned mountaineer who was one of the pair. The other, short and powerfully built, retaliated with a resounding slap. The next second they were locked in each other’s arms.
Hemingwood leaped to the ground while the onlookers watched breathlessly. Those men were perilously close to the ship. If one of them put a foot through the frail linen of the elevators or rudder—
As he ran toward them, followed by Apperson, he saw the taller man deliberately kick his foot toward the drooping elevators. In a flash Hemingwood took in the details. Their faces were not those of two fighting men temporarily hating each other. And that kick had looked deliberated, even if it had missed. As he got within a foot of them they were poised directly over the tail assembly, straining mightily. Another second and they would have crashed together over the ship and would have put one De Haviland airplane totally out of flying condition for several days.
It was a frame-up, Hemingwood thought as he hurled himself at the contestants. He hit them like a human cannon ball. And, for the moment, he was one. Characteristically, he was totally unimpressed by the odds against him. With fists and feet he drove the astounded battlers back. After they had recovered, they commenced to retaliate. No one else took a hand, for a moment, and Hemingwood fought entirely alone. He seemed to be a dynamic ball, bristling with feet and fists from every angle. He was in a cold rage at the unwarranted interference of the mountaineers, and he gloried in the opportunity to vent some of it on them. He fought furiously, and for a few seconds actually had the best of it. A sweeping kick sent the stocky man to the ground, and George took a clumsy swing on the side of the head in order to sink his fist in the taller man’s belly. That put that personage out for a second or two, so he was able to meet the rising gladiator with a wild flurry of fists that cracked home to the jaw and sent him down again.
But he knew it could not last. He leaped back, and jerked out his Colt.
“Stand still, you!” he snapped, and his glinting eyes were hard and keen and his smile had more than a touch of grimness about it. Subconsciously he noticed Ballardson’s amazed, slightly scared face, and the taut expectancy, half fear and half enjoyment, of the spectators. Apperson was at his elbow, his gun also out.
“Listen, all of you!” Hemingwood shouted. There was utter silence. “There’s at least one man here that knows airplanes. This framed-up fight was for the purpose of putting this ship out of commission. If another soul gets anywhere near it he’s going to be filled so full of lead it’ll take a block and tackle to lift him into the hearse.
“You’re fooling with the United States Army if you knock me off. And you won’t get away with it. I’m here to take pictures, and nothing else. I don’t give a damn who or what you are, but by God if you two birds or anyone else looks crosseyed in my direction or starts anything else as funny as this, I’ll commence to get damn interested! Now get the hell out of here, you two, and the rest of you get back and stay back!”
Which they did. They were thoroughly awed, and well satisfied to remain at a distance. It was significant that not a soul seemed to take Hemingwood’s part. Evidently the mountaineers had the village business men somewhat under their thumbs.
“Nice start I’ve got,” soliloquized the untroubled flyer.
