Chapter 5 The Hollows

According to instructions, Apperson awakened him at eight o’clock. At nine they had consumed coffee and bread, and were ready to take off.

It was a delicate job on the rolling field, but again it was accomplished safely, and the ship cleared the surrounding trees by a good fifty feet. As it roared out over the forest Hemingwood held it low, pointing for the little schoolhouse where Gail presided. It was on the outskirts of the mountain settlement called “The Hollows.” As he passed over it he jazzed the throttle twice. He saw Gail thrust her head out of a window and wave her handkerchief. He returned the greeting with his free arm. There was a pleasant warmth in his heart as he circled back and left the schoolhouse behind.

The ship was barely three hundred feet high, so he nosed up in a steep climb. His right arm was draped carelessly over the side of the cockpit, and his eyes swept the ground idly.

Suddenly he felt a jerk at his ankle. He dropped his eyes, and in utter surprise saw a clean gash on the inner side of his right boot sole. He moved his foot slightly and saw a hole in the wooden flooring of the cockpit. The next second he saw gas jetting forth from a jagged hole in the small copper tube which was the gasoline feed line between main tank and carburetor. The Liberty’s roar died away into sputtering, and then silence. And down below there was nothing but impenetrable forest into which to crash.

Hemingwood reached automatically for the mainline petcock, and turned off the gas. Then he turned on the petcock which released the gas from the emergency tank, holding the ship in a dive to maintain flying speed.

For agonizing seconds the motor did not catch and the ship was diving like a comet for the earth. Hemingwood cursed steadily, fluently. He had been shot at from the ground and, by dumb luck, they had hit the fast moving target. There was nothing for it but to crash. What the hell was the matter with that gravity tank? If he could get his hands on the blankety-blank marksmen!

Then he saw them. There were five of them, partially hidden, and they were still shooting. He could see the smoke from their rifles. Unseen and unheard above the whining wires, there were bullets zipping through the air around him.

There was two hundred feet of altitude left. With his usually boyish face suddenly grim and hard, Hemingwood swooped around and made the dive more steep. Might as well use that last little margin to teach those birds a lesson!

His finger was on the machine gun control as he pointed the ship at them. And at that second the gravity tank got working and the motor cut in. There was thirty minutes’ gas in that tank, plenty to get back to the field with.

Hemingwood came to himself. Even his unemotional soul revolted at the thought of pouring a hail of death on the five would-be murderers below. But he did dive down at them, carefully aiming a bit beyond them, and his machine guns spouted fire and a hail of bullets which ripped up the trees a few dozen yards away from them.

He barely brought the quivering, strained ship out of the dive in time to clear the treetops. He turned again, and for the next five minutes terrorized the hiding mountaineers with showers of lead all around them.

“Now let ’em see whether they’ve got any stomach to keep fiddling around,” he grinned, as he swept back toward the field.

His rancor was all gone, now that he was safe. It was something of a game to him.

They fixed the mainline by means of a spare rubber connection they had brought along, and got in a good five hours of work, landing shortly after two o’clock. Apperson, seemingly entirely unshaken by the events of the morning, had a suggestion to make. He led Hemingwood to one side, so that Mumford, there with the gas, could not overhear anything, and said:

“Let’s dispense with lunch, sir-r-r. This is bonny weather. And it may be the mornin’s events’ll scare ’em off, or maybe they’ll try again. So the queecker we get through the better, to my mind.”

To which Hemingwood assented. There were but a few onlookers this time, and seemingly the sound of the shooting had not been noticed. Mumford did not mention anything about the events of the morning, either, so Hemingwood decided that it was a secret between himself and those five men on the ground. Which was just as well, he reflected. He did not particularly care for the news to spread that he had attempted to shoot up five mountaineers.

They worked until after four o’clock, and once again Mumford was waiting with a new supply of gas. He seemed a bit more openly friendly now, and announced that Mrs. Mumford and Gail would again oblige with supper.

They arrived in due time, along with Pegasus, the buckboard, and a big basket of provender, but left almost immediately after the meal was over. Mrs. Mumford, it appeared, was president of the Mental Improvement Society of East Point, which was to meet that evening to weigh the merits of English poetry from Chaucer to Masefield, and Gail was to sing.

Hemingwood did not mention the incident of the morning to Gail. There was nothing of the grandstander in him and he did not want her to worry about it. After they had gone he and Apperson smoked and talked and watched the moon come up. At ten o’clock Apperson, who was to take the last watch again, was knocking out his pipe preparatory to retiring when Hemingwood became aware of the fact that a horse was undoubtedly galloping toward them, and coming fast. They waited by the fence, hands on their guns.

It was Gail Morgan, and Pegasus was a badly winded steed as she guided him up to the fence.

“Did you shoot anybody this morning?” she asked breathlessly.

Hemingwood, a tingle of excitement running up and down his spine, told her briefly what had happened.

“You hit Jim Calley!” she told him. “He must have been one of those men—they’re all Calleys over there. Jim must have been a little away from the others so that you got him. Anyway, they are coming over tonight to get you!”

“May I ask how you know?” Hemingwood asked easily.

Apperson was listening quietly, his empty pipe upside down in his mouth.

“Mrs. Tuttle, a woman I nursed when she was sick, sent her little boy to tell me. To these people, the fact that you and I have been friendly means that we must be sweethearts, so she wanted to warn me. She isn’t a Calley herself, although she’s kin to them.”

Gail was talking with breathless speed, as though laboring under almost unbearable tension. She went on: “I came right up, without telling a soul. You’d better start for East Point right off.”

“No, I guess we’ll have to guard the old ship, Gail.”

“But you don’t know these Calleys! They’re bad! What chance will you have against six men? I didn’t know what to do. All the men in East Point are either with them or afraid of them. It would be suicide for anyone like my uncle to take a hand in it, Lieutenant Hemingwood. But you could come down to East Point for the night, and—”

“No! We’ll stay. And there’s nothing to worry about,” declared Hemingwood. “Gail, you’re a brick. You’re a whole mansion of bricks. Now you turn right around and gallop home before you get mixed in it yourself. I’ll thank you later.”

“You can’t stay!” she said, the hint of a sob in her voice. “I tell you those Calleys—”

“Please run along, Gail. And I tell you we’ll be all right. If I didn’t think so. I’d light out. I’m not hankering to commit suicide.”

Finally, after Hemingwood had outlined his plans, she did go, but not before she had exhausted every means of persuasion at her command. Hemingwood had a hard time to keep her from staying nearby to see what happened and then she announced that she’d tell her uncle and that they would both be back, which Hemingwood likewise vetoed.

“Please be careful!” she whispered finally, leaning over a trifle. “And if there’s any way you can, will you let me know that everything has come out all right? I couldn’t close my eyes until I know—”

“Sure. Now for the love of Mike, pretty lady, beat it!”

She had not disappeared from sight before Hemingwood and Apperson were busy. A big rock, protruding two feet above the ground, was the cornerstone of their defense. The ship was standing by the fence, the tent thirty feet away from it and ten feet from the edge of the forest. The rock was in a corner of the field nearest the road, perhaps forty feet from both tent and ship.

They worked with breathless haste, carrying the fence rails over to the rock and constructing their barricade. In a half hour they had a small, three sided fortification of which the rock formed the apex facing the tent, where Hemingwood figured most of the action would take place, if any. The machine guns were useless—there was no time to dismount them.

He was right about the scene of battle. Less than half an hour from the time they had ensconced themselves in their shelter, lying flat on the ground, they heard a rustling in the bushes behind the tent. Although the moonlight was flooding the world in silver radiance, they could see no signs of the men they knew were there.

For taut minutes there was utter silence. Hemingwood wondered whether the low structure of rails and rock behind which they were hidden would catch the marauders’ eyes and scare them off. He hoped it would, but the chances were against it.

It was fully ten minutes before six ghostly figures, long rifles in hand, slipped out of the bushes and started to surround the tent. Hemingwood acted before any of them went out of sight behind it.

He shot his Colt in the air, and shouted, “Drop your guns! Hands up!”

“Quick!” bellowed Apperson, to let them know there was more than one gun trained on them.

For an instant six men, vague in the moonlight, stood like statues. Hemingwood shot again, shouting at the same time: “Next shot I’ll get someone! Drop those guns!”

The utter surprise of it and the terrifying effect of those two shots from unseen marksmen did the trick. The mountaineers were a bit too far from the shelter of the forest to risk a break for it against unknown odds. Their rifles dropped to the ground and six pairs of hands thrust slowly into the air.