Our Pilots in the Air Part 27

"Why, hullo, Lafe!" And Blaine and Stanley both recognized the wrecked intruder. "I thought you had made the home base."

Sure enough it was Buck Bangs himself, breathless from exertion, yet full of vim and energy still. He climbed nimbly up the slope and gripped Blaine's hand, then stooping, greeted the still weak, yet slowly recovering Stanley.

"I would have got there," said Blaine, replying to Buck's first remark, "but my petrol all at once gave out. I barely managed to save a fall by alighting here. How came you in this fix?"

"That's soon said. While I was fighting that plane that was after you and you were on the way home, as I thought, along came two other Boches. Well, we had it hot for a minute or so. I downed one somewhere along here."

"Yonder it lies," and Blaine pointed at the ruins of the other plane, near which lay Bauer and the other dead German. "Bet you'd never guess who one of them two Huns is." Lafe eyed Bangs quizzically.

"Nix! I ain't much on blind guessing. I saw my chap was crippled and I went back after the other, to keep him off you. I'd lost sight of you, but I reasoned you'd be on the way home. I knew you couldn't go very fast. Then all at once I saw I was afire. One of my wings had caught from something -- probably an explosive sh.e.l.l. Well, I had to turn back. Meantime those planes arriving from our side had swept the Boches clean off. I saw I wasn't getting much of anywhere and I just managed to light down here."

"But what about that chap over there?"

"Bother! I don't know beans about him; only if I helped bring him down I guess it was a good job."

"Better job than you think! You remember Bauer, the chap that was caught in the spy act back in the old station?"

Bangs nodded.

"He's one of the two over there," pointing at the airplane wreck, "and he was alive when I heard him. I went to him, but he was practically gone. Will say this for him though, he was a Hun all right, and he died cussing us all, Johnny Bull, Uncle Sam, as 'Schwein, schwein!' Oh yes, be was true German to the backbone. Between you and me I'm right glad that it fell to us to do him up, and that we will all know he got the reward due his abominable treachery." And Blaine nodded his head emphatically.

Bangs walked across, eyed the dead Hun a moment, and came back, saying:

"Will your plane carry us -- but pshaw! You're out of gasoline, man!"

"No - we're not. Got a tank half full!"

"Too thin, old man! Why, then did you stop here? You didn't know I was going to drop down, and you knew Stanley ought to be in the hospital instead of lying here listening to you and me gabbing this way."

"Why haven't you got some invention, Buck?" Blaine was grinning as he rose up to prepare for early departure. "I 'lowed that if Bauer had enough gasoline to get this far, if his tank wasn't busted, he might have more. I took what they had and was about to leave when down you came. Come on -- let's go!"

With great care Stanley was placed as comfortably as possible inside the biplane, which the two aviators trundled to the edge of the sh.e.l.l-hole. A moment later, with Bangs giving the plane a downward push, then leaping lightly up behind Blaine, they easily rose to a requisite height and glided over the sh.e.l.l-torn plain.

Far away to the east and southeast rumbled the roar of battle, while with the gray dawn, now mantling into rose pink, then red, and finally melting into the brightest of gold, at last came the morning's sun, leaping from its nightly nest and flooding half the world with the day's celestial glory.

Luckily their plane was not hit or in danger from the occasional sh.e.l.ls that still came screaming over the lines across the scraggy war-torn land over which they flew. Stanley, though very weak, was still alive.

Loss of blood was the main cause of his weakness. Upon recovering from his first state of coma, after sustaining his injury, he had borne the long, wearisome ride, the spatter and peril of conflict without complaint.

At Appincourte Bluff, where was now a base hospital, he was taken from the plane and put under adequate medical care. For twenty-four hours he dozed and slowly strengthened; but when be finally waked again to life and its daily events, there was Miss Daskam's fair young face at his bedside. Needless to state that Stanley's recovery was rapid under these auspices.

Meantime Blaine and Bangs made their further, way in the plane over the few miles intervening between the hospital and the aerodrome.

Most of the boys were away, scattered along the now advancing front but by night some of them began to straggle back. Poor Finzer and Brodno would never come back. That both Lafe and his companion well knew.

But they had died like true men, fighting for the cause they believed in.

Captain Byers was also at the front, now many miles to the east. But the veteran Sergeant Anson was on hand and in partial charge. He it was who brought to the boys some sealed envelopes, saying:

"You chaps have been gone a goodish while. And you've managed to lose one bully scouting plane. But I guess you've done your bit all right."

"Well, sergeant," remarked Blaine quizzically, "I don't know what you'd call doing our bit. Buck here has brought down, with my help at times, several Boche planes. I managed to knock spots out of a troop and ammunition train or rather two of them. Better than all, we helped bring down another plane with two Huns in it, one dead, another dying.

Guess who the last one was?"

Anson grinned, frowned, then shook his head.

"Bother the guessin'! I ain't as bally good at that as you Yanks. Was it any one we knows?"

"You remember Bauer?"

"That rotter what was found guilty of spyin' for the enemy? Yes, I knew the blighter, the traitor?"

"Well, he's dead. When his plane fell on fire, I had to drop down in a sh.e.l.l-hole back yonder. Bauer and his pilot had fallen near there just before. He was cussing us all out, Boche fas.h.i.+on. But it was from their machine that I got enough petrol to fetch us three safely back.

So you see Bauer was some good after all. Of course he was a traitor and should have been hung."

"Well, you two haven't done so bad. Before Senator Walsen and his daughters left they gave me these things for you two, if you had the luck to get back. And Captain Byers, before going on this raid, left this permit, together with all necessary papers for you two to go on leave for ten days."

"That reminds me, said Blaine, fis.h.i.+ng in his own pockets. "Here are some photos, maps and so on that I got from those two dead Germans, Bauer and his pilot. They may be of service up at headquarters."

And he handed them over, Buck supplementing them with a few he too had taken on his various ventures within the last day or two.

CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSION

Two days later a couple of rather spruce looking young men alighted from an eastern train in Paris and, strolling forth in the crowd of pa.s.sengers, looked about them rather curiously.

Both had pa.s.sed through the French capital before, but more as strangers and foreigners than as ally Americans, visiting a city famed as the center of all that is best in French history and tradition.

"Looks much like little old New York," remarked Buck, "only I don't see so many skysc.r.a.pers."

"I like that!" said Blaine. "I never did fall in love with fifty-story shacks that seem to resent the sunlight down here below. I wish Stan could be with us, don't you?"

"Yep! But I bet he's satisfied with the nursing he's getting off that pretty Chicago girl we left him with. What we better do? Wait for something to happen?"

"'Looks that way. Our wire said for us to wait at the depot." And Blaine, looking curiously around, happened to be turned the wrong way when a uniformed porter came up to Bangs, touched his cap and said:

"Pardon, messieurs, but will you come with me?" And be presented a card upon which was engraved the name of Senator Walsen. Under this was hastily penciled in a feminine hand: "We are waiting. Please follow the porter." That was all.

Buck, slightly confused, tugged at Blaine's sleeve, saying:

"Come on! They're waiting for us - somewhere."

With a start of surprise Blaine obeyed, and each bearing his hand-bag, they set out dumbly after the station official who had already picked up a couple of suit-cases.

For a minute or more they threaded the mixed throngs of civilians, officials, soldiers of all grades and many nationalities, together with trainmen, guards, gendarmes and what not, to a line of waiting cabs, taxies, motor-cars just beyond a series of high iron gates. At one of these a sentry, together with a railway official, examined their tickets, and more important still their pa.s.ses or permits. After this, both sentry and guard, respectfully saluting, stood aside and the porter took them to a big gray limousine drawn up near by. A uniformed driver sat in front, while the porter placed the luggage in a rear rack and climbed up behind himself.