It wasn’t that this red-headed bird didn’t know ships. He did. In the first place he had those goggle-cuts around the eyes—and I figured from the first second my baby-blue eyes glimpsed his fire-top, that he’d crashed them far and wide. Bert Billings, who runs the “Billings Air Circus,” looks up from a pile of high-test gas bills, and greets the new arrival cheerfully.

“I’m betting you’re Happy Hennessy,” he says. “—Sometimes known as Red. An’ you’re down in Texas to tie up with the roughest ridin’ air circus what is. Am I right?”

This red-headed boy never blinks an eyelash. He’s tall and thin, and his face is a perfect brown.

“What is, right now,” he says slowly. “But not what was. I just come from an outfit, man, where we landed the crates upside down, an’ did outside loops to cool our toes off. Out in California we used to zoom ’em with the engine throttled down just to get a kick out of it. I can remember the time that—”

Bert interrupts with a chuckle. “That you fell out of a loop into two airholes an’ a dozen left-handed cotter-pins. Happy, you’ve come to the right outfit this time.

“Where that bunch you left stopped—that’s where we start down here! Tell him, Gus!”

“Happy,” I says, innocent-like, “the boss is right. I can tell by your face that you’ve set ’em down fast and furious, an’ that more than a few has nosed over on you. But you don’t know nothin’ yet, Red. We always land cross-wind down here—an’ the boss has a set rule that we gotta side-slip to within six inches of the ground. We got a master mechanic who hates engines to hit smooth-like; and the boss gives a grand prize for the guy that takes a ship off with the most cylinders missing—”

“That,” this red-headed bird interrupts, “aint nothin’. Out in California we flew ’em without usin’ the controls unless we was in a sixty-mile gale, an’ we never—”

And right there the boss got sore. Bert’s like that. He can stand just so much—and no more. I guess he had visions of a two-months’ no-crash record being shot to pieces. The Billings outfit was sane and safety-first, and this red-headed bird had the boss wind up from the start, even if Bert did try a bluff.

“Happy,” he says slowly, “you got a sweet rep back of you. Since Jake ‘went West’ last week we’ve been short-handed. But none of the boys has even strained a landing gear in the last month—not countin’ the tail-spin that Jake neglected to come out of—an’ we don’t want no epidemic brought along by you. Am I getting across?”

Well, this lean bird looks serious-like for several seconds, an’ then just grins.

“Boss,” he says slowly, “I got right sick of them excitin’ times in California. An’ I like the Texas scenery. I’m a safety-first pilot, an’ I really handle a stick as careful as a maiden-lady handles an honest-to-God marriage opportunity.”

The boss stared, and then nodded his head. But this red-topped bird didn’t fool me none. I’d seen ’em like that before. It takes a neck-crackin’ crash to cure the wild ones, and then the only kind of flyin’ they do is with harps.

“Apple soup!” I mutters (very much to myself) and clears out of the office to put the rest of the gang wise to what’s with us. It looks like things aint going to be so quietlike—with Happy on the payroll.

We sure had a queer-lookin’ bunch of ships out in the canvas hangars. They were rambling wrecks with wings on, but the boys handled them gentle-like, and the boss kept them out of the rain as much as business allowed. There was two D.H.’s, a couple of ancient Curtiss two-seaters, one Nieuport and a few mixed breeds. We was doing sky-writing, plane-to-plane jumpin’, wing-stuff, and the ordinary variety of stunting and passenger joy-hopping. In them days there was coin in the game. There is yet—for a few.

Well, I made it my business to be among them present when Happy Hennessy gives the ships the two-eye. An’ it sure was worth it.

The red-headed one looked with his eyes and felt with his long fingers—an’ rambled off a past history of each plane that was so close to the mark that it was scary-like. An’ finally, with Pack Kennedy right behind him, he reaches the Curtiss two-seater with “Mary” painted in big, black letters on her fuselage sides. I seen trouble comin’ then—with that slow grin spreadin’ on Happy’s face.

“Now aint that sweet!” he says in that drawl of his. “Whose particular little pet is she?”

Pack Kennedy scowls. Kennedy gets his leadin’ name because of the fact that he’s our “chute” man. Seventy-two parachute drops in three months—an’ not even a twisted ankle! Not so bad, I figures, and it looks as if Happy has picked the wrong bird this time.

“She’s my hop-off ship,” Pack says, calm-like—but I knows he’s boilin’ inside. “Gus here—he flies her. Got any kick?”

The red-headed one just grins all the more. He winks at me.

“I’ll bet your girl christened her with a bottle of vi-o-let perfume,” he says, lookin’ at Pack again. “Where I come from they numbers their ships—don’t name ’em pretty-like.”

“If you like that system,” shoots back Kennedy, “why the hell don’t you go back to where you came from?”

Which, I figures, was straight to the point. But this Happy Hennessy wasn’t gettin’ the least bit flustered. Nothin’ like that. Instead he just grins at Pack.

“Maybe,” he says casual-like, “I can teach you guys a few new tricks. Mind if I take Mary up for a loop or two—or is she just for you, private-like?”

Pack’s face is kinda white. You see, Happy aint wise to the fact that Pack’s crazy over this kid Mary. She’s a looker, and it aint no secret that Pack and she is figurin’ on gettin’ hooked up before the outfit clears Texas.

“Mister,” says our star jumper, “I been readin’ about you in some old papers. You seem to be some wild sky-stunter. An’ maybe you are. The boss here lets any pilot on the payroll take any ship up above. That’s his business method. That includes—” Pack kinda swallows hard—“this two-seater, here. Take her up, Mister. Personally, I hope she bounces you out into plenty of non-supportin’ air! I don’t like you, Mister. You strike me like a fresh guy. There’s the ships.” Pack gestured with both sun-browned hands. “An’ all I gotta say is ride ’em an’ weep!”

Which I figured was a pretty good-sized mouthful. But Happy didn’t seem to figure things that way.

“Roll this sweet-named one out!” he instructs the ground crew. “I aim to see if she’s got what them opery guys call temper’ment.”

Right then and there we all knew that Bert’s outfit was too small to hold both Pack and Happy. And when we seen what the red-headed one did to Mary, while Pack stood near the hangars and muttered to himself, we commenced makin’ little bets with ourselves as to the exact length of time required before the two boys would tangle.

Stunts? Say, the lanky one from California put the two-seater through every trick a ship can do, and keep her wings—and a few others, too. He pulled a pretty falling leaf coming down, went into a vertical slip at five hundred feet, and held her in it until I closed my eyes. When I opened them she was landing sweet and pretty.

And while the ground crew’s getting the two-seater in her hangar again Happy strolls over to where Pack is tryin’ to calm his nerves with a cigarette.

“She aint bad,” Happy says, calm-like. “Considerin’ the name you tacked on her she aint half bad.”

Pack says nothin’. For myself, I don’t think that silk-hopper could have said anythin’. He was too sore. In fact, he was even sorer than that. He just looks at Happy. I seen a killer look at a judge that had just sentenced him to life, a few years back—an’ the look that killer gave the judge was mild compared to the one Pack gives Happy. It was one of those looks that means trouble with a capital T.

Mary Thomas is one of these good-lookin’ kids, slim and tall and athletic. She drives a blue roadster out to the hangars every day or so—an’ what I mean she drives it! Pack is crazy about her, an’ she seems crazy about Pack. At least that’s the way the crowd had things figured. But she’s a woman—and there aint no real way of figurin’ a woman.

She drives out the day after Happy blows in, and just by luck that bird is up above givin’ the little ship her daily dozen. Well, the kid’s eyes is turned high, and she spots that kind of flyin’ as somethin’ else again. Not that the rest of us can’t fly—but Happy can and does.

“Who is up in the sky, Gus?” Mary says to me, I bein’ the nearest to the blue roadster.

I grins. “That,” I says, effective-like, “is the California Comet—Happy Hennessy. When it comes to ridin’ them high and wide he’s hotter than the color of his hair—so he says.”

“The gentleman,” Mary observes with a certain grimness, her eyes watching two sweet Immelmans and a barrel-roll, “has reason for such an observation.”

Well, that afternoon I was slated to take off the two-seater, with Pack as the hopper-off, at some sort of a convention holdin’ out in the ball-park on the outskirts of Dallas. An’ I was busy prayin’ that Happy didn’t crack her up. She’s a good ship, patches an’ all.

Happy gets her down pretty, an’ the first thing I know Tex Connell is introducin’ him to Pack’s girl. Aint that sweet? An’ the answer is—it aint! Pack’s in town buyin’ a gross of his favorite chewin’ gum, an’ he don’t see the eyes the two of them make at each other. But I see—an’ I know right then that Mary Thomas aint slated to help things along none.

I been wrong a few times in my life—but not this time. Pack is in a bad humor—and he makes a rotten jump at the Dallas convention. He gives me a scare as I circle around him on his way down. Pack can guide a ’chute when he wants to—but this afternoon he don’t even hit the convention field. He misses the ball-park—and lands twenty feet from the right-of-way of the Texas and Southern Railroad, with a train roaring along. An’ he gets a badly sprained ankle out of it.

That’s where Happy comes in. The first thing I know he’s doin’ the jump stuff for the “Billings Air Circus”—and he’s doin’ it good, too. Pack’s just grouchin’ along. And the girl’s smilin’ at both of them.

“Pretty quick now,” says Tex Connell,—who’s been tied up to a woman twice, an’ should know,—“there’s goin’ to be a smash.”

I nods at the time. But the smash comes sooner than I figures, and from a different direction. I sets a D.H. down a bit fast, a week before we’re slated to clear out of Dallas, an’ she blows a tire an’ noses over on me. I’m slow gettin’ my head away from the cowl—an’ when I come back to things Bert is tellin’ the boys that I’ll have to rest up a bit. Then he pulls it.

“Pack’s ankle is all right now,” he says easy-like. “The way I figure things, an’ with us short-handed, Happy’ll fly the Curtiss hop-off ship—an’ Pack can make the last jump in this here vicinity.”

I groans at that, but the boss thinks it’s on account of my head. An’ it aint up to me to say nothin’. Happy flyin’ the two-seater—an’ Pack making the leap! The two of them together—up there where there aint no traffic cops to butt in!

“Ride ’em—an’ weep!” I mutters to myself, but Bert hears me.

“He’s off his nut,” he tells the gang.

“An’ I thought he had a hard head, before he got this bump!”

The boss is sympathetic like that.

Pack an’ Happy wasn’t speakin’ when they climbed into the two-seater to get into the air for the final hop-off. Dallas was celebratin’ Old Home Week, or one of them things that cities like to celebrate to take the citizens’ minds off taxes for a day or so.

“Take it easy,” I advises, but knowin’ that neither of ’em will pay any attention to me. “We’ve been havin’ a few unhappy landings around the outfit, an’ a change of atmosphere will do us all good. An’ if you guys—”

“Tell Mary,” says Happy in that loud voice of his, “that I’ll take good care of any of her boy-friends that the boss sends up with me.”

I frowns at that. Pack, fumbling with his parachute-pack, kinda hisses between his teeth. But he says nothin’ until he was ready to climb into the rear cockpit.

“Too bad you aint flyin’ me, Gus,” he says then, plenty loud enough. “I always did enjoy the stuntin’ you pulled before I got loose. Guess it’ll be kinda mild this trip.”

An’ Happy, in the front cockpit, tunin’ up the engine, just grins. Which hits me hard an’ gives me the first real idea I’ve had in a couple of years. I goes close to Happy, an’ he bends his head down.

“Be yourself!” I mutters in his ear, above the roar of the engine. “If you get Pack rattled on his jump I’ll—”

“Yeah,” the red-headed one comes back, interruptin’ me, “the air sure is quiet. Nice day for stuntin’, aint it?”

Pack was to make his jump over the ball-park, same as he’d done several times before. An’ the ball-park bein’ only about two miles from the field in which we was hangin’ out, we had the day-glasses ready after the two-seater got into the air.

I was wonderin’ where the girl was. She always came out to the field before Pack made a jump, but today she hadn’t shown. Lately, for that matter, she had come out to see Happy about as much as Pack. Maybe more—I aint up on the signs, not bein’ an expert.

I was pretty worried—an’ I’ll admit it. Them boys up in the sky wasn’t spillin’ over with love for each other. An’ the outfit had been gettin’ some bad breaks lately.

Well, at five thousand feet, almost directly over our hangars, an’ a couple of miles from where he should have pulled a few stunts, Happy let loose. I groaned when I seen him start. Barrels, Immelmans, loops in succession, slips—two tight spins. And then a zoom into a stall.

“Hell!” I heard Tex mutter, beside me. “That Curtiss can’t stand the gaff. If he doesn’t lay off the sharp stuff pretty quick—”

Tex broke off, an’ I stiffens. The two-seater engine is missin’ badly. Then there’s a sharp clatter—back-fire. Back-fire aint nice in the air. Too risky.

I hears Tex mutter again—and then, with the ship fallin’ off into a spin, I sees the black cloud of smoke—comin’ right up off the engine. The ship is burnin’!

There’s no roar from the engine now. She’s dead. The nose comes down, an’ I can see the smoke cover up both cockpits as it streams out an’ up. Then the ship’s comin’ down, an’ I can see that this bird Happy is usin’ his noodle. He’s tryin’ to slip her down, an’ keep the black stuff and flames away from the cockpits.

At three thousand I see the wing surface start to go—an’ I figures then that the game’s up. The ship’s out of the slip an’ in a spin, with black smoke trailin’ back of her an’ remindin’ me of the “flaming coffin” D.H.’s of the war.

“Pack can jump for it!” I hears Tex mutter. “Why the hell aint he over the side by this time?”

She’s out of the spin, plungin’ straight down now, two thousand feet off the ground. An’ then we see it!

Two figures close together, through a break in the smoke—both of ’em half out of the cockpit! An’ as the black streams over them again, Tex groans.

“Fightin’!” he mutters. “Can you beat it? Fightin’ with the ship fallin’—”

The ship’s plungin’ straight down now, an’ behind her she leaves that trail of smoke, thinner than right around her. Then, out of the smoke, we see ’em. Two figures—two dark streaks! Tex lets out a yell.

“They got clear!” he howls. “If the ’chutes open—”

An’ they did just that. The two-seater crashes to earth with a dull roar as the bunch hops into the two flivvers on the field, and drives toward the gently falling ’chutes. I takes a good look with the glasses. Pack is movin’ in his harness—but Happy is just danglin’ below the white silk of his.

“Closer to the engine!” I mutters, grim-like. “The smoke and flames got him an’—”

I breaks off talkin’ to myself. That thought gives me a jolt. I’m standin’ there thinkin’—when the flivvers gets away—an’ I’m left. An’ that’s why the kid hands me the letter, a couple of minutes later, when he drives up in a light truck. It’s addressed to me—an’ I reads it in a daze, wonderin’ how bad the boys is burned, an’ tryin’ to get over the kick the whole business has handed me. An’ the letter hands me another wallop. I read it twice—and then twice again.

Three hours later I reads it to two boys whose faces an’ hands are bandaged tighter than one of them hospital dummies the young docs practise on. When I finish Pack mumbles a few words:

“Eloped with a kiwi! Can you beat it? One of them second-louie instructors over to Kelly Field! Well, I’ll be damned!”

“A ground bird!” Happy mutters, with more difficulty, because of more bandages. “I bet he never flew higher’n a kid’s kite! Aint it hell?”

An’ me, I just grins, thinkin’ of the girl throwin’ the boys over for a ground instructor with a nice shiny uniform. An’ I’m thinkin’ of Pack helpin’ Happy get clear of the front cockpit, stickin’ to him until they both could get out of that flamin’ mess. An’ then I’m thinkin’ of the girl again. Safety first—for her.

I can see Pack grinnin’ through them slits in the bandages—grinnin’ at Happy. An’ Happy’s tryin’ to grin back. It takes a sense of humor to sky-chase, I figures. But it’s Pack that makes me sure of that little point. I guess he’s thinkin’ of that louie—an’ the girl.

“Ride ’em—an’ weep!” he mutters, an’ Happy pulls somethin’ that sounds almost like a chuckle.