Battling the Clouds; or, For a Comrade's Honor Read online

  CHAPTER II

  Bill, driving the little car which he had named the Swallow, reached thequarters at the School of Fire in a rising cloud of dust. The wind hadrisen suddenly and the fine sand whipped around the long boardbuildings, driving in through every crack and crevice. All the rest ofthe afternoon it blew, and at six o'clock, when the Major came in, hewas coated with the fine yellow dust. By nine o'clock, when Bill went tobed, a small gale was singing around, and about one o'clock he wasawakened by the scream of the wind. It shrieked and howled, and thequarters rattled and quivered.

  Bill remembered the Swallow and his dad's car, both standing at the backdoor. He rose and went to his mother's room. He found her curled up in alittle ball on her quartermaster's cot, looking out of the window.

  "Come in, Billy," she said as she saw him at the door. "You are missinga great sight."

  They cuddled close, their arms around each other, and pressed theirfaces close to the pane. The yellow sand was driven across the prairielike a sheet of rain. The Major's big car shuddered with each freshblast, and the little Swallow seemed to cower close to the ground.Continuous sheets of lightning made the night as bright as day. Overthe whine and whistle of the wind they could hear the distant rumble ofthe thunder. The room was full of dust, driven through the cracks of thewindow. Their throats were choked with it. The wind blew harder andharder; the lightning grew brighter, slashing the black sky with greatgashes of blinding light.

  Bill looked sober. "Gee, it is fierce!" he said in an awed tone. "Whereis dad all this time?"

  "In his room sound asleep," said Mrs. Sherman. "I suppose he is used tosights like this. Wasn't it _nice_ of Oklahoma to stage such a wonderfulsight for us? I wouldnt have missed it for anything."

  "It is going to rain," said Bill, again looking out. "The thunder isgrowing louder and louder. Did you ever see anything like the glare thelightning makes?"

  All at once Mrs. Sherman clutched Bill and pointed out.

  "Oh, look, look!" she cried.

  Bill followed the direction of her finger, and saw a small rabbitrunning before the blast. He was going at a rate that caused his popeyes to pop worse than ever. As he skimmed along, he made the mistake oftrying to turn. In a second he was being rushed along sidewise, hoppingfrantically up and down in order to keep on his feet, but unable to turnback again or to stop. Bill and his mother laughed until they cried asthe little rabbit was hustled out of sight around the end of thestudents' quarters.

  The lightning grew worse and occasionally balls of flame shot earthward.The thunder rolled in a deafening roar. Then suddenly the windstopped--stopped so suddenly and completely that Bill jumped and hismother said, "Goodness me!" in a small, scared voice.

  There was a long pause as though Nature was calling attention to herfreaks, and then down came the rain. It came in rivers, sheets, floods.The roads ran yellow mud; the creek over the bluff commenced to boil.The sparse dwarfed trees that clung to the sides of the gullies bentunder the weight of falling water.

  It poured and poured and poured.

  Bill had seen rain before, if not in such quantities. He found himselfgrowing sleepy, and kissing his mother twice, once for luck and once forlove, as he told her, he went to bed and to sleep, while the downpourcontinued until almost morning.

  The roads were impassable, although a hot, steamy, sunshiny day did itsbest to dry things up. Bill spent most of the day putting the poorhalf-drowned Swallow in shape.

  Frank telephoned, but could not get over. He was excited about thedamage that had been done at the Aviation Field. One of the greathangars had collapsed, ruining the machines inside. No planes wereallowed to fly.

  Frank wanted Bill to walk over and Bill suggested the same pastime forFrank; consequently neither one would go. The roads continued to be agummy, sticky mass of clay, and after four or five days Frank started towalk across the prairie to the School of Fire.

  Just before he reached the bridge crossing the glen between the New Postand the School, he heard a joyful whoop and there was Bill running tomeet him.

  "Hey there!" called Bill, as soon as he could possibly make himselfheard. "I was just starting over to see you."

  "Come on back!" grinned Frank. "I am at home this morning."

  "Not as much as I am," answered his friend. "Gee, it has been a longweek! Did you ever see such a storm?"

  "Oklahoma can beat that any time she wants to," boasted Frank. "That wasjust a _little_ one. You ought to see a real blizzard or 'sly coon' aswe call the cyclones. They are bad medicine, as the Indians say."

  "This was big enough to start with," said Bill. "I thought the Swallowwas going to fly away. And dad's big car _reeled_ around. And you shouldhave seen our bath tub! It was full of sand."

  "Clear up to the top?" asked Frank teasingly.

  "There was a good inch in it," retorted Bill, "and it looks to me asthough that was a good deal of sand to trickle through the windows whenthey all have screens and were closed besides."

  "It surely does get in," granted Frank. "Hello, there comes Lee! Whereis he going, I wonder, without his fatigue suit on?"

  "I suppose you mean those overall things he works in, don't you?" saidBill. "I know that much now. Lee doesn't wear them any more. He was socrazy over mother and so good to her and to me that dad got himtransferred to his Battery, and now he is our orderly."

  "How did he manage to do that?" said Frank.

  "Why, there was some fellow who wanted to leave the guns and work aroundthe quarters as janitor. They have an idea that it is an easy job. Sodad let him make the exchange, and I can tell you we were all about aspleased as we could be."

  "Good work!" commended Frank, but without enthusiasm. He did not wantBill to have the fun of having Lee for orderly. He had been trying tothink up some scheme whereby the soldier would be sent over to fill thatposition with his own father.

  "Lee is a peach," said Bill warmly. "Look what he made me."

  He fished in his pocket and drew forth a length of chain. The small,delicate links were carved from a single piece of wood, and at the end,like an ornamentation, hung a carved cage in which rolled a littlewooden ball. It was all very curious and delicate.

  "My, but that's a peach," said Frank.

  "You ought to see the one he did for mother," said Bill. "Small enoughfor a bracelet almost, and the little ball smaller than a pea. The linksare all carved on the outside, and there is a sort of rose on the end ofthis cage thing, and Lee painted it all up pink and green where it oughtto be like that.

  "He knows all about a car too. This week he has been going over dad'scar and the Swallow, and they run like grease."

  Frank fiddled with the chain. He had nothing to say. On account of hisIndian blood, his silent ways and mischievous nature, Lee had alwaysfilled him with interest. He could tell wonderful stories too of his owntimes and the times that lay long behind him, as he heard of them fromhis father and grandfather.

  Lee's grandfather knew a great many things that he never did tell, butonce in awhile he was willing to open his close-set old mouth and talk.He wore black broadcloth clothes, a long coat, and a white shirt, butnever a collar. A wide black, soft-brimmed hat was set squarely on hiscoal black hair. Under the hat, smooth as a piece of satin, his hairhung in two tight braids close to each ear. They were always wound withbright colored worsted. Grandfather Lee, the old chieftain, likedbright colors, so he usually had red and yellow on his braids. They hungnearly to his waist, down in front, over each coat lapel. Small goldrings hung in his ears, and under his eyes and across each cheek bonewas a faint streak of yellow paint.

  His Indian name was Bird that Flies by Night, and he lived about ahundred miles away, on a farm given him by the Government. He had livedthere quite contentedly for many years, tilling the ground when he hadto. But now everything was changed. Oklahoma had given up her treasure,the hidden millions that lay under her sandy stretches. Oil derricksrose thickly everywhere, and Bird that Flies by Night found that all hehad to do was to sit
on his back porch and look at the derrick that hadbeen raised over the well dug where his three pigs used to root. Twohundred dollars a day that well was bringing to the old Bird and, as Leesaid, was "still going strong."

  "And here _I_ am," said Lee grimly, "enlisted for three years!"

  Lee's father was an Indian of a later day. He had gone through aneastern college and had been in business in a small town when the oilexcitement broke out. He went into oil at once, and was far down in theoil fields, Lee did not know where.

  As a boy, Lee himself had refused to accept the schooling urged by hismother and college-bred father, and had led a restless, roaming life,filled with hairbreadth escapes, until the beginning of the war, whenhe had enlisted in the hope of being sent across where the danger lay.But like many another man as brave and as willing, he had been caught inone of the war's backwaters, and had been stationed at Fort Sill.

  Sauntering up to the quarters, the boys found Lee staring moodily at thesmall and racy Swallow, now standing clean and glistening in the brightsunlight.

  "She knocks," he said, knitting his fierce black brows. "All morning Ihave been working over that car, and I can't find that knock."

  The boys came close and listened.

  "I don't hear any knock," said Frank.

  They all listened.

  "Don't you hear it now?" said Lee, speeding the engine.

  "Seems as though I hear something," said Bill, partly to please Lee.

  They all listened closely.

  Lee commenced to pry about in the engine. "I have it, I think," heexclaimed triumphantly as he took out a small piece of the machinery.Frank motioned Bill one side, and they wandered around the end of thebuilding.

  "Don't you feel sort of afraid to let Lee tinker with your car?" heasked with a show of carelessness.

  "Not a bit! Dad says he is a born mechanic and he trusts him with allthe care of his car. If dad thinks he can fix that, why, I guess it issafe to let him do anything he wants to do with the Swallow."

  "Do you ever let anybody else drive the Swallow?" asked Frank. "Iwouldn't mind taking it some day if you don't care."

  Bill looked embarrassed.

  "I would let you take her in a minute," He said, "but dad made mepromise that I would never loan the Swallow to anyone. It is not that hewants me to be selfish, but he says if anything should happen, if thecar should be broken, or if there should be an accident and some otherboy hurt, I would sort of feel that it was my fault."

  "I don't see it that way at all," said Frank, who was crazy to get holdof the pretty car and show it off to some boys and girls he knew inLawton. He didn't want to drive with Bill. He was the sort of a boy whoalways wants all the glory for himself. That car was quite the mostperfect thing; the sort a fellow sees in his dreams. Frank knew that hecould never hope to own such a car, and the fact that Bill was alwayswilling to take him wherever he wanted to go was not enough. Bill hadnever driven to Lawton, the town nearest the Post. He had told Frankthat he would take him with him the first time. Frank had thought itwould be pretty fine to go humming up the main street past all thepeople from the Post and the ranches, and the old Indians and thecrowds of Indian boys his own age who always came in on Saturday fromthe Indian school near by. He had been anticipating that trip ever sinceBill had appeared with the Swallow; but now he felt that it would be farnicer if Bill would or could be made to loan him the car. Of course hecouldn't run it, but he could run an airplane engine, and he wasperfectly willing to try running the little Swallow.

  Frank had a great trick of getting his own way about things, and hereflected with satisfaction that as long as the roads to Lawton werealmost impossible for traffic after the rainfall, there would be a fewdays in which to scheme for his plan. Nothing of this, however, appearedin his face. He turned and shrugged his shoulders.

  "Well, if you and your dad think Lee can handle a car all right, it'sall the same to me," he laughed. "My father says you never can trust anIndian anyhow."

  "Well, we would trust Lee with anything in the world," reiterated Bill.

  "That's all right, too, if you think so," said Frank, trying slyly tobreed distrust in Bill's heart. "I guess you never heard my father tellsome of his Indian stories. You would feel different if you had."

  "But anybody would just _have_ to trust Lee," said Bill. "Why, he is asgood as gold! And he hates a lie, and he has such nice people--two ofthe prettiest little sisters. One of them plays the harp. It's one ofthose big gold ones, and she is so little that Lee says she has to trotclear round the harp to play some of the notes, because her arms are tooshort to reach."

  "He's half Indian just the same," insisted Frank. He warmed to thesubject as he went on. He couldn't forgive Lee, quite the most thrillingand amusing soldier he knew, for _letting_ himself be made MajorSherman's orderly.

  "Well, I am for Lee every time," said Bill, "and I would wager anythingI have that he is just as true blue as--as--well, as my dad!" Bill couldpay no greater compliment, and the words rang out clear and honest. Theboys stood beside the quarters, staring idly across the bluff as theytalked. They were so interested in their conversation that they were notaware of a listener. Lee, with a part of the Swallow in his hand to showBill, had followed them in time to overhear the conversation concerninghimself, but he quickly drew back and returned to the automobile.

  "Good boy, Billy!" he said softly to himself. Then with a dark lookcoming into his face, "So you can't trust an Indian, can you? Ha ha! Iwonder what we had better do about that?"