CHAPTER I

A Daring Venture

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars to take me over to Lumberport in your
plane.”

The speaker was a tall, professional-looking man with a finely chiseled
face and piercing black eyes. A keen observer, viewing the long,
powerful, yet sensitive hands, would have classed him as a surgeon, the
impression being emphasized by the oblong black case that he carried in
his right hand.

He had addressed his remarks, spoken in a nervous, incisive tone, to a
young man in an aviator’s suit who was standing by a monoplane on the
flying field at Denver.

The airman, a lithe, muscular young fellow, without an ounce of
superfluous flesh on the frame that was surmounted by a well-shaped
head, from which looked out a pair of frank brown eyes, shook his head.

“Can’t do it,” he said decisively and yet regretfully. “It would be as
much as one’s life was worth to go up in the teeth of a howling gale
like this.”

“I’ll make it five hundred,” snapped the first speaker, as he nervously
clenched his fist in agitation. “I tell you I’ve got to get to
Lumberport.”

“I’m not trying to hold you up,” responded the aviator. “I’d take you
for the two hundred, if I took you at all. It isn’t a question of money.
It’s a question of life. You see what a gale is blowing. Even on the
ground, you can scarcely keep your feet. No plane could live in it.”

It was indeed a fearful wind that was sweeping the plateau that served
as a flying field. The temperature was close to zero, and the gale bit
into the very marrow of the bones. The low-lying clouds that hung in
ominous masses above them were full of snow.

Even now, a flurry of white flakes was scudding over the field, and to
the experienced eye of the aviator it was plain that a blizzard was
impending.

“But I am willing to risk it,” pleaded the would-be voyager.

“That may be,” was the reply. “You may have sufficient reasons. But the
only reason I would have would be the money that you offer. No amount of
money is enough to tempt me to commit suicide.”

“But you don’t understand, Mr.—Mr.——”

“Scott is my name,” replied the young fellow.

“Not Ted Scott, the Scott who flew over the Atlantic?” exclaimed the man
with a sudden quickening of interest and also of hope.

“Yes,” replied the young fellow simply.

“Then I know that you will do what I ask you to do,” cried the man
eagerly.

Ted smiled.

“I don’t exactly follow your reasoning,” he replied. “What has my flying
over the Atlantic got to do with carrying you to Lumberport?”

“Because your flight to Paris showed that you had in you the stuff of
which heroes are made,” was the quick reply. “The man who risked his
life for glory won’t hesitate to risk it again to save a human life.”

“A life!” exclaimed Ted, quickened to attention. “What do you mean by
that?”

“Just this,” was the reply. “My name is Yaley, Doctor Yaley.”

Ted recognized the name at once as that of the most distinguished
surgeon and specialist in that section of the country.

“I just got a telegram from Maxwell Bruin of Lumberport,” went on Dr.
Yaley rapidly, “telling me that his son, Frank, had been seriously
injured in a smash-up. The local doctor who attended him advised that I
be sent for, as a prompt operation is the only thing that will save his
life. It’s a matter of hours, perhaps of minutes. Everything depends on
speed. The mountain roads are blocked and the only way I can hope to get
there in time is by plane. Now you understand. Will you take me?”

There was a deadly earnestness in the doctor’s words, and the eyes were
as eloquent as the tone.

Ted had been thinking quickly. He knew that if he acceded to the
surgeon’s appeal he would be undertaking one of the most dangerous
adventures of his life. None knew better than he the peril of going up
in an airplane in that terrific gale. He had not exaggerated when he had
referred to it as possible suicide.

Two minutes before he had been firm in his determination not to go. Now
the situation had been entirely changed. A human life was in the
balance!

He looked at the surgeon. The stricken patient was no kin of his. The
man of science could easily have shrugged his shoulders and have said
that it was impossible for him to go. Yet, from sheer professional
ethics, a compelling sense of duty, this man was willing to take the
same desperate chance that he was asking Ted to accept.

Ted’s resolution was swiftly taken. It was a challenge at once to his
humanity and his sporting blood. He took up the challenge.

“I’ll take you,” he said.

The surgeon’s eyes glistened.

“I knew that Ted Scott would not refuse when he knew the facts,” he said
simply.

Ted gave a call, and several fellow pilots and mechanics who had been
toasting themselves by a warm fire in a near-by building came running
out.

“Give me a hand, will you, fellows?” asked Ted. “Help me run the machine
back to the filling station so that I can fill the tank. I’m nearly out
of gasoline.”

They gazed at the daring young aviator open-eyed.

“What’s the big idea, Ted?” asked Ed Allenby, an old comrade of Ted’s
who had been associated with him some time before in the Mississippi
flood relief work.

“You don’t mean that you’re going to take the air with this gale
blowing, do you?” queried Bill Twombley, with incredulity in his voice.

“You guessed it the first time,” replied Ted. “Don’t talk, fellows, but
help me roll this plane back. I’ll tell you about it while the tank is
filling.”

They did as he requested, but they kept looking at him as though they
thought he had suddenly gone crazy.

“But, Ted,” protested Roy Benedict, while the tank was being
replenished, “don’t tell me in dead earnest that you’re deliberately
going to throw away your life. Think, man, think!”

“I have thought, Roy,” replied Ted. “I know the danger as well as you
do. But I’ve made up my mind, and there’s no use talking about it.”

He hurriedly sketched out the substance of his talk with the surgeon.

“If that fellow is willing to take such a chance from sheer humanity,
I’m game enough to help him,” he finished.

His comrades were impressed but not convinced.

“‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’” quoted Ed Allenby. “The
doc is plucky. I’m handing it to him. But all the same he doesn’t know
how dangerous it really is. He isn’t an airman. He thinks that, if he
has Ted Scott with him, he’s sure to get through.”

“And so he is, if it’s humanly possible,” conceded Bill Twombley. “But
even Ted Scott can’t work miracles; and it won’t be much less than a
miracle if he takes that plane over the mountains in a blow like this.”

“The plane will be tossed about like a chip in the rapids,” prophesied
Roy Benedict. “How in the world, Ted, are you going to keep it on an
even keel? It can’t be done.”

“It isn’t only the wind,” added Ed. “Look at those clouds. They’re just
packed with snow. Some of it’s coming down already. If we’re not in for
the worst blizzard of the winter, I miss my guess. How are you going to
steer? You won’t be able to see twenty yards ahead of you in the
blinding snow.”

These men, all hardy and experienced aviators, knew what they were
talking about, and Ted knew that they did. But when he had once made up
his mind he was adamant.

“No use, boys,” he said. “I’m going.”

He beckoned to Dr. Yaley, who had been standing at a little distance
during this conversation and who had fearfully watched Ted’s face for
some sign of weakening.

“This way, Doctor,” said Ted. “Boys, will a couple of you strap a pair
of parachutes on his back? I hope you won’t need them, Doctor,” he
added, with a smile; “but if you do, you’ll find them mighty handy.”

“I imagine so,” Dr. Yaley answered, as he submitted to having the
life-saving apparatus adjusted. “This is my first experience in an
airplane, and I don’t want it to be my last.”

“You stand a mighty good chance of having it be just that,” grumbled
Bill, who, despairing of any success with Ted, now turned his guns on
the doctor as a last resort. “You’ve got just about one chance in a
hundred of pulling through. It’s too risky a gamble, Doctor, for both of
you.”

“It’s tough, of course, on the young fellow,” put in Ed. “But that’s his
hard luck. What’s the use of two dying in trying to save one? And after
all, you’ll never get there.”

“That is as it may be,” returned the doctor dryly. “As for me, my mind
is made up. But Mr. Scott still has the right to refuse to go if he
wants to.”

“I’ve passed my word, and I’m not in the habit of going back on it,”
replied Ted. “Hurry up, fellows, with those parachutes, will you?”

“Of all the stubborn—oh, well, what’s the use?” exclaimed Roy Benedict
despairingly.

With worried faces, Ted’s faithful friends did as he requested. They
adjusted the parachutes and then helped push the plane to the runway.

The doctor climbed in and Ted followed.

“Good-by boys,” he said, as he pulled his helmet more tightly over his
head. “Don’t think for a minute that I don’t appreciate your anxiety for
me. No fellow ever had better pals. But I’ve simply got to make the
attempt to go.”

He settled himself at the controls and gave the signal. Bill Twombley
started the motor going, Ed and Roy knocked away the blocks in front of
the machine, and the _Hapworth_ roared down the runway, hesitated a
moment, as though it, too, knew the awful risk its master was taking,
and then soared into the skies.

Bill, Roy and Ed watched it with blanched faces.

“They’ll never get through alive,” groaned Bill.