[Illustration: Wherein the rivalry of Happy Hennessy and the
parachute-jumper for the favor of fair Mary starts new excitement at a
rough-riding air circus.]


                           RIDE ’EM AND WEEP

                     by Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield


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.


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in The Blue Book Magazine,
July, 1926. It is believed to be in the public domain in the
United States; copyright status may differ in other countries.]
