Against the Day

One

The Light

Over the Ranges

Now single up all lines!"

Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well! Prepare to cast her off!

Windy City, here we come!

Hurrah! Up we go!

It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.

When the ship reached cruising altitude, those features left behind on the ground having now dwindled to all but microscopic size, Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander, announced, Now secure the Special Sky Detail, and the boys, each dressed neatly in the summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue, spiritedly complied.

They were bound this day for the city of Chicago, and the World’s Columbian Exposition recently opened there. Since their orders had come through, the scuttlebutt among the excited and curious crew had been of little besides the fabled White City, its great Ferris wheel, alabaster temples of commerce and industry, sparkling lagoons, and the thousand more such wonders, of both a scientific and an artistic nature, which awaited them there.

Oh, boy! cried Darby Suckling, as he leaned over the lifelines to watch the national heartland deeply swung in a whirling blur of green far below, his tow-colored locks streaming in the wind past the gondola like a banner to leeward. (Darby, as my faithful readers will remember, was the baby of the crew, and served as both factotum and mascotte, singing as well the difficult treble parts whenever these adolescent aeronauts found it impossible to contain song of some kind.) I can’t hardly wait! he exclaimed.

For which you have just earned five more demerits! advised a stern voice close to his ear, as he was abruptly seized from behind and lifted clear of the lifelines. Or shall we say ten? How many times, continued Lindsay Noseworth, second-in-command here and known for his impatience with all manifestations of the slack, have you been warned, Suckling, against informality of speech? With the deftness of long habit, he flipped Darby upside down, and held the flyweight lad dangling by the ankles out into empty space—terra firma by now being easily half a mile below—proceeding to lecture him on the many evils of looseness in one’s expression, not least among them being the ease with which it may lead to profanity, and worse. As all the while, however, Darby was screaming in terror, it is doubtful how many of the useful sentiments actually found their mark.

Say, that is enough, Lindsay, advised Randolph St. Cosmo. The lad has work to do, and if you frighten him that way, he sure won’t be of much use.

All right, short-stuff, turn to, muttered Lindsay, reluctantly setting the terrified Darby back on his feet. As Master-at-Arms, in charge of discipline aboard the ship, he went about his job with a humorless severity which might, to the impartial observer, easily have suggested a form of monomania. But considering the ease with which this high-spirited crew were apt to find pretexts for skylarking—resulting more than once in the sort of close call which causes aeronauts to freeze with horror—Randolph usually allowed his second-in-command to err on the side of vehemence.

From the far end of the gondola now came a prolonged crash, followed by an intemperate muttering that caused Randolph, as always, to frown and reach for his stomach. I have only tripped over one of these picnic baskets, called out Handyman Apprentice Miles Blundell, the one all the crockery was in, ’s what it looks like. . . . I guess I did not see it, Professor.

Perhaps its familiarity, Randolph suggested plaintively, rendered it temporarily invisible to you. His reproof, though approaching the caustic, was well founded, for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew’s physical safety. As Miles now went about picking up pieces of the damaged porcelain, he evoked the mirth of one Chick Counterfly, the newest member of the crew, who was leaning against a stay, observing him.

Ha, ha, cried young Counterfly, say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen! Ha, ha, ha! An angry retort sprang to Miles’s lips, but he suppressed it, reminding himself that, as insult and provocation came naturally to the class from which the newcomer sprang, it was upon his unhealthy past that one must blame the lad’s habits of speech.

Why don’t you give me some of that fancy silverware, Blundell? young Counterfly now continued. And when we get to Chicago we’ll find us a ‘hock shop’ a-and—

I recall to your attention, replied Miles politely, that all tableware bearing the Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property, to be kept aboard ship for use during official meal periods.

Like Sunday school around here, muttered the picklesome youth.

At one end of the gondola, largely oblivious to the coming and going on deck, with his tail thumping expressively now and then against the planking, and his nose among the pages of a volume by Mr. Henry James, lay a dog of no particular breed, to all appearances absorbed by the text before him. Ever since the Chums, during a confidential assignment in Our Nation’s Capital (see The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit), had rescued Pugnax, then but a pup, from a furious encounter in the shadow of the Washington Monument between rival packs of the District’s wild dogs, it had been his habit to investigate the pages of whatever printed material should find its way on board Inconvenience, from theoretical treatments of the aeronautical arts to often less appropriate matter, such as the dime novels—though his preference seemed more for sentimental tales about his own species than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid. He had learned with the readiness peculiar to dogs how with the utmost delicacy to turn pages using nose or paws, and anyone observing him thus engaged could not help noting the changing expressions of his face, in particular the uncommonly articulate eyebrows, which contributed to an overall effect of interest, sympathy, and—the conclusion could scarce be avoided—comprehension.

An old aerostat hand by now, Pugnax had also learned, like the rest of the crew, to respond to calls of nature by proceeding to the downwind side of the gondola, resulting in surprises among the surface populations below, but not often enough, or even notably enough, for anyone to begin to try to record, much less coördinate reports of, these lavatorial assaults from the sky. They entered rather the realm of folklore, superstition, or perhaps, if one does not mind stretching the definition, the religious.

Darby Suckling, having recovered from his recent atmospheric excursion, addressed the studious canine. I say, Pugnax—what’s that you’re reading now, old fellow?

"Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf, replied Pugnax without looking up, which Darby, having like the others in the crew got used to Pugnax’s voice—easier, really, than some of the regional American accents the boys heard in their travels—now interpreted as, The Princess Casamassima."

Ah. Some sort of . . . Italian romance, I’ll bet?

Its subject, he was promptly informed by the ever-alert Lindsay Noseworth, who had overheard the exchange, is the inexorably rising tide of World Anarchism, to be found peculiarly rampant, in fact, at our current destination—a sinister affliction to which I pray we shall suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the fictional leaves of some book. Placing upon the word book an emphasis whose level of contempt can be approached perhaps only by Executive Officers. Pugnax sniffed briefly in Lindsay’s direction, trying to detect that combination of olfactory notes he had grown accustomed to finding in other humans. But as always this scent eluded him. There might be an explanation, though he was not sure he should insist upon one. Explanations did not, as far as he could tell, appear to be anything dogs either sought or even were entitled to. Especially dogs who spent as much time as Pugnax did up here, in the sky, far above the inexhaustible complex of odors to be found on the surface of the planet below.

The wind, which till now had been steady on their starboard quarter, began to shift. As their orders had directed them to proceed to Chicago without delay, Randolph, after studying an aeronautical chart of the country below them, called out, Now, Suckling—aloft with the anemometer—Blundell and Counterfly, stand by the Screw, referring to an aerial-propulsion device, which the more scientific among my young readers may recall from the boys’ earlier adventures (The Chums of Chance at Krakatoa, The Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis), for augmenting the cruising speed of the Inconvenience—invented by their longtime friend Professor Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven, and powered by an ingenious turbine engine whose boiler was heated by burning surplus hydrogen gas taken from the envelope through special valve arrangements—though the invention had been predictably disparaged by Dr. Vanderjuice’s many rivals as no better than a perpetual-motion machine, in clear violation of thermodynamical law.

Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible, took their stations at the control-panels of the apparatus, as Darby Suckling, meantime, went scrambling up the ratlines and shrouds of the giant ellipsoidal envelope from which the gondola depended, to the very top, where the aery flux was uninterrupted, in order to read, from an anemometer of the Robinson’s type, accurate wind measurements, as an index of how rapidly the ship was proceeding, conveying these down to the bridge by means of a written note inside a tennis-ball lowered on a length of line. It will be recalled that this method of passing information had been adopted by the crew during their brief though inconclusive sojourn south of the border, where they had observed it among the low elements who dissipate their lives in placing wagers on the outcomes of pelota games. (For readers here making their first acquaintance with our band of young adventurers, it must be emphasized at once that—perhaps excepting the as yet insufficiently known Chick Counterfly—none would e’er have entered the morally poisonous atmosphere of the "frontón," as such haunts are called down there, had it not been essential to the intelligence-gathering activities the Chums had contracted to render at that time to the Interior Ministry of President Porfirio Díaz. For details of their exploits, see The Chums of Chance in Old Mexico.)

Though the extreme hazard was obvious to all, Darby’s enthusiasm for the task at hand created, as ever, a magical cloak about his elfin form that seemed to protect him, though not from the sarcasm of Chick Counterfly, who now called after the ascending mascotte, "Hey! Suckling! Only a saphead would risk his life to see how fast the wind’s blowing!"

Hearing this, Lindsay Noseworth frowned in perplexity. Even allowing for his irregular history—a mother, so it was said, vanished when he was yet a babe—a father, disreputably adrift somewhere in the Old Confederacy—Counterfly’s propensity for gratuitous insult had begun to pose a threat to his probationary status with the Chums of Chance, if not, indeed, to group morale.

Two weeks previous, beside a black-water river of the Deep South, with the Chums attempting to negotiate a bitter and unresolved piece of business from the Rebellion of thirty years previous—one still not advisable to set upon one’s page—Chick had appeared one night at their encampment in a state of extreme fright, pursued by a band of night-riders in white robes and sinister pointed hoods, whom the boys recognized immediately as the dreaded Ku Klux Klan.

His story, as clearly as could be made out among the abrupt changes of register which typify the adolescent voice, exacerbated by the perilousness of the situation, was as follows. Chick’s father, Richard, commonly known as Dick, originally from the North, had for several years been active in the Old Confederacy trying his hand at a number of business projects, none of which, regrettably, had proven successful, and not a few of which, in fact, had obliged him, as the phrase went, to approach the gates of the Penitentiary. At length, upon the imminent arrival of a posse comitatus who had learned of his attempted scheme to sell the state of Mississippi to a mysterious Chinese consortium based in Tijuana, Mexico, Dick Counterfly had absquatulated swiftly into the night, leaving his son with only a pocketful of specie and the tender admonition, Got to ‘scram,’ kid—write if you get work. Since then Chick had lived from hand to mouth, until, at the town of Thick Bush, not far from the Chums’ encampment, someone, recognizing him as the son of a notorious and widely sought carpetbagger, had suggested an immediate application of tar and feathers to his person.

Much as we might be inclined to offer our protection, Lindsay had informed the agitated youth, here upon the ground we are constrained by our Charter, which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched.

You ain’t from these parts, replied Chick, somewhat sharply. When they’re after a fellow, legal ain’t got nothing to do with it—it’s run, Yankee, run, and Katie bar the door.

In polite discourse, Lindsay hastened to correct him, ‘isn’t’ is preferable to ‘ain’t.’

Noseworth, for mercy’s sake! cried Randolph St. Cosmo, who had been glancing anxiously out at the robed and hooded figures at the perimeter of the camp, the blazing torches they carried lighting each fold and wrinkle of their rude drapery with almost theatrical precision and casting weird shadows among the tupelo, cypress, and hickory. There is nothing further to discuss—this fellow is to be granted asylum and, if he wishes, provisional membership in our Unit. There certainly remains to him no future down here.

It had been a night of sleepless precaution lest sparks from the torches of the mob drift anywhere near the hydrogen-generating apparatus and devastation result. In time, however, the ominously cloaked rustics, perhaps in superstitious fear of that very machinery, had dispersed to their homes and haunts. And Chick Counterfly, for better or worse, had remained. . . .

The Screw device soon accelerated the ship to a speed which, added to that of the wind from directly astern, made it nearly invisible from the ground. We’re doing a way better than a mile a minute, remarked Chick Counterfly from the control-console, unable to eliminate from his voice a certain awe.

That could put us in Chicago before nightfall, reckoned Randolph St. Cosmo. Feeling all right, Counterfly?

Crackerjack! exclaimed Chick.

Like most rookies in the organization, Chick had found his initial difficulties to lie not so much with velocity as with altitude, and the changes in air-pressure and temperature that went along with it. The first few times aloft, he did his duty without complaint but one day was discovered unauthorizedly rummaging through a locker containing various items of arctic gear. When confronted by Lindsay Noseworth, the lad in his defense could only chatter, C-c-cold!

Do not imagine, Lindsay instructed, "that in coming aboard Inconvenience you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual. There may not be mangrove swamps or lynch law up here, but we must nonetheless live with the constraints of the given world, notable among them the decrease of temperature with altitude. Eventually your sensitivities in that regard should moderate, and in the meantime—tossing him a foul-weather cloak of black Japanese goatskin with C. OF C. PROPERTY stenciled in bright yellow on the back—this is to be considered as a transitional garment only, until such time as you adapt to these altitudes and, if fortunate, learn the lessons of unpremeditated habitude among them."

Here it is in a nutshell, Randolph confided later. Going up is like going north. He stood blinking, as if expecting comment.

But, it occurred to Chick, if you keep going far enough north, eventually you pass over the Pole, and then you’re heading south again.

Yes. The skyship commander shrugged uncomfortably.

"So . . . if you went up high enough, you’d be going down again?"

Shh! warned Randolph St. Cosmo.

"Approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" Chick persisted.

Not exactly. No. Another ‘surface,’ but an earthly one. Often to our regret, all too earthly. More than that, I am reluctant—

These are mysteries of the profession, Chick supposed.

You’ll see. In time, of course.

As they came in low over the Stockyards, the smell found them, the smell and the uproar of flesh learning its mortality—like the dark conjugate of some daylit fiction they had flown here, as appeared increasingly likely, to help promote. Somewhere down there was the White City promised in the Columbian Exposition brochures, somewhere among the tall smokestacks unceasingly vomiting black grease-smoke, the effluvia of butchery unremitting, into which the buildings of the leagues of city lying downwind retreated, like children into sleep which bringeth not reprieve from the day. In the Stockyards, workers coming off shift, overwhelmingly of the Roman faith, able to detach from earth and blood for a few precious seconds, looked up at the airship in wonder, imagining a detachment of not necessarily helpful angels.

Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways in a Cartesian grid, sketched in sepia, mile on mile. The Great Bovine City of the World, breathed Lindsay in wonder. Indeed, the backs of cattle far outnumbered the tops of human hats. From this height it was as if the Chums, who, out on adventures past, had often witnessed the vast herds of cattle adrift in ever-changing cloudlike patterns across the Western plains, here saw that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor.

Close to sundown, south of the city, as the Inconvenience bobbed in fitful breezes above a sweeping stretch of prairie which was to be the site this week of the great international gathering of aeronauts being held in conjunction with the World’s Fair, Professor St. Cosmo, spying at length a clear patch of meadow among the vast population of airships already berthed below, had given the order, Prepare to descend. The state of reduced attention into which he seemed then to have drifted was broken soon enough by Lindsay, advising, biliously, As I am sure it has not escaped your attention, Blundell’s ineptness with the Main Valve, grown I fear habitual, has increased the speed of our descent to a notable, if not in fact alarming, degree.

Indeed, the well-meaning but far from dextrous Miles Blundell had somehow contrived to wrap the pull-rope leading to the valve mechanism around his foot, and could be seen moving that extremity to and fro, a bewildered look on his wide, honest face, in hopes that the spring-loaded valve would thus, somehow, close again—for it had already allowed an enormous quantity of hydrogen gas to escape the envelope in a sudden rush, causing the ship to plummet toward the lakeside like a toy dropped by some cosmic urchin.

Blundell, what in Heaven’s name! Randolph exclaimed. Why, you will destroy us all!

Say, it just got tangled up, Professor, declared Miles, plucking ineffectually at the coils of hemp, which only grew more snarled as his efforts continued.

With an inadvertent yet innocuous oath, Lindsay had sprung to the side of young Blundell, grasping him about his ample waist, in an attempt to lift him, in hopes that this would relieve the tautness in the pull-rope and allow the valve to close. Here, Counterfly, the second-in-command snapped at Chick, who, jeeringly amused, had been lounging against a gear locker, do rouse yourself for a moment and bear a hand with Blundell, that awkward fellow, disposed to ticklishness, meanwhile having begun to scream and thrash about in his efforts to escape Lindsay’s grasp. Chick Counterfly rose indolently and approached the lurching pair with some caution, unsure of which part of Miles to take hold of, lest it but increase his agitation.

As the vital gas continued to stream in unsettling shriek from the valve overhead, and the airship to plunge ever more rapidly Earthward, Randolph, gazing at the feckless struggling of his crew, understood too well that the responsibility for the disaster nearly upon them was, as always, none but his own, this time for having delegated duties to those unskilled in them. . . .

His broodful reflections were interrupted by Darby, running over to tug at the sleeve of his blazer—Professor, Professor! Lindsay has just now made a defamatory remark about Miles’s mother, yet he’s forever after me about using ‘slang,’ and is that fair, I ask you?

Insubordinate drivel, Suckling, sternly declared Lindsay, "will earn you someday what is known among the lower seafaring elements as a ‘Liverpool Kiss,’ long before you ever receive one of the more conventional variety, save perhaps for those rare occasions upon which your mother, no doubt in some spell of absentmindedness, has found herself able to bestow that astonishing yet, I fear (unhappy woman), misplaced, sign of affection."

You see, you see? squealed Darby, going after a fellow’s mother—

Not now! screamed Randolph, flinging off the young mascotte’s importunate grasp and frightening him nearly out of his wits. Counterfly, the ballast, man! leave that spastical oaf be, and jettison our sandbags, or we are done for!

Chick shrugged and released his grip on Miles, proceeding lackadaisically to the nearest gunwale to unlash the ballast bags there, leaving Lindsay, with no time to adjust to the increased burden, to crash to the deck with a panicked cry, and the now all but hysterical Miles Blundell on top of him. With a loud twang that may as well have been the Crack of Doom, the line around his foot was yanked free of its attachment to the Main Valve, though not before pulling beyond its elastic limit the spring meant to restore it to a safely-closed position. The valve now remained ajar—the very mouth of Hell!

Suckling! aloft, and quickly!

The ready little fellow scurried up the lines, as Randolph, preoccupied with the crisis and staggering across the deck, somehow tripped over Lindsay Noseworth attempting to extricate himself from beneath the squirming mass of Miles Blundell, and abruptly joined his horizontal shipmates. Looking up, he observed Darby Suckling gazing down at him, inquisitively.

What is it that I am to do up here, Professor? called the ingenuous mascotte.

As tears of frustration began to gather in Randolph’s eyes, Lindsay, sensing in his chief a familiar inertia, his speech only temporarily muffled by Miles’s elbow, rushed, or more accurately crawled, into the vacuum of authority. Return the valve manually, he shouted up at Darby, to its closed position, adding, you little fool, in a barely audible tone. Darby, his uniform fluttering in the outrush of gas, gallantly hastened to comply.

Like me to break out some of them parachute rigs, Noseworth? drawled Chick.

"Mr. Noseworth, Lindsay corrected him. No, Counterfly, I think not, there scarcely being time—moreover, the complexities that would attend rigging Blundell in the necessary paraphernalia would tax the topological genius of Herr Riemann himself. This irony was lost, however, on Chick as well as its object, who, having at last somehow regained his feet, now went stumbling with serene insouciance over to the rail, apparently to have a look at the scenery. Above him, Darby, with a triumphant Hurrah!" succeeded in closing the valve, and the huge airship accordingly slackened in its downward hurtling to a velocity no more ominous than that of a leaf in autumn.

Well, we certainly scared those chaps down there, Professor, commented Miles, gazing over the side. Dropping all those sandbags, I’ll wager.

Eh? Randolph beginning to regain his air of phlegmatic competence. How’s that?

Well, they’re running just lickety-split, Miles continued, a-and say, one of them hasn’t even got any clothes on, that’s sure what it looks like all right! From an instrument locker nearby, he produced a powerful spyglass, and trained it upon the objects of his curiosity.

Come, Blundell, Randolph arising from where he had fallen, there is quite enough to be done at the moment without more idle shenanigans— He was interrupted by a gasp of terror from Miles.

Professor! cried that lad, peering incredulously through the burnished cylinder, "the unclad figure I reported—it is not that of a chap, after all, but rather of . . . a lady!"

There was an eager stampede to the rail, and a joint attempt to wrest the telescope from Miles, who, however, clung to it stubbornly. All meanwhile stared or squinted avidly, attempting to verify the reported apparition.

Across the herbaceous nap below, in the declining light, among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast-bags, running heedless, as across some earthly firmament, sped a stout gentleman in a Norfolk jacket and plus-fours, clutching a straw skimmer to the back of his head with one hand while with the other keeping balanced upon his shoulder a photographic camera and tripod. Close behind him came the female companion Blundell had remarked, carrying a bundle of ladies’ apparel, though clad at the moment in little beyond a floral diadem of some sort, charmingly askew among masses of fair hair. The duo appeared to be making for a nearby patch of woods, now and then casting apprehensive looks upward at the enormous gasbag of the descending Inconvenience, quite as if it were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure. By the time Lindsay could remove the optical instrument from the moist hands of Miles Blundell, and induce the consequently disgruntled youth to throw out grapnels and assist Darby in securing the great airship to Mother Earth, the indecorous couple had vanished among the foliage, as presently would this sector of the Republic into the falling darkness.

DARBY SWUNG LIKE a regular little monkey hand over hand down the anchor line, gained the ground and, tripping briskly about beneath Inconvenience, adroitly caught each of the mooring lines flung down to him by Miles Blundell. With a mallet driving home, one by one, sturdy wooden pegs through the eye-splices at the ends of the hempen strands, he soon had the giant vehicle, as if charmed into docility by some diminutive beast-wrangler, tethered motionless above him.

The Jacob’s-ladder now came clattering over the side, and upon it, presently, in uncertain descent, Miles, surmounted by a giant sack of soiled laundry. There remained in the western sky only an after-glow of deep crimson, against which could be seen Miles’s silhouette, as well as those of the heads of the other boys above the curved rim of the gondola.

Since that morning, before the first light, a gay, picnic-going throng of aeromaniacs of one sort and another had been continuing all day now to vol-à-voile in, till long after sundown, through the midwestern summer evening whose fading light they were most of them too busy quite to catch the melancholy of, their wings both stationary and a-flap, gull and albatross and bat-styled wings, wings of gold-beaters’ skin and bamboo, wings laboriously detailed with celluloid feathers, in a great heavenwide twinkling they came, bearing all degrees of aviator from laboratory skeptic to Jesus-rapt ascensionary, accompanied often by sky-dogs, who had learned how to sit still, crowded next to them in the steering-cabins of their small airships, observing the instrument panels and barking if they noticed something the pilot had failed to—though others could be observed at gunwales and flying bridges, their heads thrust out into the passing airflow, looks of bliss on their faces. From time to time, the aeronauts hailed one another through megaphones, and the evening was thus atwitter, like the trees of many a street in the city nearby, with aviatory pleasantries.

In short order, the boys had set up their mess-tent, gathered wood, and ignited a small fire in the galley stove, well downwind of Inconvenience and its hydrogen-generating apparatus. Miles busied himself in the miniature galley, and soon had fried them up a mess of catfish, caught that morning and kept all day on ice whose melting had been retarded by the frigidity of altitude. Around them the other groups of sky-brothers were busy at their own culinary arrangements, and roasting meat, frying onions, and baking bread sent delicious odors creeping everywhere about the great encampment.

After dinner and Evening Quarters, the boys dedicated a few moments to song, as a group differently engaged might have to prayer. Since their Hawaiian escapades a few years previous (The Chums of Chance and the Curse of the Great Kahuna), Miles had become an enthusiastic ukulelist, and tonight, after securing the scullery and restoring the mess decks to their usual spotless state, he produced one of many of the four-stringed instruments which he kept in his sky-chest, and, after strumming a brief introduction, accompanied the boys as they sang,

There’s fellows live in little towns,

And those who live on farms,

And never seem to wander far

From smiles and loving arms—

They always know just who they are

And how their lives will go—

And then there’s boys like us, who say

Good-bye before hello,

For we’re the

Aces of the Altitudes

Vagabonds of the Void. . . .

When some folks shrink with terror, say,

We scarcely get annoyed.

Let the winds blow clear off the Beaufort Scale,

And the nights grow dark as can be,

Let the lightning lash,

And the thunder thrash,

Only cheerful young hearts have we!

For . . .

the Chum of Chance is a pluc-ky soul,

Who shall neither whine nor ejac-u-late,

For his blood’s as red and his mind’s as pure

As the stripes of his bla-a-zer immac-u-late!

That evening Chick and Darby, as the port section of the crew, had watch-duty, while Miles and Lindsay were to be allowed ground-leave in Chicago. Each in his own way excited at the prospect of attending the Exposition, the two lads shifted rapidly into dress uniform, although Miles encountered such difficulty in lacing his leggings, knotting his neckerchief with the needed symmetry, and securing correctly the forty-four buttons of his dickey, one for each State of the Union, that Lindsay, after having applied a few drops of Macassar oil to his own locks and combing them carefully, was obliged to go to his unskillful shipmate’s assistance.

When Miles had been rendered as fit to be seen by the populace of The Windy City as he would ever be, the two boys came smartly to attention, dressing right at close interval in the circle of firelight, to await inspection. Pugnax joined them, tail still, gaze expectant. Randolph emerged from his tent in mufti, every bit as spruce as his liberty section, for he, too, was bound for earthly chores, his Chums of Chance flight uniform having been replaced by a tastefully checked Kentucky hemp suit and Ascot tie, with a snappy fedora topping off the ensemble.

Say, Randolph, called Darby, you look like you’re going over to meet a girl!

As his bantering tone, however, was not unmixed with manly admiration, Randolph chose not to respond to the innuendo with the pique it would otherwise have merited, instead riposting, I had not been aware that fellows of your years recognized any distinction between the sexes, drawing from Lindsay an appreciative chuckle, before promptly returning to moral seriousness.

About the fringes, Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary. I will not dignify it by naming that sinister quarter where such dangers are most probably to be encountered. The very vulgarity of its aspect, particularly by night, will speak for itself, disinclining all but the most reckless of their well-being to linger in contemplation upon, much less actually investigate, the unprofitable delights offered therein. A word to the wise . . . or, in this case . . . hrrumph, hmmm, howsoever . . . good liberty, boys, I say, and good luck. Wherewith Randolph saluted, turned, and vanished soundlessly into the great fragrant darkness.

You have the watch, Suckling, Lindsay advised before departing. You know the penalties for falling asleep—be sure that you impress them upon your watchmate Counterfly, who inclines, I suspect, toward sloth. Perimeter check once every hour, as well as a reading of the tension of the gas within the envelope, corrected, I need scarcely add, for the lower temperatures of the nighttime. He turned and strode away to join Miles, while Pugnax, whose tail had regained its customary animation, was left to scout the bounds of the encampment, searching for evidence of other dogs and their humans who might seek unauthorized entry.

Darby, left solitary in the glow of the watch-fire, applied himself, with his customary vivacity, to the repair of the main hydrogen valve whose mechanical disruption earlier had nearly spelt their doom. That unpleasant memory, like the damage beneath Darby’s nimble fingers, would soon be quite unmade  . . . as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys’ book of adventures . . . as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done, and the order About-face had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again. . . .

He had just completed his repairs when, looking up, he noticed Chick Counterfly by the fire, brewing a pot of coffee.

Care for some? Chick offered. Or don’t they let you drink this stuff yet?

Something in his tone suggested that this was only the sort of friendly teasing a fellow Darby’s age had to expect and put up with. Thanks, wouldn’t mind a cup at all.

They sat by the fire for a while, silent as a pair of drovers camping out on the western prairie. Finally, to Darby’s surprise, I sure do miss my Pop, Chick confided, abruptly.

I guess that must be awful tough for you, Chick. I don’t think I even remember mine.

Chick gazed dolefully into the fire. After a moment, Thing is, I believe he would have hung on. If he could have. We were partners, see? Always had something going. Some swell little moneymaker. Not always to the sheriff’s liking, but enough to keep beans in the pot. Didn’t mind all the midnight relocations, but those small-town courtrooms, I never could get used to them. Judge’d take one look at us, up went that hammer, whiz! we were usually out the door and on the main road before it came back down again.

Good exercise, I bet.

Well, but it seemed like Pop was starting to slow down some. Wondered if it was me somehow. You know, the extra trouble or something.

Sounds more like it was all that Chinese foofooraw you mentioned, said Darby, nothing you caused. Here, do you smoke these? lighting up a species of cigarette and offering one to Chick.

My Great-Aunt Petunia! exclaimed Chick, what is that smell?

Say, it’s cubebs. Medicinal use only. No tobacco allowed on board, as you might recall from your Chums of Chance Membership Oath.

Did I swear off? I must’ve been all confused in my mind. No tobacco! Say, it’s the goldurn Keeley Cure around here. How do you people get through your day?

Suddenly what sounded like a whole kennelful of dogs began to bark furiously. Pugnax, explained Darby, noting Chick’s alarmed expression.

Him and what else?

Just ol’ Pugnax. One of his many talents. Guess we’d better go have a look.

They found Pugnax up on his feet, clenched and alert, watching the outer darkness intently—from what the boys could tell, poised to launch a massive counter-assault on whatever was now approaching their perimeter.

Here you go, called an invisible voice, nice doggy! Pugnax stood his ground but had ceased barking, apparently judging the visitors nasally acceptable. As Darby and Chick watched, out of the evening came a giant beefsteak, soaring in an arc, slowly rotating, and hit the dirt almost exactly between Pugnax’s front paws, where he regarded it for a while, a single eyebrow raised, one would have to say, disdainfully.

Hey, anybody home? Into the firelight emerged two boys and a girl, carrying picnic baskets and wearing flight uniforms of indigo mohair brilliantine with scarlet pinstripes, and headgear which had failed to achieve the simpler geometry of the well-known Shriner fez, being far more ornate and, even for its era, arguably not in the best of taste. There was an oversize spike, for example, coming out the top, German style, and a number of plumes dyed a pale eclipse green. Howdy, Darb! What’s up and what’s down?

Darby, recognizing them as members of Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C., a club of ascensionaries from Oregon, with whom the Chums of Chance had often flown on joint manœuvres, broke into a welcoming smile, especially for Miss Penelope (Penny) Black, whose elfin appearance disguised an intrepid spirit and unfaltering will, and on whom he had had a case for as long as he could remember. Hello, Riley, Zip . . . Penny, he added shyly.

That’s ‘Captain’ to you. She held up a sleeve to display four gold stripes, at whose edges could be seen evidence of recent needlework. The Bindlestiffs were known and respected for granting the loquacious sex membership on a strictly equal footing with boys, including full opportunities for promotion. Yeahp, Penny grinned, "they gave me the Tzigane—just brought the old tub in here from Eugene, got her berthed down past that little grove of trees there, nobody worse for wear."

W-wow! Your first command! That’s champion! He found himself shuffling nervously, and with no idea what to do about his hands.

You better kiss me, she said, it’s tradition and all.

Even with the chorus of hoots it evoked from the other boys, Darby found the fleeting brush of her freckled cheek against his lips more than worth the aggravation. After introductions, Chick and Darby brought out folding camp chairs, the Bindlestiffs opened their baskets of delectables, and the colleagues settled down to an evening of gossip, shop talk, and sky-stories.

Coming in over ‘Egypt,’ downstate Illinois to you, Darb, we caught us an upriser off a cornfield by Decatur, thought we’d be onto the dang moon by now—’scuse me—pausing to sneeze—icicles o’ snot down to our belt buckles, goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid, ‘s whirlpoolin round our heads—ahh-pffeugghh!

Oh, Gesundheit, Riley, said Zip, but last time you told that one, it was strange voices and so forth—

We’d picked up a little galvanic halo ourselves by the time we got here, said Chick, what with the speed and all.

A-aw that’s nothin, cried Riley, next to dodgin tornadoes all day! You boys want real electricity, git on out to Oklahoma sometime, get a treat for your ears into the bargain that will sure’s hell drownd out any strange voices in your neighborhood.

Speaking of voices, said Penny, what have you heard about these . . . ‘sightings’ that keep getting reported in? Not just from crews up in the air but sometimes even from civilians on the ground?

You mean aside from the usual, Darby said, fata morgana, northern lights, and so forth?

Different, Zip in a low, ominous voice. There’s lights, but there’s sound, too. Mostly in the upper altitudes, where it gets that dark blue in the daytime? Voices calling out together. All directions at once. Like a school choir, only no tune, just these—

Warnings, said Riley.

Darby shrugged. "News to me. Inconvenience, we’re only the runts of the Organization, last at the trough, nobody ever tells us anything—they keep cutting our orders, we follow ‘em, is all."

Well we were over by Mount Etna there back in the spring, Penny said, and you remember those Garcons de ‘71, I expect. For Chick’s benefit, Darby explained that this outfit had first been formed over twenty years ago, during the Sieges of Paris, when manned balloons were often the only way to communicate in or out of the city. As the ordeal went on, it became clear to certain of these balloonists, observing from above and poised ever upon a cusp of mortal danger, how much the modern State depended for its survival on maintaining a condition of permanent siege—through the systematic encirclement of populations, the starvation of bodies and spirits, the relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen, even to the point of committing atrocities like those of the infamous pétroleurs of Paris. When the Sieges ended, these balloonists chose to fly on, free now of the political delusions that reigned more than ever on the ground, pledged solemnly only to one another, proceeding as if under a world-wide, never-ending state of siege.

Nowadays, Penny said, they’ll fly wherever they’re needed, far above fortress walls and national boundaries, running blockades, feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted . . . so of course they make enemies everyplace they go, they get fired at from the ground, all the time. But this was different. We happened to be up with them that one day, and it was just the queerest thing. Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . . energy we could feel, directed personally at us. . . .

Somebody out there, Zip said solemnly. Empty space. But inhabited.

This making you nervous, Chick? teased Darby.

Nawh. Thinking about who wants that last apple fritter there.

Meantime Miles and Lindsay were off to the Fair. The horse-drawn conveyance they had boarded took them through the swarming streets of southern Chicago. Miles gazed with keen curiosity, but Lindsay regarded the scene with a peevish stare.

You look kind of glum, Lindsay.

I? no, not at all—beyond an unavoidable apprehension at the thought of Counterfly with full run of the ship and no one to supervise him, I am as cheerful as a finch.

But Darby’s there with him.

Please. Any influence Suckling could exert on a character that depraved would be negligible at best.

Oh, but say, reckoned the kind-hearted Miles, Counterfly does seem a good skate, and I bet you he’ll soon get the hang of things.

As Master-at-Arms, muttered Lindsay, perhaps only to himself, my own view of human nature is necessarily less hopeful.

At length the car deposited them at a street-corner from which, the conductor assured them, it would be but a short walk to the Fairgrounds—or, as he chuckled, depending how late in the evening, a brisk run, and went on its way in metal-to-metal clangor and clopping. At a distance the boys could see in the sky the electrical glow of the Fair, but hereabouts all was in shadow. Presently they found a gap in the fence, and an admissions gate with something of the makeshift about it, lit by a single candle-stub, whose attendant, a scowling Asiatic midget of some sort, though eager enough to take their proffered fifty-cent pieces, had to be pressed by the scrupulous Lindsay for a duly executed receipt. The diminutive sentinel then held out his palm as if for a gratuity, which the boys ignored. Deadbeats! he screamed, by way of introducing them to the quatercentennial celebration of Columbus’s advent upon our shores.

From somewhere ahead too dark to see came music from a small orchestra, unusually syncopated, which grew louder, till they could make out a small outdoor dance-floor, all but unlit, where couples were dancing, and about which crowds were streaming densely everywhere, among odors of beer, garlic, tobacco smoke, inexpensive perfume, and, from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, somewhere up ahead, the unmistakable scent of massed livestock.

Observers of the Fair had remarked how, as one moved up and down its Midway, the more European, civilized, and . . . well, frankly, white exhibits located closer to the center of the White City seemed to be, whereas the farther from that alabaster Metropolis one ventured, the more evident grew the signs of cultural darkness and savagery. To the boys it seemed that they were making their way through a separate, lampless world, out beyond some obscure threshold, with its own economic life, social habits, and codes, aware of itself as having little if anything to do with the official Fair. . . . As if the half-light ruling this perhaps even unmapped periphery were not a simple scarcity of streetlamps but deliberately provided in the interests of mercy, as a necessary veiling for the faces here, which held an urgency somehow too intense for the full light of day and those innocent American visitors with their Kodaks and parasols who might somehow happen across this place. Here in the shadows, the faces moving by smiled, grimaced, or stared directly at Lindsay and Miles as if somehow they knew them, as if in the boys’ long career of adventure in exotic corners of the world there had been accumulating, unknown to them, a reserve of mistranslation, offense taken, debt entered into, here being re-expressed as a strange Limbo they must negotiate their way through, expecting at any moment a run-in with some enemy from an earlier day, before they might gain the safety of the lights in the distance.

Armed bouncers, drawn from the ranks of the Chicago police, patrolled the shadows restlessly. A Zulu theatrical company re-enacted the massacre of British troops at Isandhlwana. Pygmies sang Christian hymns in the Pygmy dialect, Jewish klezmer ensembles filled the night with unearthly clarionet solos, Brazilian Indians allowed themselves to be swallowed by giant anacondas, only to climb out again, undigested and apparently with no discomfort to the snake. Indian swamis levitated, Chinese boxers feinted, kicked, and threw one another to and fro.

Temptation, much to Lindsay’s chagrin, lurked at every step. Pavilions here seemed almost to represent not nations of the world but Deadly Sins. Pitchmen in their efforts at persuasion all but seized the ambulant youths by their lapels.

Exotic smoking practices around the world, of great anthropological value!

Scientific exhibit here boys, latest improvements to the hypodermic syringe and its many uses!

Here were Waziris from Waziristan exhibiting upon one another various techniques for waylaying travelers, which reckoned in that country as a major source of income. . . . Tarahumara Indians from northern Mexico crouched, apparently in total nakedness, inside lath-and-plaster replicas of the caves of their native Sierra Madre, pretending to eat vision-producing cacti that sent them into dramatic convulsions scarcely distinguishable from those of the common geek long familiar to American carnival-goers. . . . Tungus reindeer herders stood gesturing up at a gigantic sign reading SPECIAL REINDEER SHOW, and calling out in their native tongue to the tip gathered in front, while a pair of young women in quite revealing costumes—who, being blonde and so forth, did not, actually, appear to share with the Tungus many racial characteristics—gyrated next to a very patient male reindeer, caressing him with scandalous intimacy, and accosting passersby with suggestive phrases in English, such as Come in and learn dozens ways to have fun in Siberia! and See what really goes on during long winter nights!

This doesn’t seem, Lindsay adrift between fascination and disbelief, quite . . . authentic, somehow.

Come over here, boys, first time for free, find the red get a pat on the head, find the black, get nothin back! cried a cheerful Negro in a pork-pie hat, who was standing behind a folding table nearby, setting down and picking up playing-cards.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was one of those monte games, murmured Lindsay, politely suppressing his disapproval.

No, boss, it’s an ancient African method of divination, allows you to change your fate. The sharper who had addressed them now began to move cards around with bewildering speed. At times there were too many cards to count, at others none at all were visible, seeming to have vanished into some dimension well beyond the third, though this could have been a trick of what light there was.

O.K.! maybe it’s your lucky night, just tell us where that red is, now. Three cards lay face-down before them.

After a moment of silence, it was Miles who announced in a clear and firm voice, The cards you have put down there all happen to be black—your ‘red’ is the nine of diamonds, the curse of Scotland, and it’s right here, reaching to lift the sharper’s hat, and to remove from atop his head, and exhibit, the card at issue.

Lord have mercy, last time that happened I ended up in the Cook County jail for a nice long vacation. A tribute to your sharp eyes, young man, and no hard feelings, holding out a ten-dollar banknote.

Oh, that is . . . Lindsay began tentatively, but Miles had already pocketed the offering, amiably calling out, Evening, sir, as they strolled away.

A surprised expression could be noted on Lindsay’s face. That was . . . well executed, Blundell. How did you know where that card was?

Sometimes, Miles with a strangely apprehensive note in his voice, these peculiar feelings will surround me, Lindsay . . . like the electricity coming on—as if I can see everything just as clear as day, how . . . how everything fits together, connects. It doesn’t last long, though. Pretty soon I’m just back to tripping over my feet again.

Presently they had come within view of the searchlight beams sweeping the skies from the roof of the immense Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building—a miniature city, nested within the city-within-a-city which was the Fair itself—and began to see caped Columbian Guards on patrol, a reassuring sight, to Lindsay at least.

Come on, Lindsay, Miles flourishing the banknote they had acquired so unexpectedly. Long as we have this windfall, let’s go get us some root beer, and some of that ‘Cracker Jack,’ too. Say, what do you know! We’re here! We’re at the Fair!

MEANWHILE RANDOLPH ST. COSMO, though out of uniform, was still on duty. The detective agency he sought was located in a seedy block of the New Levee district, between a variety saloon and a manufacturer of exploding cigars. The sign read WHITE CITY INVESTIGATIONS. Randolph tugged the brim of his hat a bit lower, looked swiftly up and down the littered and shadowy street, and sidled in the entrance. A young lady typewriter who managed to act prim and bold at the same time glanced up from her florally-appliquéd machine. It’s after bedtime, sonny.

The door was open—

Yeah, and maybe this ain’t the Epworth League.

I was supposed to see Mr. Privett?

Nate! she screamed, causing Randolph to jump. Her smile was not unmischievous. You bring a note from your parents, kid?

In Nate’s office were a combination sideboard, bookcase, and filing cabinet with assorted bottles of whiskey, a bed-lounge over in the corner, a couple of cane-bottom chairs, a curtain desk with about a thousand pigeonholes, a window with a view of the German saloon across the street, local-business awards and testimonials on the dark-paneled walls, along with photos of notable clients, some of them posed with Nate himself, including Doc Holliday, out in front of the Occidental Saloon in Tombstone, Doc and Nate each pointing a .44 Colt at the other’s head and pretending to scowl terribly. The picture was inscribed, More of a shotgun man myself, regards, Doc.

Since the Haymarket bomb, Nate was explaining, "we’ve had more work than we can handle, and it’s about to get even more hectic, if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers. Heaven knows what that’s gonna let loose on Chicago, the Fair in particular. Antiterrorist security now more than ever will be of the essence here. And, well, you boys enjoy the one perspective that all us in the ‘spotter’ community long for—namely, a view from overhead. We can’t pay you as well as the Pinkertons might, but maybe we could work out a deferred arrangement, small percent of profits down the line instead of cash right now. Not to mention what tips or other off-the-books revenue might come your way."

That is between you and our National Office, Randolph supposed. For here at Unit level, our compensation may not exceed legitimate expenses.

Sounds crazy. But, we’ll have our legal folks draw up some language we can all live with, how’s that? He was peering at Randolph now with that mixture of contempt and pity which the Chums in their contact with the ground population were sooner or later sure to evoke. Randolph was used to it, but determined to proceed in a professional manner.

Of what exactly would our services consist?

Got room on your ship for an extra passenger?

We have carried up to a dozen well-fed adults with no discernible loss of lift, replied Randolph, his glance not quite able to avoid lingering upon Mr. Privett’s embonpoint.

Take our man up on a short trip or two’s about all it’ll amount to, the sleuth-officer now, it seemed, grown a bit shifty. Out to the Fair, maybe down to the Yards, duck soup.

Strolling among the skyships next morning, beneath a circus sky which was slowly becoming crowded as craft of all sorts made their ascents, renewing acquaintance with many in whose company, for better or worse, they had shared adventures, the Chums were approached by a couple whom they were not slow to recognize as the same photographer and model they had inadvertently bombarded the previous evening.

The sportive lensman introduced himself as Merle Rideout. And my fair companion here is . . . give me a minute—

You bean-brain. The young woman directed a graceful kick which was not, however, altogether lacking in affection, and said, I’m Chevrolette McAdoo, and mighty pleased to meet you fellows, even if you did nearly sandbag us into the beyond yesterday. Fully attired, she seemed to have just stepped out of a ladies’ magazine, her ensemble this forenoon right at the vanguard of summer fashion, the current revival of the leg-of-mutton sleeve having resulted in a profusion of shirtwaists with translucent shoulders big as balloons, all over town—as Chick Counterfly, a devoted observer of the female form, would express it—in Miss McAdoo’s case, saturated in a vivid magenta, and accompanied by a long ostrich-feather boa dyed the same shade. And her hat, roguishly atilt, egret plumes swooping each time she moved her head, would have charmed even the most zealous of conservationist bird-lovers.

Nice put-together, Chick nodded admiringly.

And you haven’t seen the turn she does down to that South Seas Pavilion yet, declared Merle Rideout gallantly. Makes Little Egypt look like a church lady.

You are an artiste, Miss McAdoo?

I perform the Dance of Lava-Lava, the Volcano Goddess, she replied.

I greatly admire the music of the region, said Miles, the ukulele in particular.

There are several ukulelists in my pit-band, said Miss McAdoo, tenor, baritone, and soprano.

And is it authentic native music?

More of a medley, I believe, encompassing Hawaiian and Philippino motifs, and concluding with a very tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns’s wonderful ‘Bacchanale,’ as recently performed at the Paris Opera.

I am only an amateur, of course, Miles, though long a member of the prestigious International Academy of Ukulelists, said modestly, and get lost now and then. But if I promised to go back to the tonic and wait, do you think they’d let me come and sit in?

I’ll certainly put in a good word, said Chevrolette.

Merle Rideout had brought a hand camera with him, and was taking snaps of the flying machines, aloft and parked on the ground, which were continuing to arrive and take off with no apparent letup. Some social, ain’t it! Why, every durn professor of flight from here to Timbuctoo’s flying in, ‘s what it looks like.

The smoke from breakfast campfires rose fragrantly through the air. Babies could be heard in both complaint and celebration. Far-off sounds of railway traffic and lake navigation came in on the wind. Against the sun as yet low across the Lake, wings cast long shadows, their edges luminous with dew. There were steamers, electrics, Maxim whirling machines, ships powered by guncotton reciprocators and naphtha engines, and electrical lifting-screws of strange hyperboloidal design for drilling upward through the air, and winged aerostats, of streamlined shape, and wing-flapping miracles of ornithurgy. A fellow scarcely knew after a while where to look—

Pa! An attractive little girl of four or five with flaming red hair was running toward them at high speed. Say, Pa! I need a drink!

Dally, ya little weasel, Merle greeted her, the corn liquor’s all gone, I fear, it’ll have to be back to the old cow juice for you, real sorry, as he went rummaging in a patent dinner pail filled with ice. The child, meanwhile, having caught sight of the Chums in their summer uniforms, stood gazing, her eyes wide, as if deciding how well behaved she ought to be.

"You have been poisoning this helpless angel with strong drink? cried Lindsay Noseworth. Sir, one must protest!" Dally, intrigued, ran over and stood in front of him, peering up, as if waiting for the next part of some elaborate joke.

Lindsay blinked. This cannot be, he muttered. Small children hate me.

A fine-looking little girl, sir, Randolph, brimming with avuncularity. You are the proud grandfather, of course.

Ha! D’ye hear that, Carrot-head? Thinks I’m your grandpa. Thank you, lad, but this here is my daughter Dahlia, I’m proud to say. Her mother, alas— He sighed, gazing upward and into the distance.

Our deepest sympathies, Randolph hastily, yet Heaven, in its inscrutability—

Heaven, hell, cackled Merle Rideout. She’s out there in the U.S.A. someplace with the mesmerizin variety artist she run away with, a certain Zombini the Mysterious.

Know him, by gosh! Chick Counterfly, nodding vigorously. "Makes his molly disappear down a common kitchen funnel! ‘Imbottigliata!’ ain’t it? then he twirls his cape? Seen it down in New Orleans with my own peepers! some awesome turn, you bet!"

The very customer, Merle beamed, and that beauteous conjuror’s assistant you saw’d likely be ol’ Erlys herself, and say, you’ll want to close your mouth there, Buck, ‘fore somethin flies into it?—the casual mention of adultery having produced in Randolph’s face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic. Chick Counterfly, less affected, was alert enough to offer, Well—an entirely admirable lady, whoever she was.

Admiration noted—and you might examine little Dahlia here, who’s the spit of her Ma, fulminate me if she ain’t, fact if you’re ramblin by some ten, twelve years hence, why ride on over, have another look, make an offer, no price too small or too insulting I wouldn’t consider. Or if you’re willing to wait, take an option now to buy, got her on special, today and tomorrow only, dollar ninety-eight takes her away, heartbreakin smile and all. Yehp—there, lookit, just like ‘at. Throw you in an extra bonnet, I’m a reasonable sort, ‘n’ the minute she blows that sweet-sixteenth birthday candle out, why she’s on them rails, express to wherever you be.

Seems a little long to wait, don’t it? leered Chick Counterfly.

—I could go age fifteen, I guess, Merle went on, twinkling directly at Lindsay Noseworth strangling with indignation, but you’d have to pay in gold, and come fetch her on your own ticket. . . . But say now would you mind if I got a snap of you all in front of this Trouvé-screw unit over here?

The boys, fascinated as always with modern sciences such as the photographic, were of course happy to comply. Chevrolette managed to mollify even Lindsay by borrowing his skimmer and holding it coyly in front of their faces, as if to conceal a furtive kiss, while the frolicsome Darby Suckling, without whose spirited clowning