Chapter I

The vast aviation field at Fort Sill quivered in the grilling heat of mid-July. The beautiful road stretching through the Post looked smooth as a white silk ribbon in the blazing sun. The row of tall hangars glistened with fresh white paint. On the screened porches of the officers' quarters, at the mess, and at the huts men in uniform talked and laughed as though their profession was the simplest and safest in the world.

Around the Post as far as the eye could reach the sun-baked prairies stretched, their sparse grasses burned to a cindery brown. From the distant ranges came the faint report of guns. The daily practice was going on. Once in a while against the sky a row of caissons showed up, small and clear cut.

Overhead sounded the continual droning of airplanes manoeuvering, now rising, now circling, now reaching the field safely, where they turned and came gaily hopping along the ground toward the hangars, like huge dragonflies. And when they finally teetered to a standstill, what splendid young figures leaped over the sides and stretched their cramped legs, pushing off the goggles and leather headgear that disguised them! Laughing, talking, swapping experiences, listening in good-natured silence to the "balling out" that so often came from the harried and sweating instructors, splendid young gods were these airmen, super-heroes in an heroic age and time.

In the shade of one of the hangars sat two boys. They were blind and deaf to the sights and sounds around and over them. The planes were as commonplace as mealtime to them, and not nearly so thrilling. All their attention was centered on a small box on the ground before them. It was made of screen-wire roughly fastened to a wooden frame. One side was intended for a door, but it was securely wired shut. The box had an occupant. Furious, raging with anger, now crouching in the corner, now springing toward the boys, only to strike the wires, an immense tarantula faced his jailers with deadly menace in his whole bearing. One of the boys gently rested a stick against the cage. The great spider instantly hurled himself upon it.

Involuntarily both boys drew back.

"What you going to do with him now you have got him?" asked the taller of the two boys.

"Dunno," said the other, shrugging his shoulders. "No use expecting mother to let me keep him in quarters, and the C. O. won't have 'em around the hangars. I guess I will have to give him back to Lee and let him get rid of him."

"What does C. O. mean, and who is Lee?" asked the first boy.

"Gee, you are green!" scoffed the smaller of the two. "Tell you what I'll do, Bill; I will take a day off and teach you the ropes."

"I will learn them fast enough if I can get a question answered once in awhile," answered Bill, laughing pleasantly. "You can't expect to learn _every_thing there is about the Army in a week."

"It is too bad you are in Artillery," said the other boy, whose name was Frank and whose father was Major Anderson, in the Air service. "There is a lot more doing over here, but of course as long as I am sort of your cousin, why, you can get in on things here whenever you want to."

"Much obliged," returned Bill. "And of course whenever you want, I will take you any place you want to go in my car."

"That car is the dandiest little affair I ever did see," said Frank half enviously. "Just big enough for two of us." He glanced over to the boy-size automobile standing in the shade. It was a long, racy looking toy, closer to the ground than a motorcycle, but evidently equipped with a good-sized engine. "Where did you get it, anyhow?"

"I have an uncle in the automobile business, and he had it made for me."

"Some uncle!" commented Frank. "How fast will she go?"

"A pretty good clip, I imagine," said Bill. "I have never tried her out."

"What's the matter with you? Scared?" asked Frank. "I say we speed her up some of these days."

"Can't do it," said Bill, shaking his head. "There is a speedometer on it, and I promised my mother I would never go over fifteen miles an hour until she gives me leave."

"Fifteen miles; why, that's crawling!" said Frank scornfully. "I tell you what. I can drive a little, and you can let me take the wheel, and see what she will do. That won't be breaking your word."

Bill shook his head. "It isn't my way of keeping a promise," he said. Then to change the conversation before it took a disagreeable turn, he asked, "You didn't tell me what C. O. means and who Lee is."

"C. O. means Commanding Officer; you had better keep that in your head. And Lee is the fellow who gave me this tarantula. He takes care of the quarters across from yours at the School of Fire. I go over there to play with the Perkins kids a lot. Lee fools with us all he can. He is a dandy. He is half Indian. His father was a Cherokee."

"I know whom you mean," said Bill. "He is awfully dark, and has squinty black eyes and coal black hair. He has been transferred to our quarters now. He is splendid--does everything for mother: brings her flowers and all that, and a young mocking bird in a cage he made himself."

"I didn't know he had been transferred," said Frank. "I bet he won't be let to stay long. The Perkins family like him themselves."

"Can they get him sent back?" asked Bill anxiously.

"Sure," said Frank. "Colonel Perkins can get anybody sent where he wants them. If he was your orderly he would stay with you, of course, but he isn't; he is working as janitor."

"What's an orderly?" asked Bill.

"You sure have a lot to learn!" sighed the learned Frank. "It is like this. That new dad of yours is a Major, isn't he? All right. He has the right to have a special man that he picks out work for him, and take care of his horse and fuss around the quarters and fix his things. But the man has to belong to his command, and Lee is attached to the School of Fire."

"I see," said Bill, thoughtfully. As a matter of fact he did not see so very clearly, but he knew that it would be clearer after awhile, and he had the good sense not to press the matter further. Bill had the great and valuable gift of silence. To say nothing at all, but to let the other fellow do the talking, Bill had discovered to be a short cut to knowledge of all sorts.

"Yes," said Frank, "you see now that you can't get Lee for orderly."

Frank was glad of it. He did not know it, but down in his heart, he was jealous of this Bill boy, who had appeared at the School of Fire with his quiet good manners and his polite way of speaking, his good clothes and, above all, his wonderful little automobile scarcely larger than a toy, yet capable of real work and speed.

He rejoiced that Bill at least was not going to have Lee for an orderly. He knew what it was to have a fine orderly, and Lee was almost too good to be true at all. Why, only the week before, Lee had offered to get Frank a wildcat cub for a pet. Frank's mother, Mrs. Anderson, and his father, the Major, had refused to have the savage little creature about and Frank had had to tell Lee so. He had kept teasing Lee for some sort of pet, however, and as a joke Lee had just presented him with the biggest tarantula he could capture.

The tarantula, taken as a pet, was not a great success. Frank poked the stick at the cage and watched the ferocious creature dart for it, and decided that the wisest thing was to get rid of it at once.

"I will give you this tarantula, Bill," he said with an air of bestowing a great benefit. "I bet your mother has never seen one, and you can take it home with you in your car and show it to her. If she has never seen one, she will be some surprised."

"I suppose she would," said Bill, "but for all I know it might frighten her, and I couldn't afford to risk that. Mother isn't so very strong, and dad says it is our best job to keep her well and happy. I don't believe it will help any to show her something that looks like a bad nightmare and acts like a demon, so I'm much obliged but I guess I won't take your little pet away from you, not to-day at any rate." He laughed, and jumped to his feet.

"Where you going?" demanded Frank.

"Home," said Bill. "It is nearly time for mess. Get that? I said _mess_ and not _dinner_."

"Don't go yet," pleaded Frank. "What if you are a little late?"

"Mother likes me to be punctual, so I'll have to move along," said Bill.

Frank looked at him. "Say," he said, "aren't you just a little tied to your mother's apron strings?"

"I don't know," replied Bill good-naturedly. "I think it is a pretty good place to be tied to if anyone should ask me, and if I am, I hope I am tied so tight she will never lose me off."

He shook himself down and started toward his little car. "So long! Come see us!" he called over his shoulder.

Frank scrambled to his feet and followed. He stood watching while Bill settled himself in his seat and started the engine. He stood looking after him until the speedy little automobile swept out of sight across the prairie and down the rough road that led to the New Post and from there on to the School of Fire.

Frank gave a grin. "It's a dandy car, all right," he said, "and he may be able to swim and ride the way he says he does, but I can beat him out on one point. I can pilot a plane, and I have been up in an observation balloon. I wonder what he would look like up in the air. I bet he would be good and sick!"

Bill, guiding the car with a practiced hand, swept smoothly along, avoiding the ruts made by the great trucks belonging to the ammunition trains and the rough wheels of the caissons.

Bill was thinking hard. The years of his life came back to his thoughts one by one.

When his father died, he was only four years old, and his pretty young mother had been obliged to go out into the world and support herself and her little son. They had lived alone together, in the dainty bungalow that had been saved from the wreck of their fortunes, and had come to be more than mother and son; they were companions and pals.

So when Major Sherman appeared, and surprised Bill greatly by wanting to marry his mother, he was not surprised to hear her say that the Major would have to get the permission of her son before she could say yes.

Bill and his mother had many a long and confidential talk in those days and Bill learned, through her confidences, a great deal about the strange thing that grown people call love. Bill's mother talked to her son as she would have talked to a brother or a father, and the result was that one day young Bill had a long talk with Major Sherman, a talk that the Major at least never forgot. After it was over, Bill led the way to his mother, and taking her hand said gravely:

"Mother, we have been talking things over, and I think you ought to marry the Major. You are a good deal of a care sometimes, and I have his promise that he will help me."

Bil's mother laughed, and then she cried a little, while she asked Bill if he was trying to get rid of his troublesome parent. But Bill knew that she was trying to joke away the remembrance of her tears, so he kissed her and went out, wondering if he had lost his darling mother or had won a new and dandy father.

It proved that he had found a real father after so many years, a father who understood boys and who was soon as good and true a pal as his mother was. Bill commenced to whistle when he remembered up to this part, and then he laughed to himself when he recollected a couple of old lady aunts who had offered to take him to bring up, because they were sure that Major Sherman, being a soldier and no doubt unused to boys, might abuse him!

It was enough to make Bill chuckle. His mother said that the Major spoiled Bill. And in his secret heart Bill knew that there were times, off and on, say a few times every week, when the Major gave him treats that he would never have been able to coax from his mother. The little car for instance. His mother had declared that it was a crazy thing to give a boy twelve years old, no matter how tall and well grown he was, but the Major had prevailed, and she had at last given a reluctant consent. There had been an endless time of waiting, indeed a matter of several months while the small but perfect car was assembled, and Bill could never forget the day it arrived and the Major squeezed his big frame into the driver's seat and gave it a thorough trying out.

Pets, too. Mother was brought to see that pigeons and white rats and a tame coon and indeed everything that came his way, was a boy's right to have. The Major was educating Bill in the knowledge of how to care for dumb animals: he was learning the secret of self-discipline and self-control, without which no man or woman or boy or girl is fit to be the owner of any pet.

The Great War was ended when Bill's mother married the Major, just returned from foreign service, and immediately they packed their belongings, putting most of them in a storehouse for the happy day when the Major should retire and be able to have a home. This is the dream of every officer who gives his days and strength and brains to the service of his country. Then they packed the few articles that they felt most necessary to their comfort, gave away ten guinea pigs, eight white rats, four pigeons and a kitten, crated Bill's collie and the Major's Airdale, and started off for their first post, Fort Sill, where the Major was stationed at the School of Fire as instructor.

Fort Sill rambles all over the prairie. Not the least of its various branches is the Aviation School. And when the Major arrived with his wife and son, he found that his cousin, Major Anderson, who was in the Air service, was stationed at the Aviation School. Major Anderson had two children: a little girl, and a boy just the age of Bill. Frank Anderson liked his new cousin, but scorned him for his very natural ignorance on subjects referring to the Army. He did not stop to discover that in the way of general information Bill was vastly his superior. Major and Mrs. Anderson were quick to see a certain clear truthfulness and good sense in Bill that they knew Frank lacked and they were anxious to have the boys chum together for that reason.