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courageous souls; they aren’t locked up some where but they can go about, looking down on loved ones who need them. We’ll never recognize that they want to help, though, if we refuse to believe or accept that help." Jean questioned, "Where did you learn that, Brant?” His weather-lined face lighted up. "In the war, Jean. My kid brother, Jim, cracked up. Afterward, he helped me through. You see, the enemy had attacked him and he went West. He came back to guide me safely back to our own lines. I had become confused and lost over enemy lines. The shells couldn't hit me that night. Another time, Jim kept my plane in the air when I had been stunned by a bursting shell. Some people say such ideas are silly, but a lot of other fellows had experiences like mine. We know.” “Surely, Brant!" breathed Jean. “You ought to know." And after a moment, she said, strangely comforted, ‘‘Brant, we had better approve the plans for the new causeway, so they can get busy when the thaw comes." seemed to have entered her spirit. Drearily she went about her task, preparing for a hot dinner when Jack should bring his passengers in. She wondered that she could endure it to stay here forever — watching the planes come in. And Harry never coming in! About five, Jean went outside. The fog swirled about her, isolating her in a great loneliness. She began to worry about Jack. At six o’clock there was still no sound of his motor. Listening, she heard a strange bumping and thumping near the boat-landing on the west shore. When she investigated, she was appalled to find logs churning against a boat landing already half tom from the shore. Puzzled, frightened, Jean ran around to the south jetty. Here was the cause! A trailer log boom had broken away from the leader, the high water had carried the runaway boom onto the sharp, rocky south jetty. This had split the boom, scattering the logs, piling them along the shoreline. What of the new causeway? Jean stumbled in her haste to the east shore. Illustrations by Stanley Parichouie into the workshop beyond the pilots' quarters. She saw him climb to the driver’s seat of the supply truck and speed away. She knew a plane was due in from the north within an hour. He had to take it south. Jean's mind was diverted to the responsibilities and routine of the air port. Presently 1 farry came down, triumphant and happy. “We'll fly over to Valley Grove,” he said, "and get some autumn foliage for your rooms.” “Great,” she enthused. “You take the pilot’s seat, Jean. I’ll sit at your side and be co-pilot. Don't ask me any questions," he warned. She laughed. She boasted brazenly that she could handle the Blue Bird as well as he could. But she made plenty of errors! And she felt that if Harry weren’t there at her side, she would forget what to do. Be lost. Her set down was jerky. While they were standing on the hilltop ibove Valley Grove, Jean swaying like a young jirch in the scented breeze, testing him, she aid: “The truth is Harry, I never could take ler up alone. It’s only you at my side that ives me confidence, dear.” Then she laughed oftly and added.: “ I goess that’s because I im so much a part of you and you of me that 'rr» sxnltr Kalf ftutro olnno M Harry grinned. "Just the same, honey, you're oing to learn to fly the old girl all by your mesome, so I’ll be prepared for the day when ou can’t resist the urge to take her up — just a see the sun streak the first snow on Lauret 'eak or a particularly gorgeous sunset hanging bove the heights.” He paused, looked around he hilltop, then musingly told her: "Jean Girl, ifhen I’m old and feeble, and pass out, I want o be planted on the side of this hill, in the un and wind. It’s sort of home to me.” Then e grabbed her hand and they ran down the ath to the little plane. For Jean, the grilling went on. Harry set a ay for her solo flight. "Of course, Jean Girl, if you were afraid, it ould be different. Wouldn’t be any fun, might >e risky, though the ones who are scared often lave the best luck. I saw fellows at the train ng camp turn green with fear when they had o go it alone, and they often came in with lying colors, crazy about soloing. It gives you sort of power that you don't realize you have ntil you try it." Jean, in her great love for Harry, smiled nd agreed. Harry chose Saturday for her solo flight — wo days away. Of course, the weather would lave to be good, Harry said. Jean fervently )rayed for an early fall storm. But Jean Brooks did not fly her solo on Saturday; for Saturday, by noon, Jean was a widow, stunned and dazed with grief. No tears ame as she looked upon Harry’s beloved fea tures, so still, a half-smile on his lips. ‘‘His home-coming smile, Brant,” Jean said. “It wasn’t his fault, Jean. I’m glad that it wasn’t, aren’t you?” Brant’s voice soothed her. “That it was all the fault of the student dis obeying orders?" "Yes, Brant, of course I am.” They buried Harry on the sunny hillside. Piteously Jean questioned Fate. Was Harry chained in that hillside plot? Harry's vagabond spirit that loved to ride the wind, to go gypsy ing? She could see the shining joy in his eyes as he gazed into a colorful sunset, the happy lift of his body as he followed a flock of geese. Freedom to roam at will was what he had loved above all else. Surely Harry could not be Dounar The winter days passed, in agonized remem bering ; in Jean’s conscious need of Harry and his fortitude, his courageous acceptance of Irfe. Time and time again his words came to hei his reasoning that once one went up alone one would lose all fear, and she would leave her task and run out to the hangars, where they were rebuilding the Blue Bird — doing as they knew Harry would wish. She gazed at the reassembled plane, the new wings being put into place, and tried to visual ize the whole with Harry’s eager eyes. Proudly Brant said: ‘‘Some motor! Grand as the heart of an eagle — ” But Jean could know only the absence of a loved, sure hand on the stick; the broken, crumpled wings of the Blue Bird's tragic flop. They were the broken pinions of her lonely heart. Jack Gale, one of the young men who had learned to fly under Brant’s tutelage, tested the shining blue and silver plane. He came down boyishly eager and exuberant over its “sweet” engine. He thought that Jean was glad to have Harry’s plane right again, that she might fly it, finding comfort in piloting it. She smiled bravely at his questioning, and said gently, “Not vet. Jack.” Early one morning she went out to the Blue Bird, tried to climb into it with a confident manner. But when she put her hands on the controls, an agonizing repugnance gripped her. She jumped down and fled into the house. Flinging herself upon the bed, she gave way to the agony of grief she had bottled so long. “Oh, Harry, how will I ever find you again? I can't go up alone! And cowards can’t come where you are, Harry.” In the days that followed, a hopelessness settled upon her like a heavy fog. Jack and Brant worried about her. Whenever Brant brought his mail plane in, he tried to cheer her. Probing with a surgeon’s hope, he said one day: “Something else troubling you, Jean?” “It’s just that I’ve lost Harry forever, be cause I am a coward. 1 can never dimb into a plane and go up into the clouds for the sheer joy of it. I’ll never meet him up there!” she went on. "He wouldn’t want me —afraid!” Brant took her by the shoulders, shook her gently. “Listen, you little idiot. Harry knows now wherever he is! Don't you realize that he loves you more than ever? He knows now about the courageous display you put on. That you were scared stiff all the time. It doesn’t take courage to do the thing you love to do, as he did! And Harry loved courage," Cal reminded her. Silently, Jean considered this. It might be true. “Oh, Brant, I want to believe you!" He gripped her hands, and she went on, "Another thing, Brant, if I should go to live on Harry's hillside, build a little house there, wouldn't I feel nearer to Harry?” "Harry’s not there! There is a heaven for A warm Chinook opened the spring and melted the mountain snows. The streams rose. The loggers sent great booms down the river to the opening mills. The new causeway frame work lifted, a skeleton to be filled in and sub stantiated when the spring flood waters would subside. Small steamers and motor boats guided the huge booms past the rocky south jetty and into the broad west channel. Brant said one day, “I’ll give up my air route and bring mother to live on the island. She's been wanting an excuse to come for a long while.” He smiled his rare smile. "She says she is looked on as a freak at home be cause she’s so crazy about flying. There’s a lot of work to be done, Jean, and I've a notion I can accomplish more here than on the route.” Brant left in a gathering fog one early after noon for a lower-valley town to get his mother. "The shop men will be in town until to morrow,” he told Jean. “Jack should be in about five. I won’t come back 'til morning if the fog holds.” Jean watched him, his homely face showing a grave concern. All pilots dreaded the fog. The heaviness of the enveloping gray mist uevasiauon greeted ner. rne pontoon onage had been swept away. Against the causeway supports, logs gathered and crashed in plung ing fury. Even as she looked, she saw the frame work of the causeway crumple at the center, then crash down onto that angry churning of water and logs. Jean raced back to the hangars. The hum of a motor far above penetrated the fog. Her heart beat fearfully as she looSfed out at the sickly gleam that the flood lights threw into that misty, yellow pall. At her dinner task, a stabbing uneasiness possessed her. She suddenly thought of the siren; she hurried to the shop where Brant had been experimenting. She started the motor and, clicking the switches, was rewarded with a clear siren call. It wasn’t loud, but a piercing note that should reach an anxious ear above a motor’s drone. The motor in the air above became silent. Jack was circling high, to the north. The whine of descending wires reached her. She heard a light impact, the roar of the motor. What had happened? Had he grazed the rail road bridge? Oh, here he came—diving through a hole in the fog bank, like a great gray b«rd. He flew through the beacon’s path of light (CmNmmd or pogm 12) SICK WITH FEAR, SHE WATCHED THE PLANE ZOOM UP FROM A SCREAMING DESCENT