OFF TO THE BORDER

“Report to Commanding Officer Naval Aviation Base, Punta Rio, Texas.”

Such was the order that sent Jack Sterling hiking south that first hot week in August. Forty-eight hours’ leave allowed him a visit home, however, and it was not until the morning of the sixth that he bade good-by to his folks and started off for the station in one of Mike Connell’s rattling taxis, his battered suit-case beside him and his small trunk swaying tipsily about on the seat outside. Oddly enough, it was Jerry Connell who drove that morning. He and Jerry had gone to school together in Mount Warren, had played together and, at times, had fought together. The fact that Jack was the son of Judge Sterling, a citizen of prominence and some wealth, and that Jerry was the heir apparent to the town’s principal liveryman had made no difference. Nor did it now, for the two had nearly wrung each other’s hands off at meeting, and all the way to the station Jack, sitting well forward on his seat, conversed with the driver through the open front window of the little car. As Jack had not been home since shortly after Christmas, there was much news to be told, and as they rattled and bumped down the long, straight length of Adams Street, Jerry’s head was turned half around and his tongue kept busy. When, however, he had guided the car through the traffic of the Square and was bouncing over the cobbles of Ferry Street, under the many-windowed front of the knitting mill, he began to put questions himself. Because of the whirring and clicking that came from the building beside them he had to shout to make himself heard.

“Well, you got your commission, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Last month.”

Jerry turned further around and cast an admiring look at the insignia adorning the sleeve of his friend’s coat. “I heard you had,” he continued. “Steve Perry, down at the Post Office, said you’ve got a stripe and he read it in the paper. Ensign, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” answered Jack, “and without ever being at sea!”

“Get out!”

“Fact. The nearest I got to it was six months at Norfolk on a receiving ship that never left the dock. Maybe I’m due for better luck now, though. I’m going down to Texas.”

“That so? But, say, Texas isn’t―― There isn’t any water around Texas, is there?”

“Well, there’s considerable of it along one side, Jerry, about four hundred miles of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“That’s right, too. I’d forgot that. I always think of Texas as being inland like. I never was any good at geography, anyway. I suppose you’ll be fighting Mexicans before long, eh? Is there really all the trouble down there the papers say there is?”

“I don’t believe so. The papers generally make those things out rather worse than they are. Still, there’s a chance of trouble, I guess, and I’m tickled to death to get down there. All the fellows back at the Yard were green with envy when I told them about my transfer. What’s bothering me is that I’m ordered to report to the Aviation Corps. That doesn’t sound much like salt water. I’ve never qualified for the flying service. I’m guessing!”

“Radio’s your line, isn’t it?” asked Jerry.

“Yes, and if they stick me in an aëroplane I’ll probably die of fright! Mother’s worried sick for fear I’ll get killed. I had to promise her I’d wear a parachute around my neck every minute!”

“Gosh, Jack, I’d certainly love to go up in one o’ those things! Wish I’d tried for the navy when you did that time. Guess they wouldn’t have taken me, though, on account of my eyes. That’s what kept me out of the army, you know. Made me feel like an awful fool, too. Folks used to ask me when I was going, and when I’d tell ’em I hadn’t passed they’d sort of grin, and I’d know they thought I was lying. Guess the old Kaiser wasn’t any gladder than I was when they signed that armistice! Say, you must be eighteen now, aren’t you? You’re about a year younger than me if I remember right.”

“Eighteen next month. I try hard to look older, but I don’t succeed very well, I guess.”

Jerry grinned. “You surely don’t, kid. Fact is, you look more like seventeen than eighteen. You were always like that, though. I remember when we went to the old primary school together. You looked like you’d climbed out of the cradle and run away!”

“If I could only raise a mustache it mightn’t be so bad,” said Jack, ruefully. “But a mustache on anything under an admiral isn’t thought well of in the navy! Well, I’m awfully glad to have seen you again, Jerry. I’ll drop you a post-card some day when I get down there and tell you what I’m doing. Mind lugging that trunk around to the baggage-room? Here, I’ll give you a hand with it.”

“Lay off!” protested Jerry. “You’d look fine toting your own trunk around, wouldn’t you? Don’t they teach you respect for your uniform where you come from?”

“Sure,” laughed Jack. “And they teach us to take hold when there’s work to be done, too! All right, Jerry, I’ll toddle behind with the bag.”

Jack’s father had come down from his office for a final leave-taking and was waiting on the platform when he got there. The remaining minutes were occupied in securing transportation and checking the trunk, and then the long train was puffing into the station and Jack was climbing aboard. The Judge’s smile never faltered, but there was much earnestness in his final grip and in his words as the train moved off.

“Write often, son,” he said, “for we’re going to be pretty anxious now, mother and I. I sort of hope you’ll land on a ship and not a flying machine. But, you be careful and――and do your duty and――――”

If there was more, Jack didn’t hear it, for the train was moving fast. He smiled reassuringly, waved from the car steps and saw his father and Jerry Connell and all the others on the platform merge and dwindle and pass from sight. Then, from his seat in the parlor car he watched the home town gradually disappear; the mills and the long lines of operatives’ houses, the wagon bridge over North Creek, the pool in the old brick yard where he and Jerry and many others had skated in winter and paddled in summer, the pretty stucco, vine-clad cottages in the new residence district on what had used to be Town Line Hill, the old Fair Grounds, with the withered reminders of a war garden bleaching in the hot morning sunlight, and then the open, rolling country glimpsed between rows of freight cars along the sidings.

Presently Jack opened his bag and took out a book. It was a treatise on aërial navigation which he had hurriedly procured in the city two days before. For awhile he studied the pictures and diagrams and then, settling back in his seat, began to read. Jack’s ignorance of the subject was colossal, for, save that he had watched airplanes and seaplanes in flight often enough, he couldn’t have told why they flew had his life depended on it. But he meant to find out, since, no matter what sort of duty might be awaiting him at Punta Rio, it certainly behooved him to know something at least of the theory of flying. Even if his assignment should prove to be ground work, and he rather expected it would, he would nevertheless be thrown in with men who knew aviation as well as he knew radiotelegraphy, and it would be a convenience, if no more, to be able to understand their talk. When he passed into the dining car for luncheon he took the book along and went on reading as he ate. There was much he couldn’t quite understand, but on the whole he made progress, and when, shortly after three o’clock, the train drew into the city he could have spoken quite knowingly of torsion and stability and poise, having reached page 114. Nevertheless there was a perplexed look on his face as he stuffed the book back into his suit-case, and he mentally echoed his father’s hope that the deck of a ship and not the car of an aëroplane would prove to be his station!

He had a wait of over two hours in the city, and, checking his suitcase, he went forth and made a few simple purchases, consuming as much time as possible over each. But it still lacked an hour of train time when he got back to the terminal and so, buying an evening paper at the news stand, he found a seat in the waiting-room and spread it out before him. The first headline to meet his gaze gripped his attention. “Mexican Situation Grows More Acute,” he read. “British and French Warships Reach Tampico. War Department Gives Number of American Troops Along Border as 154,000. Raiders Cross Rio Grande at Las Orgas and Thurston. Twelve Mexicans Killed and Many Taken Prisoner. Eight Americans Wounded and Three Missing. State Department Denies Receipt of Answer to President’s Note.” Jack read the dispatches with pursed lips. Maybe, after all, the papers were for once telling no more than the facts, he thought. At all events, affairs along the border were in bad shape. And the arrival of British and French ships at Tampico looked like business. He didn’t pretend to understand the right and wrong of Mexico’s position in the controversy regarding her oil fields, but he was willing to bet a month’s pay that if they’d just give the word to the United States Navy the whole thing could be settled in a wink! Whereupon, stuffing the paper in his pocket, he retrieved his suit-case and sought the train-shed. Of course he couldn’t hurry that train off, but at least he could see that it wasn’t delayed on his account!