The Last Shot. Frederick Palmer
an agony of suspense they saw the fragile creation of cloth and bamboo and metal, which had seemed as secure as an albatross riding on the lap of a steady wind, dip far over, careen back in the other direction, and then the whirring noise that had grown with its flight ceased. It was no longer a thing of winged life, defying the law of gravity, but a thing dead, falling under the burden of a living weight.
"The engine has stopped!" exclaimed Westerling, any trace of emotion in his observant imperturbability that of satisfaction that the machine was the enemy's. He was thinking of the exhibition, not of the man in the machine.
Marta was thinking of the man who was about to die, a silhouette against the soft blue holding its own balance resolutely in the face of peril. She could not watch any longer; she could not wait on the catastrophe. She was living the part of the aviator more vividly than he, with his hand and mind occupied. She rushed down the terrace steps wildly, as if her going and her agonized prayer could avert the inevitable. The plane, descending, skimmed the garden wall and passed out of sight. She heard a thud, a crackling of braces, a ripping of cloth, but no cry.
Westerling had started after her, exclaiming, "This is a case for first aid!" while Mrs. Galland, taking the steps as fast as she could, brought up the rear. Through the gateway in the garden wall could be seen the shoulders of a young officer, a streak of red coursing down his cheek, rising from the wreck. An inarticulate sob of relief broke from Marta's throat, followed by quick gasps of breath. Captain Arthur Lanstron was looking into the startled eyes of a young girl that seemed to reflect his own emotions of the moment after having shared those he had in the air.
"I flew! I flew clear over the range, at any rate!" he said. "And I'm alive. I managed to hold her so she missed the wall and made an easy bump."
Marta smiled in the reaction from terror at his idea of an easy bump, while he was examining the damage to his person. He got one foot free of the wreck and that leg was all right. She shared his elation. Then he found that the other was uninjured, just as she cried in distress:
"But your hand—oh, your hand!"
His left hand hung limp from the wrist, cut, mashed, and bleeding. Its nerves numbed, he had not as yet felt any pain from the injury. Now he regarded it in a kind of awakening stare of realization of a deformity to come.
"Wool-gathering again!" he muttered to himself crossly.
Then, seeing that she had turned white, he thrust the disgusting thing behind his back and twinged with the movement. The pain was arriving.
"It must be bandaged! I have a handkerchief!" she begged. "I'm not going to faint or anything like that!"
"Only bruised—and it's the left. I am glad it was not the right," he replied. Westerling arrived and joined Marta in offers of assistance just as they heard the prolonged honk of an automobile demanding the right of way at top speed in the direction of the pass.
"Thank you, but they're coming for me," said Lanstron to Westerling as he glanced up the road.
Westerling was looking at the wreck. Lanstron, who recognized him as an officer, though in mufti, kicked a bit of the torn cloth over some apparatus to hide it. At this Westerling smiled faintly. Then Lanstron saluted as officer to officer might salute across the white posts, giving his name and receiving in return Westeling's.
They made a contrast, these two men, the colonel of the Grays, swart and sturdy, his physical vitality so evident, and the captain of the Browns, some seven or eight years the junior, bareheaded, in dishevelled fatigue uniform, his lips twitching, his slender body quivering with the pain that he could not control, while his rather bold forehead and delicate, sensitive features suggested a man of nerve and nerves who might have left experiments in a laboratory for an adventure in the air. There was a kind of challenge in their glances; the challenge of an ancient feud of their peoples; of the professional rivalry of polite duellists. Lanstron's slight figure seemed to express the weaker number of the three million soldiers of the Browns; Westerling's bulkier one, the four million five hundred thousand of the Grays.
"You had a narrow squeak and you made a very snappy recovery at the last second," said Westerling, passing a compliment across the white posts. Marta could literally see a white post there between the two.
"That's in the line of duty for you and me, isn't it?" Lanstron replied, his voice thick with pain as he forced a smile.
There was no pose in his fortitude. He was evidently disgusted with himself over the whole business, and he turned to the group of three officers and a civilian who alighted from a big Brown army automobile as if he were prepared to have them say their worst. They seemed between the impulse of reprimanding and embracing him.
"I hope that you are not surprised at the result," said the oldest of the officers, a man of late middle age, rather affectionately and teasingly. He wore a single order on his breast, a plain iron cross, and the insignia of his rank was that of a field-marshal.
"Not now. I should be again, sir," said Lanstron, looking full at the field-marshal in the appeal of one asking for another chance. "I was wool-gathering. My mind was off duty for a second and I got a lesson in self-control at the expense of the machine. I treated it worse than it deserved, and it treated me better than I deserved. But I shall not wool-gather next time. I've got a reminder more urgent than a string tied around my finger."
"Yes, that hand needs immediate attention," said the doctor. He and another officer began helping Lanstron into the automobile.
"The first flight ever made over a range—even a low one! Thirty miles straightaway!" remarked the civilian, making a cursory examination of the wreck of the machine which was a pattern known by his name.
"Very educational for our young man," said the field-marshal, and at sight of Mrs. Galland paused while they exchanged the greetings of old friends.
"Your Excellency, may we send back for you, sir?" called the doctor. He was not one to let rank awe him when duty pressed. "This hand ought to be at the hospital at once."
"I'm coming along. I've a train to catch," replied His Excellency, springing into the car. "No more wool-gathering, eh?" he said, giving Lanstron a pat on the shoulder. To Lanstron this pat meant another chance.
"Good-by!" he called to the young girl, who was still watching him with big, sympathetic eyes. "I am coming back soon and land in the field, there, and when I do. I'll claim a bunch of flowers."
"Do! What fun!" she cried, as the car started.
"The field-marshal was Partow, their chief of staff?" Westerling asked.
"Yes," said Mrs. Galland. "I remember when he was a young infantry officer before the last war, before he had won the iron cross and become so great. He was not of an army family—a doctor's son, but very clever and skilful."
"Getting a little old for his work!" remarked Westerling. "But apparently he is keen enough to take a personal interest in anything new."
"Wasn't it thrilling and—and terrible!" Marta exclaimed.
"Yes, like war at our own door again," replied Mrs. Galland, who knew war. She had seen war raging on the pass road. "Lanstron, the young man said his name was," she resumed after a pause. "No doubt the Lanstrons of Thorbourg. An old family and many of them in the army."
"The way he refused to give in—that was fine!" said Marta.
Westerling, who had been engrossed in his own thoughts, looked up.
"Courage is the cheapest thing an army has! You can get hundreds of young officers who are glad to take a risk of that kind. The thing is," and his fingers pressed in on the palm of his hand in a pounding gesture of the forearm, "to direct and command—head work—organization!"
"If war should come again—" Marta began. Mrs. Galland nudged her. A Brown never mentioned war to an officer of the Grays; it was not at all in the accepted proprieties. But Marta rushed on: "So many would be engaged that it would be more horrible than ever."
"You cannot make omelets