She looked like a glorious, slender boy in the riding breeches and puttees she had thought appropriate for the adventure.
THE HIGHFLYERS
CHAPTER I
Fred la Mothe was speaking. After a certainnumber of beverages composed of Scotchwhisky, imported soda, and a cube of ice, it was amatter of comparative ease for him to exhibit anotable fluency. After two o’clock in the afternoonFred was generally fluent.
“‘’Tain’t safe,’ I says to him. And the wind wasblowin’ enough to lift the hair out of your head.‘I wouldn’t go up in the thing for the price of it,’ Isays, ‘and, besides, you’re seein’ two of it. Badenough drivin’ a car when you’re lit up,’ I says, ‘butwhat these flyin’ machines want is a still day and aman that’s cold sober. You just let it rest on itslittle perch in the bird-cage.’”
Fred refreshed his parched throat while his fourcompanions waited for the conclusion of the tale.“‘You’ll bust your neck,’ I told him.
“‘Ten to one,’ says he, ‘I round Windmill PointLight and come back without bustin’ my neck.Even money I make it without bustin’ anything,’says he.
“‘Dinner for four at the Tuller to-night that theleast you bust is a leg,’ I says, and the wind whippedthe hat off my head and whirled it into a tree.”
Fred stopped, evidently mourning the loss of hishat.
“Well,” said Will Kraemer, impatiently, “whathappened? Did he go up?”
“Him?... I paid for that dinner, but, b’lieveme, there were times when I thought I’d have tocollect from his estate. Ever see a leaf blowingaround in a gale? Well, that’s how he looked outover the lake. Just boundin’ and twirlin’ andtwistin’, but he went the distance and came backand landed safe. Got out of the dingus just like hewas gettin’ off a Pullman. Patted the thing on thewing like it was a pet chicken. ‘Let’s drive downto the Pontchartrain,’ he says. ‘Likely the crowd’sthere.’ Not another darn word. Just that.”
“Trouble with Potter Waite,” said Tom Watts,“is that he just naturally don’t give a damn. Ifhe’s going to pull something he’d as lief pull it in themiddle of Woodward Avenue at noon by the villageclock as to pull it on the Six Mile Road at midnight.”
“No pussy-footin’ for him,” said Jack Eldredge.“My old man was talking about him the other night.Day after he cleaned up those two taxi-drivers outhere in fr