--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - McLaughlin, Fred collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 28 number: 6 published: 1925-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Fred McLaughlin, “Wings of the Night,” *Improvement Era 28, no. 6 (April 1925)*: 542–549." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2806unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2806unse start_page: 542 end_page: 549 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1925-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2806unse publication_year: 1925 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1925, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Wings of the Night WINGS OF THE NIGHT By Fred McLaughlin Jack Newcomb had been unable to get a laugh out of Buster Keaton, and now the five-reel sob-story left him cold. During the interval between the happy ending of the feature and the beginning of a Larry Semon that had been touted to bring down the house, there came one of those interpolating advertising stunts, now all the rage in the mountain country. The first scene showed a man staring wildly at a telegram. "Too late! Too late!" he is supposed to be saying. Then he suddenly remembers something, and dashes out. The next flash shows him climbing into an aeroplane, along the fuselage of which has been painted "Inter-Mountain Transportation Company." The plane soars aloft. It is shown hurtling through clouds, skimming mountains, finally passing a speeding train, and lighting near a desert station. The man who was too late hops out, races to the station, pays with one hand, grabs the ticket with the other, and dashes off in time to catch the train. There is a caption: "Did you miss your train? We catch it for you. Did you forget that date? We help you fix it up." Another picture shows the same plane with the same advertising legend land, and the same man make a last second dash for the gang- plank, just before it is raised. Another caption: "Did you miss your boat? We catch it for you." Before the crowd had half read this last caption, Newcomb went suddenly insane, threw himself out of his seat, stumbled across feet and knees and chair arms, fell into the aisle, sprang to his feet, and dashed for the exit door. People looked for the fire, and an usher stood in the way of the fleeing man. "Is there anything I can do, sir? Is there — ?" He received a stiff-armed jab that sent him twirling, and Jack broke through the door, forced his way frantically past the waiting crowd, hurled himself across the sidewalk into a huge red roadster, which roared away like a thing of life. Up Main and out South Temple it went, paying no heed to traffic or to the officer's angry whistle. He crossed the track beside the station and sped off into the moonlit night. Beside the office of the Inter-mountain Transportation Company he came to an abrupt stop. The calm demeanor of the slightly stooped man behind the rail- ing infuriated him. "Can I get a ship to Frisco? Can I get — ?" The man behind the counter studied his finger nails. "Yes indeed," he said. "When do you want it?" WINGS OF THE NIGHT 543 "When do I want it? Now. Do you think I'd — -?*' "Oh, no indeed." The man with the stooped shoulders put out a hand deprecatingly. "Of course not. If you would tell me — " Jack put his hands on the rail. "Pardon," he said: "I'm a little excited and I — " "Sit down." He laughed a little. "I'm afraid I can't. You see I want to catch the President Grant tomorrow morning at nine o'clock; the last train left Salt Lake this morning." "I see; it's quite easy I assure you." "Quite easy?" He stared vacantly. The man's coolness irri- tated him. "You mean you can put me — ?" "Oh, yes. We can easily land you in San Francisco an hour or two before sailing time." Jack visualized that great stretch of mountain and valley and desert between Salt Lake City and the coast. "Well," he said, with doubt still lingering in his tone. Already the still-faced man in front of him was filling in some spaces on a printed sheet, which he put under Newcomb's hand for his signature. "Of course," he was saying, "we make no guarantee against accidents, but we contract to put you in San Francisco in time for the boat." Jack hastily scanned the printed lines. He discovered that the com- pany promised to put him on the boat but it did not guarantee dam- ages against personal injury. He smiled. "You mean that if you don't kill me and don't get me there in time the three hundred and fifty dollars will be returned?" "That's it exactly," said the man. "I'm ready now." The blase clerk behind the counter spoke a few words into a telephone and turned back to his customer. "I'll send Mr. Halliday out with you. He's the best flyer we have. He's quite safe, I assure you." "Halliday," said Newcomb. "Would he be a small man with a dried up face and a sense of humor?" "He's small and his face is rather — er — dried up, as you say. but as for a sense of humor, I don't know." "No, you wouldn't," said Jack hastily. "Fact is I knew a Halliday in France — a flyer." The door opened behind him, and turning, he saw a little man with a dried up face and keen bright eyes, who looked at Jack an instant and then hurled himself upon him. "Shrimp Halliday!" said Newcomb when he had gotten his breath. "Jack, you big — " They pump-handled each other and laughed in an excess of joy, while the still-faced gentleman behind the counter looked calmly on, 544 IMPROVEMENT ERA "Mr. Newcomb wants you to take him to San Francisco in time to catch the President Grant tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, Mr Halliday." "Sure," said Mr. Halliday. Shrimp Halliday climbed into the front cock-pit and Newcomb took hold of the propeller. "Let me do it, Shrimp, this time," he said. "Go ahead." He caught the blade, pulled it down and turned it loose. He repeated the operation and stood back. The propeller began to beat the air with a tremendous roar. Jack ran around the wing and climbed into the rear cockpit. A man in brown overalls drew a wooden block away from the wheels and away they went. Newcomb took hold of the joy-stick, for the machine was a dual control, and the pulsing throb of the thing took him back three years to the time when he and Shrimp Halliday had flown one on the western front. High over the lake Halliday, reading his thought, turned and yelled, "Want it?" Jack nodded and Halliday raised his hands. Newcomb pushed the stick forward a little and dove toward the lake; then drew it back and zoomed. He twisted it sideways and banked. He pushed it forward again," turned off the gas, and fell like a plummet for half a mile while the struts shrieked in the reluctant air. A thousand feet from the surface of the lake he straightened out and then gave it all he had for another roaring climb. In the top of the climb he described a half dozen circles; flip-flops, Shrimp Halliday had called them. Then he leaned forward again and turned the joy- stick as one turns the handle of a coffee mill, throwing the ship into a soul sickening vtille. He had seen a young mule, freed from the harness, cut up just this way. He felt freed from the earth, its cares, and its perennial business. Even the waiting boat with Peggy seemed of another world. He cleansed his mind in this wild debauch in, the air. From a great height he turned the nose of the plane in a gentle angle toward the earth, cut off the gas, and volplaned swiftly and easily and silently. Shrimp Halliday turned. "That'll do for you," he said; and Jack felt a firm grip on the controls. He filled his lungs and looked around. The serrated ranges speeding backward far below him were softened now under a brilliant moon. The deserts shone like sheets of silver and the few roads which crossed them seemed like tiny white ribbons. Finally he dozed to the drone of the motor. It was Halliday's business to get him there and he felt that Halliday would do it. The hours went by and narrow parallel ranges and the broad flat deserts streamed behind them. He woke up suddenly. The motor was dead. He saw Halliday's shoulders moving rapidly, and looking out, he perceived the earth ap- WINGS OF THE NIGHT 545 proaching at terrific speed. Halliday turned his head for an instant said something, and turned back. Jack loosened the belt across his lap. He remembered vividly how they had tried to drag a man from a burning ship that had crashed, and the belt across his knees had balked them. A hundred feet from the crest of a jagged mountain Shrimp lifted the machine out of the volplane and then dipped down again." "Good boy," Jack murmured under his breath. They were nearing the flat now; ahead of them a body of water shone in the moonlight. They cleared the lake by inches, rousing thousands of pelican, the din of whose wings filled the air for five minutes. The plane came easily to rest beyond the lake, and the two men climbed out and waited for the noise of the myriad wings to cease. "So this is Frisco," said Jack. He considered the lake. "My word, how the Pacific has shrunk!" "Ah ," said Shrimp. "Well," said Jack encouragingly, "we missed the mountain any- way." Halliday laughed. "We just did." He applied himself to the motor. "I would be foolish were I to ask you if the gas is out," said Newcomb. "You would," agreed Halliday. "The gas is not out." Jack looked at his watch. "It is now four o'clock," he said. "In five hours the President Grant pulls out." Halliday grunted. "I guess there's some solder in the circula- tion," he explained. "Sort of a blood clot, eh?" questioned Jack. "That's usually fatal, isn't it?" Shrimp Halliday stood up slowly, straightening out a badly ach- ing back. "There ought to be a law," he said slowly, "making it a high crime to poke fun at a man whose motor has quit. I can't fix this 'til daylight." "Where are we?" "We're in Nevada," said Halliday. "Ah, so?" "That's Carson Sink Lake." Shrimp spat at the stagnant water. "The railroad is over there." He pointed northwest. "Ten miles or more. Hazen is over there." He pointed west. "Fallon down yonder, about fifteen miles southwest. Aside from that," he finished, "there's nobody home." "Ah, then," said Jack encouragingly, "we will have a nice quiet morning." "Hm." "Is there a ship either in Hazen or Fallon?" "No," said Halliday. "Hazen is only a railroad point and Fal- lon's a bunch of nesters." 546 IMPROVEMENT ERA "I've got an idea that I'm going to get my three hundred and fifty dollars back." Shrimp Halliday turned and extended his hand. "I'm sorry, Jack." "It's all right, old kid." They sat down on the soft alkali dirt and looked out over the moonbathed hills. Halliday dug a hole in the soil with his heel. "I've worked for that joint fifteen months," he said reminiscently, "and I haven't yet failed to land my man in time." "How long will it take to fix it after daylight?" "An hour or two if at all," said Shrimp. "Say seven o'clock." "Um-huh. And there's not a flying thing that can go from here to Frisco in two hours." They sat in silence for ten minutes. "If I had the wherewith," said Jack, "I'd play you a game." Shrimp Halliday stood up. He knew that tone of voice. He remembered it was just such a tone that Jack had used when he had announced one bleak night that his brother had crashed. "I guess you wanted to get that boat, Jack." Newcomb nodded. "Business?" Jack shook his head. "Hm; only one other thing." "You're real bright," said Jack. He drew a telegram from his pocket and extended it to Halliday, who spread it out, shot his flash- light upon it, and read aloud: "John C. Newcomb. 321 South Main, Salt Lake City. "Sorry. "Peggy." Halliday handed it back. "Short," he said, "and quite sweet." He studied the dead ship for a moment. "I take it she's on the President Grant." "Yes." "Which sails this morning at nine" "Yes again." "And at the last minute you decided — " Newcomb interrupted. "Not quite; I was there. There was a party of eight going all the way around — guests of Peggy's mother and father. It had been planned that we were to be married some- where on the way. Probably the consulate at Pekin. Day before yesterday we had some words — Peggy and I." "You poor simp," broke in Halliday. "Exactly," agreed Jack. "I took my hat and came back home. I found this wire waiting for me in Salt Lake, but the last train had WINGS OF THE NIGHT 547 already gone. I dropped into a movie," he continued slowly, "to while away a rotten hour." Shrimp Halliday laughed. "Do you know, Jack, the Company gave me a hundred dollars for that advertising idea?" Jack grunted. "It's worth it," he said, "when it works." So they waited. The moon went down beyond the arid western desert, and the pink came up behind the gray hills to the east. Halliday tinkered with the engine while Newcomb cast what few stones he could find at a dilatory pelican who seemed too lazy or too careless to move. Long after seven o'clock the furious roar of the whirling pro- peller filled the desert with sound which beat back from the high ranges in ever fading echoes. It was nearly eight o'clock when they passed the impounded waters of the Truckee and Carson Rivers, flying high now over the ragged ranges of eastern California. Just before eleven o'clock the plane landed on a stretch of beach north of Sausalito. "Try the telephone," urged Halliday. "It's possible that some- thing may have postponed the sailing." Jack was back in ten minutes, breathless and discouraged. "There's no use," he said; "I might as well take the train back." Halliday looked out to the west. Faintly there came to them the murmur of the Pacific. "It seems to be calling, doesn't it, Jack?" Newcomb turned a haggard face to his friend. "I'd have given a thousand dollars to have made that boat." Halliday still faced the west. "She's going to meet a good many men between here and New York — fascinating men, clever ones, hand- some beggars, and maybe a title or two." "You give me a pain," said Jack. The flyer suddenly turned back. "The Inter-Mountain Trans- portation Company guaranteed to put you on the boat. I am paid to fulfil their promises. If you're willing to take a chance I'll drop you right into the arms of your lady love." Newcomb looked into the wrinkled face and keen eyes, and he saw there the light of the fanatic, the crusader. He laughed shortly. "That fish-faced 'dood' back there in Salt Lake assured me you were quite safe." Halliday grinned. "I didn't realize, Shrimp, until I had lost the boat, how badly I wanted to catch it." "Are you on?" questioned the flyer. "I'll take any chance to make it." They raced toward a tumble-down store which stood beside the dusty road, and brought back two huge cans of gasoline and a heavy roll of rope. Soon the tiny craft took the air again, pointing its nose out into the broad Pacific. Newcomb knew that the President Grant had at least an eighty mile lead on them. Directions to him were vague, and the boats, com- 548 IMPROVEMENT ERA ing and going on the water far below them, seemed lost on the bound- less ocean. He leaned forward and yelled into the flyer's ear, "Can we find it?" "We can't miss it; it's as big as a ball park, and they all follow the same line." There was a cross wind, and Jack knew that the ship was making nearly a hundred miles an hour, which meant that the President Grant would be over a hundred miles out when they caught it. It was after one when they sighted it; just a speck at first, but assuming size and shape with incredible swiftness. Halliday cut off the gas and, turning, spoke in the silence that followed: "There she is, Jack; pretty?" "Beautiful!" said Jack. He visualized a slim, lithe little beauty with great gray eyes and a wealth of golden-brown curls, with sweetly pointed chin and warm, willing lips. She had said she was sorry, and now he was coming back. He counted no chances of failure. "All ready?" Halliday's voice was a little bit husky. As Jack climbed out of the cock-pit the flyer gripped his hand an instant. "Wave a hat three times if you light," he said; and then, "good luck, old head!" Newcomb tied one end of the rope around a strut and dropped the coil, which straightened out behind them. He drew it back and tied a number of knots near the end. As the craft circled over the speeding steamer he lay flat on the wing and slid off gradually. Look- ing up he saw a hand and Shrimp Halliday's anxious face. He had wrapped the rope around his leg, and as the air beat him and whirled him around and around he let the rope slip slowly through his gripping fingers until he reached the knots at the end. Then he held on and waited. He swung high over the ship. Another great circle of the plane and he paralleled the length of the deck no more than twenty feet above it. The people stared, spell-bound, and a slim girl in a white dress and a floppy sailor hat screamed, "No, Jack! No-No!" How she recognized him in the all-enveloping canvas suit and helmet and goggles only love can tell. Another circling trip and the watchers on the boat saw the speed- ing, pendant figure lift its feet to miss the rail, then drop to the deck, skidding forty feet and plunging into a fat man in a steamer chair. Jack got to his feet. "Pardon," he said, to the irate man, still tangled up in the overturned chair. Then he sank slowly to the deck. "Guess I hurt my leg." The girl had hold of him now. She tore the goggles and the helmet from his head. "Are you hurt, Jack?" Half sobbing, she held to him. "Are you — ?" The roar of the plane came to them again. "Somebody wave a hat," said Jack, feebly, "three times around your head." Peggy sprang clear of the crowd, took off the broad gray hat WINGS OF THE NIGHT 549 and swung it around her head three times as the machine swept by for the last time. A hand waved from the fuselage, the plane turned sharply and sped away to the eastward. Shrimp Halliday, hurtling home through the balmly moon-lit night, happy in the knowledge of a task well done, did not know that the radio had passed him, and that a thousand dollars awaited him in the office of the Inter-Mountain Transportation Company. THE DAWN By Joseph Quinney Jr., President of the Canadian Mission Behold: The morning breaks; the hour of light has dawned. With majestic touch he sweeps the skies; all space is filled with light. O what light! It is God who speaks, and with his word all earth gives ear. The Son of God is born; he is called the Mighty One, The King. Behold: With this Son of Light all sordid things are gone; they sleep in unknown graves, while this Celestial One brings peace. He is called the Prince of Peace, who stands as God to bless and give — to lead the way, the eternal way of life, where love is work and work is love. Behold: The dawn of Light is love, God's pure love to bind up broken hearts. Ah! this Light of all great lights is faith, a pure and vital faith. The dead are made to live, the blind to see, the sick are healed, and the dumb sing praises to his name. This Holy One moves in majestic power, unfolding in his path of grace all life — eternal life. Behold: This Starlit Son of Light is God; he spreads in everlasting splendor, his rays upon the believing and on the unbelieving. Om- nipotent in power, this Light of lights deals justly with the just and the unjust. The cycle is fixed; all deeds are weighed; the reward is given as man is found. Behold: This Mighty One, the Christ, brought gifts to man; not gifts that die, but gifts that live and grow in God's great garden of love. Ah! the gift of all great gifts grows in mighty splendor. Christ gave to man his greatest prize. This gift of Life is ours; immortality our crown; ours, through this Prince of Peace is eternal life, ever- lasting joy. Toronto, Canada