Horace McCoy: Frost Rides Alone (Short Story)

“It’d be suicide,” said Clay, shaking his head.

Frost laughed. “Lissen, Ox—I admit it may seem funny to you, but it doesn’t to me. Besides, I’ve got to do it. How am I going to know when I see her?”

“Easy,” said Clay. “Brass taffrails. She’s ebony black all over but for her taffrails. You can see ‘em rain or shine. She carries one funnel, looks perfect alow and aloft, has a heavy stern and her cutwater and bow lines are as pretty as I ever saw.”

Frost laughed. “I don’t get that conversation,” he said. “But I did understand about the brass. I don’t guess I can miss her.”

“You can’t,” O’Neill said.

“Definitely made up your mind to go it alone?” asked Clay.

“Yep. Would it be possible for me to requisition silencers?”

Ox Clay swung open a drawer and took out two pistols fitted with longish muzzles. “Presto!” he said. He handed them to Frost. “I’ll let you use mine.”

Frost stared at them curiously. “This,” he said, “is the first time I ever saw a silencer. Are they apt to jam?”

Clay grinned. “The first shots will be all right. After that you gamble. Hope they’ll do you, Jerry. They’re my contribution to your success.”

Frost took an automatic out of his hip-holster and one from under his chamois jacket. He said: “I’ll trade for the time being. Now one thing more and I’ll blow a bugle over your grave. Will you phone Roland at the field that I’m on my way and be sure and be in.”

“I’ll phone, but don’t think that gang on the Catherine B will be a pushover. It’s a tough mob.”

“I know.” Frost shook hands with each of them. “Well,” he said; “so long.”

“So long. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

He sheathed his pistols and walked out. Ox Clay looked at Jimmy O’Neill.

“Lotsa guts,” he observed.

“You said it!”

Major Oliver Roland, commander of the flying field at Corpus Christi was a stout admirer of Jerry Frost personally and professionally, being a veteran airman himself, but he thought Frost’s plan to take the air in an effort to locate the kidnaped woman was a wild idea.

“It’s all wet,” as he put it.

Frost said no.

“Ridiculous—and dangerous.”

“Neither,” Frost retorted crisply. “I can’t afford to think of either one.”

“You ought to.” Sternly: “Just because you’ve had a lot of success along the Border you think you’re invulnerable That makes you cocky and breeds overconfidence. You mustn’t get that way.”

Roland’s tone was firm, but inoffensive, and Frost grinned. “I’m not overconfident. I’ve got good reasons not to be.” He was thinking of that time not so long ago when he escaped in an enemy plane, to think he had the world by the tail on a down-hill pull, and was promptly shot down by his companions. “I’m not overconfident,” he repeated. “But I am curious—curious as hell. It’s up to me to get that woman—and with your help I intend to!”

Oliver Roland knew flyers. He looked into Frost’s eyes—clear. He looked at his mouth— tight. He looked at his chin—square under pressure of the jaws. He decided the young man knew what he was doing.

“Very well,” he surrendered. “Want a flying boat?”

“Nope, pontoons. Just pontoons. Will you fit me?”

Roland nodded. “On the condition that you forget where you got ‘em.”

“My memory’s awful,” Frost smiled.

It required little more than two hours to fit the pontoons and service the ship; and then the silver-winged bird cascaded through the Gulf of Mexico, left the water in a stream of fume, and turned its eager wings southward.

That bird was a fighting ship of the Texas Rangers, carried two thousand rounds of ammunition, a veteran pilot who had a brace of silencer-equipped pistols, and, what was infinitely more important, a stout heart.

Jerry Frost was riding alone. He climbed to fifteen thousand feet better to deaden the roar of his motor, and swung down the jagged coast line. The Gulf lay beneath, a somber expanse as far as his eyes could see, its surface rippling with whitecaps: long, thin, broken lines like the foreground of an etching. Far down the lanes he could see the funnels of a boat which seemed to hang on the edge of the world, so slowly did it move.

The coast line was dotted with innumerable coves and the waves rolled against them to be broken into effervescence. Frost reflected that Ox Clay had been entirely correct. There were so many of these serrated sanctuaries which afforded natural shelter for the lawless they could well defy the maps. No cartographer possibly could have marked them all.

Frost rocketed down the coast line for a hundred miles and then veered over the Gulf in a wider flight. Already he had come to realize that finding the Catherine B out here was no sinecure for a young man who wanted action. There was, however, one consoling thought: he, at least, was in the air with a definite objective.

The Catherine B had been seen in Longitude 97 east and Latitude 27. He consulted the map on his board. That would be, as near as he could roughly estimate, fifty miles out of the Laguna de la Madre in a line with Rockport and Vera Cruz. Of course, she wouldn’t be there now. But she had started—and there was a reason why. It was not, manifestly, chance. She was on her way to keep a rendezvous.

Frost kept cudgeling his brain seeking a motive for the kidnaping of Helen Stevens. It probably was the least remunerative thing the gang could have done. What could they hope to gain? Didn’t they know they would only attract official attention? And that the less attention they attracted the more success would attend their missions?

It seemed, to Frost, inconsistent, imbecilic. But—they had her. He couldn’t very well get away from that—they had her. And it was up to him.

It seemed simple. “Two and two,” he said to his instrument board; “make four.”

A long way out from the Mexican coast his eyes were caught by a tiny boat that was slipping through the water, leaving a long wake, and he deduced she must be running all of thirty knots. Even from his height he knew the speed was unusual. His heart jumped. He came as close as he dared and maneuvered to get the sun on her. He looked closely. No brass reflection. A rumrunner, but, now, inconsequential. Frost was not interested.

He rolled back closer to the coast and maintained his vigil for thirty more minutes. Then he looked down and was surprised to see another boat. Bang, like that. He had been looking away for only a moment and when he gazed below the boat was there.

He thought probably the lowering sun was playing tricks on him, so he stared intently. No mistake. A boat. Speeding southwest; occasionally outlined against wide swells. If the first launch he saw was speeding there was no adjective for this one. She was, comparatively, doing more than that. And she looked capacious and businesslike now that he could see well. Worth investigating.

He turned the nose of his ship up and climbed. Over to the left was a perfect cirro-cumulus formation which invited him with its natural protection, and he went for it. As he took a gap in the fleece his eyes caught a reflection.

Brass!

The Catherine B!

He offered a silent prayer for the cloud bank and took a hurried compass reading. The course the boat was holding was in a straight line with Galveston. The big traffic route! But it could dare. It could show its stern to ninety-nine out of a hundred….

Frost knew it would be fatal to attempt a landing now. Too much light yet. Something might happen. He thought about that rather sharply. An unknown grave in the Gulf was not appealing. That was the way Nungesser and Coli went. And Pedlar. And Erwin. Poor old Bill. There was a tug at Frost’s throat. He had gone through many a dogfight with the Dallas ace….