The Revolutionaries by Max Hennessy

Author:Max Hennessy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2020-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

I’d done some funny things in my flying career – from shooting down balloons to taking part in a charge of Cossack cavalry, but this was a new one. I was proposing to tackle with an aeroplane a bunch of Mexican bandits on horses who neither respected the law nor had any law to respect.

There still wasn’t an official government in Mexico City and there wasn’t much order either; and, for once, I wasn’t flying a good aeroplane, serviced, tuned and rigged by stolid British fitters and riggers; just an old army cast-off which had been put through God alone knew what stresses by its late last owner. But though she was of patched and dubious quality, I reckoned I had enough skill to make sure she’d carry me and Slingsby over the border and the necessary eighty miles inland.

Half Camarillo had turned up by this time, and it took Captain O’Hara and his men, aided now by the Sheriff and his deputies, who’d turned up in a Ford tourer, to push the crowd back. Mounting his men, Captain O’Hara trotted them up and down in front of the crowd, growing nearer with every turn, until they finally edged back to the fringe of the field. With the area clear, we filled the Avro up, filtering the petrol through a chamois leather that Slingsby had been careful to obtain, because like me, he had no particular wish to come down on the wrong side of the border with a blocked petrol feed.

Neither of us had proper flying clothes, but Captain O’Hara provided a leather campaign overcoat which he loaned to Slingsby who was going to be standing up in the slipstream in the rear cockpit, studying the ground, while Young Lukey dug out an old motoring helmet and a pair of goggles for him. A heavy cavalry coat appeared for me, and O’Hara’s sergeant provided a pair of army goggles to make up the complement.

‘Look like Richthofen,’ Slingsby grinned.

‘You ready?’

‘And willin’. Let’s wind up the old clockwork and shove off before we realize what we’re goin’ to do and back out of it.’

I nodded. Slingsby’s nerve was proverbial, but he always made a great show of being frightened to death whenever anything was happening.

We stuffed the maps away carefully and turned the machine down-wind. Ojarra appeared, nervous-looking, near the aeroplane, determined to shake hands as if we were the saviours of his country.

‘You will do Mexico a great service,’ he said, ‘if you could rid her of Guzmán. There will never be peace near the border while he’s alive.’

‘I’m not going to war,’ I pointed out gently. ‘I’m just here to do a bit of rescue work. That’s all. Don’t use me to start a conflict.’

He gave a sad smile. ‘I wish I could, señor. I shall be ready to hear what you have decided when you return. I now have seven men in the town, with horses and provisions and water. We can leave as soon as you give us the word.

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