adjusting his goggles to a more satisfactory angle and releasing the ear flaps of his helmet. They had left the frigid altitude where they had climbed almost as though shot upward by some monster cannon, thanks to the novel wings with which the new ship was equipped.

“Huh! let ’em try to outsmart us,” Perk went on to say, a bit scornfully. “We c’n jest keep our lips buttoned tight an’ mind our own business. Won’t be long, anyway, I guess, till we hear from Headquarters an’ have to jump off on some fresh stunt, roundin’ up the slick crooks who keep puttin’ their thumbs on their noses an’ wigglin’ their fingers at Uncle Sam’s Secret Service boys—counterfeiters, smugglers, aliens crossing the borders, booze from out on the high seas, makers o’ moonshine in the mountings and on the burnin’ deserts like Death Valley an’ such riffraff that scoffs at the law!”

Perk, as he was generally called by his friends, was really a World War veteran, having served aboard a “sausage” observation balloon and later on as a fighting pilot of more than average bravery and ability. He did his “daily dozen” through the whole desperate series of conflicts in the Argonne with a fair number of “flaming coffins” placed to his credit—enemy ships shot down on fire.

Since quitting the army after the Armistice put a stop to all hostilities, Perk had passed through quite a number of vocations that appealed to the unrest in his blood, demanding so strenuously a calling built upon more or less continual excitement.

He had been a barn-storming pilot, giving exhibitions of reckless parachute jumping from high altitudes and similar stunts at county fairs and other public gatherings and had also spent several years as a valued member of the Mounted Police up in the Canadian Northwest country. He finally was drafted into Uncle Sam’s Secret Service by reason of an official having met up with him when moose hunting in the trackless wilds of northern British Columbia.

When Jack Ralston, who himself had gained a little fame in the Secret Service on account of generally bringing in his man, was selected to pilot a speedy ship he picked Gabe Perkiser whom he had known for some time and whose companionable disposition as well as unquestioned courage made him an ideal pal—in Jack’s eyes at least.

Their first assignment called for service carrying the flyers over the Mexican border to apprehend a notorious character who had long been a thorn in the flesh of the Washington authorities, since he came and went, mostly via the air route, crashing Uncle Sam’s frontier gate with cargoes of undesirable aliens, usually Chinese, willing to pay as much as a thousand dollars per head for an opportunity to enter the States, forbidden ground to those of their race.^[1]

Having, despite all difficulties, carried out their instructions to the letter and handed over their man to the nearest U. S. District Attorney for prosecution, Jack and Perk were later on dispatched with their efficient plane to the Gulf Coast of Florida, there to break up a powerful combination of smugglers through whose bold and lawless ventures, by air and sea, the whole Southern country was being submerged in a flood of foreign brands of liquor.

Again the two pals proved their calibre and brought home the bacon, having dealt the rum-runners a severe jolt and actually kidnaped the chief offender.^[2]

Now they were daily anticipating still another assignment which, for aught they knew might carry them to the Maine border or even to Alaska—all