CHAPTER FOURTEEN

                 I didn't have long to wait before headlight beams flashed across the airport as cars turned into the drive in front of the vacant house. I counted the number of times that headlights flashed across in order to know how many cars were arriving. They must have gathered more searchers because eleven cars turned into the drive. The dogs stopped baying and began to bark in the same manner that I had heard them do each time that they thought that they had me located.

                 The sheriff's gruff voice came through the darkness, "I know that you are in there, so come out with your hands up," he shouted.

                 I leaned forward so I could look under the fuselage to see what was going on. The house was bathed in the light from the headlights of the cars parked in a circle around it. Two or three of the cars had spotlights and were playing them on the upstairs windows. I could also see several people standing on the front porch, carrying shotguns and rifles. I could also see that most of the men were carrying bottles from which they took swigs now and then. Not only was I being chased by a bunch of men with itchy trigger fingers, they were also drunk. There seemed to be a lot of booze around for a state which was supposed to be dry. It wouldn't surprise me if the sheriff wasn't also the local bootlegger. Seems that they usually were.

                 "I'm giving you one last chance to surrender or we are going to send the dogs in after you," yelled the sheriff.

                 "What the hell, let's set the place on fire. That'll flush him out," shouted a man standing on the porch.

                 "Don't nobody strike no matches and don't nobody start shooting neither," yelled the sheriff. "You're liable to hit one of us."

                 I could hear the dogs barking as they searched through the house. Most of the activity seemed to be concentrated on the second floor and then I heard a loud crash. "You find him?" yelled the sheriff, who was still standing in the yard and playing the beam of his long flashlight across the upstairs windows.

                 "Naw, that was Clarence. He was up in the attic and fell through the damn ceiling. I think he broke his leg," came an answer from a man who poked his head out of an upstairs window.

                 There was a considerable amount of talking and yelling for the next several minutes as they carried a man out the front door and laid him in the back of a pickup. One of the people in the pickup yelled, "Wait till we get back before you flush him out. We want to be here for the fun." The engine of the pickup started and it roared off toward town.

                 The true impact of what Maggie had told me about the special deputies really came home when I heard that. Those men had every intention of killing me when they found me. I looked toward the east, hoping for any signs of approaching dawn. It was still dark but it did seem that the whole sky was turning slightly gray. I wasn't sure whether it was actually getting lighter or just the reflection of the car lights on the low overcast.

                 "He's under the floor," came a shout from inside the house and the activity shifted back to the lower floor. I could hear the muffled barking of the dogs as they searched for me beneath the house.

                 After the dogs had searched the crawl space and determined that I wasn't there, the sheriff called all of the men to the front of the house and told the men with the dogs, "He ain't in the house so he must have gone to the barn. Everybody stand back and let the dogs see if they can pick up his scent again."

                 The men who were holding the dogs held out something for the dogs to smell and they began to bay again. I guessed that it was the handkerchief that I had carelessly left in the jail that they were using to give them my scent. I certainly would have been more careful about leaving something like that behind if I had even guessed that they would bring out the dogs to search for me. So much for hindsight. While all of this was happening, three more cars arrived. With all the laughing and yelling, the place was beginning to take on the atmosphere of a county fair. The whole town must be awake and hunting for me.

                 It was almost surreal, sitting there watching armed, drunken men searching for me no more than the length of a football field away. The men with the dogs began to sweep back and forth across the area between the house and the barn and suddenly the dogs really let it out. They had picked up my trail again and were headed for the barn. Perhaps the diversions that I had left for them there would keep them busy long enough for me to be able to see to take off. Dark or not, I was determined to crank the engine and go for it the instant that the dogs lead them through the fence and onto the airport.

                 When the dogs stopped baying and began to bark, everyone converged on the barn. "He's in the hay loft," shouted one of the dog handlers from inside the barn.

                 "Three or four of you men go up there and find him," shouted the sheriff.

                 "Hell, let's just set fire to the place and smoke him out," shouted another.

                 "Like hell you will," came another voice. "This is my barn and I got hay stored in there."

                 Cars were backed up and turned around so their headlights would shine on the door of the barn and a couple of them drove to the opposite end. Spotlights came on and illuminated the hayloft doors. There was a lot shouting going on inside the barn as they searched for me.

                 The loft doors swung open and someone stuck their head out and shouted, "There's a million bales of hay up here and he could be hiding under any of them."

                 "I say that we burn him out," came a shout from the growing crowd in front of the barn.

                 "Set the place on fire," yelled another.

                 Mixed in with the confusion of noise of the hunt, the dogs were adding their voices to the fray. Suddenly they began to yelp and howl as all bedlam broke loose. Dogs and men came running and tumbling out the door of the barn, swearing and yelling. "Skunks! The place is full of skunks!" There was the sound of several shots being fired inside the barn as they killed the mother skunk and her babies.

                 Several of the men began to mill around the front of the barn and shout, "Burn the place! Set it on fire! Smoke him out!"

                 I flinched as I heard a shot. In an attempt to get the attention of the mob, the sheriff had fired his pistol into the air and was shouting, "Don't do it men. This barn belongs to Homer Watson."

                 "You burn my barn and you will all pay for it," shouted Homer.

                 It was too late to stop the drunken mob. Someone was already splashing gasoline around inside the barn and a few seconds later, the glow of fire could be seen through the doors and windows. Smoke began to roll out of the open loft doors.

                 "Get your guns ready and get him as he comes out," someone shouted.

                 The flames went after the dry hay in the barn like a tornado goes after a mobile home park. Within seconds after the fire was started, flames were licking out of windows and shooting from the hay loft doors. A large round area of the roof began to glow and suddenly it fell in, sending a spray sparks and flames into the air. The flames were lighting up everything as bright as day. The men began to fall back from the heat which was so intense that I could even feel it where I was.

                 I had been so absorbed in watching the men setting fire to the barn that I had neglected to watch for the approach of dawn. I looked to the east and could see the horizon against a dull gray sky. I had forgotten just how rapidly the change from total darkness to dawn comes in the late summer. It was time for me to make my move. I hoped that the men would be so engrossed in the burning barn that I could escape undetected. With the dog's noses full of skunk spray, they certainly wouldn't be able to trail me and perhaps the men would think that I had perished in the fire. Probably the smartest thing to have done was stayed out of sight and waited for them to finally leave, but the animal instinct of fear and flight took over my good judgment.

                 I stepped in front of the Cub and spun the prop. Nothing happened! I pulled it again and still no response. I knew that I had turned the magneto switches on after I primed it, but the engine refused to start. My throat was cotton dry as I pulled the prop again before finally realizing that the fuel charges that I had pulled into the cylinders an hour before had long since evaporated.

                 On these older engines, the throttle has to be completely closed in order for the idle mixture to be rich enough to prime the cylinders for starting. I reached inside the cockpit and closed the throttle but left the switches on so that it would start as soon as gas reached the spark plugs. A cold engine will start with a closed throttle but it usually won't run for more than a few seconds unless the throttle is cracked to give a faster idle.

                 As I stepped back in front of the ship to spin the prop again, I heard someone yelling, "There he is. He's got an airplane!"

                 "Get him. Don't let him escape," shouted some else.

                 I didn't dare to pause long enough to look at the person who had spotted me as I pulled the prop through. One pull, two pulls and finally the little engine caught on the third pull and began to cough and sputter. I lunged past the spinning prop and grabbed for the throttle to get it opened to a fast idle before the engine died.

                 Just as I reached inside the cockpit and nudged the throttle, I heard guns firing. One bullet kicked up dirt a few feet in front of the Cub and I heard another one slam into the metal of the hangar. One of the benefits, if you could call it that, of being shot at by drunken people instead of sober ones is that they usually aren't very good shots. Using the old saw that they couldn't hit the side of a barn didn't fit here as I could hear more bullets slamming into the hangar. Then I heard one crash a window in the office behind me.

                 The usual way to enter the rear seat of a Cub is from behind the wing struts, but I wasn't about to waste the time that it would take to duck under the struts and get into the seat the normal way. I jerked the throttle about half way open and barked both shins as I struggling over the struts. The cold engine sputtered in protest as it began to pick up speed.

                 My unusual entry was far from graceful and the ship was already beginning to move forward when I was able to turn around and plop into the seat with my right leg still hanging out the door. I could hear more gunshots and felt a puff of wind as a bullet whizzed in front of my face and smashed through the sliding Plexiglas window. Had I have been in the front seat, it would have struck me in the head.

                 I shoved the throttle all the way forward but the cold engine refused to come up to full power. It coughed and sputtered along at about half power, far less than what would be required to get me off the ground. My only hope was that the I could pick up enough speed to get out of their range and that the engine would come up to takeoff power before I reached the end of the runway.

                 The Cub suddenly begin to veer to the right and I glanced out to see a man clinging to the right wingtip, dragging it back. He was hanging on with one hand and trying to find something to grab with the other one. I was going faster than he could run but he kept hanging on with one hand and sort of swinging and bouncing his feet against the ground. If he should ever get his feet in front of his body and dig his heels into the ground, he could easily bulldog the ship around in a ground loop.

                 I jammed full left rudder and stabbed the left brake with my heel. The ship responded by veering to the left, which whipped the wingtip free of his grip and sent him tumbling head over heels. The engine was beginning to pick up power and the tail came up as I gained speed, but was still too slow to get off the ground.

                 I looked to the right and could see a pickup with several men in the back racing along the other side of the fence which separated the airport from the farm. Fortunately for me, the men couldn't aim their guns and shoot because they were having to hang on in order to keep from being thrown out as the pickup bounded over the rough ground. Suddenly the driver swerved the pickup into the fence, ripped through it and began to race at an angle which would put him ahead of me when he reached the runway.

                 The engine was now hitting on all four cylinders and running smoothly now but for some reason I simply wasn't accelerating fast enough to get off the ground. I glanced at the tach which was indicating only 1800 rpm, a good 300 below what it should be turning. It was then that I finally realized that the carburetor heat was still on. I had forgotten to turn it off before starting the engine. Had I been able to do a normal pre-takeoff check, I would have found it but there was no time for such amenities. With the heat on, the engine would barely develop cruise power. One might be able to get off the ground with the carb heat on, but it would take a very long run. I fumbled for the knob and shoved it forward.

                 The little Continental surged up to full power just as the driver of the pickup swerved in front of me and slammed on his brakes. The men in the back tumble forward as the pickup skidded to a stop, then began to untangle themselves and grab for their guns. I was less than a hundred yards from the pickup but I could feel that the Cub was ready to fly. Since a good offense is the best defense, I held the wheels of the Cub on the ground and pointed the nose directly at the men in the back of the truck.

                 Before they could raise their guns to get a shot off at me, they realized that they were only seconds from being chewed to bits by the spinning propeller. Between the early light of dawn and the illumination from the burning barn, I could see the sheer terror on their faces as they dropped their guns and tumbled over one another trying to find safety behind the truck.

                 During my crop dusting days, I had learned just how close I could come to an obstacle and still be able to pull up and miss it. I held the Cub down until I was no more than fifty feet from the truck before I hauled back on the stick. I was looking eye to eye at the driver as the Cub leaped off the ground and its wheels missed the cab by inches.

                 The instant that I had cleared the truck, I shoved the nose down and leveled out with the wheels only inches above the grass in order to present the smallest possible target and to gain speed as rapidly as possible in ground effect. There was a row of trees at the end of the runway so I pulled up at the last instant, roared over them and dropped back to ground level behind them. If the men with the guns couldn't see me, there was a very good chance that they couldn't hit me.

                 It was now light enough that I could see that it was still overcast but the clouds had lifted considerably and there was two or three miles of visibility. When I felt that I was well out of range of their guns, I pulled up to a few hundred feet of altitude and swung the nose toward the eastern sky which was just taking on a rosy hue. I looked back just in time to see the barn tumble into a heap of burning rubble, sending a plume of sparks into the air. A column of smoke rose straight up from the fire and disappeared into the low clouds. I fastened my seatbelt and checked the engine gauges. Everything was normal and the engine was running smoothly. I leaned out the open door and sniffed the air coming off the engine. It smelled normal and I could see no signs of damage other than the hole in the side window. The controls moved easily which indicated that a lucky shot hadn't hit anything critical.

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