Silently Ernest reached over and patted Bill's shoulder. Bill scarcely
noticed. He was no longer afraid, no longer nervous. He had come into
his own--and his mother was waiting for him! He would not fail her. She
expected him. He would be there. How or why she knew that he was coming
he could not guess, but he had heard her voice. Bill settled back in his
seat and felt that he was master of his machine. And, better still, he
was master of himself. Never again would he lose control of his nerves.
He wondered how he had ever done so. In the darkness he smiled.

Hour after hour sped by. Bill was experiencing one of the peculiar
things about air voyages. Time seemed to be obliterated and he did not
feel the slightest fatigue. All the usual sensations of the human body
seemed to disappear just as the earth had disappeared. On and on flew
the plane. Once more he glanced at Ernest. It seemed as though he had
slipped down in his seat. Bill wondered if he was tired. Darkness crept
over the intense moonlight like a veil, and Bill realized that the moon
was gone. He kept his course, however, with the aid of his indicator and
the air compass and at last a new light commenced to show, the cold,
cheerless, dun light of early dawn. As yet there was no sign of the sun.

Bill wondered if, in the night, he had flown past Fort Sill. It was
certainly time they were approaching it. He slowed the engine down as
much as he dared, and waited for more light. As day came, he saw that
he was indeed over the bleak, cheerless wastes of Oklahoma, but as yet
there was no sign of the great Post.

At last, far, far ahead he saw it; a great city, part of it forsaken and
dismantled now that the war was ended and the need of trained troops not
so important. He dropped a little as he recognized his location. He
scanned Old Post lying on its low eminence, with the white hospitals
spreading over their area, New Post with its wide parade ground and its
trim rows of officers' quarters staring primly at the departmental
buildings built in the old Mexican fashion on the other side of the
parade.

Donovan, with its splendid roads and miles of skeleton tent frames, and
nearer Bill recognized with a quickly beating heart the squat, ugly
quarters and class buildings of the School of Fire.

Now on the instant there came to Bill a daring idea. Back of the
quarters where his mother and dad lived, a wide level space stretched
out to a bluff under which ran a sluggi