That is why I cannot guarantee the veracity of what
follows; I can but guarantee that he guaranteed it.
Steve had had a varied and highly coloured career, and I think that
the war, or so much of it as he was permitted to see, seemed to him
a comparatively tame affair--something all in the year's work. When
he was fifteen years old he was conducting his father's public
garage in a town not far from Denver; at that age he knew as much
about motors as the men who built them, and he had, moreover, the
invaluable knack of putting his finger immediately on a piece of
erring mechanism and, with the aid of a bit of wire and a pair of
pliers, setting it to rights. Given enough wire and a pair of pliers,
I believe that he could have built the Eiffel Tower.
Becoming restless in the garage, he determined to make his fortune
quickly, and accordingly went out prospecting in the vicinity of the
Little Annie mine. He bought himself a small patch of promising
ground and he and another fellow shovelled away until they had no
money left. So then he took up aviation.
He was one of the pioneers of the flying-men in this country. He
used to fly at country fairs in an old ramshackle bus of the Wright
model--a thing of sticks and canvas and wires precariously hung
together.
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