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of wild wheat spattered against them. A tiny turn left, and just a little lower.
    At that instant, the wheels hit the ground, and they hit it hard enough to jerk my head down and blur my sight. The biplane bounced high into the air and I eased forward again on the stick and made ready to drop the wing for the pickup.
    Then in that second there was a great snapping explosion, the world went black and the engine wailed up in a shriek of metal running wild.
    The prop is hitting the ground I am crashing what happened the wheels must have torn off I have no wheels and now the propeller is hitting the ground hitting dirt we’re going over on our back way too fast dirt flying pull up pull up full power flying again but nothing I’m getting nothing out of the engine prop’s gone where land wires trees field wind… All at once that concussion of thought burst across me. And behind it, the dead knowing that I had crashed.

    CHAPTER FOUR    
    I FELT THE TREMENDOUS POWER of the airplane smashing into the ground, clenched down tight in the cockpit, jammed full throttle and jerked the machine back into the air. The only thing I got from the throttle was a loud noise forward. There was no power at all. The biplane staggered back up on sheer momentum.
    We were not going to make it over the telephone wires ahead. It was strange. They had been close, at 110 mph, but now they were not close. We turned into the wind by reflex, and at full throttle, engine screaming a hundred feet in the air, everything slowed down. I felt the airplane trembling on a stall and I was keen and aware of it, knowing that to slow any more would be to pitch nose-down into the ground. But I knew the biplane, and I knew that we would just hang there and come down slowly slowly into the wind. I wondered if the people on the ground were frightened, since it must all look pretty bad; a big burst of dirt and wheels flying off and the strange howling of the engine and the shuddering high in the air before it falls. Yet the only fear I felt was their fear, of how this all must look from the ground.
    We came down in slow motion, facing the wind, into thetall grass. Not a single obstacle to clear. The earth came leisurely up to meet us and at last it brushed us lightly with its green. In that moment the engine was of no further use, and I flicked the magneto switch off. We slid slowly through the weeds, less than 20 miles per hour, and with nothing else to do, I moved the mixture lever to Idle-Cutoff and the fuel selector to Off. There was no shock of touchdown, no lurching forward in the seat. All in very slow motion.
    I was impatient to get out and see what had happened, and had my safety belt off and was standing up in the cockpit before we had slid to a stop.
    The biplane tilted wildly down, right wing low, grass and dust settling through the air. My beautiful darn airplane.
    It did not look good. The right lower wing was a mass of wrinkles, which could only mean a broken spar beneath the fabric. How sad, I thought, standing there in the cockpit, to end this barnstorming all so quickly after it had started.
    I watched myself very carefully, to see when I would begin to be afraid. After this sort of thing happens, one is supposed to be afraid. The fear was taking its time, though, and more than anything, I was disappointed. There would be work ahead, and I would much rather fly than work.
    I stepped out of the airplane, all alone in the field before the crowd arrived, pushed my goggles up and looked at the machine. It was not easy to be optimistic.
    Besides the spar, the propeller was bent. Both blades, bent hard back from the tips. The right landing gear had broken loose, but not off, and had smashed back into the wing when we landed. That was the extent of the damage. It was not nearly so bad as it had felt.
    Off across the field, the men walking, the boys running, the crowd came to see what was left of the old airplane. Well, I thought, I guess it had to be,