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Inquiry-Based Learning
 Inquiry-Based Learning
Designing Instruction to Promote Higher
Level Thinking

Third Edition

Teresa Coffman

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
Copyright © 2017 by Teresa Coffman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available
ISBN 978-1-4758-2567-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4758-2568-8 (pbk: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4758-2569-5 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
 Contents

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Teaching with Inquiry
2 Teaching and Student Learning Using Inquiry
3 Integrating Computer Technologies as a Cognitive Tool
4 Technology Integration Models
5 Social Media and Collaboration
6 Digital Citizenship
7 Information Literacy
8 Engaging in Problem-Based Learning
9 Global Connections and Telecollaborative Learning
10 Using Technologies for Assessment and Feedback
11 Engaging Learners around Inquiry with Blended Learning
References
About the Author
 Preface

As an instructor, teaching both graduate and undergraduate students in

education, I have found that many textbooks in instructional technology do
not focus enough on learning and instruction. Instead, they concentrate on a
specific tool or even a particular skill that is only useful in limited
circumstances. This third edition text provides a tripartite emphasis on
learning, instruction, and technology integration thereby helping to fill this
gap.
Examples used in this book are drawn from educational situations that help
illustrate theoretical concepts important to learning and thinking more
concretely about how to use digital technologies as a cognitive tool
throughout instruction.
This book has an applied focus and encourages exploration of a variety of
educational technologies. It also has a reflective emphasis encouraging
practice and then reflection on how best to integrate technologies into
classroom instruction.
The content in this third edition text has been updated from the past two
editions to reflect the way educators currently view teaching and learning
from an inquiry-based approach. Content has been added, removed, or
reorganized to make it more relevant to practicing teachers today.
New to this third edition is a case scenario running throughout the book that
helps to organize key features of the chapter content. Introduced in chapter 1
and presented at the beginning of chapters 2 through 11 to help explain the
content more deeply, this scenario also provides an opportunity to think more
directly about how information in the chapter applies to specific pedagogy,
content, and technology needs.
End-of-chapter Reflections ask poignant questions for the reader to consider
based on their overall classroom and integrating content-specific ideas. End-
of-chapter Skill Building Activities push beyond the opening scenario to
encourage the reader to think more creatively and incorporate digital tools
that allow for more conceptual and applied learning.
 Illustrations, examples, and activities all attempt to align what is being
mastered through this text with how it applies to today’s students, content
knowledge and requirements for teaching and learning, and advancement of
overall technology skills and knowledge.
I hope you enjoy this text and it serves as a welcome addition to your library
of instructional resources that incorporate technology and inquiry to help
develop and strengthen your body of knowledge. Enjoy!
 Acknowledgments

As an instructor, I constantly challenge myself to improve my craft by

seeking better ways to meet the needs of students in both teaching and
learning. As part of this professional development, I have paid close attention
to the comments and feedback from students over the years to help me
improve my curriculum. As a result, I owe a very special thank you to each of
my past, present, and future students for making me the educator I am today.
I also want to thank Dr. Mary Beth Klinger who provided thoughtful
critique and helpful suggestions for improvement for this third edition text. I
also want to thank the editors and reviewers at Rowman & Littlefield,
Education Division for their support.
Finally, I would like to thank my readers who have asked questions and
provided feedback to help guide improvements made in this current edition.
 Chapter One

Teaching with Inquiry

An Introduction

Welcome to the world of inquiry learning! Defined by experience and

exploration, it involves students in the process of learning through good
questioning. From this, they acquire a deeper understanding of the material
being taught. The inquiry-oriented learning approach implements a
constructivist model that encourages students to interact with content around
established learning goals.
Students make meaningful and thoughtful connections to the world around
them by asking questions, conducting research, and formulating informed
decisions using technology tools that are as authentic as the problem they are
tackling. See the Inquiry Learning Design Framework in figure 1.1.

1.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
big boy. You’ll go down farthest. My resignation’ll be in before I start
shooting off my mouth; I figure on that.”
For a long ten seconds Kennedy’s unwinking eyes bored into
blazing Penoch’s. The indomitable little flyer, as if carved out of
granite, stood there and waited. Kennedy threw his cap on the table.
His voice softened, and in a wheedling tone he said:
“What’s all this about, Penoch? Good lord, boy, don’t go off half-
cocked. I ain’t done nothin’ to Shirley or her old man.”
“Not yet, maybe! Why she ever fell for you, I don’t know; but she
has. And if you’ve got any intentions at all, they’re rotten, and I know
it. You couldn’t marry her if you wanted to, and if you could and did,
she’d break her heart in six months. You’re a natural born crook and
you know it. You’re a great guy in some ways; but there isn’t one
gram of honesty in your whole body. You’ll end up broke or in jail, as
sure as there’s a jail left. You never gave a woman in love with you a
square break in your life, or hesitated at getting everything you could
out of any man or woman who got in your power.
“And if you think I’m going to be responsible for getting a kid like
Shirley into any mess with you, you’re crazy! If you get her she’ll
know what she’s getting, and I don’t mean maybe. You’re no more
eligible to wear that uniform or to mix socially with Shirley than I am
to be the Grand Gazabo of Guam. Now, by God, you make up your
mind. You’re going to do one decent thing in your life, and you’re
going to do it within three days, by wiping Shirley off the slate and
staying where you belong. If you don’t, you know what I’ll do. That
goes just exactly as it lays!”
Penoch had been talking in low, deep tones, but every word was
like a muffled bullet. When he had finished, a dangerous human
being was crouched, figuratively speaking, with his back to the wall. I
put in my horn then, having been stricken with an idea.
“Penoch’s right, big boy,” I told him. “As a matter of fact, why the
hesitation? Shirley means nothing to you except a time-passer—a
kid like that.”
“Is that so? How do you know so much?” he snarled.
His eyes flashed to Penoch’s.
 “Gone back on me, have you? All right, you lousy little double-
crosser. Watch yourself, and plenty! I’ll—”
“You’ll what?”
O’Reilly had covered the space between them in one bound, like
a bounced ball. Suddenly sheer hatred burned from two pairs of
eyes. Kennedy licked his lips, and his smile was mirthless and his
eyes indescribable.
“I said to watch yourself,” he said softly. “I don’t like people that
talk too much.”
“I guess,” I interrupted slowly, “that it may be time for me to do
some talking.”
“Talk all you want to; but you stand the gaff, and don’t forget that,
Peewee!”
The look he threw over his shoulder, as he walked out, left no
doubt about what he meant. O’Reilly’s body relaxed slightly, but his
face remained set and strained.
“I’ve always thought,” he said slowly, “that there weren’t many
bozos in the world I’d hate to have as an enemy as much as I would
Ralph. And now the wad is shot, Slim. I guess I’m in for it. But what
the hell? The fact that I’ve talked to you will be the last straw, as far
as he’s concerned. Shirley or no Shirley, he’s doing a lot of low and
lofty thinking right now. And he’ll have a way figured to get even with
me, if it takes a year, without hurting himself. Three days from now
should be interesting, what? Ho-ho-ho! The skeletons’ll be out doing
a song and dance for all McMullen to watch, eh?”
Now that the die was cast, Penoch was himself again, daring the
world to do its worst. Indomitable, hard-boiled, soft-hearted, he flung
his loud, raucous laughter in Kennedy’s face, so to speak,
challenging him and the universe in general to get him down.
“Why couldn’t you have talked quietly to Shirley,” I asked him.
“Tried to,” he boomed absently. “She wouldn’t even listen. She’s
nuts, I tell you, and the old man likes him. He’s given them a long
song and dance about his automobile business in Los Angeles, and
all that stuff. If I went to the old man and told him, there’d be hell to
pay; the truth would come out that I had peached on him, and then
my neck would be chopped neatly. Whichever way it’s done, there’ll
be the same result when I expose him. I’m sunk myself.”
“Right now,” I ruminated, “he may not be satisfied with just
smearing your reputation and having you tried for that mine salting
business, at that. Struck me he’d love to throttle you.”
“I guess he would,” Penoch said calmly. “He served five years for
manslaughter in Virginia once.”

I went to bed early. I hadn’t had much sleep for three days, so at ten
o’clock in the morning I was still pounding my ear commodiously. I
was awakened by long, lean, drawling Tex MacDowell.
“Take a peek at the paper and then arise and shine,” he told me.
“We start for the Gulf of Mexico in exactly one hour.”
One peer at the headlines, that took up half the front page,
awakened me as thoroughly as a pail of ice water would have.
“Laguna In Ruins!” the paper screamed in letters big enough to
put on a signboard.
Within a moment I had the details. One of those tidal waves,
estimated as at least a hundred feet high and two miles in width, had
swept in from the Gulf. Doubtless the result of a volcanic eruption on
the sea floor. According to the meager reports available, every
house, structure and living thing existing in the portion of Laguna,
within a half mile of the beach, had been doomed by that vast crush
of water. The remainder of the town, back farther from the beach,
had been inundated; but houses were standing, and many of the
people had escaped alive. The low country—marshy ground, a lot of
it, anyway—was under three feet of water, and Laguna, as well as
small settlements along the beach, which had likewise been
demolished, was a marooned and ruined little city. Telegraph lines
down, railroads washed out, telephones useless, and at least one
thousand people dead or washed out to sea.
“We go over to patrol the Gulf for survivors,” Tex said tersely.
“Donovan Field ships will ferry food and water and medical supplies
down. We leave in an hour. Get a move on!”
All I could think of, as I made passes at my whiskers and leaped
into my clothes and gulped some food was this—how must it feel to
look up and see millions of tons of water about to fall on you? A ten
foot wave in a storm makes me feel like an ant bucking a steam
roller.
Four men were to be left at the field for patrol. Six ships were
warming up, as I ran out on the field. The roar of the half-dozen four
hundred and fifty horsepower Libertys fairly shook the earth, and
their propellers send clouds of dust swirling upward. As I approached
the line, a car tore into the airdrome. There was Shirley, her hair
blowing in the wind, as she streaked down the road toward the ships.
As I got closer, I saw her fling herself out of the roadster and
make a beeline for none other than Kennedy. Penoch O’Reilly was
standing near by, his face a study.
“Kennedy going down?” I asked him, noting meanwhile that
Shirley and Kennedy were holding hands.
“Begged to,” boomed O’Reilly. “He’s got guts, all right, and a
craving for excitement.”
“How’s he acting—toward you, I mean?”
“Doesn’t speak. Hardly speaks to anybody. I think he’s afraid
some of the rest are wise to him.”
Just then I saw Shirley lean forward, as if to kiss him good-by. He
looked around almost furtively and held her off. Mr. Ralph Kennedy,
for the moment, was very unsure of his ground. As Penoch and I
passed him on our way to our ships, his eyes rested on us for just a
moment. They were passionless, but when his face was serious the
meanness in it seemed to be intensified. Funny what an effect eyes
too close together can give. Add that mouth—and my imagination—
and perhaps you can see what I mean. Somehow, I shivered.
A moment later I was in my ship, giving her the last look-over, as
she strained against the wheel-blocks. Oil pressure, air pressure,
rotations per minute, battery-charging rate, temperature—all were O.
K. Captain Kennard was already swinging out on the field; I being
Number Two followed him, and the others took up the parade in their
proper positions. One by one we took off, circling the field for altitude
in single file. At a thousand feet the C. O. zoomed, and I slid in,
twenty-five feet behind him, twenty-five feet to one side, and ten feet
higher than he. Tex MacDowell came in on the left, and the others
followed, until a V of ships, three on one side and four on the other,
turned eastward and thundered their way toward the Gulf.

Formation is tricky stuff. You hold your position by throttle-handling

alone. There are no brakes on airplanes, as you may have heard. It’s
no time to commence mooning upon the whichness of the what, nor
the why of the how. You ’tend to your knitting, if you don’t want a
collision, and I ’tended to mine plenty. Subsconsciously I noted that
Kennedy, at the rear of the left side, was holding his position well.
Pretty fair flyer, he was. Penoch was behind me.
In an hour we were on the outskirts of the flood district. Ten
minutes later I was stealing looks at the ground. We seemed to be
flying over a shallow lake, from which houses and barns and cattle
protruded. About two feet of water, I should say, covered the ground,
and dozens of people were gathered on each knoll. Houses were
down here and there, but not until we reached the outskirts of
Laguna itself, did the real devastation become apparent.
As we circled that town, it seemed as if I couldn’t move. It looked
like some gigantic canvas, whereon some artist had painted his idea
of a shambles. The back part of the town still had buildings; the
streets, clogged with small débris and overturned automobiles, was
the sole evidence, save for broken chimneys, of the water. The
beach section was nothing but one gigantic rubbish pile. Ten-story
buildings had toppled and fallen in ruins, and for a space of at least a
square mile, it seemed, there was not even a lane through the
wreckage. Try to picture a heap of rubbish, so gigantic that a
hundred automobiles, or more, flung upon it looked like so many
flies. Dozens of boats, ranging from oil-tankers to canoes, had been
flung hundreds of feet inland, like so many children’s toys flung on a
dump.
The Gulf itself held a scum of débris of all kinds, and its shore, as
far as we could see, was a rim of ruins.
I had not seen a single spot where a landing was possible.
Kennard had wigwagged his ship, and one by one we fell into single
file. Down below, thousands of people—the survivors—had their
heads turned upward. Down in the ruins I could see bodies, now,
and out in the bay unnumbered corpses were floating.
Suddenly Kennard started down, and then I saw what had been
done. There had been other disasters and floods in Texas, when the
airplanes had saved lives. Laguna had prepared. A force of
hundreds of men was just finishing the job of clearing a hundred-foot
runway down the hard-packed beach on the outskirts of the town;
and it was there, one by one, that we landed, to face haggard,
hollow-eyed men, steeped in tragedy.

Much happened during our days at Laguna; but that has nothing to
do with Penoch O’Reilly and Ralph Kennedy. Anyway, twenty
minutes later we were all back in the air, carrying packages of food
and water, put up to float. Each of us had a sector assigned. We
went roaring out over the open Gulf, spotting survivors who were
floating on improvised rafts or clinging to planks. Kennard’s ship,
with Jack Beaman at the radio key, was flashing information to San
Antonio. Soon the Donovan ships would be coming in, carrying
supplies.
As we got out over the water, I turned to look at George Hickman,
pointing downward. He’s big and blond and nerveless; but his face
was strained, and there was the closest thing to fear, that I’ve ever
seen in his eyes.
As for me, I was one jump ahead of a fit. Down below, flashing
along between carcasses of human beings and animals, were what
seemed like untold hundreds of fins, cutting the water and feeding on
their prey. Six times we swooped low to drop food and water to those
poor wretches down below us. We could almost look into sharks’
eyes, and time after time the flash of a white belly announced
another mouthful.
Remember this, too. If we came down in the water, we could float
two hours. There was not a single serviceable boat to rescue a soul.
I flew six solid hours that day, as did every one of the others. It
was just before the last patrol, and getting dusk, when I ran into
Kennedy for the first time. Our landings hadn’t synchronized before.
 “God!” I heard him mumble in an unutterably tired voice. “This’ll
drive me nuts! I can’t even swim, if I come down.”
“No difference, my boy,” Jimmy Jennings told him with an attempt
at jauntiness. “None of us could swim over a mile. Who thinks he
could make five hundred feet through that forest of fins?”
And he was right. It seemed as if every shark in the Atlantic
ocean had come to the picnic. But there were still unexplored
sections, little towns along the shore which needed help, and on we
went. Twenty Donovan ships were ferrying supplies; one came in
almost every ten minutes. God knows we were willing to fly until we
dropped. Those poor devils down in the water will haunt me to my
dying day, I guess.

The sun was setting, when I turned around from a spot ten miles out
in the Gulf, my last package dropped and my patrol over. My twelve-
cylinder Liberty had never missed a lick, and I remembered saying
over and over to the rhythm of the motors:
“If you’ll only keep it up—if you’ll only keep it up—”
My ears were ringing from a day’s bombardment; my face was so
sun-burnt with sun and wind that it was sore as a boil, and I was
more tired than I’ve ever been in my life. Two other D.H.’s, one a
mile to my right and the other on beyond, were coming home across
the vile, befouled water.
I was two thousand feet high, and land was six or seven miles
ahead, when Hickman grabbed me with a grip like a vise. My heart
did a backflip, and I turned as if I’d been shot. He was pointing to the
right. In a second I had swung my ship and was flying wide-open
toward that middle D.H.
It was coming down in a shallow dive. The propeller was turning
as slowly as a water-wheel. One look was enough to tell me that the
motor was dead, and that only the air-stream was moving the stick.
Two of the boys were going to the sharks.
I was diving now, motor full on. I don’t know why. I guess I had
some wild idea that I could help them out. The other ship was
heading for the falling D.H., too. We ranged alongside it almost
together. The pilot in the crippled plane was Ralph Kennedy. The
man in the third ship was Penoch O’Reilly.
Everyone was flying alone, except me, for two reasons. One was
to leave more room for supplies to drop; the other was to conserve
manpower as much as possible. I had George along to work the
radio. We’d reconnoitered some outlying towns on the trip.
It seemed a year before the ship hit, and I was thinking at top
speed, searching for some possible method of saving Kennedy. He
could float for two hours; then he’d be sunk—
Just before the ship hit the water I let out a wild yell, which I
myself couldn’t hear. Right ahead of Kennedy was a huge, partially
submerged thing floating. It looked like a bunch of logs tied together.
I guess he never saw it.
The ship crashed into it with its undercarriage. Just what
happened I don’t know, because the water rose in a geyser, and I
couldn’t see for a moment. But what I saw, when the water subsided,
was plenty.
It seemed that the ship had been crumpled completely. It had
turned on its back. Kennedy was invisible. The fuselage had broken
in half, the wings crumpled back, and the motor, of course, was
under water. That little heap of wreckage would become water-
soaked in a few minutes. It would sink in a quarter of an hour,
instead of in two hours.
I guess I was shaking a little. I remember Penoch, circling and
circling. Kennedy had not come to the surface.
“Knocked out and drowning—maybe a mercy,” I was thinking, and
four fins, circling, sent cold chills up and down my back.
Then he came to the surface. He struggled weakly to climb up out
of the water, but it took him a full two minutes. Even then he was
partly submerged. Suddenly the sight of those fins set me crazy, I
guess.
“I’ll give him a chance to drown, at least!” I fairly shouted at them;
and the next second I was pouring machine-gun bullets into the
shadowy green monsters, and they were floating, dead, on the
surface of the water.
 There was not one single, solitary thing that could be done to
save him. Two minutes more, and his frail life-raft would be sunk.
There was no time to fly back and get something to which he could
cling and drop it to him. He couldn’t swim.
I fairly froze in my seat, as a great mass of water rose from the
sea. As it cleared, I saw the tail of Penoch’s DeHaviland, high in the
air, less than ten feet from Kennedy. The next second Penoch was
clambering up on the wreckage of his own ship. A few seconds later
he was stripped to his underwear, and swimming toward the crippled
Kennedy.
As the little devil was towing his enemy I came to myself. I circled
watchfully above the water, and machine-gunned an approaching
shark. As I did that my stunned brain got working. I don’t think I’m
either better or worse than the average. I’m franker, that’s all. If I had
been sitting in my ship, while my deadly enemy was dying a sure
death, I would have been conscious of a sense of relief.
Penoch O’Reilly had landed to give him two hours more of life; it
seemed a certainty that at the end of two hours, Penoch, too, would
go down to the sharks, with the man who had almost ruined his life.
Then and there that squat, little figure, ho-ho-ho-ing at life, grew
into a giant, towering above ordinary mortals, as far as I was
concerned.
“There must be some way,” I kept telling myself over and over as
I circled them. Maybe I hypnotized myself into an idea. I gave a war-
whoop of relief. Anything was better than one hundred per cent.
hopelessness.
Kennedy was hurt. That was apparent. Penoch had to drag him
up on the fuselage, and then the reserve man lay there as if he were
completely out.
I made wild motions to Penoch; he nodded. He was standing up,
a small white figure, his feet far apart to brace himself against what
fate had in store. As I sped for land, I almost thought I could hear him
laughing that deep-toned, Rabelaisian laugh, flinging his challenge to
the gods, a small white speck in the dusk.
A moment after I had landed, I’d told my story. Tex MacDowell
and Sleepy Spears were in their ships in two seconds less than
nothing, and we were off. When we arrived, Penoch had the upper
left wing detached, and Kennedy was on it.
From there O’Reilly started his heartbreaking journey, a full mile,
pushing that wing slowly through the water, his legs kicking tirelessly.
Kennedy, partially recovered, was using the vertical fin as a paddle
to help. Three airplanes cruised round and round over the ugly
water, and not a shark got within our lines. Every second was a
strain, for the sharks could come up from below and get Penoch, but
they did not. With so much dead meat in the sea, I guess our outfit
was entirely too suspicious for them to bother with.
It was ten minutes after dark when Penoch and Kennedy
staggered up on the beach. Kennedy collapsed. When I got out of
my plane, I was swaying like a rubber lamp-post, and before Penoch
had been taken care of and got back, I had eaten and fallen on a cot,
fully dressed, but dead to the world.

Strange as it may seem, I didn’t see either of them next day. Our
flyings came at different hours, and when one was on the ground the
others were in the air. And at three in the afternoon, when I landed, I
found that Penoch and Kennedy and Pete Miller had started back for
McMullen. Kennard, Sleepy and Tex and I started home at five
o’clock. There were Donovan ships available, and there’d been
another bandit raid in our territory. The patrol was needed on the
river.
I saw Penoch in the mess-hall, at dinner, and sat next to him. We
were all ready to drop, and hadn’t even washed. Kennard went to
sleep over his soup. Sleepy Spears gave up after the meat course,
and stumbled out to bed.
“Where’s Kennedy?” I asked Penoch.
“In at Shirley’s—for dinner,” he said tersely and, as our eyes met,
I guess our thoughts were the same.
“Then what you did for him had no effect, eh?” I finally asked him.
“How’d he act?”
“Avoids me.”
“I see. Come clean, Penoch. It must have been a temptation to
leave him down there, even if you figured you’d have a good chance
of saving him.”
Penoch buttered some bread thoughtfully.
“I just couldn’t; and I’d never thought of that wing gag. Just had
an idea that there ought to be some way out—”
“So you tossed a few sharks right out of your mind, eh?” I
interrupted.
“Oh, hell, I didn’t think of anything, except how nice it would be if
he was dead. Well, old-timer, he’s sure slapped me in the face
tonight by going back there. Shows what he is. Hell, I’ve been doing
things for him all my life, and he’s willing to blackmail me. Guess I
was a damn’ fool back over the Gulf, eh? Well, there’ll be excitement
about in a few days, I guess. Better get some sleep tonight. Ho-ho-
ho!”
I knew then that he had fully made up his mind, that he’d
considered everything, and was ready to go. And when that crisis
was passed with Penoch O’Reilly, he feared not man, devil or
circumstances. Right at that moment he figured that the Army was a
thing of the past and that the world was waiting to be bucked by a
man in disgrace. The tougher it was, the louder he’d laugh.
The next day we both saw Kennedy at breakfast. He greeted us
with a straight stare, said, “Hello,” in his customary breezy manner,
ate with relish, and was absolutely himself. His eyes were as cold a
green as ever, except for that surface shine that came when he
laughed. He told a good story about Noah and the Johnstown flood,
indulged in his reminiscences of the Columbus raid and likewise the
Galveston flood, in all of which he had participated with considerable
gusto.
I just sat there and watched him. That clear-cut, hard face and
those fishy eyes made as impenetrable a mask as I’ve ever seen.
“The hell it’s a mask!” I finally told myself. “He just hasn’t any
feelings that can’t be expressed in a grin or a laugh or a snarl. He
couldn’t hate anybody real hard any more than he could like anybody
very much. Except himself.”
At lunch he came breezing in with:
“Well, well, the good old feedbag’ll be fastened round my snoot
pronto. The meal ain’t been cooked that I can’t clean up by myself.”
 He shook out his napkin, grasped his fork firmly and started in at
the salad. His eating was not a pronouncedly delicate proceeding. It
was audible for miles around when he wasn’t trying to act unnaturally
elegant; and I believe that in a straight contest Kennedy’s eating
anything could drown out my snoring.
“By the way, Peewee, my lad, how about a bit of poker at
Shirley’s Old Man’s house tonight? I was given instructions to ask
you and Slim to come out. Sheriff Trowbridge’ll be there, too. Come,
and bring your checkbook, because it’s my night to howl!”
Penoch just looked at him. Kennedy stared back with a mirthless
smile.
“Risk a few nickels!” he gibed. “I ain’t seen your game for years.
How about it? Shirley’ll be glad to see you both, she said. She ain’t
had much time—”
“Yes, I’ll go.”
Simple, those words. But I knew as surely as I knew that I was at
the table that Penoch’s deliberate interruption was a threat. He
stared straight at Kennedy, and the implication in his statement was
plain for me to see. That poker game that night was to include some
unscheduled fireworks. Shirley and her father were to hear some
hitherto unknown episodes in the lives of Ralph Kennedy and
Percival Enoch O’Reilly.
“Fine! A good time’ll be had by all,” Kennedy came back. “You act
as though you’d been invited to risk your life, or attend your own
funeral. Heh-heh-heh! Didja hear him say that, boys? Peewee don’t
think any more of a nickel lost at cards than he does his left eye.”
There he sat, gibing at the man who had saved his life. It was
apparent to any one that there was a deadly undercurrent in the
conversation between the two. I saw Kennard and Tex and the
others looking at them speculatively.
Directly after the meal I put it up to Penoch.
“You’re going to lay your information on the line tonight, eh?” I
asked him.
“Right. And my resignation’ll be written. He doesn’t intend to back
away from Shirley. I can see that. Maybe what I say won’t change a
thing; but she’ll go into it with her eyes open.”
 “Damn’ funny, at that,” I said in considerable bewilderment. “I
don’t see why a girl—any girl—could mean so much to Kennedy that
he’s willing to run the risk of exposure as a criminal. I—”
“He doesn’t think I’ll go through with it,” rasped Penoch. “Well, I’m
going to take a nap.”
He strode away, his short legs twinkling through the dust, toward
his tent. He didn’t sleep, though, because I peeked in a few times.
He wrote reams of letters, setting his house in order, as it were,
before he moved out. And he didn’t seem so downcast. In fact, the
devil-may-careness of his face had increased, and there was hard
recklessness there. He had taken his hundredth knockout blow from
fate; and he was still standing erect, unbeaten.
It was a long and tough afternoon for me. Kennedy flew a patrol,
and then took a long time dressing for dinner. At the meal he was in
excellent form, holding the floor continuously with ribald tales, which
were good. And Penoch O’Reilly, his eyes bright, seemed strung to a
high nervous pitch. His roaring “Hoho-ho!” rolled forth continuously,
and he and his enemy fought a silent battle of eyes beneath the
laughter. I was depressed and silent, but possessed with such
infinite hatred and repulsion when I thought of Kennedy that I could
have stuck the bread-knife in his throat and enjoyed it.

I felt as if I were riding deliberately into disaster, when we went to the

Curran house. Sheriff Trowbridge, Gargantuan old-timer, who had
been friend and aid to the flight since its inception, was already
there. He was six feet two, with a shock of iron-gray hair, a great
mustache, and a genial old face tanned to mahogany. He and Mr.
Curran had been friends for years and, as we came up on the porch,
Mr. Curran yelled in stentorian tones—
“Three new customers, sugar!”
He was tall and thin and bald, with piercing eyes and an aquiline
nose, all of which gave him the appearance of a soft-hearted old
eagle.
In a moment Shirley came out, bearing three long, cold drinks.
Her eyes were on Kennedy. When I saw the smile on her lips and
the look in those eyes, I sort of caught my breath. I don’t know much
about love, but almost anybody can recognize it when it stares them
right in the face.
She was all in white, her golden hair slicked back, throwing her
features into bold relief. Slim and lithe and tall, she looked every inch
a thoroughbred. Kennedy, as he bent over her, was a good-looking
officer, too. You couldn’t see those mean eyes, in profile.
“And women are supposed to have intuition!” I groaned.
At that, there was a sort of new note in Kennedy’s smile—a trace
of real feeling—when he looked at her; and his eyes were a little less
hard, maybe.
But the adulation was principally on her part. From the time the
game started he seemed to avoid even looking at her. He played
quietly, as did everybody. Every man around that table was a lover of
poker and a hater of conversation when the pasteboards were being
wooed. Even Shirley had had it bred in the bone, I guess, and never
said a word. She tended to the ash receivers, brought us drinks, and
finally went out on the porch to throw a ten-minute sop to a boy
friend who had called on her.
The game was twenty-dollar take out, table stakes, and either
draw or stud, to be played at the option of the dealers. Penoch
watched Kennedy like a hawk, and so did I, on general principles.
Not that I really thought he’d try his tricks there.
The most amazing thing to me was his utter nonchalance. He
knew what Penoch was going to do before the evening was over;
and he grinned into the little flyer’s face and dared him with his eyes.
It was close to ten o’clock, and I was about fifty dollars ahead,
Penoch even, and Kennedy sixty dollars winner. We’d been taking
the two old-timers over the jumps, to our great glee and their
humorous disgust.
It was Kennedy’s deal. He shuffled them, and I saw him casually
put an ace on the bottom before he started. When he finished, he
gave the cards a rapid double cut—bottom half of the deck placed on
top, but a little forward of the other half of the deck. Then he simply
cut again, and that little shelf between the two halves of the deck
enabled him to replace the cards exactly. That is, after two cuts, the
cards lay exactly as they had before he’d cut them, the first time.
 It was my cut, and he did not offer it, but started dealing.
My eyes were busy from that moment on. My heart was pounding
as I visualized the possibilities. Maybe I could get Penoch out of the
mess.
Card after card fell. Kennedy was high, with a king showing, and
held the bet until the fourth card had dropped, when Sheriff
Trowbridge drew an ace. I stayed, and Kennedy raised ten dollars.
That dropped Penoch and Mr. Curran. The sheriff came back with a
thirty-dollar re-raise, and I, with a pair of fours, dropped and devoted
myself to watching. Had that cut been an accident? If it hadn’t, how
had Kennedy stacked them for himself? Or did his crookedness
merely include the placing of one lone ace to use if necessary?
He came back with a fifty-dollar raise—his stack. The sheriff, who
had bought four times already and had plenty of chips in front of him,
saw the raise.
Every eye was concentrated on Kennedy. I was peering so hard it
hurt, and somehow my mouth felt dry. Shirley came in, her eyes
widening at the size of the pot. She stood back of Kennedy, without
saying a word. I knew that she comprehended the hands perfectly—
the sheriff with ace, queen, ten showing; Kennedy with king, queen,
deuce.
Slowly Kennedy flipped the sheriff’s card. A seven. Kennedy
studied his own hand a moment, and his eyes flickered around the
table, a curious light in them. Suddenly he dealt. An ace! And from
the bottom of the deck, so clumsily done that any one in the world
could have caught it.
“Pair of aces!” he crowed, showing his hole card.
The silence was like a physical substance, throbbing and heavy
and packed with evil. My eyes rested on Shirley’s face. Her eyes
were wide and horror-stricken, and she looked as if she were about
to scream.
Suddenly the silence was shattered by the blow of Curran’s fist
on the table. As if it had set a spring into action, every man around
that table, except Kennedy, was on his feet.
“Out of this house, you thieving, yellow, sneaking crook!”
thundered the old man furiously. “There ain’t a man here didn’t see
you take that ace from the bottom! Git out, I tell you, or I’ll—”
He choked with his own wrath, as he crouched as if to leap
across the table.
Kennedy got up leisurely, his eyes hard enough to make one’s
flesh crawl. They held an expression that I can not describe, but this
I was sure of, crazy as it seemed—there was no rage in them.
Perhaps he couldn’t feel deeply enough to wax furious. It was as if
he were dead.
“I guess you caught me,” he said evenly.
He pulled down his blouse and ran his hand through his hair.
Penoch was like a statue. Not one sound broke the stillness.
Then there came a strangled sob from Shirley. She rushed from
the room, and from somewhere in the hall, before she got out of
earshot, we heard her weeping.
I licked my lips with my tongue. I saw Curran’s face twitch, and
such demonaic fury leap into his eyes that I was afraid of murder. I
believe he’d have sprung at Kennedy in another second.
“Sorry. Good night,” Kennedy said slowly, almost as if he were
playing a part.
He walked out without haste, and without a word or a look to any
one of us.
“God! I’m sorry!”
Penoch’s deep bass seemed to reverberate from the walls. As
the sheriff broke into deep curses, Penoch interrupted him.
“Please, Sheriff, let me get this off my chest. Maybe you’ll be
through with me, now, too.”
They sank into their chairs, Mr. Curran wiping his brow with a
shaking hand. As Penoch made a clean breast of his relationship
with Kennedy, I half listened, but I didn’t pay close attention at that. A
thousand crazy ideas were running through my head, and suddenly
it seemed as if I couldn’t wait to get Penoch alone. I had a queer
hunch.
Those old-timers understood the little flyer’s position, and the
sheriff summed up the general sentiment, when he put his hand on
Penoch’s shoulder and told him:
 “Mike, here, and me, ain’t blamin’ you a bit, son. And you was
ready to prevent any trouble. You couldn’t be blamed, any way you
take it, for givin’ him the benefit of the doubt for a while. Gosh! What
a snake in the grass he is! And I aim to git him in jail. We’ll plaster
him for life—”
“And me with him,” barked O’Reilly.
“Not a bit of it. Say, young feller, he can go up for a long time right
in this country for what he done! More’n he deserves for this trick;
but we’ll sort o’ consider his other crimes, see?”
“Listen Sheriff,” I found myself saying. “Some way or another I’ve
got a funny idea. Let me talk it over with Penoch and call you back,
eh?”
The leonine old man peered at me through puckered eyes.
“Shore,” he commented. “But what’s the secret?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m sure of it myself,” I told him. “Good night, Mr.
Curran. I sure hope Shirley won’t take it too hard.”
“She will, for awhile. But when I think o’ what might ’a’ happened
if he hadn’t give himself away—say, I ought to be thankful for this
night!”
We had no sooner got out the door and into the car than I said:
“Don’t start her for a minute. Penoch, my boy, just how good it
was, or ought to be Kennedy with his fingers and a deck of cards?”
“Used to be a wonder!”
“And he deliberately, before five people, does the clumsiest piece
of cheating a man ever did in the world! If he’d wanted to be caught,
he couldn’t have done it more openly.”
“By God!”
It was almost a prayer from Penoch. Then he faced me, tense
and strained, and his attempted whisper couldn’t have been heard
more than a hundred feet.
“He couldn’t have done it deliberately! I know what you think—
that because of what I did for him at Laguna he decided to give up
Shirley and took that way. But all he had to do was walk out on her,
without putting himself in disgrace.”
“Let’s talk to him,” I suggested, and we started immediately to
make a new speed record between McMullen and the flying field.
 It did seem ridiculous. For what possible reason, short of sheer
insanity, would a man brand himself a card-cheat? A man who’d do
that would cut off his head to cure an earache. I couldn’t make head
nor tail of it, but I was exuding curiosity in corpulent chunks. I aimed
to get at the bottom of things, and quickly.

We found him in his tent, alone, holding communion with a large

bottle of tequila.
He stared at us, as we came in, and I’ll swear his eyes brought
me up short. There was suffering in them, and a sort of
bewilderment. It changed the whole aspect of the man. It was his
eyes that repelled one, ordinarily. Now that there was something
human in them, the change was magical.
Penoch O’Reilly planted himself, as per usual, his mustache
turned upward belligerently, and his eyes snapping.
“Regardless of anything else, Ralph, how the ’ell did you happen
to cheat so clumsily? The cheating I can understand; the way it was
done I can’t.”
Kennedy took a big drink, gave us one and, as he poured them,
said sardonically:
“You give me credit for knowing better, then? You ought to.”
“If you did it deliberately, why?” I broke in. “If you wanted to do
what Penoch asked, and lay off the girl—”
“We both happened to be in love,” he said calmly, as if laughing
up his sleeve. His eyes, however, were averted.
“Huh?” snorted Penoch scathingly. “You in love?”
“For the first and only time in my life,” Kennedy admitted casually,
his back toward us. “In fact, I’m so nuts about her that I couldn’t let
her in for what she’d be in for with me. Don’t flatter yourself, Peewee.
It wasn’t for you I did it. It was for her.”
“But why that way?” I barked.
“If I just broke off,” he said, eying a new glass of tequila with
narrowed eyes, “she’d have taken a long while to get over it. Might
as well cut everything off clean, show her what I am all at once, and
blackjack her into hating me. Make it easier all around.”
 For a moment his eyes met mine, and the mask was off. I don’t
get sentimental as a rule, but I was looking at a man whose whole
life had come up to torture him, and who was going through an
accumulation of suffering.
“By the way, Peewee, I’m resigning, of course, and leaving
tomorrow on the five o’clock. Probably’ll have to borrow some dough.
I’d like to take a last ride, so keep things quiet until I get it, eh?”
Penoch nodded wordlessly. Cocky as he was ordinarily, and sure
of himself, he was nonplussed now. Kennedy had turned into a
strange species of animal to him, and he couldn’t believe it.
“And now,” grinned Kennedy, keeping up his bluff to the last, “will
you two get the hell out of here and let a gentleman and a scholar
get drunk in peace and quiet?”
“Don’t want any company?” Penoch asked him, and there was
real pleading in his tone.
For the first time in our acquaintance I saw actual softness in
Kennedy’s eyes, as he looked at the man he had liked and admired
as much as it had been possible for him to feel those emotions for
anybody.
“Nope. Let’s shuck the past, eh what? What the hell? And I’ve got
to do a little high-powered thinking. ’Night.”
We walked thoughtfully out into the starlight. Then I made a
profound remark.
“I’ve heard of the miracles that love is supposed to work, but this
is the first one I’ve seen. I think the combination of you risking your
life for him, and a real unselfish feeling for a girl, has sort of opened
up a new world to Kennedy. He’s got guts, hasn’t he?”
“Never lacked those,” boomed Penoch. “At that, you may be right.
I guess he’s always figured every hand was against him—and now
that he’s found out there’s a little white in the world he doesn’t know
what to make of it. He proved himself, all right, tonight, but if he’d
told me that this afternoon I’d have laughed as hard as I would over
a romantic yarn about the honeymoon of a salmon.”
“’Night. I don’t feel much like talking.”
To tell the truth, I didn’t either. I wandered around the field,
smoking a few reflective cigarets, and finally called up the sheriff. I
told him the whole story, and he was satisfied that everything pointed
to the fact that if he didn’t make a move everything was all right. I
figured it was better, and so did he, that Shirley should never know
the inside. Consequently, the Currans were not called up, and have
not had the real dope to this day.
I finally went to sleep, but in the morning I was, of course, still
thinking about one Ralph Kennedy. And for some funny reason I
wasn’t sure of him—his sincerity, I mean. I was wondering whether
there wasn’t some trick connected with his gesture of the night
before. However, I thought it best, at breakfast—to which meal he
did not lend his presence—to tell the boys the entire yarn, simply to
offset the gossip that would run wild around McMullen. Mr. Curran, of
course, would eventually spill the beans, and I wanted the gang to
speak up, knowing the facts, and say whatever they deemed best.
Furthermore, I had a funny idea that when Kennedy left, I didn’t want
him to go in disgrace.
As the day wore on, I came to think more and more of this last
flight stuff. All flyers are more or less superstitious about that. As a
matter of fact, there have been a few, from Hobey Baker down,
who’ve met their Waterloo on the last hop before they kissed the Air
Service good-by. I had a sort of premonition that it shouldn’t be
taken.
Consequently, when Kennedy ate bacon and eggs at lunch, with
his eyes red, a hang-over sticking out all over him, I said:
“Listen, big boy, you’ve said you were leaving tonight and likewise
that you were going to take a last jazz flight. You were drunk as a
hoot owl last night, and I don’t think you’ll be in such good shape to
fly this afternoon. Why not douse the idea of a hop?”
“Maybe you’ve got a good idea there,” he said with a grin that
didn’t change the suffering eyes. “In fact, it’s probably the good old
logic. Say, Peewee, how about you taking me for a ride, so nothing’ll
happen?”
“Sure. I’ll go with you.”
I just happened to switch my gaze from one to the other, and I
saw something. There were many experiences that they had gone
through together in the past, which, naturally, had generated a