The other Half by Edwin L. Sabin

I had advertised that a passenger would be taken (for a price) on my return trip by air from Omaha to the coast, and awaited the responses with no little curiosity. A flying companion should be chosen carefully.

The very first applicant, therefore, startled me. He appeared almost as soon as the papers were off the presses -- a spare, intense, elderly man, with gray mustache and imperial, and bushy brows shadowing singularly bright, restless eyes. His years, of course, were against him; his weathered, lean face and active step bespoke energy, nevertheless I judged him to be rising sixty.