Since Life is no more than a series of achievements and failures, this
story is going to begin exactly where the teller of tales usually
stops. It is going to begin with Johnny Jewel an accepted lover and
with one of his dearest ambitions realized. It is going to begin there
because Johnny himself was just beginning to climb, and the top of his
desires was still a long way off, and the higher you go the harder is
the climbing. Even love does not rest at peace with the slipping on of
the engagement ring. I leave it to Life, the supreme judge, to bear me
out in the statement that Love must straightway gird himself for a life
struggle when he has passed the flowered gateway of a woman's tremulous
yes.
To Johnny Jewel the achievement of possessing himself of so coveted a
piece of mechanism as an airplane, and of flying it with rapidly
increasing skill, began to lose a little of its power to thrill. The
getting had filled his thoughts waking and sleeping, had brought him
some danger, many thrills, a good deal of reproach and much
self-condemnation. Now he had it--that episode was diminishing rapidly
in importance as it slid into the past, and Johnny was facing a problem
quite as great, was harboring ambitions quite as dazzling, as when he
rode a sweaty horse across the barren stretches of the Rolling R Ranch
and dreamed the while of soaring far above the barrenness.
Well, he had soared high above many miles of barrenness. That dream
could be dreamed no more, since its magic vapors had been dissipated in
the bright sun of reality. He could no longer dream of flying, any
more than he could build air castles over riding a horse. Neither
could he rack his soul with thoughts of Mary V Selmer, wondering
whether she would ever get to caring much for a fellow. Mary V had
demonstrated with much frankness that she cared. He knew the feel of
her arms around his neck, the look of her face close to his own, the
sweet thrill of her warm young lips against his. He had bought her a
modest little ring, and had watched the shine of it on the third finger
of her tanned left hand when she left him--going gloveless that the
ring might shine up at her.
The first episode of her life thus happily finished, Johnny was looking
with round, boyish, troubled eyes upon the second.
"Long-distance call for you, Mr. Jewel," the clerk announced, when
Johnny strolled into the Argonaut hotel in Tucson for his mail. "Just
came in. The girl at the switchboard will connect you with the party."
Johnny glanced into his empty key box and went on to the telephone
desk. It was Mary V, he guessed. He had promised to call her up, but
there hadn't been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of
inaction, which meant failure, and Johnny Jewel never liked talking of
his failures, even to Mary V.
"Oh, Johnny, is that you? I've been waiting and _waiting_, and I just
wondered if you had enlisted and gone off to war without even calling
up to say good-by. I've been perfectly _frantic_. There's something--"
"You needn't worry about me enlisting," Johnny broke in, his voice the
essence of gloom. "They won't have me."
"Won't _have_--why, Johnny Jewel! How _can_ the United States Army be
so stupid? Why, I should think they would be glad to get--"
"They don't look at me from your point of view, Mary V." Johnny's lips
softened into a smile. She was a great little girl, all right. If it
were left to her, the world would get down on its marrow bones and
worship Johnny Jewel. "Why? Well, they won't take me and my airplane
as a gift. Won't have us around. They'll take me on as a common buck
trooper, and that's all. And I can't afford--"
"Well, but Johnny! Don't they know what a perfectly wonderful flyer
you are? Why, I should think--"
"They won't have me in aviation at all, even without the plane," said
Johnny. "The papers came back to-day. I was turned down--flat on my
face! Gol darn 'em, they can do without me now!"
"Well, I should say so!" cried Mary V's thin, indignant voice in his
ear. "How perfectly idiotic! I didn't want you to go, anyway. Now
you'll come back to the ranch, won't you, Johnny?" The voice had
turned wheedling. "We can have the duckiest times, flying around!
Dad'll give you a tremendously good--"
"You seem to forget I owe your dad three or four thousand dollars,"
Johnny cut in. "I'll come back to the ranch when that's paid, and not
before."
"Well, but listen, Johnny! Dad doesn't look at it that way at all. He
knows you didn't mean to let those horses be stolen. He doesn't feel
you owe him anything at all, Johnny. Now we're engaged, he'll give you
a good--"
"You don't get me, Mary V. I don't care what your father thinks. It's
what I think that counts. This airplane of mine cost your dad a lot of
good horses, and I've got to make that good to him. If I can't sell
the darned thing and pay him up, I'll have to--"
"I suppose what I think doesn't count anything at all! I say you don't
owe dad a cent. Now that you are going to marry me--"
"You talk as if you was an encumbrance your dad had to pay me to take
off his hands," blurted Johnny distractedly. "Our being engaged
doesn't make any difference--"
"Oh, doesn't it? I'm tremendously glad to know you feel that way about
it. Since it doesn't make any difference whatever--"
"Aw, cut it out, Mary V! You know darn well what I meant."
"Why, certainly. You mean that our being engaged doesn't make a
particle--"
"Say, _listen_ a minute, will you! I'm going to pay your dad for those
horses that were run off right under my nose while I was tinkering with
this airplane. I don't care what you think, or what old Sudden thinks,
or what anybody on earth thinks! I know what I think, and that's a
plenty. I'm going to make good before I marry you, or come back to the
ranch.
"Why, good golly! Do you think I'm going to be pointed out as a joke
on the Rolling R? Do you think I'm going to walk around as a living
curiosity, the only thing Sudden Selmer ever got stung on? Oh--h, no!
Not little Johnny! They can't say I got into the old man for a bunch
of horses and the girl, and that old Sudden had to stand for it! I
told your dad I'd pay him back, and I'm going to do it if it takes a
lifetime.
"I'm calling that debt three thousand dollars--and I consider at that
I'm giving him the worst of it. He's out more than that, I guess--but
I'm calling it three thousand. So," he added with an extreme
cheerfulness that proved how heavy was his load, "I guess I won't be
out to supper, Mary V. It's going to take me a day or two to raise
three thousand--unless I can sell the plane. I'm sticking here trying,
but there ain't much hope. About three or four a day kid me into
giving 'em a trial flight--and to-morrow I'm going to start charging
'em five dollars a throw. I can't burn gas giving away joy rides to
fellows that haven't any intention of buying me out. They'll have to
dig up the coin, after this--I can let it go on the purchase price if
they do buy, you see. That's fair enough--"
"Then you won't even listen to dad's proposition?" Mary V's tone
proved how she was clinging to the real issue. "It's a perfectly
wonderful one, Johnny, and really, for your own good--and not because
we are engaged in the least--you should at least consider it. If you
insist on owing him money, why, I suppose you could pay him back a
little at a time out of the salary he'll pay you. He will pay you a
good enough salary so you can do it nicely--"
Johnny laughed impatiently. "Let your dad jump up my wages to a point
where he can pay himself back, you mean," he retorted. "Oh--h, no,
Mary V. You can't kid me out of this, so why keep on arguing? You
don't seem to take me seriously. You seem to think this is just a whim
of mine. Why, good golly! I should think it would be plain enough to
you that I've got to do it if I want to hold up my head and look men in
the face. It's--why, it's an insult to my self-respect and my honesty
to even hint that I could do anything but what I'm going to do. The
very fact that your dad ain't going to force the debt makes it all the
more necessary that I should pay it.
"Why, good golly, Mary V! I'd feel better toward your father if he had
me arrested for being an accomplice with those horse thieves, or
slapped an attachment on the plane or something, than wave the whole
thing off the way he's doing. It'd show he looked on me as a man,
anyway.
"I'll be darned if I appreciate this way he's got of treating it like a
spoiled kid's prank. I'm going to make him recognize the fact that I'm
a _man_, by golly, and that I look at things like a man. He's got to
be proud to have me in the family, before I come into the family. He
ain't going to take me in as one more kid to look after. I'll come in
as his equal in honesty and business ability,--instead of just a new
fad of Mary V's--"
"Well, for gracious sake, Johnny! If you feel that way about it, why
didn't you say so? You don't seem to care what I think, or how I feel
about it. You don't seem to care whether you ever get married or not.
And I'm sure I wasn't the one that did the proposing. Why, it will
take years and _years_ to square up with dad, if you insist on doing it
in a regular business way--"
Johnny's harsh laugh stopped her. "You see, you do know where I stand,
after all. If I let it slide, the way you want me to, that's exactly
what you'd be thinking after awhile--that I never had squared up with
your dad. You'd look down on me, and so would your father and your
mother. They'd always be afraid I'd do some fool thing and sting your
dad again for a few thousand."
"Well, of all the crazy talk! And I've gone to the trouble of coaxing
dad to give you a share in the Rolling R instead of putting it in his
will for me. And dad's going to do it--"
"Oh, no, he isn't. I don't want any share in the Rolling R. I'd go to
jail before I'd take it."
Mary V produced woman's final argument. "If you cared anything at all
for me, Johnny, when I ask you to come back and do what dad is willing
to have you do, you'd do it. I don't see how you can be stubborn
enough to refuse such a perfectly wonderful offer. You wouldn't, if
you cared a snap about me. You act just as if you were sorry--"
"Aw, lay off that don't-care stuff!" Johnny growled indignantly.
"Caring for you has got nothing to do with it, I tell you. It's just
simply a question of what kinda mark I am. You know I care!"
"Well, then, if you do you'll come right over here. If you start now
you can be here by sundown, and it's nice and quiet and no wind at all.
You've absolutely no excuse, Johnny, and you know it. When dad's
willing to forget about those horses--"
"When I come, your dad won't have anything to forget about," Johnny
reiterated obstinately. "I do wish you'd look at the thing right!"
Mary V changed her tactics, relying now upon intimidation. "I shall
begin to look for you in about an hour," she said sweetly. "I shall
keep on looking till you come, or till it gets too dark. If you care
anything about me, Johnny, you'll be here. I'll have dinner all ready,
so you needn't wait to eat." Then she hung up.
Johnny rattled the hook impatiently, called hello with irritated
insistence, and finally succeeded in raising Central's impersonal:
"Number, please?" Whereupon he flung himself angrily out of the booth.
"Do you want to pay at this end?" The girl at the desk looked up at
him with a gleam of curiosity. Mentally Johnny accused her of
"listening in." He snapped an affirmative at her and waited until
"long distance" told her the amount.
"Four dollars and eighty-five cents," she announced, giving him a pert
little smile. Johnny flipped a small gold piece to the desk and
marched off, scorning his fifteen cents change with the air of a
millionaire.
Johnny was angry, grieved, disappointed, worried--and would have been
wholly miserable had not his anger so dominated his other emotions that
he could continue mentally his argument against the attitude of Mary V
and the Rolling R.
They refused to take him seriously, which hurt Johnny's self-esteem
terribly. Were he older, were he a property owner, Sudden Selmer would
not so lightly wave aside that debt. He would pay Johnny the respect
of fighting for his just rights. But no--just because he was barely of
age, just because he was Johnny Jewel, they all acted as though--why,
darn 'em, they acted as though he was a kid offering to earn money to
pay for a broken plate! And Mary V--
Well, Mary V was a great little girl, but she would have to learn some
day that Johnny was master. He considered this as good a day as any
for the lesson. Better, because he was really upholding his principles
by not going to the ranch meekly submissive, because Mary V had
announced that she would be looking for him. Johnny winced from the
thought of Mary V, out on the porch, watching the sky toward Tucson for
the black speck that would be his airplane; listening for the high,
strident drone that would herald his coming. She would cry herself to
sleep.
But she had deliberately sentenced herself to tears and disappointment,
he told himself sternly. She must have known he was in earnest about
not coming. She had no right to think she could kid him out of
something big and vital to his honor. She ought to know him by this
time.
Briefly he considered returning to the hotel and calling up the ranch,
just to tell her not to look for him because he was not coming. But
the small matter of paying the toll deterred him. It was humiliating
to admit, even to himself, that he could not afford another
long-distance conversation with Mary V, but he had come to the point in
his finances where a two-bit piece looked large as a dollar. He would
miss that small gold piece.
Since the government had refused to consider accepting his services and
paying him a bonus for his plane, he would have to sell it--if he could.
There it sat, reared up on its two little wheels, its nose poked
rakishly out of an old shed that had been remodelled to accommodate it,
its tail sticking out at the other side so that it slightly resembled a
turtle with its shell not quite covering its extremities. The Mexican
boy whom Johnny had hired to watch the plane in his absence lay asleep
under one wing. A faint odor of varnish testified to the heat of the
day that was waning toward a sultry night.
Without disturbing the boy Johnny rolled a smoke and stood, as he had
stood many and many a time, staring at his prize and wondering what to
do with it. He had to have money. That was flat, final, admitting no
argument. At a reasonable estimate, three thousand dollars were tied
up in that machine. He could not afford to sell it for any less. Yet
there did not seem to be a man in the country willing to pay three
thousand dollars for it. It was a curiosity, a thing to come out and
stare at, a thing to admire; but not to buy, even though Johnny had as
an added inducement offered to teach the buyer to fly before the
purchase price was taken from the bank.
The stalking shadow of a man moving slowly warned Johnny of an
approaching visitor. He did not trouble to turn his head; he even
moved farther into the shed, to tighten a turnbuckle that was letting a
cable sag a little.
"Hello, old top--how they using yuh?" greeted a voice that had in it a
familiar, whining note.
Johnny's muscles stiffened. Hostility, suspicion, surprise surged
confusingly through his brain. He turned as one who was bracing
himself to meet an enemy, with a primitive prickling where the bristles
used to rise on the necks of our cavemen ancestors.