Bland woke him, just as day was coming. A new Bland, fresh
shaven,--with Johnny's razor,--and with a certain languid animation in
his manner that was in sharp contrast to his extreme dejection of the
night before.
"Thought I'd come out and see if you was going to make a flight this
morning," he said. "It's a good morning for it, bo. How's she
working, these days? Old man at the ranch wouldn't let me try her out
after I'd fixed her up; said you was too sick to have the motor going.
So I couldn't be sure I'd made a good job of it. Give you any trouble?"
Johnny sat up and knuckled his eyes, his mouth wide open in a capital
O. It seemed to him that Bland had his nerve, and he guessed shrewdly
that the aviator was simply making sure of his breakfast. When cats
come back they have a fashion of hanging around the kitchen, he
remembered. Oh, well, there was nothing to be gained by being nasty
and even Bland's company was better than none.
"Hey, ain't yuh awake yet? I asked yuh how the motor's acting."
"O--o--h, aw-righ!" yawned Johnny, blinking around for his boots. "I
ain't been flying much. Just flew over here from the ranch, and a
little circle now and then when something come along that looked like
money. I wanted to keep her in good shape in case the gover'ment--"
"Trying to sell it back to the gover'ment, huh? I coulda told yuh, bo,
they wouldn't take it as a gift. She's a back number now--a has-been,
from the gover'ment viewpoint. Why don't you keep it? What yuh want
to sell it for, f'r cat's sake? She's a gold mine if you know how to
work it, bo--take it from me."
"Well, I wish to thunder you'd show me the gold, then," Johnny retorted
crossly, pulling on his boots.
"Lend us a smoke, will yuh, old top? The money's here, all right, if
yuh just know how to get it out. And flying for the gover'ment ain't
the way. I'll say a man's got to be his own boss if he wants to pull
down real money. Long as you're workin' for somebody else, he's
getting the velvet. You ain't, believe me. And the gover'ment as a
boss--"
"Well, good golly, come to the point!" snapped Johnny. "How can I make
money with this plane?" He gave it a disgruntled look, and turned to
Bland. "She's a bird of a millionaire's toy, if you ask me," he said.
"She's a fiend for gas and oil, and every time you turn 'er around
there's some darned thing to be fixed or replaced. I'm about broke,
trying to keep her up till I can sell out. It's coffee and sinkers for
you, old timer, if you're going to eat on me. Another meal like you
had last night, and we'll both have to skip a few in order to buy gas
to joy-ride some cheap sport that lets on he's thinking of buying. I
suppose your idea is--"
"F'r cat's sake give me a chance to tell yuh! Course you'll go broke
trying to support the plane. You're goin' at it backwards. Make the
plane support you. That's my idea. And you do it by exhibition flying
for money--not sailin' around giving the whole damn country a free
treat.
"I know--you think I'm a bum and all that; maybe you think I'm a crook,
fer all I know. And you turn up your nose at anything I say. But
lemme tell yuh, old top, I ain't a D. and O. because I never made any
money flyin'. It's because I blowed what I made. And it's because I
made so damn' much it went to my head and made a fool outa me. Listen
here, bo: I bought me a Stutz outa what I earned flyin' in one
season--and I blowed money right and left and smashed the car and like
to of broke my neck, and had to pay damages to the other feller that
peeled my roll down to the size of a pencil. The point is, it took
_money_ to do them things, didn't it? And I made it flyin' my own
plane. That's what you want to soak into your system. _I made big
money flying_. What I done with the money don't need to worry you--you
ain't copyin' me for morals.
"Now what you want to do is learn some stunts, first off. You learn to
loop and tail-slide and the fallin' leaf, and to write your name, and
them things. It ain't so hard--not for a guy like you that ain't got
sense enough to be afraid of nothing. The way you went off in that
plane with the girl made my hair stand on end, and that's no kiddin',
neither. If you'd had a fear germ in your system you wouldn't 'a' done
that. But you done it, and got away with it, is the point. And you
been gittin' away with it right along--and you not knowin' your motor
any more'n I know ridin' on a horse!"
"Aw, say! That's goin' too far," protested Johnny, but Bland gave him
no heed.
"You learn the stunts--early in the morning when there ain't the hull
town out to rubber--and then pull off an exhibition or two.
Seventy-five dollars is the least you ever need to expect. Don't go in
the air for less. From that up--depends on how spectacular you are.
The public loves to watch for the death fall. That's what they pay to
see--not hopin' you get killed, but not wantin' to miss seeing it in
case yuh do. And with this the only airplane around here--why, say,
bo, it's a cinch!"
Johnny fanned the smoke away from his face and eyed Bland with lofty
tolerance. "And where do you expect to come in? You needn't kid
yourself into hoping I'll take you for a self-forgetful martyr person.
What's the little joker, Bland?"
Bland turned his pale, opaque stare upon Johnny for a minute. "Aw, for
cat's sake, gimme the doubt, bo! I'm human in more ways than tryin' to
see how much booze I kin lap up. It's a chance I want to start fresh.
This bumming around ain't getting me anything. I'm sick of it. You
gotta be learnt to do exhibition stuff, and I'm the guy that can learn
yuh. You'll want a mechanician to keep your motor in shape. I can
_make_ a motor, gimme the tools. You want somebody that knows the game
to kinda manage things. You're Skyrider Johnny, same as the boys at
the ranch calls yuh. Yon gotta have a flunkey, ain't yuh? I'm willin'
to be it. I'll change my name, so nobody needs to know it's Bland
Halliday. Or you can gimme a share in the net profits, and I'll keep
the name and make it pull things our way. They's no use talking, bo,
I've got the goods! The name Bland Halliday is a trademark for
flyin'--and never mind if it also stands for damfool. I'll brace up
and give yuh the best I got. Honest, that's what I want--a chance to
get on my feet agin. I'd ruther help you fly your plane than fly one
of my own. I'd run amuck agin if I owned anything I could raise money
on.
"If you think I tried to do you dirt, back there in the desert, bo,
you're wrong. Ab-so-lutely. I thought you was fixing to double-cross
me, and git away with the plane and leave me there. It got my
goat--I'll say it did--that desert stuff. So I hid the gas, so you
couldn't go off and leave me. But that's behind us. You can give me a
chance now to straighten up, and I can put you in the way to make big
money. You think it over, bo. They's no great hurry, and we can make
a flight now and see how she stacks up. Be a sport--go fill up the
tank and let's go."
Johnny ground the cigarette stub under his heel in the dirt, shrugged
his shoulders with a fine imitation of perfect indifference, and
yawned. He would think over Bland's idea. He did not, of course,
intend to fall for anything that did not look like good business, and
he was not at all anxious to have Bland for a partner. Indeed, having
Bland for a partner was about the last thing Johnny would ever expect
himself to do. Still, there was no harm in letting Bland down easy. A
flight or two, maybe, would give Johnny some good pointers. He had
learned much from Bland, in a very short time, he admitted readily to
himself. He could learn more, and he could let Bland go over the
motor. By that time he would maybe have a buyer. If not, he would
have time to decide about exhibition flying.
Johnny did not know that as he went after gas his step was springier
than it had been for a long, long while. He did not know why it was
that he whistled while he filled the torpedo-shaped tank--indeed,
Johnny did not even know that he whistled, nor that it was the first
time since he had worked over his plane down at Sinkhole Camp when all
his dreams were bright, and bad luck had not knocked at his door. Yet
he did whistle while he made ready for flight, and his eyes were big
and round and eager, said he moved with the impatient energy of a youth
going to his favorite game. These signs Mary V would have recognized
immediately; Johnny did not know the signs existed.
Bland helped himself to a pair of new coveralls of Johnny's and
tinkered with the motor. Johnny went around the plane, testing cables
and trying to conceal even from himself his new hope of keeping it.
"All right, bo," Bland announced at last. "Kick the block away and
let's run her out. She sounds pretty fair--better than I expected."
It pleased Johnny that Bland seemed to take it as a matter of course
that he should occupy the front seat. The last time they had flown
together, Bland had occupied it perforce, with Johnny and two guns
behind him. After all, Johnny reflected, he would not have been so
suspicious of Bland if Mary V had not influenced him. And every one
knows that girls take notions with very little reason for the
foundation. Bland was a bum, but the little cuss seemed to want to
make good, and a man would be pretty poor stuff that wouldn't help a
fellow reform.
With that comfortable readjustment of his mental attitude toward the
birdman, Johnny strapped himself in, pulled down his goggles while
Bland eased in the motor. He saw Bland glance to right and left with
the old vigilance. He felt the testing of controls, the unconscious
tensing of nerves for the start. They raced down the calf pasture,
nosed upward and went whirring away from a dwindling earth, straight
toward the heart of the dawn.
It was like drinking of some heady wine that blurs one's troubles and
pushes them far down over the horizon. Johnny forgot that he had
problems to solve or worries that nagged at him incessantly. He forgot
that Mary V, away off there to the southwest, had probably cried
herself to sleep the night before because he had disappointed her. He
was flying up and away from all that. He was soaring free as a bird,
and the rush of a strong, clean wind was in his face. The roar of the
motor was a great, throbbing harmony in his ears. For a little while
the world would hold nothing else.
They were climbing, climbing, writing an invisible spiral in the air.
Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with
telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to
yield the control and to watch closely how the thing was done.
They swooped like a hawk that has seen a meadow mouse amongst the
grass. They climbed steeply, swung clean over, so that the earth was
oddly slipping past far above their heads; swung down, flattened out
and flew straight. It was glorious.
A second time Bland looped, and yet again. It was exactly as Johnny
had known it would be. He who had flown so long in his day-dreaming,
who had performed wonderful acrobatics in his imagination, felt the
sensation old, accustomed, milder even than in his dreams.
Once more, and he did the loop himself, hardly conscious of Bland's
presence. Bland turned his head, signalling, and did a flop, righted,
and was flying straight in the opposite direction. Again, and flew
southeast by the sun. They practised that manoeuver again and again
before Johnny felt fairly sure of himself, but once he did it he was
one proud young man!
All this while the familiar landmarks were slipping behind them.
Tucson was out of sight, had they thought to look for it. And all this
while the sturdy motor was humming its song of force triumphant.
Subsequently it stuttered faintly in expressing itself. Triumph was
there, but it was not so joyously sure of itself. Bland glided,
cocking an anxious ear to listen while he slowed the motor. It was
there, the stutter--more pronounced than before; and once that pulsing
power begins to flag a little and grow uncertain, there is but one
thing to do.
They glided another ten miles or so before Bland picked a spot that
looked safe for landing. They had one ill-chosen landing still vivid
in their memory, and Johnny carried a long, white scar along the side
of his head and a tenderness of the scalp to assist him in remembering.
Wherefore they came down circumspectly in a flat little field beside a
flat little stream, with a huddle of flat dwellings drawn back shyly
behind a thin group of willows. They came down gently, bouncing toward
the willows as though they meant to drive up to the very doorway of the
nearest hut. As they came on, their great wings out-spread rigidly,
the propeller whirring at slackened speed, the motor sputtering
unevenly, the doorway spewed forth three fat squaws and some naked
papooses who fled shrieking into the brush behind the willows.