"Well, here we are," Johnny announced with more cheerfulness than the
occasion warranted. "Now what?"
Bland was staring slack-jawed after the squaws. "Wasn't them Injuns?"
he wanted to know, and his voice showed some anxiety. "We want to get
outa here, bo, while the gittin's good. You bring any guns?" His pale
eyes turned to Johnny's face. "I'll bet they've gone after the rest of
the bunch, and we don't want to be here when they git back. I'll say
we don't!"
Johnny laughed at him while he climbed down. "We made a dandy landing
anyway," he said. "What ails that darned motor? She didn't do that
yesterday."
Bland grunted and straddled out over the edge of the cockpit, keeping
an eye slanted toward the brush fringe. What Johnny did not know about
motors would at any other time have stirred him to acrimonious
eloquence. Just now, however, a deeper problem filled his mind. Could
he locate the fault and correct it before that brush-fringe belched
forth painted warriors bent on massacre? He pushed up his goggles and
stepped forward to the motor.
"I put in new spark plugs just the other day," Johnny volunteered
helpfully. "Maybe a connection worked loose--or something." He got up
on the side opposite Bland, meaning to help, but Bland would have none
of his assistance.
"Say, f'r cat's sake, keep a watch out for Injuns and leave me alone!
I can locate the trouble all right, if I don't have to hang on to my
skelp with both hands. You got a gun?"
"Yeah. Back in Tucson I have," Johnny suppressed a grin. Bland's
ignorance, his childlike helplessness away from a town tickled him.
"But that's all right, Bland. We'll make 'em think we're gods or
something. They might make you a chief, Bland--if they don't take a
notion to offer you up as a burnt offering to some other god that's got
it in for yuh."
Bland, testing the spark plugs hastily, one after the other, dropped
the screwdriver. "Aw, f'r cat's sake, lay off that stuff," he
remonstrated nervously. "Fat chance we got of godding over Injuns this
close to a town! They're wise to white men. Quit your kiddin', bo,
and keep a watch out." And he added glumly, "Spark plugs is O.K.
Maybe it's the timer. I'll have to trace it up. Quit turning your
back on that brush! You want us both to git killed? Hand me out that
small wrench."
"Say, I know what ailed them squaws, Bland. Gods is right. You know
what they thought? They took us for their Thunder Bird lighting. I'll
bet they're making medicine right now, trying to appease the Bird's
wrath. And say, listen here, Bland. If they do come at us, all we've
got to do is start up and buzz at 'em. There ain't an Injun on earth
could face that."
Bland lifted a pasty face from his work. "Fat chance," he lamented.
"You'd oughta brought your gun. Back there at Sinkhole you was damn
generous with the artillery--there where you had no use for it. Now
you fly into Injun country without so much as a sharp idea. Bo, you
give me a pain!"
Johnny spied an Indian peering fearfully out from the branches of a
willow. He ducked behind the motor and hissed the news to Bland.
Bland nearly fell from his perch.
"Gawd!" he gasped, clinging to a strut while he stared fascinatedly in
the direction Johnny had indicated. "Git in, bo, and we'll beat it.
She may have power enough to hop us outa this death trap. We can come
down somewheres else." He clawed back and climbed in feverishly.
Johnny emitted a convulsive snort. "Death trap" sounded very funny,
applied to this particular bit of harmless landscape. Behind him,
Bland was imploring him to hurry, and Johnny climbed in.
"You let me pilot the thing," he ordered. "I know Injuns. I still
have hopes of saving our lives, Bland. We'll scare 'em to death.
We'll be their Thunder Bird for 'em. Now lemme tell yuh, before we
start--oh, we're safe for the present. They'll stutter some before
they attack us in here--say, good golly, Bland! Is that your teeth
chattering? Hold your jaws still, can't yuh, while I tell yuh what
we'll do?"
"F'r cat's sake, hurry! I seen another one peekin' around the corner
of the house!"
"Now listen, Bland. The Navajos have got a Thunder Bird mixed up in
their religion, and I guess maybe these Injuns will have, too. If so,
we are reasonably safe. They must not know we're plain human--we've
got to be gods come down to earth, and this is the Thunder Bird. Or
another kind of bird. We'll make 'em think that. They don't sabe
flying machines--see? And we'll find out where they're all at, and fly
low over their heads to convince them that didn't see us come down.
It'll scare 'em, and work on their superstition, so when we come down
again to locate that motor trouble, they'll stand in awe of us long
enough to give us time to get in shape. You leave the soaring to me,
Bland. I'll pull us through all right. Think she'll lift us off the
ground?"
"She's _gotta_ lift us!" Bland chattered. "She's runnin' better since
we landed. And say, bo, don't go any closer to them--"
Johnny told him to shut up; he was running things. Whereupon he
circled and taxied back down the field, thankful that the soil was
sun-baked and hard. The motor ran smoothly again--a fact which Bland
was too scared to notice. He gasped when Johnny turned back toward the
huts, but beyond a protesting look over his shoulder he gave no sign of
dissent.
They started to climb, got fifty feet from the ground and the motor
began to spit and pop again. Then it stalled completely, and they came
down and went bouncing over the uneven surface and stopped again, a rod
or so nearer the willows than before.
Several scuttling figures left that particular hiding place like
rabbits scared out of a covert, and Bland took heart again. A few
minutes he spent crouched down in the cockpit, watching the willows,
and when nothing happened he ventured forth, armed with pliers and
wrench, and went at the motor.
"Sounds to me like poor contact," he diagnosed the trouble. "Like the
breaker-points are roughened, maybe. You'll have to work the gawd
stuff, bo, and work it right. Because if I start tearing into the hull
ignition system, we ain't going to be able to hop outa here at a
minute's notice, nor even start the motor and buzz at 'em."
"Fly at it," said Johnny, eyeing the huts speculatively. He was
hungry, and certain odors floated to his nostrils. Something left
cooking over a fire was beginning to scorch, if his nose told the
truth, and it seemed a shame to let food burn when his stomach clamored
to be filled.
With Bland watching him nervously, he crossed the little open space and
entered the hut nearest, presently emerging with two flat cakes in his
hand. Another hut yielded a pot of stew which he thought it wise not
to analyze too closely. It was this which had begun to burn, but it
was still fairly palatable. So, with a can of water from a muddy
spring, they breakfasted, their hunger charitably covering much
distrust and dulling for the time even Bland's fear of the place.
The sun, shining its Arizona fiercest though the season was early fall,
brought a cooked-varnish smell from the wings. There was no shade save
the scant shadow which the scraggly willows and brush cast over the
edge of the parched field, and of that Bland refused to avail himself.
He would rather roast, he said.
Johnny conscientiously carried the kettle back to the hut, then set to
work helping Bland. Which help consisted mainly of turning the
propeller whenever Bland wanted to start the motor; a heartbreaking
task in that broiling heat, especially since the motor half the time
would not start at all. Crimson, the perspiration streaming down his
cheeks like tears, Johnny swung on that propeller until Bland's grating
voice singing out "Contact!" stirred murder within his soul and he
balked with the motor and crawled under a wing.
"Yon can start her yourself if you want to start," he growled when
Bland expostulated. "I've turned that darned propeller enough to fly
from here to New York. Why don't you get in and locate the trouble?"
"There ain't any trouble--not according to the look of things. Acts
like water in the gas, or something. F'r cat's sake, don't lay down on
the job now, bo! We gotta beat it outa here."
"I'm ready to go any time you are," Johnny retorted, mopping neck and
chest while he lay sprawled on his back. "But I'd rather stay here
till Christmas than get sun-struck trying to start, I'm all in."
Bland could not budge him and swore voluminously while he worked over
the motor. Finally he too gave up and crawled under a wing where the
heat was not quite so unendurable, and tried to think of something he
had not done but which he might do to correct the motor trouble. No
Indians having been sighted since their second landing, he could push
his fear of them into the back of his mind until a dark face peered out
at him again.
Miles away to the west men were sweating while they rode, searching for
this very airplane that sat so placidly in the midst of an Indian corn
field. Farther away the news went humming along the wires, of a young
aviator lost with his airplane on the desert. The fame of that young
aviator was growing apace while he lay there, casually wishing there
was a telephone handy so he could call up Mary V and tell her he had a
plan which might make him big money without his having to sell his
plane.
Not once did it occur to him that any one would be especially concerned
over his absence. Not once did he look upon this mishap as anything
more serious than an unpleasant incident in the life of a flyer. He
went to sleep, lying there under a wing of his plane, and presently
Bland himself drifted off into dreams that would have been much less
agreeable had he known that a full two dozen Indians had crawled into
the willows and were peering timorously out at them.
It was past noon when Bland awoke. Johnny was still sound asleep,
snoring a little now and then. Bland grumbled more profanity, sent a
questing glance toward the willows and saw nothing to alarm him,
crawled out into the searing sunlight and tried to work. But the motor
was so hot he could not touch it anywhere. His pliers and wrenches
were too hot to hold, and his face felt scorched where the sun fell
upon it. So Bland crawled back again and cursed the land that knew
such heat, and himself for being in it, and presently slept again.
Hunger woke Johnny at last, and he straight-way woke Bland, politely
intimating that it was about time he got busy and did something.
Johnny did not propose to settle down for life in that neighborhood, he
pointed out. There must be something they could do, if the darned
engine wasn't broken anywhere.
Bland, too miserable to argue, sat up and pushed greasy fingers through
his lank hair. Having remained alive and unharmed for so long in that
neighborhood, his faith in Johnny's knowledge of Indians waxed
stronger. He began to think less of his danger and more about the
motor.
The thing mystified him, who could tear a motor apart and put it
together again. What he felt he ought to do was impossible for lack of
the proper tools, Johnny's emergency kit being quite as useless for any
real emergency as such kits usually are. Merely as an experiment he
removed the needle valve and washed several specks of dirt off it with
gasoline. Without hesitation the motor started, and Bland cursed
himself quite sincerely for not having sooner thought of the simple
expedient. He must be getting feeble-minded, he said, while he
adjusted the mixture and made ready to fly.
Once more they taxied down the denuded corn field, turned and ascended
buoyantly, boring into the hot breeze that rose as the shadows
lengthened into late afternoon. They circled, climbing steadily. Then
pop--pop-pop-pop--pop, the motor began to stutter. The earth lifted to
them as if pulled up by a string. They could see more huts and tiny
figures running like disturbed ants. The field where they had spent
most of the day broadened beneath them, like a brown blanket spread to
receive them.
They came down with a jolt that bent the axle of the landing gear, sent
them bounding into the air, and all but wrecked them. They went
ducking and wobbling up to the willow fringe and swung off just in time
to escape plunging into a deep little creek. As they stopped they
heard a great crackling of brush and glimpsed many forms fleeing
wildly, but they were too engrossed in their own trouble to be greatly
impressed. One wing had barely escaped damage with the tilting of the
machine, and the near-catastrophe chilled them both with the memory of
a certain other forced landing which had not ended so harmlessly. They
climbed down soberly and inspected the landing gear.
"Well, that can be fixed," Bland stated in the tone of one who is
grateful that worse has not befallen. "I'll say it was a close shave,
though, bo."
"I'll try and straighten the axle, while you see what ails that cussed
motor. Good golly! We'll be here all night at this rate. And if we
keep on hopping over this field like a lame crow, we'll be plumb outa
gas. For a mechanic that can _make_ a motor, Bland, you sure ain't
making much of a showing!"
"Aw, f'r cat's sake, lay off the crabbing! Gimme the tools and I'll
rip your damn motor apart so quick it'll make your head swim! I'll say
I've tied into a sweet mess of trouble when I tied up with you. I
mighta knowed I'd git the worst of it. Look at what I was handed the
other time I throwed in with you! Got stuck in a cave and had to live
like a darned animal, and double-crossed when I'd helped you outa the
hole you was in. And now you wish this job on to me and begin to lay
the blame on me when this mess of junk fails to act like a motor. Come
off down here with a monkey wrench and a can opener and expect me to
rebuild a motor that oughta been junked ten year ago!"
"Aw, shut up!" snapped Johnny, and stalked off to find something they
could eat. "Monkey wrench and can opener are about as many tools as
you know how to use--unless maybe it's a corkscrew."
He went on, muttering because he had ever let himself be imposed upon
by Bland Halliday. Muttering too because he had started out that
morning to do stunts, instead of trying to find a buyer for the machine
as he had first planned. Now the prospect of getting back to Tucson
that night looked very remote indeed. And the winning of a fortune
doing exhibition work looked even more remote. "Unless we take up a
collection amongst the Injuns cached out in the brush," he grinned
ruefully to himself. "We're liable to take up a collection all right,
if we have to sleep here--but it won't be money."