That day was a terrible one for Mary V. The big car went lurching here
and there over roads that never expected an automobile to travel them,
and Mary V watched and hoped and would not give up when even her dad
showed signs of yielding to heat and discouragement.
Before noon they had met the sheriff and some of his men, and had
compared notes and given what information they could. The sheriff, in
a desert-scarred Ford loaded mostly with water and some emergency
rations, had managed to scatter his men and yet keep in fairly close
touch with them, and he seemed very sure that the search had been
thorough as far as they had gone. Young Jewel, he asserted, had not so
much as dropped a handkerchief on the ground they had covered, or his
men would certainly have found it.
This, while it served as a temporary relief from the dread of hearing
the worst, merely postponed the full knowledge of a disaster which Mary
V could not bear to contemplate. They drove to a rendezvous previously
agreed upon with Bill Hayden and gleaned what news the boys had to
tell. Which was no news at all. Their search had been as barren of
results as the sheriff's, and Mary V's eyes, when they turned from face
to face, were hard to meet. Little Curley, who had been Johnny Jewel's
especial admirer and champion when that youth was spending his days
more or less tumultuously at the Rolling R Ranch, was seen to draw his
shirt sleeve hastily across his eyes after he had confronted Mary V for
a minute's questioning.
She watched with painful interest a car that came bouncing toward them
over the rough trail they had taken. When it arrived their fears might
become a terrible certainty. Two men occupied the dusty roadster, and
neither was Johnny, and their haste implied great urgency. Mary V
weakened to the point of covering her face with her hands as they drew
near. But they were merely reporters anxious for news.
That afternoon other reporters appeared, and the next day an
enterprising motion-picture concern had a camera man on the job. The
mystery of the vanished airplane grew with the passing hours. The
desert fairly swarmed with men, and theories were thick as lizards. On
the second night beacon fires were burning on every hilltop, and water
was being hauled in barrels to certain rest stations where the
searchers could come and recuperate. Old Sudden achieved some
front-page fame himself as a stalwart Napoleon of the desert--which he
profanely resented, by the way.
On the third day Mary V was ordered to stay at home. There were
reasons which her father did not care to dwell upon, which made it
extremely undesirable that the girl should be present when her lover
was discovered. And, since the search had narrowed to a point where
discovery was practically certain within a few hours, Sudden was not to
be cajoled or bullied.
Mary V was lying on the porch, wondering dully when the nightmare would
end and she would wake up and find life just as it had always been,
with Johnny alive and full of fun and ready to argue with her over
every little thing. It seemed grotesquely impossible that her own
innocent command that he come to her should result in all this horror.
Upheld at first by a frenzied hope that they should find him, she now
dreaded the finding, and refused to reckon the time since she had last
heard his voice over the telephone. Hurt and without water or food on
the desert in all that heat--she set her teeth to stifle a groan. A
little while ago when he had been so sure that he could enlist as a
flyer, she had shrunk from the thought of his going to war. Before
that, when he had lain unconscious for so many days there in the
bedroom behind her; when a trained nurse had stood guard and would not
let Mary V so much as look at Johnny, and the doctor had spoken glibly
of hope, when his eyes told her how little hope there was, she had
suffered terribly. She had thought that she had touched the depths of
worry over Johnny--and she had not begun to know the meaning of the
word.
She lay a small, huddled heap of heartache, shrinking from her own
thoughts, shrinking from the sight of every one, dazed with terror of
what she might hear if any one spoke. Into this nightmare jingled the
telephone bell. Mary V gave a faint scream and put her hands over her
ears.
"There, there, baby--I'll answer it," her mother's voice came
soothingly, and Mary V shrank farther down in the hammock cushions.
"Oh--why--land alive! Just a minute--hold the line," she heard her
mother say in a strange, flustered voice. Then she called, "Mary V--I
guess you better come and--"
"Oh, I--_can't_, mommie! I'll go crazy if I have to hear--"
"There, there, baby, it's something you want to hear!"
Mary V's knees shook under her as she went to the telephone. Her voice
was pinched and feeble when she tried to call the stereotyped hello.
"Oh, hello, Mary V. That you? I just got in, and I thought I'd better
call up. I hear they're out looking for me--"
Mary V's eyes turned glassy. She made a faint sound and drooped
forward until her forehead rested on the table. The receiver slid
soundlessly into her lap and lay there while Johnny Jewel rattled on
hurriedly.
"--And so after that happened, we were held up till dark getting the
landing gear straightened out. And of course we couldn't fly very well
after dark. And then next morning, after Bland had cleaned out the
carburetor--say, it was straight mud in there and the screen was packed
solid, so of course she didn't get gas half the time, and that's what
ailed her--and when we did start, or was going to start, we found out
there wasn't enough gas in the tank to take us home. So I had to catch
an Injun and make him take a note to the nearest station for gas, and
wait till he got back with some. I'd have sent word on to you, but I
was in such a darned hurry I forgot--and the Injuns were all scared
stiff, and it was only by making them understand I wanted water for the
Bird, and nothing else would do."
"Mary V's fainted," mommie interrupted him then. "I guess it was too
sudden, hearing you on the wire when she thought you was dead. You
better wait and call up after awhile when her mind's more settled.
She's had an awful hard time. I'm real glad you're all right, Johnny,
but I've got to take care of Mary V now."
Johnny's eyes were very wide open when he came out of the telephone
booth in the hotel lobby. That Mary V should faint when she heard his
voice sounded rather incredible, but it seemed to confirm the strange
intent looks and the flustered manners of every one around that hotel.
People seemed to be flocking in from the street and from other parts of
the hotel, and that they were gathering to gaze upon him, Johnny Jewel,
came with a shock.
Three reporters came at him so impetuously that the foremost man
skidded on the polished floor and all but fell. Bland was plucking at
his elbow and whispering, "You let me handle the publicity, bo!" The
clerk was staring at him, both palms planted firmly on the desk, and
men were pushing up and craning for a look at him. Johnny whirled
suddenly and retreated to the telephone booth, shutting the door
tightly behind him. It was the first time in his life that he had run
from any one.
To gain time, he called up the Rolling R Ranch again and managed to get
Bedelia, the cook, on the 'phone. Bedelia was perfectly willing to
tell all she knew, and she appeared to know a great deal. Johnny held
the receiver to his ear until his elbow cramped, and said "uh-huh" once
in a while, and wondered how much Bedelia was exaggerating the truth.
As a matter of fact Bedelia was giving him a conservative history of
the past three days and, indirectly, she was explaining the crowd in
the lobby behind him.
Telephone booths are not any too comfortable on a hot day, and Johnny
emerged rather limp and sober.
He edged in to where Bland was gesticulating in the center of a group
that seemed to be drinking in his words eagerly.
"I'm going on to the ranch, Bland," he said shortly. "Jar loose here
and come help get the machine ready."
"In a minute, bo. As I was saying--"
"Ah--I hear you had quite an adventure, Mr. Jewel, down among the
Indians with your airplane. Now, just where--"
"I'm in a hurry," Johnny hedged. "I don't know anything about any
adventure. We had a little carburetor trouble, and had to wait for gas
before we could get back. That's all." He grabbed Bland firmly by one
arm and hustled him outside, where men were seemingly waiting far his
appearance.
"Oh, Mr. Jewel! I wish you'd tell me--"
"I'm in a hurry! Good golly, folks seem to think talking is all there
is to do in this world! Come on, Bland." He hurried on, his mind
absorbed in grasping the full significance of Bedelia's excited report
of events at the Rolling R and this curious crowd that gaped at him.
The thought of Mary V lying unconscious, stricken by the sound of his
voice over the telephone, nagged at him persistently and unpleasantly.
He had not told Bedelia that he was coming, and now he feared that his
unheralded appearance might be another shock to Mary V; but he would
not take the time to go back and warn her, for all that. Instead, he
walked a little faster to where his plane was waiting.
"I think you're making a bad play, bo--duckin' out when all them
newspaper guys are hot after dope on us," Bland expostulated while he
drilled along beside his boss. "I give 'em some scarehead stuff, but
they'd lap up a lot more. We can get a lot of valuable publicity right
now if we play 'em right. I give 'em that gawd stuff for a start-off,
and I made--"
"Shut up and save your breath," snapped Johnny. "I'm not chasing up
any newspaper notoriety now."
"Well, it'd be better business if yah did, bo--I'll say it would. Why,
it's free advertising we couldn't have pulled off on a bet, if we'd
tried to frame it. Absolutely not. Well, mebby your duckin' out right
now is a good play, too. It'll keep 'em chasin' yuh for more--and I'll
say that's about the only way to handle them smart guys. Oncet you
chase them, the stuff's off. You can bust your spine in four different
places and wreck your machine, and mebby get a four- or five-line
notice down in a corner next the dentist ads. It's worse, too, since
the war begun. There ain't no more chance, hardly, of getting
front-page publicity. Say, a couple of 'em took your picture. D' yuh
know that?"
"No, and I don't care," Johnny retorted.
Just now nothing mattered save getting to the Rolling R as soon as
possible and stopping that idiotic search for him. He hustled Bland
around to such good purpose that by the time the reporters had trailed
him to the hangar he was already in his seat and was barking "Contact!"
at Bland, who was unhappily turning the propeller at stated intervals
and wondering when he would ever again have a square meal, and hoping
that no misfortune would delay their arrival at the Rolling R, where he
remembered hungrily certain past achievements of the cook.
"Going back to your Indian tribe?" one smiling, sandy-haired fellow
called out to Johnny.
"No. I'm going to the Rolling R!" Johnny retorted unguardedly.
"Ready, Bland? Contact!"
The motor started, and Bland pulled down his cap. "His best girl lives
at the Rolling R. He's goin' to see her," he informed the sandy-haired
man as he passed him. "They're engaged." He climbed up and took his
place, tickled at the chance to hand out more "dope." The sandy-haired
one seemed tickled, too, until he saw that his ears had not been the
only ones to drink in Bland's words.
They moved hastily aside as the big plane swung round and went down the
field like a running plover. They watched it swing and come back,
taking the air easily, thrumming its high, triumphant note. They
tilted heads backward and followed it as Johnny circled, getting his
altitude. They squinted into the sun to see the plane head straight
away toward the Rolling R, its little wheels looking very much like the
tucked-up feet of some gigantic bird, until it had dwindled to the
rigid, dragon-fly outline.
"He's got nerve, that kid!" the sandy-haired one declared to his
fellows. "Didn't care a whoop for publicity--did you fellows get that?
I'd been wondering if it wasn't some frame-up, but it's on the level.
That boy couldn't frame anything."
"Not with those eyes," a sallow companion agreed. "I seem to know that
other bird. He's a crook, if I know faces."
"He's just the mechanic. He don't count. But that kid--say, I like
that kid!" And he added enthusiastically, "Great story, that stuff the
mechanic doped out for us. We'd never have pulled it out of the kid."
"I wish I could remember that bird. I ought to know him. Leaves a bad
taste in my memory, somehow. You're right--it's some story."