Modern Lochinvar Lands in Jail!
Thunder Bird Carries Maiden Off.
Telephone Halts Flight in County Clerk's Office, Where Couple is
Arrested. Abductor Attacks Sheriff Viciously. Is Manacled in Presence
of Hysterical Young Heiress Who Faints as Her Lover is Overpowered.
Irate Father Hurries to the Scene.
After keeping the country in a turmoil of excitement over his
disappearance in an airplane, the Skyrider, young Jewel, flies boldly
to Rolling R ranch and abducts beautiful Mary V Selmer, only daughter
of the rich rancher who led the search for the missing birdman.
Romance is not dead, though airplanes have taken the place of horses
when young Lochinvar goes boldly out to steal himself a bride. Modern
inventions cannot cool the hot blood of youth, as young Jewel has once
more proven. This sensational young man, apparently not content with
the uproar of the country for the past three days, when he was believed
to be lost on the desert with his airplane, attempts one adventure too
many. When he brazenly carried off his sweetheart in his airplane he
forgot to first cut the telephone wire. That oversight cost him dear,
for now he languishes in jail, while the young lady, who is under age,
is being held by the sheriff--
It was sickening, because in a measure it was true, though he had never
thought of emulating Lochinvar or any one else. He had neither thought
nor cared about the public and what it would think, and the blatant way
in which he had been made to entertain the country at large humiliated
him beyond words.
He picked up the square, white envelope tightly sealed and addressed in
Mary V's straight, uncompromising chirography, turned it over,
reconsidered opening it, and flipped it upon the cot.
"There was an answer expected," the jailer lingered to hint broadly.
"The young lady is waiting, and she seemed right anxious."
But Johnny merely walked to the barred window and stared across at the
blank wall of another building fifteen feet away, and in a moment the
jailer went away and left him alone, which was what Johnny wanted most.
After a while he opened Mary V's letter and read it, scowling and
biting his lips. Mary V, it would seem, had read all that the papers
had to say, and was considerably upset by the facetious tone of most of
the articles.
". . . and I think it's perfectly terrible, the way everybody stares
and whispers and grins. What in the world made you act the way you did
and get arrested. And those were reporters that you shoved out of the
office, too, and that is why they wrote about us in such a horrid way.
And I shall never be able to live it down. I shall be considered
hysterical and always fainting, which is not true and a perfect libel
which they ought to be sent to jail for printing. I shall probably
have that horrid Lochinvar piece recited at me the rest of my life,
Johnny, and I should think you would be willing to apologize to the
sheriff and be nice now and make them let you off easy. And dad blames
me for eloping with you and thinks we had it planned before he got home
yesterday, and he says there was no excuse and it showed a lack of
confidence in his judgment. He says you are a d. fool and take
yourself too seriously, and it is a pity you couldn't have some sense
knocked into you. But you must not mind him now because he is angry
and will get over it. But Johnny, please do be a good boy now and
don't make us any more trouble. I am sure I never dreamed what you had
in mind, but I would have married you since we started to, but now it
is perfectly odious to have it turn out such a fizzle, with you in jail
and I being preached at every waking moment by dad and mommie. If you
had only kept your temper and waited until dad and mommie got here, I
am sure we would be married by now, because I could have made them give
their consent and be present at the Wedding and everything go off
pleasantly instead of such a horrid mess as this is.
"I want you to promise me now that you will be good, and I will make
dad get the judge to let you off. Won't you please see dad and be nice
to him? His calling you a d. fool does not mean anything. That is
dad's way when he is peeved, and the jailer says you told him dad could
go to h. That is why he said it and not on general principles, because
he does really like you, Johnny. Of course we could see you anyway,
because you couldn't help yourself, but dad won't do it unless you are
willing to be good. So please, dear, won't you let us come up and talk
nicely together? I am sure the sheriff bears no ill will though his
jaw is swelled a little but not much. So we can get you out of this
scrape if you will meet us halfway and be a nice sensible boy. Please,
Johnny.
"Your loving Mary V."
Johnny read that last paragraph three times, and gave a snort with each
reading. If being let off easy involved the intercession of Mary V's
father, Johnny would prefer imprisonment for life. At least, that is
what he told himself. And if being a nice sensible boy meant that he
was to apologize to the sheriff and say pretty please to Sudden, the
chance of Johnny's ever being nice and sensible was extremely remote.
His loving Mary V had said too much--a common mistake. What she should
have done was confine her letter to a ten-word message, and tear the
message up. A fellow in Johnny's frame of mind were better left alone
for a while.
He sulked until he was taken down into the police court, where his
crime was duly presented to the judge and his sentence duly pronounced.
Knowing nothing whatever of the seamy side of life, as it is seen
inside those dismal houses with barred windows, Johnny thought he was
being treated with much severity. As a matter of fact, his offence was
being almost forgiven, and the six days' sentence was merely a bit of
discipline applied by the judge because Johnny sulked and scowled and
scarcely deigned to answer when he was spoken to.
The judge had a boy of his own, and it seemed to him that Johnny needed
time to think, and to recover from his sulks. Six days, in his
opinion, would be about right. The first two would be spent in
revilings; the third and fourth in realizing that he had only himself
to blame for his predicament, and the fifth and sixth days would
stretch themselves out like months and he would come out a considerably
chastened young man.
Another thing Johnny did not know was that, thanks to Mary V's father,
he was not herded with the other prisoners, where the air was bad and
the company was worse. He went back to his room under the roof, where
the jailer presently visited him and brought fruit and magazines and a
great box of candy, sent by Mary V with a doleful little note of
good-by as tragic as though he were going to be hanged.
Johnny was sulkier than ever, but his stomach ached from fasting. He
ate the fruit and the candy and gloomed in comparative comfort for the
rest of that day.
The next day, when the jailer invited him down into the jail yard for a
half hour or so, Johnny experienced a fresh shock. Somewhere, high in
the air, he heard the droning hum of his airplane. Bland was not
neglecting the opportunity Johnny had inadvertently given him, then.
Johnny craned his neck, but he could not see the plane in the patch of
sky visible from the yard. He listened, and fancied the sound was
diminishing with the distance. Bland was probably leaving the country,
though Johnny could not quite understand how Bland had managed to get
the funds for a trip. Perhaps he had taken up a passenger or two--or
if not that, Bland undoubtedly had ways of raising money unknown to the
honest.
Oh, well, what did it matter? What did anything matter? All the world
was against John Ivan Jewel, and one treachery more or less could not
alter greatly the black total. Not one friendly face had he seen in
the police court--since he did not call the reporters friendly. Mary V
had not been there, as he had half expected; nor Sudden, as he had
feared. The sheriff had not been friendly, in spite of his chuckle.
Bland had not shown up--the pop-eyed little sneak!--probably because he
had already planned this treachery.
He went back to his lonely room too utterly depressed to think.
Apathetically he read the paper which his jailer brought him along with
the tobacco which Johnny had sent for. Smoke was a dreary comfort--the
paper was not. The reporters had lost interest in him. Whereas two
columns had been given to his personal affairs the day before, his
troubles to-day had been dismissed with a couple of paragraphs. They
told him, however, that the "irate father" had taken the weeping maiden
out of town and left the "truculent young birdman pining in captivity."
It was a sordid end to a most romantic exploit, declared the paper.
And in that Johnny agreed. He could not quite visualize Mary V as a
weeping maiden, unless she had wept tears of anger. But the fact that
her irate father had taken her away without a word to him seemed to
Johnny a silent notice served upon him that he was to be banished
definitely and forever from her life. So be it, he told himself
proudly. They need not think that he would ever attempt to break down
the barrier again. He would bide his time. And perhaps some day--
There hope crept in,--a faint, weary-winged, bedraggled hope, it is
true,--to comfort him a little. He was not down and out--yet! He
could still show them that he had the stuff in him to make good.
He went to the window and listened eagerly. Once more he heard the
high, strident droning of the Thunder Bird. He watched, pressing his
forehead against the bars. The sound increased steadily, and Johnny,
gripping the bars until his fingers cramped afterwards, felt a
suffocating beat in his throat. A great revulsion seized him, an
overwhelming desire to master a situation that had so far mastered him.
What were six days--five days now? Why, already one day had gone, and
the Thunder Bird was still in town.
Johnny let go the bars and returned to his cot. The brief spasm of
hope had passed. What good would it do him if Bland carried passengers
from morning until night, every day of the six? Bland couldn't save a
cent. The more he made, the more he would spend. He would simply go
on a spree and perhaps wreck the plane before Johnny was free to hold
him in check.
Once more the motor's thrumming pulled him to the window. Again he
craned and listened, and this time he saw it, flying low so that the
landing gear showed plainly and he could even see Bland in the rear
seat. He knew him by the drooping shoulders, the set of his head, by
that indefinable something which identifies a man to his acquaintances
at a distance. In the front seat was a stranger.
He could see the swirl of the propeller, like fine, circular lines
drawn in the air. The exhaust trailed a ribbon of bluish white behind
the tail. And that indescribable thrumming vibrated through the air
and tore the very soul of him with yearning.
There it went, his airplane, that he loved more than he had ever loved
anything in his life. There it went, boring through the air, all
aquiver with life, a sentient, live thing to be worshipped; a thing to
fight for, a thing to cling to as he clung to life itself. And here
was he, locked into a hot, bare little room, fed as one feeds a caged
beast. Disgraced, abandoned, impotent.
It was in that hour that Johnny found deeper depths of despair than he
had dreamed of before. Bedraggled hope limped away, crushed and
battered anew by this fresh tragedy.