Off to the right and flying high, two government planes circled slowly
over the boundary line. Long before the Thunder Bird had put the map
of Mexico behind her the two planes veered that way, their fishlike
fuselages and the finned rudders gleaming like silver in the moonlight.
Cliff, happening to glance that way, moved uneasily in his seat and
cursed the moon he had so lately blessed.
"Better duck down somewhere; can't you dodge 'em?" he yelled back at
Johnny, who was himself eyeing perturbedly the two swift scouts.
"You let me handle this. It's what I'm paid for," he yelled back, and
banked the Thunder Bird sharply to the left. He had not yet crossed
the border; until he did so those scouting machines dare not do more
than keep him in view. But keeping him in view was absurdly simple in
that cloudless sky, white-lighted by the moon.
To a person looking up from the earth, the situation would have
appeared to be simple--a matter of three planes zooming homeward after
a long practice flight. The five-pointed star in the black circle,
painted on each wing Of the government planes, would probably have been
invisible at that height, and the bold lettering of THE THUNDER BIRD
indistinguishable also on the shadowed underside of the outlaw plane.
To the government planes she was branded irrevocably as they looked
down upon her from their superior height. There was no mistaking her,
no hope whatever that the scouts might think her anything but the
outlaw plane she was, flying in the face of international law,
trafficking in treason, fair game if she once crossed the line.
On she went, boring through the night, heading straight for Tia Juana,
which lies just south of the line. Just north of that invisible line
her pursuers held doggedly to the course.
"Turn back," Cliff turned to shout to Johnny who was driving big-eyed,
his lips pursed with the tense purpose that held him to his work.
"Turn back and land at the rancho. We'll never make Los Angeles with
those damned buzzards after us. I'll have to notify Sch--somebody."
"Send him a thought message, then."
"Turn back when I tell you!" Cliff twisted around as far as his safety
belt would permit, that he might glare at Johnny. His tone was the
long of stern authority.
"Can't be done! The Thunder Bird's took the bit in her teeth. I'm
just riding' and whippin' down both sides!" Johnny laughed aloud,
Cliff's tone releasing within him a sudden, reckless mood that gloried
in the sport of the chase and forgot for a moment its grim meaning.
"Whoo-ee! Go to it, old girl! They gotta go some to put salt on
_your_ tail--whoo-ee!"
"Are you crazy, man? Those are government planes! They're probably
armed. They'll get us wherever we cross the line--turn back, I tell
you! You're under orders from me, and you'll fly where I tell you!
This is no child's play, you fool. If they get me with what
papers--it'll be a firing squad for you if they catch you--don't forget
that! Damn you, don't you realize--"
"Sit down!" roared Johnny. "And shut up!"
"I won't shut up!" Cliff's eyes, as Johnny saw them facing the moon,
looked rather wild. "You're working for me, and I order you to take me
back to Schwab's. You better obey--it will go as hard with you as it
will with me if those planes get in their work. Why, you fool, they--"
"What the heck do I care about them? I'm working for a bigger man than
you are right now. Sit down!"
"Stop at Tia Juana then and let me out. But I warn you--"
"Shut up!"
"I will not! You'll do as I tell you, or I'll--"
"Now will you shut up?" Johnny swung his gun, a heavy, forty-four
caliber Colt, of the type beloved of the West. Its barrel came down
fairly on the top of Cliff's leathern helmet and all but cracked his
skull. Cliff shut up suddenly and completely, sliding limply down into
his seat.
"By gosh, you had it coming!" Johnny muttered as he settled back into
his seat. He had never knocked a man cold before, and his natural
soft-heartedness needed bracing. He had let Cliff rave as long as he
dared, dreading the alternative. But now that it was done he felt a
certain relief to have it over. He could turn his mind wholly to the
accomplishment of another feat which would take all his nerve.
That other thing had looked simple enough in contemplation, but the
actual doing of it presented complications. The simplicity of the plan
vanished with the sighting of those two scouting planes that persisted
in paralleling his course and herding him away from the line he fain
would cross.
Tia Juana with its flat-roofed adobes lay ahead of him now, its lights
twinkling like fallen stars. Away off to the right he could see the
blurred lights of San Diego and the phosphorescent gleam of the bay and
ocean beyond. Beautiful beyond words was the broad view he got, but
its beauty could only vaguely impress him then, though he might later
recall it wistfully.
He looked toward San Diego with longing; looked at the two planes that
hounded him, then gazed straight ahead at the ocean. Perhaps they
would not follow him beyond their station at North Island. They would
maybe circle and come back, watching for his return, or they might keep
to the shore line, flying north, and thinking to head him off when he
turned inland. At least, he reasoned, that is what he would do if he
were following an outlaw plane and saw it head out over the ocean,
straight for Honolulu.
So over Tia Juana he flew and made for the sea like a gull that has
flown too far from its nesting place. He watched and saw the two
planes spiraling upward, climbing to a higher altitude where it would
be easy to dart down at him if he swung north. They suspected that
trick, evidently, and were preparing to swoop and follow.
The beach, pale yellow in the moonlight, with a riffle of white at its
edge, slid beneath him. The ocean, heaving gently, rolled under, the
moon reflected from its depths.
Cliff sat slumped down in his seat, his head tilted upon one shoulder.
He had not moved nor made a sound, and his limp silence began to worry
Johnny. What if he had struck too hard, had killed the man? A little
tremor went over him, a prickling of the scalp. Killing Cliff had no
part in his plans, would be too horrid a mischance. He wished now that
he had left him alone, had let him bluster and threaten. Perhaps Cliff
would not have had presence of mind enough to do what Johnny had feared
he would do when he saw capture was inevitable: drop overboard what
papers he carried that would incriminate him with the United States
Federal officers. With empty pockets Cliff would be as free of
suspicion as Johnny himself--a mere passenger in a plane that had flown
too far south. He would then be fairly safe in assuming that Johnny
would never dare to cross the line with him under the eye of those who
watched from the sky. It had been the fear of that ruse that had
brought Johnny to the point of violence to Cliff's person, but he was
sorry now that he had not risked taking that chance.
Flying has its inconveniences, after all, for Johnny could not stop to
investigate the injury he had done to Cliff. He would have to go on,
now that he was started, but the thought that he might be flying with a
dead man chilled what enthusiasm he had felt for the adventure.
On over the ocean he flew until he had passed the three-mile limit
which he hazily believed would bar the planes of the government unless
they had express orders to follow him out. Looking back, he saw that
his hunters seemed content to wheel watchfully along the shore line,
and presently he banked around and flew north.
From the Mexican line to San Diego is not far--a matter of twenty miles
or so. Across the mouth of San Diego bay, on the inner shore of which
sits the town, North Island stretches itself like a huge alligator
lying with its back above water; a long, low, sandy expanse of
barrenness that leaves only a narrow inlet between its westernmost tip
and the long rocky finger of Point Loma.
Time was when North Island was given over to the gulls and long-billed
pelicans, and San Diego valued it chiefly as a natural bulkhead that
made the bay a placid harbor where the great combing rollers could not
ride. But other birds came; great, roaring, man-made birds, that rose
whirring from its barrenness and startled the gulls until they grew
accustomed to the sight and sound of them. Low houses grew in orderly
rows. More of the giant birds came. Nowadays the people of San Diego,
looking out across the bay, will sometimes look again to make sure
whether the sailing object they see is an airplane or only a gull. In
time the gull will flap its wings; the airplane never does. All
through the day the air is filled with them--gulls and airplanes
sharing amicably the island and the air above it.
Up from the south, with her nose pointed determinedly northward and her
rudder set steady as the tail of a frozen fish, the Thunder Bird came
humming defiantly, flying swift under the moon. Over San Diego bay,
watching through night-glasses the outlaw bird, the two scouting planes
dipped steeply toward their nesting place on North Island. Three
planes were up with students making practice flights and doing
acrobatics by moonlight. These saw one scout go down and land, saw the
other circle over the field and climb higher, bearing off toward the
mainland to see what the outlaw plane would do.
The Thunder Bird swung on over the island, banked and came back over
Point Loma, heading straight for the heart of the flying station. She
was past the finlike reef where the pelicans foregather, when the
searchlight brushed its white light over that way, seeking her like a
groping finger; found her and transfixed her sternly with its pitiless
glare.
There was no hiding from that piercing gaze, no possibility of
pretending that she was a government plane and flying lawfully there.
For straight across her middle, from wing-tip to wing-tip, still
blazoned THE THUNDER BIRD in letters as bold and black as Bland's brush
and a quart of carriage paint could make them.
She volplaned, flattened out a thousand feet or so above the island,
circled as the searchlight, losing her when she dipped, sought her
again with wide sweeping gestures of its accusing white finger.
Blinded by the glare, poor Johnny was banking to find a landing place
among that assemblage of tents, low-eaved barracks, hangars, shops--the
city built for the purpose of teaching men how to conquer the air.
Something spatted close beside him on the edge of the cockpit as he
wheeled and left a ragged hole in the leather. Johnny's brain
registered automatically the fact that he was being shot at. They
probably meant that as a hint that he was to clear out or come down,
one or the other. Well, if they'd take that darned searchlight out of
his eyes so he could see, he would come down fast enough.
In desperation he slanted down steeply toward an open space, and the
open space immediately showed a full border of lights, revealing itself
a landing field such as he had read of and dreamed of but had never
before seen. It shot up at him swiftly; too swiftly. He came down
hard. There was a jolt, a bounce and another jolt that jarred the
Thunder Bird from nose to tail.
After a dazed interval much briefer than it seemed, Johnny unstrapped
himself and climbed out unsteadily. He looked fearfully at Cliff, but
there was no sign of life there. Cliff's head had merely tilted from
the right shoulder to the left shoulder, and rested there.
Uniformed young men came trotting up from all sides. Two carried
rifles, and their browned faces wore a look of grim eagerness, like men
looking forward to a fight. Johnny pushed up his goggles and stared
around at them.
"Where's your captain or somebody that's in charge here? I want to see
the foreman of this outfit, and I want to see him quick," he demanded,
as the two armed young athletes hustled him between them. "Here, lay
off that grabbing stuff! Where do you get that? I ain't figuring on
any getaway. I'm merely bringing a man into camp that stacks up like a
spy or something like that. Better have a doctor come and take a look
at him; I had to land him on the bean with my six-gun, and he acts
kinda like he's hurt. He ain't moved since."
"Well, will you listen to that!" One of the foremost of the unarmed
group grinned. "This here must be Skyrider Jewel, boys, no mistake
about that--he's running true to form. 'Nother elopement--only this
time he's went and eloped with a spy, he claims."
"Here comes the leatherneck. You'll wish you hadn't of lit, Skyrider.
You'll be shot at sunrise for this, sure!"
"You know it! It's a firing squad for yours, allrighty!"
Johnny gave them a round-eyed, disgusted glare. "They can shoot and be
darned; but the boss has got to see Cliff Lowell and the papers he's
got on him, if I have to wade through the whole hunch of you! Do you
fellows think, for gosh sake, I just flew over here to give you guys a
treat? Why, good golly! You--"
"Here, you come along with me and do your talking to the commandant," a
gruff voice spoke at his shoulder.
"And let these gobblers fool around here and maybe lose the stuff this
man's got in his clothes! Oh-h, no! Bring him along, and I'll go.
I'd sure like a chance to talk to somebody that can show a few brains
on this job. That's what I came over here for. I didn't have to land,
recollect."
The petty officer gave an order or two. The guards fell in beside
Johnny with a military preciseness that impressed him to silence. From
somewhere near two men trotted up with a field stretcher, and upon it
Cliff was laid, still unconscious.
"You sure beaned him right," one of them observed, looking up at Johnny
with some admiration.
"Yes, and I'd like to bean the whole bunch of you the same way. You
fellows ain't making any hit with me at all," Johnny retorted uncivilly
as he left under guard for headquarters.
A few minutes later he was standing alone before a man whose clean-cut,
military bearing, to say nothing of the insignia of rank on his
uniform, awed Johnny to the point of calling him "sir" and of couching
his replies in his best, most grammatical English. The guards had been
curtly dismissed, for which he was grateful, and he had the
satisfaction of stating his case in private. Johnny did not want those
fellows out there to hear just how easily he had been fooled. They
seemed to know altogether too much about him as it was.
The commandant listened attentively to what John Ivan Jewel had to say.
John Ivan Jewel had nearly finished his story when he thought of
another phase of the affair, and one that had begun to worry him
considerably.
"I forgot to tell you about the money. I've got a good deal from them
since I started. They paid me on a sliding scale, beginning with
fifteen hundred dollars a week and ending with two thousand that Cliff
paid me this evening. I've got it all with me."
Prom his secret pocket Johnny drew all his wealth, counted off four
hundred dollars and handed the rest to his inquisitor.
"This four hundred dollars is my own, that I brought from Arizona," he
explained, flushing a little under the keen eyes of Captain Riley.
"This is honest money; the rest is what they paid me for flying back
and forth across the line."
The commandant turned the big roll of bank notes over, looking at it
quizzically.
"Who is really entitled to this money?" he asked Johnny crisply.
"Well, I--I don't know, sir. It's what they paid me for flying."
"And did you fly as agreed upon?"
"Yes, sir; I made trips back and forth whenever Cliff wanted me to.
That is, up to the time I lit out for here, so you could see for
yourself what he's up to. He ordered me to go back to Schwab's place,
but I wouldn't. I--I knocked him on the head and came on. But until
then I flew as agreed upon."
"Do you feel that you earned this money?"
"Well--taking everything into consideration--yes, sir, I do. I think
now I worked for them much cheaper than any other aviator would have
done.
"Yes. Well, you spoke of that four hundred being honest money, thus
differentiating it from this money. Don't you consider this is honest
money? What do you mean by honest?"
Johnny flushed unhappily. "Well, it's kinda hard to explain, but I
guess I meant that I wasn't doing the right thing when I was earning
that money you've got. I meant it wasn't clean money, the way I look
at it now. Because it was crooks I was working for, and I don't know
how they got it. I worked honestly for it, for them, but the work
wasn't honest with the government. It's kinda hard--"
"I think I'll just give you a receipt for this. How much is it?"
"There ought to be about seventy-two hundred there, all told, sir."
Captain Riley looked at him queerly and proceeded to count the
astounding wealth of John Ivan Jewel. Then he very matter-of-factly
wrote a receipt, which Johnny accepted with humility, not at all sure
of what the captain thought or intended.
"Now, tell me this. Is this young man---the one you brought in--is he
the only one you know who has been concerned in this--er--business?
"Yes, sir, on this side he is. Cliff spoke about his boss several
times, but he never told me who his boss was. An International News
Syndicate, he claimed. But I know now that was just a stall. I don't
think there was any such thing. There's a Mexican, Mateo, down where
we kept the plane--"
"Mateo--yes, we have Mateo." Captain Riley sat drumming his fingers
gently on the table, studying Johnny with his chin dropped a little so
that he looked up under his eyebrows, which grew long, unruly hairs
here and there.
Johnny's eyes rounded with surprise. He wanted to ask how they had
come to suspect Mateo when they had seemed so unsuspicious, but he let
it go.
"There's another one, named Schwab, over in Mexico where we always
went," he divulged. "He's the one Cliff got those papers
from--whatever they were. And he's the one that expects to get some
money in the morning. I heard that much. I--I could get him, too," he
added tentatively.
"Out of Mexico?" Captain Riley stirred slightly in the chair.
"Yes, sir. I'm pretty sure I could. I was planning to nab him, if
you'd let me."
"You mean you could bring him--as you brought this man Lowell?"
Johnny's lips tightened. "If I had to--yes, sir. I'd knock him on the
head same as I did Cliff. Only I wouldn't hit quite so hard next time."
Captain Riley bit his lip. "Better hit hard if you hit at all," he
advised. "That's a very good rule to remember. It applies to a great
many things."
Then he straightened his shoulders a bit and called his orderly, who
again impressed Johnny with his military preciseness when he stood at
attention and saluted. Captain Riley's whole manner seemed to stiffen
to that military preciseness, though Johnny had thought him stiff
enough before.
"Detain this man," he commanded crisply, "until further orders. If he
is hungry, feed him; and see that he has a decent place to sleep. The
petty officers' quarters will do."
He watched the perturbed John Ivan Jewel depart under guard, and his
eyes were not half so stern as his tone had been. Then he reached for
his desk 'phone and called up the repair shop.
"Run that Thunder Bird plane into the shop and repair it to-night," he
commanded. "You will probably need to shift motors, but preserve the
present appearance of the plane absolutely. It must be ready to fly at
sunrise."
Then, being all alone where he could afford to be just a human being,
he grinned to himself, "So-ome boy," he chuckled. "Hope he doesn't
lose any sleep to-night. So-ome boy."