riding a sweating bronk along a trail that wound more-or-less southward
across the desert. That was his body, chained by grim necessity to work
for a wage. He, Johnny Jewel's ego, was soaring up and up and up--up till
the eagles themselves gazed enviously after. He was darting in and out
among the convolutions of fluffy white clouds; was looping earthward in
great, invisible volutes; catching himself on the upward curve and
zigzagging away again, swimming ecstatically the high, clean air currents
which the poor, crawling, earthbound ones never know.
Johnny jarred back to earth and to the sordid realities of life. He had
ridden half way to Sinkhole without knowing it, and now his horse had
stopped, facing another horse whose rider was staring curiously at
Johnny. This was Pete, on his way in from Sinkhole.
"Say-y! Yuh snake-bit, or what?" Pete asked. "Ridin' glassy-eyed right
_at_ a feller! If my hawse had been a mite shorter, I expect you'd of
rode right on over me and never of saw me. What's bitin' yuh, Johnny?"
"Me? Nothing!" No daydreamer likes being pulled out of his dream by so
ugly a reality as Pete, and Johnny was petulant. "Why didn't you get outa
the way, then? You saw me coming, didn't you?"
"Me? Sure! I ain't _loco_. I seen yuh five mile back, about. I knowed it
was somebody from the ranch. Sudden 'phoned in and said I could drag it.
And you can bet yore sweet young life I hailed them words with joy! What
yuh done to 'im that he's sendin' yuh off down to Sinkhole? Me, I 'phoned
in and much as told 'em he'd have to double my pay if he wanted me to
stay down there any longer. That was a coupla days ago. Didn't git no
satisfaction atall till to-day. Me, I'd ruther go to jail, twicet over,
than stay here a week longer. Ain't saw a soul in two weeks down there.
Well, I'll be pushin' along. Adios--and here's hopin' you like it better
than what I done."
Johnny told him good-bye and straightway forgot him. Once he had his two
horses "lined out" in their shuffling little trail-trot that was their
natural gait, he picked up his dream where he had been interrupted. Where
his body went mattered little to Johnny Jewel, so long as he was left
alone with his thoughts. So presently his eyes were once more staring
vacantly at the dim trail, while in spirit he was soaring high and
swooping downward with the ease of a desert lark, while thousands
thrilled to watch his flight.
What did he care about Sinkhole Camp? Loneliness meant long,
uninterrupted hours in which to ride and read and dream of the great
things he meant some day to do.
CHAPTER FOUR
A THING THAT SETS LIKE A HAWK
Six days are not many when they are lived with companions and the
numberless details of one's everyday occupation. They may seem a month if
you pass them in jail, or in waiting for some great event,--or at
Sinkhole Camp, down near the Border.
Three days of the six Johnny spent in familiarizing himself with the two
or three detached horse herds that watered along the meager little stream
that sunk finally under a ledge and was seen no more in Arizona. He
counted the horses as best he could while they loitered at their watering
places, and he noticed where they fed habitually--also that they ranged
far and usually came in to water in the late afternoon or closer to dusk,
when the yellow-jackets that swarmed along the muddy banks of the stream
did not worry them so much, nor the flies that were a torment.
He reported by telephone to his employer, who seemed relieved to know
that everything was so quiet and untroubled down at that end of his
range. And once, quite inadvertently, he reported to Mary V; or was going
to, when he recognized a feminine note in the masculine gruffness that
spoke over the wire. And when she found he had discovered her:
"Oh, Johnny! I've thought of another verse!" she began animatedly.
Johnny hung up, and although the telephone rang twice after that he would
not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping
away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the
ranch, but now he thanked heaven, emphatically enough to make up for any
lack of sincerity, that he was where he was.
He got out his aviation circulars again and went over them one by one,
though he could almost repeat them with his eyes' shut. He tried to dream
of future greatness, but instead he could only feel depressed and
hopeless. It would take a long, long time to save enough money to learn
the game. And the earning was dreary work at best. The little adobe cabin
became straightway a squalid prison, the monotonous waste around him a
void that spread like a great, impassable gulf between himself and the
dreams he dreamed. He wished, fervently and profanely, that the greasers
would try to steal some horses, so that he could be doing something.
People thought the Border was a tumultuous belt of violence drawn from
Coast to Gulf, he meditated morosely. They ought to camp at Sinkhole for
awhile. Why, he could ride in an hour or two to Mexico--and see nothing
more than he could see from the door of his cabin. He wished he could see
something. A fight--anything that had action in it. But the revolution,
boiling intermittently over there, did not so much as float a wisp of
steam in his direction.
He wished that he had not "hung up" on Mary V before he had told her a
few things. He couldn't see why she didn't leave him alone. The Lord
knew he was willing to leave _her_ alone.
A few days more of that he had before he saw a living soul. Then a
Mexican youth came wandering in on a scrawny pony that seemed to have its
heart set on drinking the creek dry, before his rider could drink it all.
Johnny watched the boy lie down on the flat of his lean stomach with his
face to the sluggish stream, and drink as if he, too, were trying to
cheat the pony. Together they lifted their heads and looked at Johnny.
The Mexican boy smiled, white-toothed, while deep pools of eyes regarded
Johnny soberly.
"She's damn hot to-day, señor," he said. "Thank you for the so good water
to drink."
"That's all right. Help yourself," Johnny said languidly. "Had your
dinner?"
"Not this day. I'm come from Tucker Bly, his rancho. I ride to see if
horses feed quiet."
"Well, come in and eat. I cooked some peaches this morning."
The youth went eagerly, his somewhat stilted English easing off into a
mixture of good American slang and the Mexican dialect spoken by peons
and some a grade higher up the ladder. He was not more than seventeen,
and while Johnny recalled his instructions to put any greaser on the run,
he took the liberty of interpreting those instructions to please himself.
This kid was harmless enough. He talked the range gossip that proved to
Johnny's satisfaction that he was what he professed to be--a young rider
for Tucker Bly, who owned the "Forty-Seven" brand that ranged just east
of the Rolling R. Johnny had never seen this Tomaso--plain Tom, he called
him presently--but he knew Tucker Bly; and a few leading questions served
to set at rest any incipient suspicions Johnny may have had.
They were doing the same work, he and Tomaso. The only difference was
that Johnny camped alone, and Tomaso rode out from the Forty-Seven ranch
every day, taking whatever direction Tucker Bly might choose for him. But
the freemasonry of the range land held Johnny to the feeling that there
was a common bond between them, in spite of Tomaso's swarthy skin.
Besides, he was lonely. His tongue loosened while Tomaso ate and praised
Johnny's cookery with the innate flattery of his race.
"Wha's that pic'shur? What you call that thing?" Tomaso pointed a
slender, brown finger at a circular heading, whereon a pink aeroplane did
a "nose dive" toward the date line through voluted blue clouds.
"That? Say! Didn't you ever see a flying machine?" Johnny stared at him
pityingly.
Tomaso shook his head vaguely. "Me, I'm never saw one of them things. My
brother, he's tell me. He knows the spot where there's one fell down. My
brother, he says she's awful bad luck, them thing. This-a one, she's fell
'cross the line. She's set there like a big hawk, my brother says. Nobody
wants. She's bad luck."
"Bad luck nothing." Johnny's eyes had widened a bit. "What you mean, one
fell across the line? You don't mean--say what 'n thunder _do_ yuh mean?
Where's there a flying machine setting like a hawk?"
Tomaso waved a brown hand comprehensively from east to west.
"Somewhere--me, I dunno. My brother, he's know. He's saw it set there.
It's what them soldiers got lost. It's bad luck. Them soldiers most dead
when somebody find. They don't know where that thing is no more. They
don't want it no more. My brother, she's tol' me them soldiers flew like
birds and then they fell down. It's bad luck. My brother took one hammer
from that thing, and one pliers. Them hammer, she's take a nail off my
brother's thumb. And them pliers, she's lost right away."
Johnny's hand trembled when he tried to shake a little tobacco into a
cigarette paper. His lips, too, quivered slightly. But he laughed
unbelievingly.
"Your brother was kidding you, Tom. Nobody would go off and leave an
airplane setting in the desert. Those soldiers that got lost were away
over east of here. Three or four hundred miles. He was kidding you."
"No-o, my brother, she's saw that thing! She's hunt cattle what got
across, and she's saw that what them soldiers flew. Me, I _know_." He
looked at Johnny appraisingly, hesitated and leaned forward, impelled yet
not quite daring to give the proof.
"Well, what do you know?" Johnny returned the look steadfastly.
"You don't tell my brother--I--" He fumbled in his trousers pocket,
hesitated a little longer, and grew more trustful. "Them pliers--I'm
got."
He laid them on the table, and Johnny let his stool tilt forward abruptly
on its four legs. He took up the pliers, examined them with one eye
squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, weighed them in his hand,
bent to read the trade-mark. Then he looked at Tomaso. Those pliers may
or may not have come from the emergency kit of an airplane, but they
certainly were not of the kind or quality that ranchmen were in the habit
of owning. To Johnny they looked convincing. When he had an airplane of
his own, he would find a hundred uses for a pair of pliers exactly like
those.
"I thought you said your brother lost 'em," he observed drily.
Tomaso shrugged, flung out his hands, smiled with his lips, and frowned
with his eyes. "S'pose he did lost. Somebody could find."
Johnny laughed. "All right; we'll let it ride that way. I ain't going to
tell your brother. Want to sell 'em?"
Tomaso took up the pliers, caressed their bright steel with his long
fingers, nipped them open and shut.
"What you pay me?" he countered.
"Two bits."
Tomaso turned them over, gazed upon them fondly. He shook his head
regretfully. "_No quero._ Them pliers, she's _bueno_," he said. "You
could find more things. My brother, she's tell lots of things is where
that sets like a hawk. Lots of things. You don't tell my brother?"
"Sure not. I don't want the things anyway. And I don't know your
brother."
Tomaso thoughtfully nipped the pliers upon the oilcloth table cover. He
looked at the airplane picture, he looked at Johnny. He sighed.
"Me, I'm like see those thing fly like birds. I'm like see that what sets
over there. My brother, she's tell me it's so big like here to that water
hole. She's tell me some day it maybe flies. I go see it some day."
Johnny laughed. "You'll have some trip if you do. You take it from me,
Tom, I don't know your brother, but I know he was kiddin' you. It was
away over east of here that those fellows got lost."
After Tomaso had mounted reluctantly and ridden away, however, Johnny
discovered himself faced southward, staring off toward Mexico. It was
just a yarn, about that airplane over there. Of course there was nothing
in it--nothing whatever. He didn't believe for a minute that an airplane
was sitting like a hawk on the sands a few miles to the south of him. He
didn't believe it--but he pictured to himself just how it would look, and
he played a little with the idea. It was something new to think about,
and Johnny straightway built himself a dream around it.
Riding the ridges in the lesser heat of the early mornings, his physical
eyes looked out over the meager range, spying out the scattered horse
herds grazing afar, their backs just showing above the brush. Behind his
eyes his mind roved farther, visioning a military plane sitting, inert
but with potentialities that sent his mind dizzy, on the hot sand of
Mexico--so close that he could almost see the place where it sat.
This was splendid food for Johnny's imagination, for his ambitions even,
though it was not particularly good for the Rolling R. He was not
bothered much. Evenings, the foreman or Sudden would usually call him up
and ask him how things were. Johnny would say that everything was all
right, and had the stage driver made a mistake and left any of his mail
at the ranch? Because he had been to the mail box on the trail and there
was nothing there. The speaker at the ranch would assure him that nothing
had been left there for him, and the ceremony would be over.
Johnny was fussy about his mail. He had spent twenty-five dollars for a
correspondence course in aviation, and he wanted to begin studying. He
did not know how he could learn to fly by mail, but he was a trustful
youth in some ways--he left that for the school to solve for him.
Tomaso rode over again in a few days. This time he had a mysterious
looking kind of wrench in his pocket, and he showed it to Johnny with a
glimmer of triumph.
"Me, I'm saw that thing what flies. Only now it sets. It's got wheels in
front--little small wheels. Dos--two. My brother, he's show me. I'm find
thees wranch. It's got wings out, so." Tomaso spread his two arms. "Some
day, I'm think she's fly. When wind blows."
Johnny felt a little tremor go over him, but he managed to laugh. "All
right; you've been looking at the pictures. If you saw it, tell me about
it. What makes it go?"
Tomaso shook his head. "She don't go," he said. "She sets."
"All right. She sets, then. What on,--back of the wheels? You said two
wheels in front. What holds up the back?"
"One small, little leg like my arm," Tomaso answered unhesitatingly.
"Like my arm and my hand--so. Iron."
Johnny's eyes widened a trifle, but he would not yield. "Well, where do
men ride on it? On which wing?"
"Men don't," Tomaso contradicted solemnly. "Men sets down like in little,
small boat. Me, I'm set there. With wheel for drive like automobile.
With engine like automobile. My brother, she's try starting that engine.
She's don't go. Got no crank nowhere. She's got no gas. Me, I'm scare my
brother starts that engine. I'm jomp down like hell. I'm scare I maybe
would fly somewhere and fall down and keel. _No importa._ She's jus'
sets."
Johnny turned white around the mouth, but he shook his head. "Pretty
good, Tommy. But you better look out. If there's a flying machine over
there, it belongs to the government. You better leave it alone. There's
other folks know about it, and maybe watching it."
Tomaso shook his head violently. "_Por dios_, my brother she's fin' out
about that," he said. "She's don't tell nobody, only me. She's fin' out
them _hombres_ what ride that theeng, they go _loco_ for walking too much
in sand and don't get no water. Them _hombres_, they awful sick, they
don't know where is that thing what flies. My brother, she's fin' out
that thing sets in Mexico, belongs Mexico. Thees countree los'. Jus' like
ship what's los' on ocean, my brother she's tell from writing. My
brother, she's smart _hombre_. She's keep awful quiet, tell nobody. She's
theenk sell that thing for flying."
"Huh!" Johnny grunted. "What you telling me about it for? Your brother'd
skin yuh alive if he caught you blabbing it all out to me."
Tomaso looked a little scared and uneasy. He dropped his eyes and began
poking a hole in the sand with his toe. Then he looked up very candidly
into Johnny's face.
"Me, I'm awful lonesome," he explained. "I'm riding here and I'm see
you jus' like friend. You boy like me. You got picshurs them thing what
flies. You tell me you don't say nothing for my brother when I'm tell
you that things sets over there." He waved a dirty, brown hand to the
southward. "Me, I'm _trus'_ you. Tha's secret what I'm tell. You don't
tell no-_body_. You promise?"
"All right. I promise." Very gravely Johnny made the sign of the cross
over his heart.
Tomaso's eyes lightened at that. More gravely than Johnny he crossed
himself--forehead, lips, breast. He murmured a solemn oath in Spanish,
and afterwards put out his hand to shake, American fashion. All this
impressed Johnny more than had the detailed description of the thing
which sat.
If he still laughed at the story, his laugh was not particularly
convincing. Nor was his jibing tone when he called after Tomaso when that
youth was riding away:
"Tell your brother I might buy his flying machine--if he'll sell it
cheap!"
CHAPTER FIVE
DESERT GLIMPSES
Mary V was indefatigably pursuing a new and apparently fascinating
avocation, for which her mother expressed little sympathy, no enthusiasm
whatever, and a grudgingly given consent. Mary V was making a collection
of Desert Glimpses for educational purposes at her boarding school. She
had long been urged to do so by her schoolmates and teachers, she told
her mother, and now she was going to do it. It should be the very best,
most complete collection any one could possibly make within riding
distance of the Rolling R. Incidentally she meant to collect jackrabbit
ears and rattlesnake rattles, for the purpose of thrilling the girls, but
she did not tell her mother that. Neither did she tell her mother just
why her quest always lay to the southward when there was plenty of desert
to be glimpsed toward the north and to the east and the west. She did not
even tell herself why she did that.
So Mary V, knowing well the terrific heat she would have to face in the
middle of the day, ordered her horse saddled when the boys saddled their
own--which was about sunrise. She did not keep it standing more than half
an hour or so before she came out and mounted him. She was well equipped
for her enterprise. She carried a camera, three extra rolls of film, a
telescoped tripod which she tied under her right stirrup leather, a pair
of high-power Busch glasses (to glimpse with, probably), two duck-covered
canteens filled and dripping, a generous lunch of sandwiches and cake and
sour pickles, a box-magazine .22 rifle, a knife, a tube of cold cream
wrapped in a bit of cheesecloth, and a very compact yet very complete
vanity case. Jostling the vanity case in her saddle pocket were two boxes
of soft-nose, .22-long cartridges for the rifle. Furthermore, for special
personal protection she had an extremely businesslike six-shooter which
she carried in a shoulder holster under her riding shirt; a concession to
her father, who had made her promise never to ride away from the ranch
without it.
For apparel Mary V wore a checked riding coat and breeches, together with
black puttees. The suit had grown a bit shabby for Los Angeles, and Mary
V's mother believed that town cast-offs should be worn out on the ranch.
Mary V did not mind. She hated the cumbersome riding skirts of the range
girl proper, and much preferred the breeches. When she had put a little
distance between herself and the ranch, she usually removed the coat and
tied it in a roll behind the cantle. She looked then like a slim boy--or
she would have, except for the hat. Mary V cherished her complexion,
which Arizona sun and winds would have burned a brick red. In cool
weather she wore a Stetson like the boys; but now she favored a great,
straw sombrero such as you see section hands wear along the railroad
track in Arizona. To keep it on her head in the winds she had resorted to
tying a ribbon down over the brim from the front of the crown to the nape
of her neck; and tying another ribbon from the back of the crown down
under her chin. Thus doubly anchored, and skewered with two hatpins
besides, the hat might be counted upon to give Mary V no trouble, but a
great deal of protection. Worn with the checked riding breeches and the
heavy, black puttees, it was not particularly becoming, but Mary V did
not expect to meet many pairs of critical eyes. Rolling R boys were too
much like home folks to bother about, having been accustomed to seeing
Mary V in strange and various guises since she was a tiny tot.
Southward she rode, and as swiftly as was wise if she valued the
well-being of her horse. Movies will have it that nothing short of a
gallop is tolerated by riders in the West; whereas Mary V had been taught
from her childhood up that she must never "run" her horse unless there
was need of it. She therefore contented herself with ambling along the
trail at a distance-devouring trail-trot, slowing her horse to a walk on
the rising slopes and urging him a little with her spurred heels on the
levels. She did not let him lag--she could not, if she covered the
distance she had in her mind to cover.
Away over to the south--almost to Sinkhole Camp, in fact--was a ridge
that was climbable on horseback. Not every ridge in that country was,
and Mary V was not fond of walking in the sand on a hot day. The ridge
commanded a far view, and was said to be a metropolis among the snakes
that populated the region. Mary V had, very casually, mentioned to the
boys that some day she meant to get a good picture of a snake den. She
said "the girls" did not believe that snakes went in bunches and writhed
amicably together in their dens. She was going to prove it to them.
A perfectly logical quest it was therefore that led her toward that
ridge. You could not blame Mary V if the view from the top of it extended
to Sinkhole Camp and beyond. She had not made the view, remember, nor had
she advised the snakes to choose that ridge for their dens. She was not
even perfectly sure that they did choose it. The boys had told her that
Black Ridge was "full up" with snake dens, and she meant to see if they
told the truth.
Wherefore her horse Tango laboriously carried Mary V up the ridge and
kept his ears perked for the warning buzz of rattlers, and his eyes open
for a feasible line retreat in case he heard one. Tango knew just as well
as Mary V when they were in snake country. He had gone so far as to argue
the point of climbing that ridge, but as usual Mary V's argument was
stronger than Tango's, and he had yielded with an injured air that was
quite lost upon his rider. Mary V was thinking of something else.
They reached the top without having seen a single snake. Tango seemed
somewhat surprised at this, but Mary V was not. Mary V thought it was too
hot even for rattlesnakes, and as for the dearth of lizards--well she
supposed the snakes had eaten them all. She had let Tango stop often to
breathe, and whenever he did so she had looked south, scanning as much of
the lower level as she could see, which was not the proper way to go
about hunting snake dens, I assure you. But at the top she permitted
Tango to walk into the shade of a boulder that radiated heat like a stove
but was still preferable to the blistering sunlight, and there she left
him while she walked a little nearer the edge of the rimrock that topped
the ridge on its southern side.
Once more she scanned the sweltering expanse of sagebrush, scant grass,
many rock patches and much sand. She saw a rider moving along a shallow
watercourse, and immediately she focused her glasses upon him. She gave
an ejaculation of surprise when the powerful lenses annihilated nine
tenths of the distance between them. One would judge from her manner and
her tone that, while she had not been surprised to see a rider, that
rider's identity was wholly unexpected.
She watched him until, having reached a certain place where a group of
cottonwoods shaded the gully, he stopped and dismounted to fuss with his
cinches. Mary V could not be sure whether he was merely killing time, or
whether he really needed to tighten the saddle; but when another rider
appeared suddenly from the eastward, she did know that the first rider
showed no symptoms of surprise.