that he was Mexican, and that was all. The two talked together with much
gesturing on the part of the Mexican, and sundry affirmative nods on the
part of the first rider. The Mexican frequently waved a hand toward the
south--toward Sinkhole Camp, perhaps. They seemed to be in a hurry, Mary
V thought. They did not tarry more than five minutes before they parted,
the Mexican riding back toward the east, the first rider returning
westward. He had come cautiously, at an easy pace. He went back riding
at a long lope, as though time was precious to him.
Mary V watched until she saw him emerge out of that hollow and duck into
another which led toward the northwest and, if he followed it, would
bring him out near the head of Dry Gulch, which was several miles nearer
the Rolling R home ranch than was the ridge where she stood. When he had
gone, she turned again to see where the Mexican was going. The Mexican,
she discovered, was going east as fast as his horse could carry him
without dropping dead in that heat; and he, also, was keeping to the
hollows.
"Here's a pretty howdy-do!" said Mary V to the palpitating atmosphere.
"I'm just going to tell dad about Tex sneaking away down here to meet
Mexicans and things on the sly! I never did like that Tex. I don't like
his eyes. You can't see into them at all. I'll bet they're framing up
something on Johnny Jewel--they were pointing right toward his camp.
There's no telling _what_ they're up to! I'm going right and tell dad--"
But she couldn't. Mary V knew she couldn't. In the first place, her dad
would ask her what she was doing on Black Ridge, which was far beyond her
permitted range of activities. Her dad would foolishly maintain that she
could glimpse all the desert necessary without going that far from the
ranch. In the second place, he would probably tell her that he was paying
Tex to ride the range and, if he met a Mexican, it was his business to
send that same Mexican back where he came from. In the third place, he
would think she was riding over there for a reason which was untrue and
very, very unjust. And he wouldn't fire Tex, because Tex was a good
"hand" and hands were hard to find. He would simply make her promise
to stay at home.
"He'd say it was perfectly all right for Tex--and perfectly all wrong for
me. Dad's _tremendously_ pin-headed where I am concerned. So I suppose
I'll just have to say nothing, and ride all that long way in the hot sun
to make sure that horrid Johnny Jewel is not being murdered or something.
It doesn't, of course, concern me personally at all--but dad is _so_
short-handed this summer. And he actually _threatened_ that he couldn't
afford me a new car this winter if wages go up or horses go down, or
anything happens that doesn't just please him. And I suppose Johnny Jewel
has his uses, in the general scheme of dad's business, so even if he is a
mean, conceited little shrimp personally, I'll have to go and make sure
he isn't killed, because it would be just like dad to call that bad luck,
and grouch around and not get me the car."
Mary V had barely reached this goal of personal unconcern for anything
but her own private interests, when Tango began to manifest certain
violent symptoms of having seen or heard something very disagreeable.
Mary V had to take some long, boyish steps in order to snatch his reins
before he bolted and left her afoot, which would have been a real
calamity. But she caught him, scolded him shrewishly and slapped his
cheek until he backed from her wall-eyed, and then she mounted him and
went clattering down off the ridge without having seen any snake dens at
all. Doubtless the boys had lied to her, as usual.
To Sinkhole Camp was a long way, much longer than it had looked from the
top of Black Ridge. Mary V, her face red with heat, hurried on and on,
wishing over and over that she had never started at all, but lacking the
resolution to turn back. Yet she was considered a very resolute young
woman by those who knew her most intimately.
Perversely she blamed Johnny Jewel for putting her to all this trouble
and discomfort, and for interrupting her in her work of getting Desert
Glimpses. She repeatedly told herself that he would not even have the
common human instinct to feel grateful toward her for riding away down
there to see if he were murdered.
She was right in that conjecture, at least. When she rode up to the
squat adobe cabin, somewhere near noon, she found Johnny Jewel stretched
morosely on his back, staring up at the low roof and thinking the
gloomiest thoughts which a lonesome young man of twenty-one or two may
conjure from a fit of the blues. That he was not murdered or even menaced
with any danger seemed to Mary V a personal grievance against herself
after that terrifically hot ride.
Johnny turned a gloomy glance upon her when she walked in and sat down
limply on the one chair in the cabin; but he did not show any keen
pleasure in her presence, nor any gratitude.
"Well! You're still alive, then!" she said rather crossly.
"I guess I am. Why?" Johnny, his meditations disturbed by her coming,
rose languidly and sat upon the side of his bunk, slouched forward with
his arms resting across his strong young legs and his glance inclined to
the floor.
"Oh, nothing." Mary V took off her hat, but she was too fagged to fan
herself with it. Her one emotion, at that moment, was an overwhelming
regret that she had come. If Johnny Jewel had the nerve to think that she
wanted to see _him_--
"You must love the sun," Johnny observed apathetically. "Lizards, even,
have got sense enough to stay in the shade such weather as this." He
rumpled his hair to let the faint breeze in to his scalp, and looked at
her. "You're red as a pickled beet at a picnic," he told her
ungraciously.
Mary V pulled together her lagging wits, marshaled her fighting forces,
and flaunted a war banner in the shape of a smile that was demure.
"Well, one must expect to make some sacrifices when one is working in a
good cause," she replied amiably, and paused.
"Yeh?" Johnny's eyes lost a little of their dullness. It is possible that
he recognized that war banner of hers. "One didn't expect to see one down
here--on a good cause."
"No? Well, you do see one, nevertheless. One is at work on an exhibit for
one's school, you see. Each of us girls was assigned a subject for
vacation work. Mine is 'Desert Glimpses'--a collection of pictures,
curios and so on, representing points of interest in the desert country.
I've a horned toad at home, and a blue-tailed lizard, and some pictures
of jack rabbits, with their ears attached to the frame, and quite a few
rattlesnake rattles. So to-day," she smiled again at him, "I rode down
here to take a picture of you!"
"Thanks," said Johnny, apparently unmoved. "I didn't know I was a point
of interest in your eyes; but seeing I am, I'm willing the girls should
have a picture of me framed. If you'll go out and sit in the shade of the
shack while I shave and doll up a little, you may take a picture. And
I'll autograph it for you. Five years from now," he went on complacently,
"you're going to brag about having it in your possession. One of those
I-knew-him-when kind of brags. And if you'll bring the girls around some
time when I'm pulling off an exhibition flight, I'll let 'em shake hands
with me."
"Well, of all the conceit!" By that one futile phrase Mary V owned
herself defeated in the first charge. "Of all--"
"Conceit? Nothing like that! When you thought it was a good cause to
ride all these miles on the hottest day of the year, just to get my
picture--" Johnny smirked at her in a perfectly maddening way. He knew it
was maddening to Mary V, for he had meant it to be so.
"I did not!" Mary V's face could not be any redder than the heat had made
it, but even so one could see the rise in her mental temperature.
"You said you did."
"Well--I merely want your picture to put with my collection of donkeys!
You--"
"You said points of interest," Johnny reminded her. He had lost all his
moroseness in the interest of the conversation. He had forgotten what a
tonic his word-battles with Mary V could furnish. "You better stick to
it, because it will sure pan out that way. You'll hate to admit, five
years from now, that you once took me for a donkey. Besides, you can't
have my ears to pin to the frame; I'll need 'em to listen to all the nice
things some _real_ girls will be saying to me when I've just made an
exhibition flight."
"Exhibition flight--of your imagination!" fleered Mary V, curling her lip
at him. "And I won't need your ears to prove you're a donkey, so don't
worry about that."
Johnny Jewel stood up, lifted his arms high above his head to stretch
his healthy young muscles, pulled his face all askew in a yawn, rumpled
his hair again and reached for his papers and tobacco. He knew that Mary
V never noticed or cared if a fellow smoked; she was too thoroughly
range-bred for that affectation.
"Good golly! Things must sure be dull at the ranch, if you had to ride
twenty miles on a day like this to pick a fight with me," he observed,
leisurely singling one leaf out of his book of papers. "Left your horse
to bake in the sun, too, I suppose, while you practice the art of
persiflage on me."
He finished rolling his cigarette, languidly helped himself to a match
from a box on the wide window ledge near him, and sauntered to the
door--with a slanting, downward glance at Mary V as he passed her. A
little smile lurked at the corners of his lips now that his face was not
visible to her. Mary V was studying her wrist watch as though it was
vital that she knew the time down to the last second. He judged that she
had no retort ready for him, so he picked up his hat and went out into
the glaring sunlight.
Tango was sweating patiently under the scant shelter of the eaves,
switching at flies and trying to doze. Johnny led him down to the creek
and gave him about half as much water as he wanted, then took him to the
corral and unsaddled him under the brush shed that sheltered his own
horse from the worst of the heat. Whatever her mood and whatever her
errand, he guessed shrewdly that Mary V would not be anxious to leave for
home until the midday fierceness of the heat was past; and even if she
were anxious, common sense and some mercy for her horse would restrain
her.
Johnny did not confess to himself that he was glad to see Mary V, but it
is a fact that his deep gloom had for some reason disappeared, and that
he even whistled under his breath while he untied her lunch and camera
and took them back with him to the cabin.
Mary V had been calmly inspecting his new Correspondence Course in the
Art of Flying, the first lessons of which had arrived at Johnny's mail
box a few days before. She seemed much amused, and she registered her
amusement in certain marginal notes as she read. At the top of the first
lesson she drew a fairly clever cartoon of Johnny in an airplane,
ascending to the star Venus. She made it appear that Johnny's hair stood
straight on end and his eyes goggled with fear, and she made Venus a
long-nosed, skinny, old-maid face with a wide, welcoming simper. Up in
a corner she placed the moon, with one eye closed and a twisted grin.
On the blank space at the end of the first lesson she wrote the
following--and could scarcely refrain from calling Johnny's attention to
it, she was so proud of it:
"Skyrider, Skyrider, where have you been?
I've been to see Venus, which made the moon grin.
Skyrider, Skyrider, what saw you there?
I saw old maid Venus a-dyeing her hair!"
Having through much industry accomplished all this while Johnny was
putting up her horse, Mary V slid the revised lesson out of sight under
other papers and was almost decently civil to Johnny when he returned.
She did not help him with dinner--which was served cold for obvious
reasons--but she divided her sandwiches and sour pickles with him in
return for a fried rabbit leg and a dish of stewed fruit. In the
intervals of their quarreling, which continued intermittently all the
while she was there, Mary V quizzed him about his ambition to fly. Did
he really intend to learn "the game"? Had he ever been up in a flying
machine? It seemed that Johnny had made two ecstatic trips into the
air--for a price--at the San Francisco Fair the fall before, and that his
imagination had never quite felt solid ground under it since! Where--or
how--could he learn?
If she were secretly trying to inveigle Johnny into showing her his new
Correspondence Course, so that she might be a gleeful witness when he
discovered her additions and revisions, she must have been a greatly
disappointed young woman. For Johnny that day demonstrated how well he
could keep a secret. He warmed to her apparent interest in his chosen
profession, but he did not once hint at the lessons, and kept rigidly to
generalities.
Mary V mentally called him sly and deceitful, and started another quarrel
over nothing. While this particular battle was raging, there came an
interruption which Mary V first considered sinister, then peculiar, and
at last, after much cogitation, extremely suspicious and a further
evidence of Johnny's slyness.
A Mexican rode up to the doorway, coming from the east. Not Tomaso,
who would have convinced even Mary V of his harmlessness, but a
broad-shouldered, square-faced man with squinty eyes, a constant smile,
and only a slight accent.
Johnny went to the door, plainly hesitating over the common little
courtesy of inviting him in. The man dismounted, announced that he was
Tomaso's brother, and then caught sight of Mary V inside and staring out
at him curiously.
His manner changed a little. Even Mary V could see that. He stopped where
he was, squinting into the cabin, smiling still.
"I come to borrow one, two matches, señor, if you have to spare," he said
glibly. "Me, I'm riding past this way, and stop for my horse to drink.
She's awful hot to-day--yes?"
Johnny gave him the matches, made what replies were needful, and stood in
the doorway watching the fellow ride to the creek and afterwards proceed
to eliminate himself from the landscape. Mary V leaned sidewise so that
she too could watch him from where she sat at the table. She was sure,
when she saw him ride off, that he was the same man who had met Tex away
back there in the arroyo.
She watched Johnny, wondering if he knew the man, or knew what was his
real reason for coming. Whatever his real reason was, he had gone off
without stating it, and Mary V believed that he had gone because she was
there. She wished she knew why he had come, but she would not ask Johnny.
She merely watched him covertly.
Johnny had turned thoughtful. He did not even see that Mary V was
watching him, he was so busy wishing that she had not come at all, or
that she had gone before this man rode up. Inwardly Johnny was all
a-quiver with excitement. He believed that he knew why Tomaso's brother
had come.
CHAPTER SIX
SALVAGE
The brother of Tomaso came back. Mary V, cannily watching the wide waste
behind her as she rode homeward, saw him and made sure of him through her
glasses. The brother of Tomaso seemed to be in a hurry, and he seemed to
have been waiting in some convenient covert until she had left. His horse
was trotting too nimbly through the sage to have come far at that pace.
Mary V could tell a tired horse as far as she could tell that it was a
horse.
She did not turn back, for the simple reason that she knew very well her
mother would have all the boys out hunting her if she failed to reach
home by sundown. That would have meant deep humiliation for Mary V and
a curtailment of future freedom. So she put up her glasses and went her
way, talking to herself by way of comforting her thwarted curiosity, and
accusing Johnny Jewel of all sorts of intrigues; and never dreaming the
truth, of course.
"Me, I'm willing to sell, all right. What you pay me?" Tomaso's brother
was sitting in Johnny's doorway where he could watch the trail, and he
was smoking a cigarette made with Johnny's tobacco.
"She's no good to nobody, setting there in the sand, but she's all right,
you bet, for fly. Them fellers, they get lost, I think. They get away off
there, and no gas to fly back. No place to buy none, you bet." He grinned
sardonically up at Johnny who was leaning against the adobe wall. "They
get the big scare, you bet. They take all the water, and they walk and
walk, drink the water and walk and walk and walk--loco, that's what.
Don't know where they go, don't know where they come from, don't know
nothin' no more atall. So that flyin' machine, that's lost. Me, I find
out. It don't belong to nobody no more only just the feller that finds.
Me, I take you there, I show you. You see I'm telling the truth, all
right. You pay me half. I help you drag it over here to your camp, all
right. You pay me other half. That's right way to fix him--yes?"
"Sounds fair enough, far as that goes." Johnny's voice had the huskiness
of suppressed excitement. The cigarette he was studying so critically
quivered in his fingers like a twig in the wind. "But the thing must
belong to _somebody_."
"No, I'm find out from lawyer. Only I'm say maybe it's automobile. Cos'
me fi' dollar, which is hold-up, you bet. Some day I get even that fi'
dollar. That flyin' machine goes into Mexico, that's los' by law.
Sal--what you call--oh!" He snapped his fingers as men do when trying
to recall a word. "She cos' me fi' dollar, that word! Jus' minute--it's
like wreck on ocean, that is left and somebody brings it--"
"Salvage?" Johnny jerked the word out abruptly.
"That's him! Salvage. Belongs anybody that finds. Mexico, she's foreign
countree. She could take; it's hers if she want. But what she wants?
Nobody can make it go. No Mexicans can fly, you bet. Me, I don't know
damn t'ing about flyin' nothin' but monee. Monee, I make it fly, yes." He
chuckled at his little joke, but Johnny did not even hear it.
Johnny was seeing a real, military airplane in his possession, cached
away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole--a wall that
featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing--what
wonderful things was Johnny not seeing?
"Like them buried treasure," Tomaso's brother went on purring comfortably
to Johnny's doubts. "The _hombre_ what finds, it belongs to him, you
bet. What you say? You pay me--" The eyes of Tomaso's brother dwelt
calculatingly upon Johnny's half-averted face. "You pay me fifty dollar
when I show you I don't lie. I help you drag him back home, you--"
"Nothing doing." Johnny pulled himself from his dreams to bargain for his
heart's desire--because he knew Mexicans. "I ain't sure I want the thing,
anyway. It's probably broke, and it takes _money_ to fix a busted plane,
let me tell you. And there might be complications; and besides, I've got
to ride this range. I can't go rambling around all over Mexico hunting an
airplane that probably wouldn't be any good when I found it."
Tomaso's brother rose from the doorsill to gesticulate while he argued
those points and others which Johnny thought of later. It was a beautiful
flying machine. By every object impressive enough to make oath upon,
Tomaso's brother swore that it was as he said. Look! Not one peso would
he accept until Johnny had seen. And the range? Would it run off in two
days, perhaps? Look, then! Tomaso's brother would make the bet. He would
agree. They would go for the airship, and they would return with it, and
of the fifty pesos that was the full price he asked, not one centavo
would he accept until the señor had seen that all was as he had left it.
Look! That very night they would go, and by noon to-morrow they would be
there. And under the great wings would they rest. And they would return
in two more days--such a little while it would take--
Johnny's jaw lengthened. Making due allowance for the lying tongue of
Tomaso's brother, it would take a week to get the thing home. And that
would mean that Johnny would have no job when he returned; which would
mean that he would have no fifty dollars a month coming in; which would
mean that he would be broke and would have to hunt another job. And you
couldn't pack a government airplane around under your arm. Not once did
it occur to Johnny that he might sell it for more money than he had ever
possessed in his life, for more than what a full course in aviation would
cost him. As his own precious plane he saw it. His to keep. His to fly,
his to worship--but never to sell.
He looked away to the southward where the land stretched gray and dreary
to the low skyline broken here and there with the pale outline of distant
hills. A night and half a day of riding to take them there, and an
airplane to haul back through brush and rocks, maybe, and across draws
and gulches--Good Lord! The thing might almost as well be in Honolulu!
"But the desert places--me, I'm making the plan how it can be brought
across the sand, with little brush to cut away." Tomaso's brother began
arguing away his unspoken fears. "We fix that, you bet! Two days, that's
all. You got strong, good fence; horses, they don't go away in such
little time, you bet!"
Johnny stood irresolute, tempted, weakly trying to beat back the
temptation while he hugged it to his soul.
"Why don't you--" Johnny was on the point of asking Tomaso's brother why
he didn't sell it to the government, but he shut his teeth on the words.
Tomaso's brother evidently had not thought of that; and why put the idea
into his head? "Why don't you and Tomaso go after it and bring it here?
Then if it's all right, I might buy it--for fifty dollars. I can give you
a check on the Arizona State Bank in Tucson."
Tomaso's brother shrugged his shoulders in true Mexican eloquence. "That
puts me all the troubles for notheeng, maybe. Maybe you say she's no
good--what I'm going to do? Not drag it back for notheeng? Not leave her
set here for notheeng." He shrugged again with an air of finality that
sent a shiver over Johnny's nerves. "Twenty-fi' dollar when you look at
her and say she's all right. Twenty-fi' dollar when she's here. That
suits me. It don't suit you, _no importa_."
It did matter, though. It mattered a great deal to Johnny, hard as he
tried to hide the fact.
"Well, I'll think about it. I'd have to ride fence first, anyway, and
make sure everything's all right. And you'd have to tell Tomaso to drift
over this way and kinda keep an eye out. I--you come back to-morrow. If
I take the offer at all, which I ain't sure of, we can start to-morrow
night. But I'm not making any promises. It's a gamble; I've got to
think it over first."
In that way did Johnny invite temptation to tarry with him and wax
stronger while it fed on his resistance, while thinking that he was being
very firm and businesslike and cautious, and that he was in no danger
whatever of yielding unless his reason thoroughly approved.
His manner of thinking it over calmly was rather pathetic. It consisted
of building anew his air castle, and in riding out to the forbidden lava
ridge that rose like a wall out of the sandy plain west of Sinkhole to
choose the niche which might best be converted into a secret hangar.
Since first he heard of the derelict airplane, his mind had several times
strayed toward those deep clefts, but his feet had heretofore refrained
from following his thoughts.
Niches there were many, but they were too prone to yawn wide-mouthed at
the world so that whatever treasure they might have contained would be
revealed to any chance passer-by. These Johnny disdained without a second
glance. Others he investigated by riding in a little way, sending a
glance around and riding out again.
Just before dusk, as he was returning disappointedly after looking as far
as was practicable, his horse Sandy swung into one of the open-mouthed
depressions of his own accord. Probably he had become convinced that they
were hunting stock, and that every niche must be entered. (Range horses
are quick to form opinions of that sort and to act upon them.) Johnny was
dreaming along, and let Sandy go back toward the wall, but Sandy, poking
along with his head bobbing contentedly at the end of his long neck,
swerved to the right, into a nature-built ell that had a fine-sifted sand
floor, walls that converged toward the top, and an entrance which no one
would suspect, surely, since Johnny himself had passed it by not half an
hour before.
Johnny did not say a word. He sat there and gazed, a little awed by the
discovery, thrilled with the feeling that this place had been planned
especially for him; that Nature had built it and kept it until he needed
it--in other words, that luck was with him and that it would be madness
to go against his luck.