pasture, and rode off to do in one day enough work to atone for the two
he had filched from the Rolling R. He covered a good deal of ground, so
far as that went. He rode to the very spot where fifteen Rolling R horses
had been driven through the fence and across the border, but since his
thoughts were given to the fine art of repairing a somewhat battered
airplane, he did not observe where the staples had been pulled from three
posts, the wires laid flat and weighted down with rocks, so that the
horses and several horsemen could pass, and the wires afterward fastened
in place with new staples. It is true that the signs were not glaring,
yet he might have noticed that the wires there were nailed too high on
the posts. And if he had noticed that, he could not have failed to see
where the old staples had been drawn and new ones substituted. The
significance of that would have pried Johnny's mind loose from even so
fascinating a subject as the amount of fabric and "dope" he would need to
buy, and what would be their probable cost, "laid down" in Agua Dulce,
which was the nearest railroad point.
As it was, he rode over tracks and traces and bits of sinister evidence
here and there, and because the fence did not lie flat on the ground, and
because many horses were scattered in the creek bottom and the draws and
dry arroyos, he returned to camp satisfied that all was well on the
Sinkhole range. He passed the cabin by and headed straight for his secret
hangar, gloated and touched and patted and planned until the shadows
crept in so thick he could not see, and then remembered how hungry he
was. He returned to the cabin, turned his tired horse loose in the
pasture, with Sandy standing disconsolately beside the wire gate, his
haltered head drooping in the dusk and his mind visioning heat and sand
and sweaty saddle blankets for the morrow.
Dark had painted out the opal tints of the afterglow. The desert lay
quiet, empty, lonesome under the first stars. Johnny's eyes strained to
see the ridge that held close his treasure. He had a nervous fear that
something might happen to it in the night, and he fought a desire to take
his blankets and sleep over there in that niche. Tomaso's brother knew
where it was, and the Mexican who had driven the mules that hauled it
there. What if they tried to steal it, or something?
That night, before he went to bed, he saddled Sandy and rode over to make
sure that the airplane was still there. He carried a lantern because he
feared the moon would not shine in where it was. It was there, just as he
had placed it, but Johnny could not convince himself that it was safe. He
had an uneasy feeling that thieves were abroad that night, and he stayed
on guard for an hour or more before he finally consoled himself with the
remembrance of the difficulties to be surmounted before even the most
persistent of thieves could despoil him.
After that he rode back to the cabin and studied his blue prints and his
typed lessons, and made a tentative list of the materials for repairs,
and hunted diligently through certain magazine advertisements, hoping to
find some firm to which he might logically address the order.
Obstacles loomed large in the path of research. The Instructions for
Repairing an Airplane (Lesson XVII) were vague as to costs and quantities
and such details, and Johnny's judgment and experience were even more
vague than the instructions. He gnawed all the rubber off his pencil
before he hit upon the happy expedient of sending a check for all he
could afford to spend for repairs, explaining just what damage had been
wrought to his plane, and casting himself upon the experience, honesty
and mercy of the supply house. Remained only the problem of discovering
the name and address of the firm to be so trusted, but that took him far
past midnight.
He was just finishing his somewhat lengthy letter of explanations and
directions and a passable diagram of the impertinent twist to the tail
of his machine. The moon was up, wallowing through a bank of clouds that
made weird shadows on the plain, sweeping across greasewood and sage and
barren sand like great, ungainly troops of horsemen; filling the arroyos
and the little, deep washes with inky blackness.
Up from one deep washout a close-gathered troop of shadows came thrusting
forward toward the lighter slope beyond. These did not travel in one
easterly direction as did those other scudding, wind-driven night
wraiths. They climbed straight across the wind to a bare level which they
crossed, then swerved to the north, dipped into a black hollow and
emerged, swinging back toward the south. A mile away a light twinkled
steadily--the light before which Johnny Jewel was bending his brown,
deeply cogitating head while he drew carefully the sketch of his new
airplane's tail, using the back of a steel table knife for a rule and
guessing at the general proportions.
"Midnight an' after--and he's still up and at it," chuckled one of the
dim shapes, waving an arm toward the light. "Must a took it into the
shack with 'm!"
Another one laughed rather loudly. Too loudly for a thief who did not
feel perfectly secure in his thieving.
"Betcher we c'ud taken his saddle hoss out the pen an' ride 'im off, and
he wouldn't miss 'im till he jest happened to look down and see where his
boots was wore through the bottom hoofin' it!" continued the speaker
contentedly. "Me, I wisht we c'd git hold of some of them bronks they're
bustin' now at the ranch. Tex was tellin' me they's shore some good
ones."
"What's the good of wishin'?" a man behind him growled. "We ain't doing
so worse."
"No--but broke hosses beats broomtails. Ain't no harm in wishin' they'd
turn loose and bust some for us; save us that much work."
The one who had laughed broke again into a high cackle. "What we'd oughta
do," he chortled, "is send 'em word to hereafter turn in lead ropes
with every hoss we take off 'n their hands. And by rights we'd oughta
_stip_-ilate that all hosses must be broke to lead. It ain't right--them
a gentlin' down everything that goes to army buyers, and us, here,
havin' to take what we can git. It ain't right!"
"The kid, he'll maybe help us out on that there. I wisht Sudden'd take a
notion to turn 'em all over to this-here sky-ridin' fool--"
And the "sky-ridin' fool," at that moment carefully reading his order
over the third time, honestly believed that he was watching over the
interests of the Rolling R, and was respected and would presently be
envied by all who heard his name. I wish he could have heard those
night-riders talking about him, jeering even at the Rolling R for
trusting him to guard their property. This chapter would have ended with
a glorious fight out there under the moon, because Johnny would not have
stopped to count noses before he started in on them.
But even though horse thieves are riding boldly and laughing as they
ride, you cannot expect the bullets to fly when honest men have not yet
discovered that they are being robbed. Johnny never dreamed that duty
called him out on the range that night. He went to bed with his brain a
whirligig in which airplanes revolved dizzily, and the marauders rode
unhindered to wherever they were going. Thus do dramatic possibilities go
to waste in real life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JOHNNY'S AMAZING RUN OF LUCK STILL HOLDS ITS PACE
On the shady side of the depot at Agua Dulce, Johnny sat himself down on
a truck whose iron parts were still hot from the sun that had lately
shone full upon it. With lips puckered into a soundless whistle, and
fingers that trembled a little with eagerness, he proceeded to unwrap one
of the parcels he had just taken from the express office. On another
truck that had stood longer in the shade, a young tramp in greasy
overalls and cap inhaled the last precious wisps of smoke from a
cigarette burned down to an inch of stub, and watched Johnny with a glum
kind of speculation. Johnny sensed his presence and the speculative
interest, and read the latter as the preparation for a "touch." And
Johnny was not feeling particularly charitable after having to pay a
seven-dollar C.O.D. besides the express charges. He showed all the
interest he felt in his packages and refused to encourage the hobo by so
much as a glance.
He examined the slender ribs, bending them and slipping them through his
fingers with the pleasurable feeling that he was inspecting and testing
as an expert would have done. He read the label on a tin of "dope,"
unwrapped a coil of wire cable and felt it, went at a parcel of
unbleached linen, found the end and held a corner up to the light and
squinted at it with his head perked sidewise.
Whereupon the hobo gave a limber twist of his lank body that inclined him
closer to Johnny. "Say, if it's any of my business, how much did Abe
Smith tax yuh for that linen?" His tone was languid, tinged with a
chronic resentment against circumstance.
Johnny turned a startled stare upon him, seemed on the point of telling
him that it was not any of his business, and with the next breath yielded
to his hunger for speech with a human being, however lowly, whose
intelligence was able to grasp so exalted a subject as aircraft.
"Dunno yet--I'll have to look it up on the bill," he said with a cheerful
indifference that implied long familiarity with such matters.
"Looks to me like some of the same lot he stung me with last fall, is why
I asked. Abe will sting you every time the clock ticks. Why don't yuh
send to the Pacific Supply Company? They're real people. Got better
stuff, and they'll treat you right whether you send or go yourself. Take
it from me, bo, when you trade with Abe Smith you want a cop along."
Johnny fingered the linen, his face gone sober. "I told him to send the
best he had in stock," he said.
"Well, maybe he done it, at that," the hobo conceded. "His stock's
rotten, that's all."
"I was looking the bunch over so I could shoot it back to him if it
wasn't all right," Johnny explained with dignity. "They sure can't work
off any punk stuff on me, not if I know it."
The hobo flipped his cigarette stub into the sand and stared out across
the depressing huddle of adobe huts and raw, double-roofed shacks that
comprised Agua Dulce. His pale eyes blinked at the glare, his mouth
drooped sourly at the corners.
"Believe me, bo, if you're stranded in _this_ hole with a busted plane,
yuh better not take on any contract of arguing with Abe Smith. He'll
stall yuh off till you forget how to fly." He turned his pale stare to
Johnny with a new interest. "You aren't making a transcontinental, are
you?"
"Well--n-no. Not yet, anyway. I--live here." You may not believe it, but
Johnny was beginning to feel apologetic--and before a hobo, of all men.
"The deuce you do!" The tramp hitched himself up on another vertebra
of his limp spine. "Why, I thought you were probably just making a
cross-country flight, and had a wreck. I was going to bone yuh for a
lift, in case you were alone. You _live_ here! Why, for cat's sake?"
"Gawd knows," said Johnny. Then added impulsively, "I don't expect to go
on living here always. I'm going to beat it, soon as I get my airplane
repaired, and--" He was on the point of saying, "when I learn to fly it."
But pride and his experience with the Rolling R boys checked him in time.
The hobo looked hungrily at the "makin's" Johnny was pulling from the
pocket of his shirt. "At that you're lucky," he said. "Having a plane
_to_ repair. Mine's junk, and I'm just outa the hospital myself. I was
a fool to ever go east, anyway. They are sure a cold proposition, believe
me. Long as you're lousy with money, and making pretty flights, you're
all right. But let bad luck hit yuh once--say, they don't know you any
more a-tall. I was doing fine on the Coast, too, but a fellow's never
satisfied with what he's got. The game looked bigger back East, and I
went. Now look at me! Bumming my way back when I planned to make a
record flight! Kicked off the train in this flyspeck on the desert;
nothing to eat since yesterday, not even a smoke left on me, nor the
price of one!" He accepted with a nod the tobacco and papers Johnny held
out to him, and proceeded languidly to roll a cigarette.
"Down to straight bumming--when I ought to be making my little old
thousand dollars a flight. Maybe you've kept in touch with things on the
Coast. I'm known there, well enough. Bland Halliday's my name. Here's my
pilot's license--about all them sharks didn't pry off me in the hospital!
I sure do wish I had of let well enough alone! But no, I had to go get
gay with myself and try and beat a sure thing."
Johnny was gazing reverently upon the pilot's license which he held in
his hand, and he did not hear the last two or three sentences of the
hobo's lament. He was busy breaking one of the ten commandments; the one
which says, "Thou shalt not covet." That he had never heard of Bland
Halliday did not disturb him, for in Arizona's wide spaces one does not
hear of all that goes on in the world. He was sufficiently impressed by
the license and what it implied, and he was thinking very fast. Here was
a man, down on his luck it is true, but a man who actually knew how to
fly; a fellow who spoke of Smith Brothers Supply Factory with the
contempt of familiarity; a fellow who had used some of the very same
linen.
Johnny Jewel forgot his pose of expert aviator. He forgot that Bland
Halliday was absolutely unknown to him and that his personality was not
altogether prepossessing. As a rule Johnny did not like pale eyes that
seemed always to wear a veiled, opaque look. Heretofore he had not liked
those new-fangled little mustaches which the Rolling R boys had dubbed
slipped eyebrows. And ordinarily he would have objected to a mouth drawn
at the corners in a permanent whine. To offset these objectionable
features there were the greasy, brown overalls and the cap which
certainly looked bird-mannish enough for any one, and there was the
pilot's license--no fake about that--and the fact that the fellow had
known all about Abe Smith and the linen.
Johnny threw away his cigarette and his caution together. "Say, I might
be able to take you to Los Angeles, all right--provided you will take a
hand on the little old boat and help me put her in shape again. It
oughtn't to take long, if we go right after it. I--er--to tell the truth,
it's hard to get hold of any one around here that knows anything about
it. Why, I had one fellow working for me, Mr. Halliday, and just for a
josh I asked him where the fuselage was. And he went hunting all over the
place and finally brought me a monkey wrench! He--"
"No brains--that's the main trouble with the game," commented Bland
Halliday, after he had exhaled a long, thin wreath of smoke which he
watched dreamily. "What you got?"
"Hunh? What kind of a plane? Why, it's a tractor. A military--"
"Unh-huh. Dual dep control, or have you monkeyed with it and--?"
"It's a regular military type tractor. It--well, it has been in
government service before--"
"You an army flier? Then what 'n hell you doing here? Say, put over
something I can take, bo. You don't look the part. Only for that stuff
you unwrapped, I'd tag you for a wild and woolly cowboy."
His tone was not flattering, and his very frank skepticism ill became a
tramp. But Johnny had plunged, and he swallowed his indignation and
explained with sufficient truth to be convincing. He even confessed that
he could not fly--yet. There was something pathetic in his eagerness and
his trustfulness, though Bland Halliday seemed to miss altogether the
pathos, in his greed for technical details of the damage to the plane,
and a crafty inquisitiveness as to distance and location.
He smoked another of Johnny's cigarettes, stared opaquely at the
sweltering little village and meditated, while Johnny wrapped his parcels
and tied them securely, and waited nervously for the decision.
"I wish I'd happened along before you sent for that stuff," Halliday
remarked at last, flicking Johnny's face with a glance. "I've got a dope
of my own that beats that, any way you take it--and don't cost a quarter
as much. And that linen--I sure would love to cram it down old Abe
Smith's gullet. Say! You got tacks and hammer, and varnish and brushes?
If you're away off from the railroad, as you say you are, all these
things must be laid in before we start work. And what about your oil and
gas? And how's the propeller? Does she show any crack anywhere? How far
is it, anyway? I'd like to look 'er over before I do anything about it.
From all I can see, you don't know what condition the motor's in. How far
is it, anyway? I might go and take a look."
"When you take a look," said Johnny, with a flash of his old spirit,
"it will be with your sleeves rolled up. If you think I'm running a
sight-seeing bus, you'd better tie a can to the thought. My time ain't my
own--yet. I can get by, this trip, because the bronk I'm riding needed
the exercise; or I can say he did, and it will get over. But I don't
expect to be riding in to the railroad every day or so. If I get another
chance in a month, I'll say I'm lucky."
"Well, I'd like to help you out all right. I can see where you're going
to need it, and need it bad. Tell you what I will do, providing it suits
you. I'll go over with you, and take a look at the plane. If it can be
repaired without shipping it into a shop, all right! I'll help you repair
it. You'll learn to fly, all right, on the way to the Coast. That is, if
you've got it in you.
"And the other side of it is, if the plane can't be repaired at your
camp, and you don't want to trust me to get it to a shop where I can
repair it, all right. You stake me to a ticket to Los Angeles and money
to eat on. It's going to be worth that to you, to know just what shape
your plane's in, and what it will cost to fix it. And without handing
myself any flowers, I'll say I'm as well qualified as anybody. I've built
fifteen of 'em, myself. I can tell you down to the last two-bit piece
what it's going to stand you to put her in shipshape condition, ready to
take the air. And believe me, old top, you can throw good money away
faster on an airplane than you can on a jamboree. I've tried both ways; I
know." He leaned back on the truck and clasped his hands around one bent
knee, as though, having stated his terms and his opinion, there remained
nothing further for him to say or to do about it.
Johnny looked at him dubiously, did some further rapid thinking, and went
to inquire of the station agent the price of a ticket to Los Angeles.
"All right, that goes," he said when he returned. "Come on and eat. We've
got to do some hustling to get back before sundown. You make out a list
of what we've got to have besides this--you said hammer and tacks--and
I'll see if the hardware store has got it. Lucky I brought an extra horse
along to pack this stuff on. You can ride him out."
"Ride a _horse? Me?_" the spine of the expert stiffened with horror, so
that he sat up straight.
"Sure, ride a horse. You. Think you were going out on the street car?"
Johnny's lips puckered. "Say, it won't prove fatal. He's a nice, gentle
horse. And," he added meaningly, "you'll learn to ride, all right, on the
way to camp. That is, if you've got it in you."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MARY V CONFRONTS JOHNNY
Johnny was in one of his hurry-up moods now. He had the material to
repair his plane, he had the aviator who could help him far, far better
than could his cold-blooded, printed instructions. Remained only the
small matter of annihilating time and distance so that the work could
start.
In his zeal Johnny nearly annihilated the aviator as well. He rode fast
for two reasons: He was in a great hurry to get back to camp, and he had
a long way to go: and the long-legged, half-broken bronk he was riding
was in a greater hurry than Johnny, and did not care how far he had to
go. So far as they two were concerned, the pace suited. But Sandy refused
to be left behind, and he also objected to a rider that rode soggily,
ka-lump, ka-lump, like a bag of meal tied to the horn with one saddle
string. Sandy pounded along with his ears laid flat against his skull,
for spite keeping to the roughest gait he knew, short of pitching. Bland
Halliday pounded along in the saddle, tears of pain in his opaque eyes,
caused by having bitten his tongue twice.
"For cat's sake, is this the only way of getting to your camp?" he
gasped, when Johnny and the bronk mercifully slowed to climb a steep
arroyo bank.
"Unless yuh fly," Johnny assured him happily, hugging the thought that,
however awkward he might be when he first essayed to fly, it would be
humanly impossible to surpass the awkwardness of Bland Halliday in the
saddle.
"Believe me, bo, we'll fly, then, if I have to _build_ a plane!" Halliday
let go the saddle horn just long enough to draw the back of his grimy
wrist across his perspiring face. "And I've heard folks claim they
_liked_ to ride on a horse!" he added perplexedly.
Johnny grinned and turned off the road to ride straight across the
country. It would be rough going for the aviator, but it would shorten
the journey ten or twelve miles, which meant a good deal to Johnny's
peace of mind.
He did not feel it necessary to inform his expert assistant that Sinkhole
Camp was accessible to wagons, carts, buckboards--automobiles, even, if
one was lucky in dodging rocks, and the tires held out. It had occurred
to him that it might be very good policy to make this a trip of
unpleasant memories for Bland Halliday. He would work on that plane with
more interest in the job. The alternative of a ticket and "eating money"
to Los Angeles had been altogether too easy, Johnny thought. There should
be certain obstacles placed between Sinkhole and the ticket.
So he placed them there with a thoroughness that lathered the horses,
tough as they were. Johnny Jewel knew his Arizona--let it go at that.
"Say, bo, do we have to ride down in there?" came a wail from behind
when Johnny's horse paused to choose the likeliest place to jump off a
three-foot rim of rock that fenced a deep gash.
"Yep--ride or fly. Why? This ain't bad," Johnny chirped, never looking
around.
"Honest to Pete, I'm ready to croak right now! I can loop and I can write
my initials in fire on a still night--but damned if I do a nose-dive with
nothing but a horse under me. He--his control's on the blink! He don't
balance to suit me. Aw, say! Lemme walk! Honest--"
"And get snake-bit?" Johnny glanced back and waved his hand airily just
as his horse went over like a cat jumping off a fence. "Come on! Let your
horse have his head. He'll make it."
"Me? I ain't got his head! Sa-ay, where's--" He trailed off into a
mumble, speaking always from the viewpoint of a flyer. Johnny, listening
while he led the way down a blind trail to the bottom, caught a word now
and then and decided that Bland Halliday must surely be what he claimed
to be, or he would choose different terms for his troubles. He would not,
for instance, be wondering all the while what would happen if Sandy did a
side-slip; nor would he have openly feared a "pancake" at the landing.
Johnny let the horses drink at a water hole, permitted the fellow five
minutes or so in which to make sure that he was alive and that aches did
not necessarily mean broken bones, and led the way on down that small
cañon and out across the level toward another gulch, heading straight for
Sinkhole much as a burdened ant goes through, over, or under whatever
lies in its path.
It was a very good way to reach home quickly, but it had one drawback
which Johnny could not possibly have foreseen. It brought him face to
face with Mary V without any chance at all of retreating unseen or making
a detour.
The three horses stopped, as range horses have a habit of doing when they
meet like that. The riders stared for a space. Then Bland Halliday turned
his attention to certain raw places on his person, trying to ease them by
putting all his weight on what he termed the foot-controls. Even a pretty
girl could not interest him very much just then, and Mary V, I must
confess, was not looking as pretty as she sometimes looked.
"Well, Johnny Jewel!" said Mary V disapprovingly. "_What_ have you
there?"
"Well, Mary V! _What_ are you doing here?" Johnny echoed promptly,
choosing to ignore her question.
"What is that to you, may I ask?" Mary V challenged him.
"What is the other to you, may I ask?" Johnny retorted.
Deadlocked, they looked at each other and tried not to let their eyes
smile.
"You're all over your cold, I see," said Mary V meaningly. "You didn't
come after all to ride with me last Sunday, although you promised to
come."
"Promised? I did? Well, what did you expect? Not me--I'll bet on it."
Johnny had been nearly caught, but he recovered himself in time, he
believed.