They seemed to be heading toward Sinkhole Camp, and Johnny signaled Bland
to keep off, and so avoid scaring the horses. But the slight detour cost
them precious feet of altitude while the nearest sandy stretch was yet
far off.
The earth was rising with incredible swiftness to meet them. The nearest
landing Johnny could think of was farther over, across Sinkhole Creek. He
did not believe they could make it, but he headed for it desperately, and
felt Bland yielding to his control.
Rocks, brush, furrowed ditches; rocks, brush. Ahead, they could see the
irregular patch of yellow that was sand. But the brush seemed fairly to
leap at them, the rocks grew malignantly larger while they looked, the
ditches deepened ominously. Over these the frail thing of cloth and
little strips of wood and wire and the delicate, dumb motor, skimmed
like a weary-winged bird. Bland flattened it out, coaxed it to keep the
air. Lower, lower--a high bush was flicked by a wheel in passing. On a
little farther, and yet a little.
She landed just at the edge of the goal. The loose sand dragged at the
wheels, flipped the plane on its nose so suddenly that Johnny never did
know just how it happened. Bland had feared that sand, and braced
himself. But Johnny did not know. His head had snapped forward against
the rim of the cowl--a terrible blow that sent him sagging inertly
against the strap that held him. Bland got out, took one look at Johnny,
and sank down weakly upon the sand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DREAMS AND DARKNESS
Johnny dreamed two separate dreams. The first dream was confused and
fragmentary. He seemed to hear certain sentences spoken while he was
whirling through space with the Milky Way flinging stars at him. As
nearly as he could remember afterwards, this is what he heard.
Mary V's voice: "Don't be so stupid! If a girl happens to bring in two
perfectly bandittish outlaws that imagine they are kidnaping her, why
must she be lectured, pray tell? If a man had done it--"
Mumble, mumble, and a buzzing in Johnny's head.
Bland's voice: "I don't know as I could tell. He could, if he should come
to. We got 'em headed this way--"
Bill's voice: "--and I seen him hittin' for the line and headed him
off--"
More mumbling.
Mary V's voice: "I can't see why he doesn't hurry! Why, for gracious
sake, must a person lie forever out in the sun when he's all smashed--"
Bland's voice: "--not as much as yuh might think, in all this brush.
I ain't gone over it yet--" (mumble) "--short circuit--" (mumble,
buzz-buzz) "went past me so close I could feel the wind--" (mumble) "--I
dunno. I've seen 'em hurt worse and get over it, and I've seen 'em die
when you'd think--"
After that it was all mumble and buzz, and then more stars, and blackness
and silence.
Piecing together the fragments, as Johnny could not do, here is the
interpretation.
The three riders whom Johnny had seen as the plane was dipping to its
final fall were Mary V, Tomaso, and Tomaso's brother. Mary V had gone
off to ride the country which Tex had said was too difficult for
her--"and it was _not_ too difficult for a person who had any brains or
any gumption and who did not lose all the sense a person had," etc. She
had gone some distance toward the southeast boundary, and Jake was
behaving like a perfect dear. She had seen a few horses, and they had all
run every which way when they got sight of her, so she was keeping right
along and planning to just gently urge them toward Sinkhole as she came
back.
Well, and on the way back she had seen the young Mexican riding along,
and he had looked perfectly harmless and innocent, and he had a rag tied
around his head besides, and kept putting his hand up, and wabbling in
the saddle exactly as though he was just about ready to fall off his
horse. And how, for gracious sake, was a person going to know he was
only pretending and not sick or hurt a speck, but merely taking a low and
mean advantage of a person's kindness of heart?
Well, and so she had let him come up to her, and he had asked her if she
had any water with her. And she had, and so she twisted around in the
saddle to untie the canteen, and Jake kept stepping around, so the young
Mexican just reached out and held Jake by the bridle while she got the
water--and how was a person to know that he was not trying to help but
was kidnaping a person's horse and herself in the most treacherous manner
ever heard of?
Just when she had got the canteen untied, and was unscrewing the cap to
give it to the boy, another Mexican rode up behind, and he had the most
insipid smile on his face, and a detestable way of trying to be polite.
And he said it was a nice horse she was riding, and he would like to show
that horse to his brother, if she would be so kind to come with him. It
would not be far, he said, and they would show her the way. And they went
on talking in the most detestable manner, and actually forced her to go
along with them. They had guns, and they said they would shoot her in a
perfectly polite way.
So Mary V had gone back with them toward the line fence, because the fat
one rode behind her with a gun and the boy had a gun, too, and they said
they would not tie her hands if she would be good, because there was a
swarm of gnats and little flies that kept pestering so, and she had to
brush them away from her face.
They kept down in hollows, and mostly they had to go single file, with
the boy in front and the detestable one behind. But after awhile they had
to climb over a ridge, and the horses were picking their own way, and the
horrid one got off to one side, where Mary V could see him out of the
corner of her eye. And he was not watching her very closely, and the gun
was not pointing at her as she naturally supposed it would be, from what
he said.
So Mary V very carefully turned in her heel, and watched her chance, and
gave Jake a kick in the ribs. And Jake did exactly as a person expected,
and gave a big jump against the horse of the boy. And the fat one did not
shoot after all, because he thought it was Jake that did it himself.
So Mary V, having reached into her riding shirt and got her gun, whirled
Jake around and took a shot at the fat one before he saw what she meant
to do. And she hit him in the hand where he was holding the gun across
the saddle horn, which was careless of him, but, of course, he never
_dreamed_ that Mary V had a gun and would use it.
So the gun dropped on the ground, and the man tried to grab his hand and
his side at the same time, because the bullet hit his side too. And then
Mary V got Jake down off his hind feet where he had stood with surprise,
and made the boy drop his gun. And they were there on the ground yet,
just where they dropped them, because Mary V thought they were safer
there than being picked up by any one present.
So that was all there was to it. The fat one was all wilted down in the
saddle, and their ponies were used to shooting and just stopped and stood
there thankful that they had an excuse, because the poor things were
terribly hot and sweaty and tired. And Mary V made the boy get off and
back up to her, which was some trouble on account of Jake and the gun she
had to hold ready to shoot, so she only had one hand for Jake, really.
And she was going to take the rag off his head to tie his hands the best
she could under the circumstances, but the boy would not do as she said,
but instead tried to run away and duck into the bushes. And that was how
the boy got shot in the leg. It seemed a pity to do it, still a person
couldn't surely be expected to tie outlaws and hold a gun and hold Jake
and everything, and not mess them up any. He seemed a kind of nice boy,
and his tricky ways were no doubt because he had not been raised
properly.
So she made him get on his horse, which was difficult on account of being
shot in the leg, and then it seemed cruel and unnecessary to tie him,
because they had both been sufficiently shot by her to know what they
might expect if they did it again. And that was how it happened that she
drove them both ahead of her without being tied or anything, as a person
would naturally expect outlaws and horse thieves and kidnapers would be.
But Mary V would like to know how, for gracious sake, a person could do
_everything_ right, with a horse to manage and a gun to hold, and only
two hands to their name?
What Bill had said was that he had kept an eye on Tex, because it looked
to him like Tex was at the bottom of the whole business. He had seen Tex
working away from the others, innocent as a hen turkey with a nest hid
out in the weeds. Bill had done some innocent kinda sidlin' off himself,
and he had seen Tex suddenly duck into a narrow wash and disappear.
Wherefore, knowing the country even better than did Tex, Bill had ducked
into another draw that would intercept Tex, if Tex was going where Bill
guessed he was aiming to go. Tex must have aimed that way, because Bill
got him and brought him back with his hands tied behind him and his gun
riding in Bill's holster, and with no bullet holes in his person such as
Mary V's captives carried.
Johnny did not know that the other boys had been signaled back with
shots, and that the prisoners had been turned over to them while Bill,
Bland, and Mary V stayed with Johnny and waited for Sudden to negotiate
that rough stretch of country with the Ford. That was what Mary V's voice
referred to when she couldn't see why he didn't hurry.
Between times, Bland told their side of the adventure, as far as Bland
understood it. He told of the horses they had scared back, and of the
horse thieves left afoot several miles across the line. He did not know
just where, however. He told of the rancho they had flown to that
morning, the rancho Johnny had discovered a short mile from where he
had got the plane in the first place.
The horses which they had turned loose from the field would probably make
their way back, Bill said. So would the last little bunch. But he would
send the boys down after them just as soon as they had put the three
prisoners away in the cabin with a guard until the sheriff could come and
get them. Which would be easy, Bill said. They'd telephone to the ranch
and have the message repeated on the town line.
Everything was easy, Bill said, except getting Skyrider to a doctor
quick, without shaking him up too much. And getting the flying machine
outa there--though he guessed mebby Skyrider wouldn't want no more flyin'
in his. He guessed mebby Skyrider would aim to keep one foot on solid
ground hereafter--if he didn't go clean under it. That shore was a bad
lookin' head he had on 'im.
Which brought forth questions from Mary V, and the somewhat qualified
comfort of Bland's experience.
Johnny's next dream was a nightmare of pain and jolting. He did not know
where he was, but it seemed to him that something kept pounding him on
the head; something very hot and very heavy--something he could not
escape because his head was being held in a vice of some sort. The pain
and the jolting seemed to have no relation to this steady beating. The
dream lasted a long, long while. And after that there was darkness and
silence.
That came when he had been put to bed at the Rolling R ranch house, in a
guest room that faced north. A doctor was there, waiting for them when
they arrived, because Sudden had telephoned him when he had finished
calling for the sheriff. The boys had told him soberly that Skyrider was
bad off, and that his whole head was smashed, and that the flyin' machine
was busted all to pieces. They didn't hardly think it would be worth
while getting a doctor to the ranch, because they didn't see how Skyrider
was goin' to last long enough for a doctor to git to work on him. It was
a damn shame. Skyrider was one fine boy--and did anybody know where his
folks lived?
But the doctor was sent for just the same, and he was ready to do what
could be done. It looked at first as though that was not much. Mary V had
kept cold cloths on Johnny's head during the whole drive, and the doctor
told her that she had made it a little more possible to pull the young
man through. He certainly had received a terrible blow, and--well, the
doctor refused to predict anything at all. Johnny was a strong-looking,
healthy young man--it took a lot to kill a youngster like that. He
advised a nurse, and gave the name of a young woman who was very good,
he said.
Sudden telephoned straightway for the nurse, and Mary V locked herself
into her room to cry about it.
The nurse came that night, and went briskly in and out of the guest room.
She wore her hair parted and slicked back from her face, and rubber
heels; and she smiled reassuringly whenever she saw Mary V or Mrs. Selmer
or any one else who looked anxious. And she never once failed to close
the door of the guest room gently but firmly behind her. Mary V hated
that nurse with a vindictiveness wholly out of proportion to the cause.
None of these things did Johnny know. Johnny lay quietly on his back with
a neat, white bandage around his head. His eyes were closed, his face was
placid with the inscrutable calm of death or deep unconsciousness. The
next day it was the same, and the day after that--except that his cheeks
began to hollow a little, and his eye sockets to deepen and darken.
And that pesky nurse wouldn't let Mary V stay in the room two minutes!
She just shooed her out with that encouraging smile of hers, that Mary V
wanted to slap. Did she think, for gracious sake, that Mary V was going
to murder Johnny? Mary V was just going to tell the doctor that she had
learned all about nursing, in her "Useful Knowledge" class at school. She
should think she was just exactly as well qualified to moisten that
bandage with whatever it was they put on it, and keep the flies out of
the room, and little things like that, as any old tow-headed nurse that
ever shook down a thermometer.
But when the doctor came he looked so sort of sober that Mary V was
afraid to ask him anything at all. She went out into the hammock on the
porch, where she could see the curtains flapping gently in the open
window of Johnny's room. And after awhile the doctor came out and looked
at her and smiled a little, and said, "Well, have we captured any more
bandits? By George, I'd hate to be one and run across you, young lady. I
had the honor of repairing the damage you did to 'em; and I will say, you
are so-ome bone smasher!"
Which was all very well--but what did Mary V care about the damage done
to those Mexicans? She looked at the open window with the flapping
curtains, and then she looked at the doctor. She did not ask a single
question, and I don't think she dreamed how wistful her eyes were.
"Well, our young aviator seems to be--holding on," the doctor observed
very, very casually, seeming not to see the question Mary V's eyes were
asking because her lips would not form it in words. "Better, on the
whole, than I expected."
"Then you think--"
"I think we won't worry about it until we have to. They're tough, these
young devils."
Mary V tried and tried to wring encouragement from the words, but it was
very hard, with Johnny lying like that and never moving.
They brought the airplane to the ranch, much as Johnny had brought it up
from "the burning sands of Mexico." Mary V went out to look at it, but it
seemed too terrible to think of how high Johnny's hopes had been, how he
had worshiped that thing--and what it had done to him. She went to her
ledge on the bluff, and sat there and cried heart-brokenly.
There it stood, reared up on its silly little wheels, with its broken
propeller still pointing straight up at the sky. Its tail was broken
too--and served it right for thrashing around like that in the brush.
She had not known her dad was having it brought in, until she saw them
coming with it. Little Curley had driven the team, and he had looked as
though he was driving a hearse. She did not even know what her dad was
going to do with it. He hadn't said a word to anybody, about anything. He
just went ahead as if taking care of Johnny and Johnny's airplane was
part of the regular work on the ranch. Even Bill did not appear to know,
nor Bland. Perhaps Sudden himself did not know. It seemed to Mary V that
the whole ranch was just waiting, minute by minute, for Johnny to open
his eyes, or stop breathing. The unbearable part of it was, no one said
anything much about it. They just waited.
The doctor came again, and he did not say anything at all to Mary V. He
stayed at the ranch all night, mostly in the room with Johnny. The next
day another doctor came, and the nurse went in and out of the room
sterilizing things and looking very mysterious and important--but always
with that intolerably reassuring smile. Mary V gritted her teeth every
time she saw that nurse.
They were going to operate, the nurse said, when Mary V simply could not
stand it another minute. She went and sat all curled up in the hammock,
not letting it swing, but just keeping very, very still, and listening.
There were voices in there mumbling sentences she could not catch. After
awhile a sickly odor came drifting through the window, and more muttering
between the two doctors. Sudden came wandering up, tiptoed to his chair
on the porch, and sat down rather heavily and twirled a cigar in his
fingers without lighting it. Mary V pulled a magazine toward her and
began turning the leaves idly, her lips pressed tight together, her ears
strained and listening still.
Ages passed. Twice Mary V placed her fingers over her lips to stifle an
impulse to scream. Then--
"We can't make it. Damn that brush," said a new voice--Johnny's
voice--quite clearly.
Mary V dropped the magazine and went and put her arms around her dad's
neck and pressed her face hard against his shoulder. Her dad held her
tight, and swallowed fast, and said never a word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JOHNNY'S DILEMMA
"Well, thank heavens she's gone! Perhaps a person can have a minute or
two of peace and comfort on this ranch now. I don't know when I have ever
disliked a person so much. I don't see how you stood her. For my part,
that creature would _make_ me sick, just having her around!" As a final
venting of her animosity, Mary V made faces at the car that carried the
nurse hack to town.
Johnny looked at Mary V, looked after the nurse, and looked at Mary V
again. He had thought the nurse a very nice nurse, with a quiet kind of
efficiency that soothed a fellow without any fuss or frills. It was queer
Mary V did not like her, but then--
"I know I've been a darned nuisance," he apologized so meekly that he did
not sound in the least like Johnny Jewel. "But I'm getting well fast.
I'll be able to beat it in a few days now."
"Why, for gracious sake? Haven't we--er--made you _comfortable_?"
"Sure, you have. Only you shouldn't have put yourselves out, this way.
I ought to have gone to a hospital or some place." Johnny looked so
distressed that Mary V could have cried. Only she was afraid that would
distress him still more, and the doctor had said he must not be worried
about anything.
"It wasn't any trouble. You are being absolutely silly, so I guess you
are getting well, all right. I--I didn't see any sense of having that
nurse in the first place. Because I can take temperature and count pulse
and everything. I've really been crazy for a chance to practice nursing
on somebody. And then when I had the chance, they wouldn't let me do a
thing."
Johnny grinned, which was rather pathetic--he was so thin and so white.
"Why didn't you practice on the greasers?" he taunted her. "Bill says you
sure made some dandy work for the hospitals."
"Well, I couldn't help that. I didn't have any way of tying them, or
anything, and--"
"Brag, girl! For Lord's sake don't apologize; it doesn't come natural to
you. What gets me is that I was ripping the atmosphere wide open, trying
to rescue you, and all the while you were making a whole sheriff's posse
of yourself--and it was you that rescued me. I should think--"
"I did not! I--did Bill tell you the latest, Johnny? You know how dad
is--about making people tell things he wants to know, and keeping them
right to the point--"
"I know." Johnny's tone was eloquent.
"Well, he got at those Mexicans, and they told everything they knew--and
some besides. And who do you think was the real leader of that gang,
Johnny? And I know now it was his voice that I couldn't quite recognize
over the 'phone. They've arrested him and two or three of his men, and
you wouldn't _believe_ a neighbor could be so tricky and mean as that
Tucker Bly. Stealing _our_ horses to sell to the Mexicans, if you please,
and selling his own to the government mostly--but some to the Mexicans,
too, I suppose. And nobody suspecting a thing all the while, and Tex in
with them and all. And if you hadn't stampeded the horses so they came
back to the line, and the boys rounded them up, dad would have lost a lot
more than he did. But now the whole thing is out, and really, if I hadn't
caught those two greasers, there wouldn't be any evidence against the
Tucker Bly outfit, or Tex either. And I just think it's awful, the way--"
She stopped abruptly. Johnny's bandaged head was leaning against the back
of his big chair, and his eyes were closed. His face looked whiter than
it had a few minutes ago. Mary V was scared. She should have known better
than to talk of those things.
"Shall--would you like a drink, or--or something?" she asked in a small,
contrite voice.
Johnny opened his eyes and looked at her.
"No, I don't want a drink; I just want somebody to give me another knock
on the head that will finish me." And before Mary V could think of
anything soothing to say, Johnny spoke again. "I think I'll go back and
lie down awhile. I--don't feel very good."
He would not let Mary V help him at all, but walked slowly, steadying
himself by the chairs, the wall, by anything solid within reach. He did
not look much like the very self-assured, healthy specimen of young
manhood whom Mary V could bully and tease and talk to without constraint.
She felt as though she scarcely knew this thin, pale young man with the
bandaged head and the somber eyes. He seemed so aloof, as though his
spirit walked alone in dark places where she could not follow.
After that she did not mention stolen horses, nor thieves, nor airplanes,
nor anything that could possibly lead his thoughts to those taboo
subjects. Under that heavy handicap conversation lagged. There seemed to
be so little that she dared mention! She would sit and prattle of school
and shows and such things, and tell him about the girls she knew; and
half the time she knew perfectly well that Johnny was not listening. But
she could not bear his moody silences, and he sat out on the porch a good
deal of the time, so she had to go on talking, whether she bored him to
death or not.
Then one day, when the bandage had dwindled to a small patch held in
place by strips of adhesive plaster, Johnny broke into her detailed
description of a silly Western picture she had seen.
"What's become of Bland?" he asked, just when she was describing a
thrilling scene.
"Bland? Oh, why--Bland's gone." Mary V was very innocent as to eyes and
voice, and very uneasy as to her mind.
"Gone where? He was broke. I didn't get a chance to pay him--"
"Oh, well, as to that--I suppose dad fixed him up with a ticket and so
on. And so this girl, Inez, overhears them plotting--"
"Where's your dad?"
"Dad? Why, dad's in Tucson, I believe, at the trial. What _makes_ you so
rude when I'm telling you the most thrill--"
"When's he coming back?"
"For gracious _sake_, Johnny! What do you want of dad all at once? Am I
not entertaining--"
"You are. As entertaining as a meadow lark. I love meadow larks, but I
never could put in all my time listening to 'em sing. I generally had
something else I had to do."
"Well, you've nothing else to do now, so listen to this meadow lark, will
you? Though I must say--"
"I'd like to, but I can't. There are things I've got to do."
"There are not! Not a single thing but be a nice boy and get well. And to
get well you must--"
"A lot you know about it--you, with nothing to worry you, any more than a
meadow lark. Not as much, because they do have to rustle their own
worms and watch out for hawks and things, and you--"
"I suppose you would imply that I have about as much brains as a meadow
lark, perhaps!" Mary V rose valiantly to the argument. If Johnny would
rather quarrel than talk about things that didn't interest either of them
a bit, why, a quarrel he should have.