by B. M. Bower
Gloom at last plumbed the depths of Johnny’s soul, and showed him where grew the root of his unalterable determination to combat Mary V’s plan to have him at the ranch. Much as he loved Mary V he would hate going back to the dull routine of ranch life. (And after all, a youth like Johnny loves nothing quite so much as his air castles.) As a rider of bronks he was spoiled, he who had ridden triumphant the high air lanes. He had talked of paying his debt to Sudden, he had talked of his self-respect and his honesty and his pride—but above and beyond them all he was fighting to save his castle in the air. Debt or no debt, he could never go back to the Rolling R and be a rancher. Lying there under his airplane and staring up at the starred purple of the night he knew that he could not go back.
Yet he knew too that once he had sold his airplane he would be almost as helpless financially as Bland Halliday, unless he returned to the only trade he knew, the trade of riding bronks and performing the various other duties that would be his portion at the Rolling R.
Johnny pictured himself back at the Rolling R; pictured himself riding out with the boys at dawn after horses, or sweating in the corrals, spitting dust and profanity through long, hot hours. There was a lure, of course; a picturesque, intangible attraction that calls to the wild blood of youth. But not as calls this other life which he had tasted. There was no gainsaying the fact—ranch life had grown too tame, too stale for Johnny Jewel. And there was no gainsaying that other fact—that Mary V would have to reconcile herself to being an aviator’s wife, if she would mate with Johnny.
He went to sleep thinking bitterly that neither he nor Mary V need concern themselves at present over that point. It would be some time before the issue need be faced, judging from Johnny’s present prospects.
CHAPTER THREE
JOHNNY WOULD DO STUNTS
Bland woke him, just as day was coming. A new Bland, fresh shaven,—with Johnny’s razor,—and with a certain languid animation in his manner that was in sharp contrast to his extreme dejection of the night before.
“Thought I’d come out and see if you was going to make a flight this morning,” he said. “It’s a good morning for it, bo. How’s she working, these days? Old man at the ranch wouldn’t let me try her out after I’d fixed her up; said you was too sick to have the motor going. So I couldn’t be sure I’d made a good job of it. Give you any trouble?”
Johnny sat up and knuckled his eyes, his mouth wide open in a capital O. It seemed to him that Bland had his nerve, and he guessed shrewdly that the aviator was simply making sure of his breakfast. When cats come back they have a fashion of hanging around the kitchen, he remembered. Oh, well, there was nothing to be gained by being nasty and even Bland’s company was better than none.
“Hey, ain’t yuh awake yet? I asked yuh how the motor’s acting.”
“O—o—h, aw-righ!” yawned Johnny, blinking around for his boots. “I ain’t been flying much. Just flew over here from the ranch, and a little circle now and then when something come along that looked like money. I wanted to keep her in good shape in case the gover’ment—”
“Trying to sell it back to the gover’ment, huh? I coulda told yuh, bo, they wouldn’t take it as a gift. She’s a back number now—a has-been, from the gover’ment viewpoint. Why don’t you keep it? What yuh want to sell it for, f’r cat’s sake? She’s a gold mine if you know how to work it, bo—take it from me.”
“Well, I wish to thunder you’d show me the gold, then,” Johnny retorted crossly, pulling on his boots.
“Lend us a smoke, will yuh, old top? The money’s here, all right, if yuh just know how to get it out. And flying for the gover’ment ain’t the way. I’ll say a man’s got to be his own boss if he wants to pull down real money. Long as you’re workin’ for somebody else, he’s getting the velvet. You ain’t, believe me. And the gover’ment as a boss—”
“Well, good golly, come to the point!” snapped Johnny. “How can I make money with this plane?” He gave it a disgruntled look, and turned to Bland. “She’s a bird of a millionaire’s toy, if you ask me,” he said. “She’s a fiend for gas and oil, and every time you turn ’er around there’s some darned thing to be fixed or replaced. I’m about broke, trying to keep her up till I can sell out. It’s coffee and sinkers for you, old timer, if you’re going to eat on me. Another meal like you had last night, and we’ll both have to skip a few in order to buy gas to joy-ride some cheap sport that lets on he’s thinking of buying. I suppose your idea is—”
“F’r cat’s sake give me a chance to tell yuh! Course you’ll go broke trying to support the plane. You’re goin’ at it backwards. Make the plane support you. That’s my idea. And you do it by exhibition flying for money—not sailin’ around giving the whole damn country a free treat.
“I know—you think I’m a bum and all that; maybe you think I’m a crook, fer all I know. And you turn up your nose at anything I say. But lemme tell yuh, old top, I ain’t a D. and O. because I never made any money flyin’. It’s because I blowed what I made. And it’s because I made so damn’ much it went to my head and made a fool outa me. Listen here, bo: I bought me a Stutz outa what I earned flyin’ in one season—and I blowed money right and left and smashed the car and like to of broke my neck, and had to pay damages to the other feller that peeled my roll down to the size of a pencil. The point is, it took money to do them things, didn’t it? And I made it flyin’ my own plane. That’s what you want to soak into your system. I made big money flying. What I done with the money don’t need to worry you—you ain’t copyin’ me for morals.
“Now what you want to do is learn some stunts, first off. You learn to loop and tail-slide and the fallin’ leaf, and to write your name, and them things. It ain’t so hard—not for a guy like you that ain’t got sense enough to be afraid of nothing. The way you went off in that plane with the girl made my hair stand on end, and that’s no kiddin’, neither. If you’d had a fear germ in your system you wouldn’t ’a’ done that. But you done it, and got away with it, is the point. And you been gittin’ away with it right along—and you not knowin’ your motor any more’n I know ridin’ on a horse!”
“Aw, say! That’s goin’ too far,” protested Johnny, but Bland gave him no heed.
“You learn the stunts—early in the morning when there ain’t the hull town out to rubber—and then pull off an exhibition or two. Seventy-five dollars is the least you ever need to expect. Don’t go in the air for less. From that up—depends on how spectacular you are. The public loves to watch for the death fall. That’s what they pay to see—not hopin’ you get killed, but not wantin’ to miss seeing it in case yuh do. And with this the only airplane around here—why, say, bo, it’s a cinch!”
Johnny fanned the smoke away from his face and eyed Bland with lofty tolerance. “And where do you expect to come in? You needn’t kid yourself into hoping I’ll take you for a self-forgetful martyr person. What’s the little joker, Bland?”
Bland turned his pale, opaque stare upon Johnny for a minute. “Aw, for cat’s sake, gimme the doubt, bo! I’m human in more ways than tryin’ to see how much booze I kin lap up. It’s a chance I want to start fresh. This bumming around ain’t getting me anything. I’m sick of it. You gotta be learnt to do exhibition stuff, and I’m the guy that can learn yuh. You’ll want a mechanician to keep your motor in shape. I can make a motor, gimme the tools. You want somebody that knows the game to kinda manage things. You’re Skyrider Johnny, same as the boys at the ranch calls yuh. Yon gotta have a flunkey, ain’t yuh? I’m willin’ to be it. I’ll change my name, so nobody needs to know it’s Bland Halliday. Or you can gimme a share in the net profits, and I’ll keep the name and make it pull things our way. They’s no use talking, bo, I’ve got the goods! The name Bland Halliday is a trademark for flyin’—and never mind if it also stands for damfool. I’ll brace up and give yuh the best I got. Honest, that’s what I want—a chance to get on my feet agin. I’d ruther help you fly your plane than fly one of my own. I’d run amuck agin if I owned
anything I could raise money on.
“If you think I tried to do you dirt, back there in the desert, bo, you’re wrong. Ab-so-lutely. I thought you was fixing to double-cross me, and git away with the plane and leave me there. It got my goat—I’ll say it did—that desert stuff. So I hid the gas, so you couldn’t go off and leave me. But that’s behind us. You can give me a chance now to straighten up, and I can put you in the way to make big money. You think it over, bo. They’s no great hurry, and we can make a flight now and see how she stacks up. Be a sport—go fill up the tank and let’s go.”
Johnny ground the cigarette stub under his heel in the dirt, shrugged his shoulders with a fine imitation of perfect indifference, and yawned. He would think over Bland’s idea. He did not, of course, intend to fall for anything that did not look like good business, and he was not at all anxious to have Bland for a partner. Indeed, having Bland for a partner was about the last thing Johnny would ever expect himself to do. Still, there was no harm in letting Bland down easy. A flight or two, maybe, would give Johnny some good pointers. He had learned much from Bland, in a very short time, he admitted readily to himself. He could learn more, and he could let Bland go over the motor. By that time he would maybe have a buyer. If not, he would have time to decide about exhibition flying.
Johnny did not know that as he went after gas his step was springier than it had been for a long, long while. He did not know why it was that he whistled while he filled the torpedo-shaped tank—indeed, Johnny did not even know that he whistled, nor that it was the first time since he had worked over his plane down at Sinkhole Camp when all his dreams were bright, and bad luck had not knocked at his door. Yet he did whistle while he made ready for flight, and his eyes were big and round and eager, said he moved with the impatient energy of a youth going to his favorite game. These signs Mary V would have recognized immediately; Johnny did not know the signs existed.
Bland helped himself to a pair of new coveralls of Johnny’s and tinkered with the motor. Johnny went around the plane, testing cables and trying to conceal even from himself his new hope of keeping it.
“All right, bo,” Bland announced at last. “Kick the block away and let’s run her out. She sounds pretty fair—better than I expected.”
It pleased Johnny that Bland seemed to take it as a matter of course that he should occupy the front seat. The last time they had flown together, Bland had occupied it perforce, with Johnny and two guns behind him. After all, Johnny reflected, he would not have been so suspicious of Bland if Mary V had not influenced him. And every one knows that girls take notions with very little reason for the foundation. Bland was a bum, but the little cuss seemed to want to make good, and a man would be pretty poor stuff that wouldn’t help a fellow reform.
With that comfortable readjustment of his mental attitude toward the birdman, Johnny strapped himself in, pulled down his goggles while Bland eased in the motor. He saw Bland glance to right and left with the old vigilance. He felt the testing of controls, the unconscious tensing of nerves for the start. They raced down the calf pasture, nosed upward and went whirring away from a dwindling earth, straight toward the heart of the dawn.
It was like drinking of some heady wine that blurs one’s troubles and pushes them far down over the horizon. Johnny forgot that he had problems to solve or worries that nagged at him incessantly. He forgot that Mary V, away off there to the southwest, had probably cried herself to sleep the night before because he had disappointed her. He was flying up and away from all that. He was soaring free as a bird, and the rush of a strong, clean wind was in his face. The roar of the motor was a great, throbbing harmony in his ears. For a little while the world would hold nothing else.
They were climbing, climbing, writing an invisible spiral in the air. Bland half turned his head, and Johnny caught his meaning with telepathic keenness. They were going to loop, and Bland wanted him to yield the control and to watch closely how the thing was done.
They swooped like a hawk that has seen a meadow mouse amongst the grass. They climbed steeply, swung clean over, so that the earth was oddly slipping past far above their heads; swung down, flattened out and flew straight. It was glorious.
A second time Bland looped, and yet again. It was exactly as Johnny had known it would be. He who had flown so long in his day-dreaming, who had performed wonderful acrobatics in his imagination, felt the sensation old, accustomed, milder even than in his dreams.
Once more, and he did the loop himself, hardly conscious of Bland’s presence. Bland turned his head, signalling, and did a flop, righted, and was flying straight in the opposite direction. Again, and flew southeast by the sun. They practised that manoeuver again and again before Johnny felt fairly sure of himself, but once he did it he was one proud young man!
All this while the familiar landmarks were slipping behind them. Tucson was out of sight, had they thought to look for it. And all this while the sturdy motor was humming its song of force triumphant. Subsequently it stuttered faintly in expressing itself. Triumph was there, but it was not so joyously sure of itself. Bland glided, cocking an anxious ear to listen while he slowed the motor. It was there, the stutter—more pronounced than before; and once that pulsing power begins to flag a little and grow uncertain, there is but one thing to do.
They glided another ten miles or so before Bland picked a spot that looked safe for landing. They had one ill-chosen landing still vivid in their memory, and Johnny carried a long, white scar along the side of his head and a tenderness of the scalp to assist him in remembering.
Wherefore they came down circumspectly in a flat little field beside a flat little stream, with a huddle of flat dwellings drawn back shyly behind a thin group of willows. They came down gently, bouncing toward the willows as though they meant to drive up to the very doorway of the nearest hut. As they came on, their great wings out-spread rigidly, the propeller whirring at slackened speed, the motor sputtering unevenly, the doorway spewed forth three fat squaws and some naked papooses who fled shrieking into the brush behind the willows.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARY V TO THE RESCUE
Mary V Selmer was a young woman of quick impulses, a complete disdain for consequences as yet unseen, and a disposition to have her own way, to override obstacles man-made or sent by fate to thwart her desires. Ask any man on the Rolling R Ranch, where Mary V was born; they will bear witness that this is true.
Mary V had fired the first gun in the battle of wills. She had told Johnny Jewel that she would expect him to fly straight to the ranch—if Johnny loved her. Mary V did not mean to seem dictatorial; she merely wanted Johnny to come back to the Rolling R, and she took what seemed to her to be the surest means of bringing him. So, serenely sure of Johnny’s love, she had no misgivings when the sun went down and those wonderful, opal tints of the afterglow filled all the sky.
Johnny would be hungry, of course. She wheedled Bedelia, the cook, into letting her keep the veal roast hot in the oven of the gasoline range. She herself spread one of mommie’s cherished lunch cloths on Bedelia’s little square table in the kitchen alcove, where she and Johnny could be alone while he ate. She dipped generously into the newest preserves and filled a glass dish full for him. She raided the great refrigerator, closing her eyes to the morrow’s reckoning. Johnny would be hungry, Johnny was a sort of prodigal, and the fatted calf should be killed figuratively and the ring placed upon his finger.
She told her mommie and her dad that Johnny was coming, and that everything was all right, and Johnny would be sensible and settle down now, because he was not going to enlist after all. She kissed them both and flew back to the kitchen because she had thought of something else that Johnny would like to eat.
This, you must understand, was while Johnny was feeding Bland,—and himself,—in “Red’s Quick Lunch”, and worrying because Bland tactlessly chose such expensive fare as T-bone steak and French fried. She was out on the porch, watching the sky toward Tucson and looking rather wistful, while Jo
hnny was generously sorting out clothes for Bland and insisting upon the bath and the change before Bland should sleep in Johnny’s bed. Mary V, you will observe, had no telepathic sense at all.
She watched while dark came and brought its star canopy,—and did not bring Johnny. Long after she saw the rim of hills draw back into vague shadows, she remained on the porch and listened for the hum of the airplane speeding toward her. He would come, of course; he loved her.
Johnny did love her more than he had ever loved any one in his life, but a man’s love is not like a woman’s love, they say.
“He must have had some trouble with his motor,” Mary V observed optimistically to her sleepy parents, when their early bedtime arrived. “I’m going to leave the lights all on, so he’ll see where to land. It will be tremendously exciting to hear him come buzzing up in the dark. It’ll sound exactly like an air raid—only he won’t have any bombs to drop.”
“He’ll have himself to drop,” her mother tactlessly pointed out. “I guess he won’t do much flying around in the dark, Mary V. Not if he’s got sense enough to come in when it rains. You go to bed, and don’t be setting out there in the mosquitoes. They’re thick, tonight.”
“Well, for gracious sake, mom! It’s perfectly easy to fly at night. Over in France they always—”
“It’s the lightin’ I’m talking about,” her mother interrupted with that terrible logic that insists upon stating unpleasant truths, “And this ain’t France, Mary V. You go on to bed. I’m going to turn out the lights.”
“And have him bump right into the house? A person would think you wanted Johnny to smash himself all to pieces again! And it isn’t going to cost anything so terrible to leave the lights on for another little minute, mom! A few cents’ worth of gas will run the dynamo—”