by B. M. Bower
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 ona truck whose iron parts were still hot from the sun that had latelyshone full upon it. With lips puckered into a soundless whistle, andfingers that trembled a little with eagerness, he proceeded to unwrap oneof the parcels he had just taken from the express office. On anothertruck that had stood longer in the shade, a young tramp in greasyoveralls and cap inhaled the last precious wisps of smoke from acigarette burned down to an inch of stub, and watched Johnny with a glumkind of speculation. Johnny sensed his presence and the speculativeinterest, and read the latter as the preparation for a "touch." AndJohnny was not feeling particularly charitable after having to pay aseven-dollar C.O.D. besides the express charges. He showed all theinterest he felt in his packages and refused to encourage the hobo by somuch as a glance.
He examined the slender ribs, bending them and slipping them through hisfingers with the pleasurable feeling that he was inspecting and testingas 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 ofunbleached linen, found the end and held a corner up to the light andsquinted at it with his head perked sidewise.
Whereupon the hobo gave a limber twist of his lank body that inclined himcloser to Johnny. "Say, if it's any of my business, how much did AbeSmith tax yuh for that linen?" His tone was languid, tinged with achronic resentment against circumstance.
Johnny turned a startled stare upon him, seemed on the point of tellinghim that it was not any of his business, and with the next breath yieldedto his hunger for speech with a human being, however lowly, whoseintelligence 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 cheerfulindifference that implied long familiarity with such matters.
"Looks to me like some of the same lot he stung me with last fall, is whyI asked. Abe will sting you every time the clock ticks. Why don't yuhsend to the Pacific Supply Company? They're real people. Got betterstuff, and they'll treat you right whether you send or go yourself. Takeit 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 thebest he had in stock," he said.
"Well, maybe he done it, at that," the hobo conceded. "His stock'srotten, that's all."
"I was looking the bunch over so I could shoot it back to him if itwasn't all right," Johnny explained with dignity. "They sure can't workoff any punk stuff on me, not if I know it."
The hobo flipped his cigarette stub into the sand and stared out acrossthe depressing huddle of adobe huts and raw, double-roofed shacks thatcomprised Agua Dulce. His pale eyes blinked at the glare, his mouthdrooped 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'llstall yuh off till you forget how to fly." He turned his pale stare toJohnny with a new interest. "You aren't making a transcontinental, areyou?"
"Well--n-no. Not yet, anyway. I--live here." You may not believe it, butJohnny was beginning to feel apologetic--and before a hobo, of all men.
"The deuce you do!" The tramp hitched himself up on another vertebraof his limp spine. "Why, I thought you were probably just making across-country flight, and had a wreck. I was going to bone yuh for alift, 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 goon living here always. I'm going to beat it, soon as I get my airplanerepaired, 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 thepocket 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 wasa fool to ever go east, anyway. They are sure a cold proposition, believeme. Long as you're lousy with money, and making pretty flights, you'reall right. But let bad luck hit yuh once--say, they don't know you anymore a-tall. I was doing fine on the Coast, too, but a fellow's neversatisfied with what he's got. The game looked bigger back East, and Iwent. Now look at me! Bumming my way back when I planned to make arecord flight! Kicked off the train in this flyspeck on the desert;nothing to eat since yesterday, not even a smoke left on me, nor theprice of one!" He accepted with a nod the tobacco and papers Johnny heldout to him, and proceeded languidly to roll a cigarette.
"Down to straight bumming--when I ought to be making my little oldthousand dollars a flight. Maybe you've kept in touch with things on theCoast. I'm known there, well enough. Bland Halliday's my name. Here's mypilot'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 getgay with myself and try and beat a sure thing."
Johnny was gazing reverently upon the pilot's license which he held inhis hand, and he did not hear the last two or three sentences of thehobo's lament. He was busy breaking one of the ten commandments; the onewhich says, "Thou shalt not covet." That he had never heard of BlandHalliday did not disturb him, for in Arizona's wide spaces one does nothear of all that goes on in the world. He was sufficiently impressed bythe license and what it implied, and he was thinking very fast. Here wasa man, down on his luck it is true, but a man who actually knew how tofly; a fellow who spoke of Smith Brothers Supply Factory with thecontempt of familiarity; a fellow who had used some of the very samelinen.
Johnny Jewel forgot his pose of expert aviator. He forgot that BlandHalliday was absolutely unknown to him and that his personality was notaltogether prepossessing. As a rule Johnny did not like pale eyes thatseemed always to wear a veiled, opaque look. Heretofore he had not likedthose new-fangled little mustaches which the Rolling R boys had dubbedslipped eyebrows. And ordinarily he would have objected to a mouth drawnat the corners in a permanent whine. To offset these objectionablefeatures there were the greasy, brown overalls and the cap whichcertainly looked bird-mannish enough for any one, and there was thepilot's license--no fake about that--and the fact that the fellow hadknown all about Abe Smith and the linen.
Johnny threw away his cigarette and his caution together. "Say, I mightbe able to take you to Los Angeles, all right--provided you will take ahand on the little old boat and help me put her in shape again. Itoughtn'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 aboutit. Why, I had one fellow working for me, Mr. Halliday, and just for ajosh I asked him where the fuselage was. And he went hunting all over theplace and finally brought me a monkey wrench! He--"
"No brains--that's the main trouble with the game," commented BlandHalliday, after he had exhaled a long, thin wreath of smoke which hewatched 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 ingovernment service before--"
"You an army flier? Then what 'n hell you doing here? Say, put oversomething I can take, bo. You don't look the part. Only for that stuffyou unwrapped, I'd tag you for a wild and woolly cowboy."
His tone was not flattering, and his very frank skepticism ill became atramp. But Johnny had plunged, and he swallowed his indignation andexplained with sufficient truth to be convincing. He even confessed thathe could not fly--yet. There was something pathetic in his eagerness andhis trustfulness, though Bland Halliday seemed to miss altogether thepathos, 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 thesweltering little village and meditated, while Johnny wrapped his parcelsand tied them securely, and w
aited nervously for the decision.
"I wish I'd happened along before you sent for that stuff," Hallidayremarked at last, flicking Johnny's face with a glance. "I've got a dopeof my own that beats that, any way you take it--and don't cost a quarteras much. And that linen--I sure would love to cram it down old AbeSmith'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 thesethings must be laid in before we start work. And what about your oil andgas? And how's the propeller? Does she show any crack anywhere? How faris 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 faris 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 asight-seeing bus, you'd better tie a can to the thought. My time ain't myown--yet. I can get by, this trip, because the bronk I'm riding neededthe exercise; or I can say he did, and it will get over. But I don'texpect to be riding in to the railroad every day or so. If I get anotherchance 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 goingto need it, and need it bad. Tell you what I will do, providing it suitsyou. I'll go over with you, and take a look at the plane. If it can berepaired without shipping it into a shop, all right! I'll help you repairit. You'll learn to fly, all right, on the way to the Coast. That is, ifyou've got it in you.
"And the other side of it is, if the plane can't be repaired at yourcamp, and you don't want to trust me to get it to a shop where I canrepair it, all right. You stake me to a ticket to Los Angeles and moneyto eat on. It's going to be worth that to you, to know just what shapeyour plane's in, and what it will cost to fix it. And without handingmyself any flowers, I'll say I'm as well qualified as anybody. I've builtfifteen of 'em, myself. I can tell you down to the last two-bit piecewhat it's going to stand you to put her in shipshape condition, ready totake the air. And believe me, old top, you can throw good money awayfaster on an airplane than you can on a jamboree. I've tried both ways; Iknow." He leaned back on the truck and clasped his hands around one bentknee, as though, having stated his terms and his opinion, there remainednothing further for him to say or to do about it.
Johnny looked at him dubiously, did some further rapid thinking, and wentto 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'vegot to do some hustling to get back before sundown. You make out a listof what we've got to have besides this--you said hammer and tacks--andI'll see if the hardware store has got it. Lucky I brought an extra horsealong to pack this stuff on. You can ride him out."
"Ride a _horse? Me?_" the spine of the expert stiffened with horror, sothat 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, gentlehorse. And," he added meaningly, "you'll learn to ride, all right, on theway to camp. That is, if you've got it in you."