The Thunder Bird

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WITH HIS HANDS FULL OF MONEY AND HIS EYES SHUT

  Under Cliff's direction, that afternoon Johnny did what a woman wouldcall shopping. He bought among other things a suit of khaki such ascity dwellers wear when they go into the wilds. Cliff had told himthat he must not appear among people in the clothes of a flyer, butmust be a duck hunter and none other when they left Los Angeles. Whenthat would be, Johnny did not know; nor did he know where they weregoing. But a duck hunter he faithfully tried to resemble when he letCliff into his room at five o'clock in the evening, which meant afterthe lights were on in the quiet hallways of the Alexandria, and thestreets were all aglow. Cliff looked, if not like a hunter, at leastpicturesque in high, laced boots and olive-drab trousers and coat thathad a military cut.

  "Fine! We'll get under way and eat somewhere along the road, if youdon't mind. What about that mechanic? Has he shown up yet?" Cliff'sboredom was gone, along with his swagger stick.

  "Naw. I guess the little runt went on a spree. I thought he'd be herewhen I got back, but he wasn't, and the clerk said nobody had calledfor me except you."

  "All the better. You won't have to bother explaining to him withouttelling him anything. If you ever do run across him, give him atemperance talk--and the boot. That will be convincing, without yourneeding to furnish any other reason for letting him out. By theway,"--reaching casually into a pocket,--"here is your first week'ssalary. The boss made it fifteen hundred a week, straight. And hesaid to tell you he would add a hundred every week that you deliver thegoods. That is giving a tremendously square deal, in my opinion. Butit's the boss's way, to make it worth a man's while to do his levelbest."

  Round-eyed, Johnny took the roll of bank notes and flipped the endswith eager fingers. Golly! One with five hundred on it--he had neverseen a five-hundred-dollar bill in his life, until this one. Andfifties--six or seven of them, and four one-hundreds, and the rest intwenties and three or four tens for easy spending. He had a keendesire to show that roll to Mary V, and ask her whether he could makemoney flying, or whether she would still advise him to go to work forher dad! Why, right there in his hand was more money than Suddenthought he was worth in a year, and this was just one week's salary!Why, good gosh! In another week he could pay that note, and startright in getting rich. Why, in a month he could own a car likeCliff's. Why--

  Cliff, watching him with sophisticated understanding of the dazzlingeffect of so much money upon a youth who had probably never before seenfifteen hundred dollars in one lump, smiled to himself. Whatever smallvoice of doubt Johnny had hearkened to, the voice would now be hushedunder the soft whisper of the money fluttering in Johnny's fingers.

  "Well, I'll call a porter to get these things down so you can settlefor the room. You had better just check out without leaving any wordof where you're going." Cliff turned to the 'phone.

  "That'll be easy, seeing I don't know," Johnny retorted, crowding themoney into his old wallet that bulged like the cheeks of a pocketgopher, busy enlarging his house.

  "Fine," Cliff flung sardonically over his shoulder. He called for aporter to remove the luggage from room six-seventy-eight, and laid hisfingers around the door knob. "I'll be down at the S.P. depot waitingfor you, Jewel. There's a train in half an hour going north, so itwill be plausible enough for you to take a taxi to the depot. Goinside, just as though you were leaving, see. And when the passengerscome off the train, you join the crowd with your gun case and grip, andcome on out to where I'll he waiting. Can you do that?"

  "I guess I can, unless somebody runs over me on the way."

  "Then I'll be going. The point is, we must not leave heretogether--even on a duck hunt!" He smiled and departed, at least threeminutes before the porter tapped for admission.

  There was no hitch, although there was a margin of safety narrow enoughto set Johnny's blood tingling. He had "checked out" and had calledhis taxi and watched the porter load in gun case and grip, had tippedhim lavishly and had slipped a dollar into the willing palm of thedoorman, when he leaned in to get the address to give the driver. Andthen, just as the taxi was moving on, over the doorman's shoulderJohnny distinctly saw Bland turn in between the rubber plants thatguarded the doorway. A pasty-faced, dull-eyed Bland, cheaplyresplendent in new tan shoes, a new suit of that pronounced blue lovedby Mexican dandies, a new red-and-blue striped tie, and a new soft hatof bottle-green velour.

  For ten seconds Johnny was scared, which was a new sensation. Forlonger than that he had a guilty consciousness of having"double-crossed" a partner. He had a wild impulse to stop the taxi andsprint back to the hotel after Bland, and give him fifty dollars or soas a salve to his conscience, even though he could not take him intothis new enterprise or even tell him what it was. Uncomfortably hismemory visioned that other day (was it only yesterday morning? Itseemed impossible!) when he had wandered forlornly out to the hangar inTucson and had found Bland true to his trust when he might so easilyhave been false; when everything would seem to encourage him to befalse. How much, after all, did Johnny owe to Bland Halliday? Justthen he seemed to owe Bland everything.

  It was all well enough for him to argue that his debt to Bland had beenpaid when he brought him to Los Angeles, and that Bland could have nojust complaint if Johnny declined to continue the partnership longer.Bland, he told himself, would have quit him cold any time some otherchance looked better. It was Johnny's plane, and Johnny had a right todo as he pleased with it.

  For all that, Johnny rode to the S.P. depot feeling like a criminaltrying to escape. He took his luggage and sneaked into the waitingroom, sought an inconspicuous place and waited, his whole head andshoulders hidden behind a newspaper which he was not reading. CliffLowell could have found nothing to criticize in Johnny's manner ofscreening his presence there; though he would probably have beensurprised at Johnny's reason for doing so. Johnny himself wassurprised, bewildered even. That he, who had lorded over Bland withsuch patronizing contempt, should actually be afraid of meeting thelittle runt!

  A stream of hurrying people, distinguished from others by their seekingglances and haste and luggage, warned him presently that he would beexpected outside. He picked up his belongings and joined theprocession, but he came very near missing Cliff altogether. He waslooking for the dark-red roadster that had eaten up distance sogreedily between Inglewood and the city, and he did not see it. He wasstanding dismayed, a slim, perturbed young fellow in khaki, with a gripin one hand and a canvas gun case in the other, when some one touchedhim on the arm. He needed the second glance to tell him it was Cliff,and even then it was the smooth, bored voice that convinced him. Cliffwore a motor coat that covered him from chin to heels, a leather cappulled down over his ears, and driving goggles as concealing as a mask.He led the way to a touring car that looked like any other touringcar--except to a man who could know the meaning of that high, long,ventilated hood and the heavy axles and wheels, and the general air ofpower and endurance, that marked it a thoroughbred among cars. Thetonneau, Johnny saw as he climbed in, was packed tight with what lookedlike a camp outfit. His own baggage was crowded in somehow, and theside curtains, buttoned down tight, hid the load from passers-by.Cliff pulled his coat close around his legs, climbed in, set his heelon the starter.

  A pulsing beat, smooth, hushed, and powerful, answered. Cliff pulledthe gear lever, eased in the clutch, and they slid quietly away downthe street for two blocks, swung to the left and began to pick up speedthrough the thinning business district that dwindled presently tosuburban small dwellings.

  "Put on that coat and the goggles, old man," Cliff directed, his eyeson the lookback mirror, searching the highway behind them. "We've gotan all-night drive, and it will be cold later on, so the coat willserve two purposes. It's hard to identify a man in a passingautomobile if he's wearing a motor coat and goggles. You couldn'tswear to your twin brother going by."

  "This is a bear of a car," Johnny glowed, all atingle now with thead
venture and its flavor of mystery. "I didn't know you had two. Iwas looking for the red one."

  "I forgot to tell you." Which Johnny felt was a lie, because CliffLowell did not strike him as the kind of man who forgot things. "Yes,I keep two. This is good for long trips when I want to takeluggage--and so on." His tone did not invite further conversation. Heseemed absorbed now in his driving; and his driving, Johnny decided,was enough to absorb any man. Yard by yard he was sending thebig-nosed car faster ahead, until the pointer on the speedometer seemedto want to rest on 35. Still, they did not seem to be going so veryfast, except that they overhauled and passed everything else on theroad, and not once did a car overhaul and pass them. Cliff glancedoften into the mirror, watching the road behind them for the singlespeeding light of a motor cop--because Los Angeles County, as you areprobably aware, does not favor thirty-five miles an hour forautomobiles, but has fixed upon twenty-five as a safe and sane speed atwhich the general public may travel.

  But Cliff was wary, chance favored them with fairly clear roads, andthe miles slid swiftly behind. They ate at San Juan Capistrano notmuch past the hour which Johnny had all his life thought of as suppertime. Cliff filled the gas tank, gave the motor a pint of oil and theradiator about a quart of water, turned up a few grease cups andapplied the nose of the oil can here and there to certain bearings. Hedid it all with the fastidious air of a prince democratically inclinedto look after things himself, the air which permeated his wholepersonality and made Johnny continue calling him Mr. Lowell, in spiteof a life-long habit of applying nicknames even to chance acquaintances.

  Cliff climbed in and settled himself. "We want to make it in time toget some hunting at daylight," he observed in a tone which included thefellow at the service station who was just pocketing his money for thegas and oil. "I think we can, with luck."

  Luck seemed to mean speed and more speed, The headlights bored a whitepathway through the dark, and down that pathway the car hummed at afifty-mile clip where the road was straight. Johnny got thrills ofwhich his hardy nerves had never dreamed themselves capable. Ridingthe sky in the Thunder Bird was tame to the point of boredom, comparedwith riding up and over and down and around a squirmy black line withthe pound of the Pacific in his ears and the steady beat of the motorblending somehow with it, and the tingle of uncertainty as to whetherthey would make the next sharp curve on two wheels as successfully asthey had made the last. Mercifully, they met no one on the hills.There were straight level stretches just beyond reach of the tide, andsometimes two eyes would glare at them, growing bigger and bigger.There would be a _swoo--sh_ as a dark object shot by with mere inchesto spare, and the eyes would glare no longer. By golly, Johnny wouldhave a car or know the reason why! He'd bet he could drive one as wellas Cliff Lowell too, once he had the feel of the thing.

  "Too fast for you?" Cliff asked once, and Johnny felt the littletolerant smile he could not see.

  "Too fast? Say, I'm used to _flying_!" Johnny shouted back, ready todie rather than own the tingling of his scalp for fear. He expectedCliff to let her out still more, after that tacit dare, but Cliff didnot for two reasons: he was already going as fast as he could and keepthe road, and he was convinced that Johnny Jewel had hardened everynerve in his system with skyriding.

  Oceanside was but a sprinkle of lights and a blur of houses when theyslipped through at slackened speed, lest their passing be notedcuriously and remembered too well. On again, over the upland and downonce more to the very sand where the waves rocked and boomed under thestars. Up and around and over and down--Johnny wondered how muchfarther they would hurl themselves through the night. Straight outalong a narrow streak of asphalt toward lights twinkling on a blur ofhillside. Up and around with a skidding turn to the right, and Del Marwas behind them. Down and around and along another straight line nextthe sands, and up a steep grade whose windings slowed even this bruteof a car to a saner pace.

  "This is Torrey Pine grade," Cliff informed him. "It isn't muchfarther to the next stop. I've been making time, because from SanDiego on we have rougher going. This is not the most direct route wecould have taken, but it's the best, seeing I have to stop in San Diegoand complete certain arrangements. And then, too, it is not alwayswise to take a direct route to one's destination. Not--always." Heslowed for a rickety bridge and added negligently, "We've made prettyfair time."

  "I'd say we have. You've been doing fifty part of the time."

  "And part of the time I haven't. From here on it's rough."

  From there on it was that, and more. There had been a rain storm whichthe asphalt had long forgotten but the dirt road recorded with ruts andchuck-holes half filled with mud. The big car weathered it withoutbreaking a spring, and before the tiredest laborer of San Diego hadyawned and declared it was bedtime, they chuckled sedately into SanDiego and stopped on a side street where a dingy garage stood open tothe greasy sidewalk.

  Cliff turned in there and whistled. A lean figure in grease-blackenedcoveralls came out of the shadows, and Cliff climbed down.

  "I want to use your 'phone a minute. Go over the car, will you, untilI come back. Where can I spot her--out of the way?"

  The man waved a hand toward a space at the far end, and Cliff returnedto his seat and dexterously placed the car, nose to the wall.

  "You may as well stay right here. I'll not be gone long. You mightcurl down and take a nap."

  It was not an order, but Johnny felt that he was expected to keephimself out of sight, and the suggestion to nap appealed to him. Hefound a robe and covered himself, and went to sleep with the readinessof a cat curled behind a warm stove. He did not know how long it wasbefore Cliff woke him by pulling upon the car door. He did notremember that the garage man had fussed much with the car, though hemight have done it so quietly that Johnny would not hear him. The manwas standing just outside the door, and presently he signalled toCliff, and Cliff backed out into the empty street. He nodded to theman and drove on to the corner, turned and went a block, and turnedagain. The streets seemed very quiet, so Johnny supposed that it waslate, though the clock set in the instrument board was not running.

  They went on, out of the town and into a road that wound up long hillsand down to the foot of others which it straightway climbed. Cliff didnot drive so fast now, though their speed was steady. Twice he stoppedto walk over to some house near the road and have speech with theowner. He was inquiring the way, he explained to Johnny, who did notbelieve him; Cliff drove with too much certainty, seemed too familiarwith certain unexpected twists in the road, to be a stranger upon it,Johnny thought. But he did not say anything--it was none of hisbusiness. Cliff was running this part of the show, and Johnny wasmerely a passenger. His job was flying, when the time came to fly.

  After a while he slid farther down into the seat and slept.