by Zane Grey
She rode straight down the ridge to the mail box, grimly determined to let no little clue to Johnny Jewel’s insufferable behavior escape her. Johnny was up to something, and it might be that the mail box was worth inspecting that morning. So Mary V rode up and inspected it.
There was not much, to be sure; merely a letter addressed to the Pacific Supply Company at Los Angeles. Mary V held it to the sun and learned nothing further, so she flipped the letter back into the box and rode on, following the tracks Johnny’s horse had made in the loose soil. She was so busy wondering what Johnny was ordering, and why he was ordering it, that she had almost reached Sinkhole Camp before it occurred to her that Johnny had that unpleasant stranger with him, and that it might be awkward meeting the two of them without any real excuse. Johnny himself knew enough not to expect any excuse for her behavior. Strangers were different.
But she need not have worried, for the cabin was empty. Since Johnny had not washed the dishes, Mary V observed that two persons had breakfasted. She observed also that Johnny had been in so great a hurry to get that letter to the mail box ahead of the stage that he had unceremoniously pushed all the dishes to one side of the table to make space for writing. She picked up a paper on which an address that matched the letter in the mail box and various items were scribbled, in a handwriting unlike Johnny’s, and she studied those items curiously. It was like a riddle. She could not see what possible use Johnny could have for a quart of cabinet glue, for instance, or for a blowtorch, or soldering iron, or brass wire, or for any of the other things named in the list. She saw that the amount totaled a little over twenty-five dollars, and she considered that a very extravagant sum for a boy in Johnny’s humble circumstances to spend for a lot of junk which she could see no sense in at all.
Having set herself to the solving of a mystery, she examined carefully the blue print laid uppermost on a thin pile of his lessons and circulars. There were pencil markings here and there which seemed to indicate a special interest in certain parts of an airplane. There was a letter, too, from Smith Brothers Supply Factory. She hesitated before she withdrew the letter from the envelope, for reading another’s mail was going rather far, even for Mary V in her ruthless quest of clues. But it was not a personal letter, which of course made a difference. She finally read it; twice, to be exact.
Its meaning was not clear to Mary V, but she saw that it had to do with airplanes, or at least with certain parts of an airplane. She wondered if Johnny Jewel was crazy enough to try and make himself a flying machine, away down here miles and miles from any place, and when he did not know the first thing about it. Perhaps that horrid man he had brought was going to help.
“Bland Halliday!” she said abruptly, memory flashing the name that fitted the personality she so disliked. “I knew I had seen him. That—whatever made Johnny Jewel take up with him, for gracious sake? I suppose he’s persuaded Johnny to build a flying machine—the silly idiot! Well!”
She waited as long as she dared, meaning to give Johnny some much-needed advice and a warning or two. She planned exactly what she would say, and how she would for once avoid quarreling with him. It would be a good plan, she thought, to appeal to his conscience—if he had one, which she rather doubted. She would point out to him, in a kind, firm tone, that his first duty, indeed, his only duty, lay in serving the Rolling R faithfully. Trying to build flying machines on the sly was not serving the Rolling R, and Johnny could not fail to see it once she pointed it out to him.
But Johnny was far afield, appeasing his conscience by riding the range and locating the horse herds. He did not return to camp at noon, for he found it physically impossible to ride past the rock wall without turning into the niche to see what Bland Halliday was doing, and to make sure that the airplane was a reality and not one of his dreams.
Bland was down under the corner of the damaged wing, swearing to himself and tacking linen to mend the jagged hole broken through the covering by the skid. He ducked his head and peered out at Johnny morosely.
“Get down here and I’ll show yuh how to do this, so I can go at that tail. I just wanted to get it started, so I could turn it over to you—in case you ever showed up again!”
“I haven’t time now to help,” Johnny demurred. “I’ve got a big strip of country to ride, this afternoon. The horses are scattered—”
“Say, listen here, bo. You’ve got a big strip of linen to tack this afternoon, and don’t overlook that fact. Fast as we can, I want to get it on so the dope can be hardening. I’ve figured out how we can save time, so if the motor’s all right, we can maybe get outa this damn country in ten days. If you don’t lay down on the job, that is, and make me do it all.” He crawled out and got stiffly to his feet, rubbing a cramped elbow and eying Johnny sourly.
“Can’t help it, Bland; I’ve got other work today. Boss’ll fire me if I don’t make—”
“For cat’s sake, what do I care about the boss? You’re going to quit anyway, ain’t you, soon as we’re ready to fly?”
“We-ell, yes, of course. But I’d have to give him time to get some one in my place. They’re working short-handed as it is. I couldn’t just—”
“You’re laying down on me; that’s what you’re doing. Look how I’ve sweat all forenoon on that darned wing! Got the frame fixed, all ready for the linen to go back on; I’ve worked today, if anybody should ask you! Oughta have that glue, but I’m making out with what little old Abe sent. And you ain’t lifted a hand. It ain’t right. I can’t do it all, and you ride around once in awhile to stall me off with how busy you are. You better can that stuff, and take a hand here.”
“Well, don’t cry about it. I’ll tack that linen on, if that’s all that’s worrying you. But I can’t stay long; I’ve spent too much time already away from my work. I oughta been riding yesterday, by rights.”
Bland Halliday looked at him queerly. “Me, I’d call that riding, what we done,” he retorted grimly. “I’m so sore I can hear my muscles squeak. Well, get down here and I’ll show yuh how to stretch as yuh tack. And be sure you don’t leave a hair’s breadth of slack anywheres, or it’ll all have to come off and be done over again.”
So that is where Johnny was, while Mary V waited for him at the cabin and puzzled her brain over his mysterious actions, and composed her speech—and afterwards lost her temper.
It was three o’clock before Johnny finally finished to the aviator’s grudging satisfaction what had looked to be a scant half hour’s work. Mary V had gone home, and it was too late for Johnny to catch a fresh mount and make the ride he had intended to make. He made coffee and fried bacon and ate a belated lunch with Halliday, and then, since the afternoon was half gone, he let himself be persuaded—badgered would be a better word—into spending the rest of the daylight helping Bland.
If his conscience buzzed nagging little reminders of his real duty, Johnny’s imagination and his ambition were fed a full meal of anticipation, and he had the joy of being actually at work on an airplane that he could proudly speak of as “my plane.”
But conscience nagged all the evening. He really must get out on the range tomorrow, no matter how urgent Bland Halliday made the work appear. He really must look over that other bunch of horses, and ride the west fence. Ab-so-lutely without fail, that must be done.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE FIRE THAT MADE THE SMOKE
Mary V, watching from that convenient ridge which commanded the Sinkhole mail box and the faint trail leading from it to the camp, saw the home-coming stage stop there. Through her glasses she saw the horses stretching their sweaty necks away from their burdensome collars, and then stand hipshot, thankful for the brief rest. She saw the driver descend stiffly from the seat, walk around to the back of the vehicle and, with some straining, draw out what appeared to be a box the size and shape of a case of tinned kerosene. He carried it with some labor to the mail box, tilted it on end behind the p
ost, and returned to the rig for two other boxes exactly like the first one. He fumbled for Johnny’s canvas mail sack—a new luxury of Johnny’s—and stuffed it into the mail box. Then, climbing wearily back to the driver’s seat, he picked up the lines, released the brake, and started on.
Mary V gave the stage no further attention. She was wondering what in the world Johnny Jewel wanted with three whole cases of coal oil—if that was what the boxes contained. Mary V was not, of course, disposed to stand long on a hill and wonder. The stage was not out of sight before she was riding down the ridge.
“Gasoline!” she ejaculated, kicking a box tentatively with a booted foot. “For gracious sake, what does that boy want with five—ten—with thirty gallons of gas? Why that’s enough to drive a car from here to Yuma, just about. Surely to goodness Johnny hasn’t—”
Tango lifted his head, pointed both ears forward and nickered a languid howdy to another horse. Mary V turned quickly, a bit guiltily, and confronted Johnny himself, riding up with something dragging rigidly from the saddle to the ground behind Sandy’s heels. The confusion in Johnny’s face served to restore somewhat the poise which Mary V had felt slipping.
“Hello, Skyrider,” she greeted him chirpily. “Unless Venus has a filling station, you’ll need more gas than this, won’t you, for the round trip? Or—isn’t it to be a round trip?”
Johnny’s eyes flew wide open. Then he laughed to cover his embarrassment. “You’re not up on sky-riding, are you, Mary V? I’ll have to train you a little. I expect to ‘vollup, bank and la-and,’ coming back.”
“Poor Bud isn’t singing today. A bronk slammed him against the fence and hurt his leg so he’s going around with a limp. What is that contraption, for gracious sake?”
“That? Why, that’s a travois. You ask Sandy what it is, though, and he’ll give you a different name, I reckon. Sandy’s beginning to think life is just one thing after another. But he’s getting educated.”
Surreptitiously they eyed each other.
“Why do you buy your gas that way?” Mary V inquired with extreme casualness. “It’s a lot cheaper if you get a drum, the way we do.”
“I know; but it’s a lot harder to handle a drum too. Besides—” Johnny broke his speech abruptly, hiding his confusion by straining to carry a case over to the travois.
Mary V studied his reply carefully, keeping silence until Johnny had loaded the other cases and was roping them to the travois frame.
“Is that Bland Halliday with you yet?” she asked him suddenly.
“Yeh—er—how do you know anything about Bl—” Johnny was plainly swept off his guard.
“Why, why shouldn’t I know about BL?” Mary V’s smile was exasperating. “I’ve seen Bland Halliday fly—and fall, too, once. Because he was drunk, they said. I’ve seen him drunk, and trying to do figure eights with a car on Wilshire Boulevard. He almost put me in the ditch, trying to dodge him. He was arrested for that, and his car was taken away from him. And I’ve heard—oh, all kinds of scandal about him. I was awfully surprised at your taking up with him. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Johnny Jewel.”
“He sure knows airplanes,” Johnny blurted unwisely.
“Yours must be ready to fly—the amount of gas you’re taking to camp.”
“She goes in the air—say, good golly, Mary V! How do you know anything about my—er—”
“I hope,” said Mary V very mildly, “that I have some brains. At any rate, I have brains enough to wonder how in the world you can afford to build yourself an aeroplane; I haven’t heard a word about any rich uncle dying and leaving you a fortune. And I know it takes a tremendous lot of money to build and fly aeroplanes.”
“Didn’t set me back so much,” Johnny bragged. “I didn’t have to build one, you see.”
Mary V needed time enough to study that statement also. She mounted Tango and waited until Johnny was ready to start with his queer load. “How did you get it—if I may ask?” she began then. “Did Bland Halliday happen along and have a wreck, and sell you the pieces? You want to be careful, because I know he’s an awful grafter, and he’ll cheat you, just as sure as you live, Skyrider.”
“He can’t,” Johnny declared with confidence. “He’s working for his passage—er—”
“Er—yes?” Mary V smiled demurely. “You may just as well tell me the whole thing, now. Have you got an aeroplane? Really truly? I mean, where did you get it? I know, of course, you must have one, or you wouldn’t buy all that gas.”
“Some deductionist,” grinned Johnny, tickled with the very human interest he had roused in himself and his doings. “Where I got it is a secret—but I’ve got it, all right!”
“Johnny Jewel! You didn’t let that Bland Halliday sell you—”
“I picked Bland Halliday up at the station in Agua Dulce,” Johnny explained tolerantly. “He’d wrecked his plane back East somewhere. He was beating his way to the Coast, and was waiting to hit a freight. They’d dumped him off there. It was just pure luck. I had some stuff for repairing mine, and he saw me undo it and started talking. I saw he knew the game” (Johnny’s tone would have amused the birdman!) “and when he showed me his pilot’s license, I got him to help me. That’s where Bland Halliday comes in—just helping me get ’er ready to fly. And he’s going to teach me. You say you’ve seen him fly, so—”
“Oh, he can fly,” Mary V admitted slightingly. “But he’s so tricky, so—so absolutely impossible! A girl friend of mine has a brother that goes in for that sort of thing. I think he invented something that goes on a motor, or something. And I know he was terribly cheated by Bland Halliday. I think Bland borrowed a lot of money, or used a lot that was intended for something else—anyway, Jerry just hates the name of Bland Halliday. I didn’t know him that day I met him with you, because they look so different all togged up to fly. But I remembered him afterwards, and I was going to warn you, only,” she looked at Johnny sidelong, “you’re a very difficult person to warn, or to do anything with. You are always so—so pugnacious!”
“I like that,” said Johnny, in a tone that meant he did not like it at all.
“Well, you always argue and disagree with a person. Besides,” she added vaguely, “you weren’t there. And I can’t be riding every day to Sinkhole.”
“You could have seen me when I took those last horses back the other day,” Johnny reminded her. “You did see me, only you pretended to be blind. Deaf, too, for I hollered hello when I passed, and you never looked around!”
“Did you?” Mary V smiled innocently. “Well, I’m here now; and I came just on purpose to warn you about that fellow. And you haven’t told me the stingiest little bit about your aeroplane yet, or where you got it, or what you’re going to do with it, or anything.”
Johnny’s lips twitched humorously. “I got it where it was setting like a hawk—a broken-winged hawk—on the burning sands of Mexico. I hauled it over here with four of the orneriest mules that ever flapped an ear at white men. It cost me just sixty dollars, all told—not counting repairs. And I’m going to ride the sky, and part the clouds like foam—”
“‘And brand each star with the Rolling R,
An-d lead the Great Bear ho-ome,’”
Mary V chanted promptly. “Oh, Skyrider, won’t you take me along too? I’ve always been just dying to fly!”
“You’ll have to stave off death till I learn how—and then maybe you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“Oh, won’t the boys be just wild! Where have you got it, Johnny? I’ve looked every place I could think of, the last two weeks, and I couldn’t—”
“Oh—hoh!” cried Johnny. “So it was you I’ve been trailing, was it? I wondered who was doing so much riding down this way. You had me guessing, and that’s a fact.”
“Well, you’ve had me; now ’fess up the whole mystery of it, Johnny. You
know that wasn’t you, telephoning with a cold, that night. You know very well you weren’t at camp at all; not for a couple of days, anyway. Probably that was while you went to the burning sands of Mexico. I don’t understand that part, either; how you found out, and all. But who was it ’phoned for you? There were things he said—”
“Huh? What things? On the square, I don’t know, Mary V. I never told anybody to ’phone—nobody knew I was going, except a greaser that told me about the plane, and went with me to see it.”
“Well, I don’t understand it at all. He certainly pretended he was you, and he must have ’phoned from Sinkhole, because there’s no other ’phone on that wire. And the way he talked—”
“Oh, I think I know who it could have been,” Johnny interposed hastily, thinking of Tomaso. “He—”
Just then the travois hung itself on a lava out-cropping which Sandy himself had dodged with his feet, and Johnny had a few busy minutes. By the time they were again moving forward, Mary V’s curiosity had seized upon something else. She wanted to know if Johnny wasn’t afraid Bland Halliday might steal his aeroplane and fly off with it in the night.
“Well, he might, at that—if he got a chance,” Johnny admitted. “Which he won’t—take it from me.”
“Which he will—take it from you, if you don’t keep an eye on him. From all Jerry said about him, he couldn’t be honest to save his life. And I’m sure Jerry—”
“Good golly! You sure do seem to bank a lot on this Jerry person. At that, he may be wrong. Bland Halliday is all right if you treat him right. I ought to know; I’ve worked right alongside him for over two weeks now. And I’ll say, he has worked! I’d have been all summer doing what he’s done in a couple of weeks; and then it wouldn’t have been done right. This said Jerry is welcome to his opinions, and you’re welcome to swallow them whole, but me, I’ve got to hand it to Bland Halliday for sticking right on the job and doing his level best. Why, he couldn’t have gone after the job any harder if it was his own plane.”
