The B. M. Bower Megapack

by B. M. Bower

  Three reporters came at him so impetuously that the foremost man skidded on the polished floor and all but fell. Bland was plucking at his elbow and whispering, “You let me handle the publicity, bo!” The clerk was staring at him, both palms planted firmly on the desk, and men were pushing up and craning for a look at him. Johnny whirled suddenly and retreated to the telephone booth, shutting the door tightly behind him. It was the first time in his life that he had run from any one.

  To gain time, he called up the Rolling R Ranch again and managed to get Bedelia, the cook, on the ’phone. Bedelia was perfectly willing to tell all she knew, and she appeared to know a great deal. Johnny held the receiver to his ear until his elbow cramped, and said “uh-huh” once in a while, and wondered how much Bedelia was exaggerating the truth. As a matter of fact Bedelia was giving him a conservative history of the past three days and, indirectly, she was explaining the crowd in the lobby behind him.

  Telephone booths are not any too comfortable on a hot day, and Johnny emerged rather limp and sober.

  He edged in to where Bland was gesticulating in the center of a group that seemed to be drinking in his words eagerly.

  “I’m going on to the ranch, Bland,” he said shortly. “Jar loose here and come help get the machine ready.”

  “In a minute, bo. As I was saying—”

  “Ah—I hear you had quite an adventure, Mr. Jewel, down among the Indians with your airplane. Now, just where—”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Johnny hedged. “I don’t know anything about any adventure. We had a little carburetor trouble, and had to wait for gas before we could get back. That’s all.” He grabbed Bland firmly by one arm and hustled him outside, where men were seemingly waiting far his appearance.

  “Oh, Mr. Jewel! I wish you’d tell me—”

  “I’m in a hurry! Good golly, folks seem to think talking is all there is to do in this world! Come on, Bland.” He hurried on, his mind absorbed in grasping the full significance of Bedelia’s excited report of events at the Rolling R and this curious crowd that gaped at him. The thought of Mary V lying unconscious, stricken by the sound of his voice over the telephone, nagged at him persistently and unpleasantly. He had not told Bedelia that he was coming, and now he feared that his unheralded appearance might be another shock to Mary V; but he would not take the time to go back and warn her, for all that. Instead, he walked a little faster to where his plane was waiting.

  “I think you’re making a bad play, bo—duckin’ out when all them newspaper guys are hot after dope on us,” Bland expostulated while he drilled along beside his boss. “I give ’em some scarehead stuff, but they’d lap up a lot more. We can get a lot of valuable publicity right now if we play ’em right. I give ’em that gawd stuff for a start-off, and I made—”

  “Shut up and save your breath,” snapped Johnny. “I’m not chasing up any newspaper notoriety now.”

  “Well, it’d be better business if yah did, bo—I’ll say it would. Why, it’s free advertising we couldn’t have pulled off on a bet, if we’d tried to frame it. Absolutely not. Well, mebby your duckin’ out right now is a good play, too. It’ll keep ’em chasin’ yuh for more—and I’ll say that’s about the only way to handle them smart guys. Oncet you chase them, the stuff’s off. You can bust your spine in four different places and wreck your machine, and mebby get a four- or five-line notice down in a corner next the dentist ads. It’s worse, too, since the war begun. There ain’t no more chance, hardly, of getting front-page publicity. Say, a couple of ’em took your picture. D’ yuh know that?”

  “No, and I don’t care,” Johnny retorted.

  Just now nothing mattered save getting to the Rolling R as soon as possible and stopping that idiotic search for him. He hustled Bland around to such good purpose that by the time the reporters had trailed him to the hangar he was already in his seat and was barking “Contact!” at Bland, who was unhappily turning the propeller at stated intervals and wondering when he would ever again have a square meal, and hoping that no misfortune would delay their arrival at the Rolling R, where he remembered hungrily certain past achievements of the cook.

  “Going back to your Indian tribe?” one smiling, sandy-haired fellow called out to Johnny.

  “No. I’m going to the Rolling R!” Johnny retorted unguardedly. “Ready, Bland? Contact!”

  The motor started, and Bland pulled down his cap. “His best girl lives at the Rolling R. He’s goin’ to see her,” he informed the sandy-haired man as he passed him. “They’re engaged.” He climbed up and took his place, tickled at the chance to hand out more “dope.” The sandy-haired one seemed tickled, too, until he saw that his ears had not been the only ones to drink in Bland’s words.

  They moved hastily aside as the big plane swung round and went down the field like a running plover. They watched it swing and come back, taking the air easily, thrumming its high, triumphant note. They tilted heads backward and followed it as Johnny circled, getting his altitude. They squinted into the sun to see the plane head straight away toward the Rolling R, its little wheels looking very much like the tucked-up feet of some gigantic bird, until it had dwindled to the rigid, dragon-fly outline.

  “He’s got nerve, that kid!” the sandy-haired one declared to his fellows. “Didn’t care a whoop for publicity—did you fellows get that? I’d been wondering if it wasn’t some frame-up, but it’s on the level. That boy couldn’t frame anything.”

  “Not with those eyes,” a sallow companion agreed. “I seem to know that other bird. He’s a crook, if I know faces.”

  “He’s just the mechanic. He don’t count. But that kid—say, I like that kid!” And he added enthusiastically, “Great story, that stuff the mechanic doped out for us. We’d never have pulled it out of the kid.”

  “I wish I could remember that bird. I ought to know him. Leaves a bad taste in my memory, somehow. You’re right—it’s some story.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MERELY TWO POINTS OF VIEW

  Mary V wadded a soft cushion under the nape of her neck, looked again at Johnny sprawled in her dad’s pet chair and smoking a cigarette after a very ample meal that had been served him half-way between dinner and supper, and stifled a sigh. Johnny was alive and well and full of enthusiasm as ever. He had just finished telling her all the wonderful things he could do and would do with his airplane, and the earnings he had hopefully mentioned ran into thousands of dollars, and left a nice marrying balance after her father’s debt was paid. Yet Mary V felt a heaviness in her heart, and though she listened to all the wonderful things Johnny meant to do, she could not feel that they were really possible.

  Something else troubled Mary V, but just now, with Johnny there before her almost like one risen from the grave, she dreaded to recognize the thing that shadowed the back of her mind. Johnny turned his head and looked at her, and she forced a smile that held so little joy that even Johnny was perturbed.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you believe I can do it?” he challenged her instantly. “There’s no reason why I can’t. It’s being done all the time. Other flyers make as much money as your dad makes here on the ranch. And—you know yourself, Mary V, I couldn’t settle down and be just a rider again. Fighting bronks is too tame, now—too slow. I’ll have to make a flyer of you, Mary V, and then you’ll know—”

  Mary V suddenly buried her face in a cushion. Johnny heard a smothered sob and got up, looking very much astonished and perturbed. With a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, ho put an arm awkwardly around her shaking shoulders.

  “If you don’t want to fly, you needn’t,” he reassured her. “I didn’t mean you had to. I only meant—”

  “It—it isn’t that at all,” Mary V managed to enunciate more or less clearly. “But we’ve been simply crazy, worrying about you and thinking all kinds of horrible things, and—”

  “Well, but I’m all right, you see, so you don’t need to worry any more. I was all right all the time, if you had only kn
own it. You don’t want to let that give you a prejudice against flying. It’s just as safe as riding bronks.”

  “It—it isn’t the safeness.” Mary V choked back a sob and wiped her eyes. “But you don’t seem to take it seriously at all!”

  “Now, you know I do! It’s the most serious thing in my whole life—except you, of course. And you know—”

  “I don’t mean that!” Mary V gave a small stamp with her slipper toe on the porch floor, thereby proving how swiftly her resilient young self was coming back to a normal condition after the strain of the past forty-eight hours. “You ought to know what I mean.”

  Johnny sat down again and looked at her with his eyebrows pulled together. Mary V had always been more or less puzzling in her swift changes of mood, wherefore this sudden change in her did not greatly surprise him.

  “Well, what do you mean, then?” he asked patiently. “Seems to me I’ve been taking everything too seriously to suit you, till just this minute. I’ve been pretty serious, let me tell you, about making good, and now I can see my way clear for the first time since all those horses were run off right under my nose, while I was busy with my airplane, getting it in shape to fly. You’ve been after me all the time because I couldn’t let things slide. Don’t you think, Mary V, you’re kinda changeable?”

  Mary V gave him a quick, intent look and bit her lower lip. “I only wish I could change you a little bit,” she retorted. “I don’t want to be disagreeable, Johnny, after you were given up for lost and everything, and then turned out to be all right. But that’s just the trouble! You—”

  “The trouble is that I wasn’t killed? Good golly!”

  “No, I don’t mean that at all. But we thought you were, and everybody in the country was simply frantic, and you weren’t even—”

  “Huh!” Johnny got up, plainly hesitating between dignified retreat and another profitless argument with Mary V. Another, because his acquaintance with her had been one long series of arguments, it seemed to him; and profitless, because Mary V simply would not be logical, or ever stick to one contention, but instead would change her attack in the most bewildering manner.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said stiffly, “that the whole country was frantic without due cause. But I never asked them to take it upon themselves to get all fussed up because I happened to be late for my meals. I was foolish enough to take it for granted that a man has a right to go about his business without asking permission of the general public. I didn’t know the public had my welfare on its mind like that. I’ll have to call a meeting after this, I reckon, and put it to vote whether I can please go up in my little airplane. Or maybe the public will pass the hat around and buy a string to tie on to me, so I can’t get too far away. Then they can take turns holding the string and pull me down when they think I’ve been up long enough! Darned boobs—what did they want to get up searching parties for? Couldn’t they find anything else to do, for gosh sake?”

  “Why, Johnny Jewel!” Righteous indignation brought Mary V to her feet, trembling a little but with the undaunted spirit of her fighting forebears shining in her eyes. “Johnny Jewel, you silly, ungrateful boy! What if you had been hurt somewhere? You’d have been glad enough then for the public to take some interest in you, I guess!”

  “Well, but I wasn’t hurt,” Johnny reiterated with his mouth set stubbornly. “They had to go and worry the life outa you, Mary V—that’s what I’m kicking about. They—”

  Mary V gazed at him strangely. “But you see, Johnny, it was I who worried the life out of them! When you didn’t come, I got dad started, and then I ’phoned the sheriff and offered a reward and big pay and everything, to get men out. All the sheriff’s men will get twenty-five dollars a day, Johnny, for hunting you. And there was a reward and everything. So don’t blame the public for taking an interest in whether you were killed or not. Blame me, Johnny—and dad, and the boys that have been riding day and night to find you.”

  Johnny reddened. “Well, I appreciate it, of course, Mary V—but I don’t see why you should think—”

  “Because, Johnny, you didn’t come the next morning after I told you to come. And the hotel clerk found your plane was gone, so—”

  “But I never said I’d come. I told you I wouldn’t come to the ranch till I had the money to square up with your dad. I meant it—just that. You must have known I wasn’t talking just to be using the telephone.”

  “But you knew I expected you just the same. And how could I know—how could I dream, Johnny, that instead of coming or letting me know, or anything, you would take up with that perfectly horrible Bland Halliday again, and go off in the opposite direction, and be gone three whole days without a word? I’m sure I wouldn’t have believed it possible you’d do a thing like that, Johnny. I—I can’t believe it now. It—it seems almost worse than if you had started for the ranch and—”

  “Got killed on the way, I suppose! I like that. I must say, I like that, Mary VI You’d rather have me with my neck broken than not doing exactly as you say. Is that it?”

  Mary V set her teeth together until she had herself under control, which, had you known the girl, would have meant a great deal. For Mary V was not much given to guarding her tongue.

  “Johnny, tell me this: After knowing Bland Halliday as you do, and after knowing what I think of him, and what he tried to do down there at Sinkhole when he was going to steal your airplane and fly off with it, why have you taken up with him again, without one word to me about it? And why didn’t you take the time and the trouble to call me up and say what you were going to do, when you knew that I’d be looking for you? I hate to say it, Johnny, but it does look as though you didn’t care one bit about me or what I’d think, or anything. You’ve just gone crazy on the subject of flying, and that Bland Halliday is just working you, Johnny, for an easy mark. You think it’s pride that’s holding you back from taking dad’s offer and staying here and settling down. But it isn’t that at all, Johnny. It’s just plain conceit and swell-headedness, and I hate to tell you this, but it’s the truth.

  “That airplane has simply gone to your head and you can’t look at anything sensibly any more. If you could, you’d have kicked that miserable Bland Halliday when he came sneaking around—wanting money and a square meal, and you needn’t deny it, Johnny. But no, instead of taking the chance that’s given you to make good, you turn up your nose at it because it isn’t spectacular enough to keep you in the limelight as the original Boy Wonder! And you—you take that crook, that tramp, that—that bum as a partner, and imagine you’re going to do wonderful things and get rich and everything! And you won’t do anything except give that tramp a chance to steal you blind!”

  “I didn’t say I’d taken Bland as a partner. But I may do it, at that—if my judgment approves of the deal.”

  “Your judgment! Johnny Jewel, you haven’t got any more judgment than a cat!”

  This was putting it rather strongly, since Mary V had fully intended to guard her tongue, being careful not to antagonize him. That heady young man now stood glaring at her in a thoroughly antagonistic manner. Speech trembled on his lips that would not formulate the scathing rebuke surging within his mind. He had been called conceited, swell-headed, inconsiderate of others, and now this final insult was heaped upon the full measure of his wrongs, just when he had a clear vision of future achievements that should have dazzled any young woman whose life was to be linked with his. But Mary V, he reminded himself, could not look beyond her own little desires and whims. Because she had tried to lay down the law for him and he had failed to obey, she refused to see that he was playing for big stakes and that he could not be expected to throw everything up just because she had been worried over him for a couple of days. The mere fact that he had not been lost on the desert, as every one supposed he was, could not affect his plans for the future, though Mary V seemed to think that it should.

  “Well, since that is the way you feel toward me, I may as well drift,” he made belated retort in a
tone of suppressed wrath. “I guess it would have been better if I’d stayed away, I’ll remember—”

  “For gracious sake, what does make you so horrid?” Mary V now had one arm crooked around his neck, which he stiffened stubbornly. With her other hand she was tweaking his ears rather painfully. “You’re going to stay right here and behave yourself till dad comes, and you’re going to have a talk with him about your affairs before you go doing anything silly. You know perfectly well that my father’s advice is worth something. Everybody in the country thinks he has a wonderful brain when it comes to business or anything like that. He can tell you what you ought to do, Johnny, if you’ll only be sensible and listen to him.”

  “What do I want to listen to him for?” Johnny’s eyes looked down at her with no softening of his anger. “Good golly! Do you think your dad’s got the only brain in the world? How do men run their affairs, and get rich, that never heard of him, do you suppose? I don’t want to mock your dad—he’s all right in his own field, and a smart man and all that. But he don’t know the flying game, and his advice wouldn’t be worth the breath he’d use giving it. Perhaps I am conceited and swell-headed and a few other things, but I am perfectly willing to take a chance on my own judgment for awhile yet, anyway. When I do need advice, I’ll know where to go.”

  “To Bland Halliday, I suppose!” Mary V took away her arm and stood back from him. “You’d take a tramp’s advice before you would my father’s, would you?” She pressed her lips together, seeming to hold back with difficulty a storm of reproaches.

  “I would, where flying is concerned.” Johnny’s lips spelled anger to match her own. “He knows the game, and your father doesn’t. And just because Bland’s playing hard luck is no reason why you need call him names. Give the devil his due, anyway.”