by B. M. Bower
“Are you sure this is the couple?” he cautiously inquired of the sheriff.
“Sure, I am. I knew this kid of Selmer’s—have known her by sight ever since she could walk. It’s the couple, all right. The girl’s eighteen on the twenty-fourth day of next January, at five o’clock in the morning. If you like, Robbins, I’ll call up Selmer. I guess I’d better, anyway. He may want to talk to these kids himself.”
The clerk put his pen behind his ear again and turned apologetically to Johnny. “We’d better wait,” he said mildly. “If the young lady’s age is questioned, I have no right—” He waved his hand vaguely.
“You bet it’s questioned,” chuckled the sheriff. “Her dad ’phoned the office and told us to watch out for ’em. Made their getaway in that flying machine there’s been such a hullabaloo about. He had a hunch they’d make for here.” He turned to Johnny with a grin. “Pretty cute, young man—but the old man’s cuter. Every town within flying distance has been notified to look out for you and stop you. Your wings,” he added, “is clipped.”
Johnny opened his mouth for bitter retort, but thought better of it. Nothing could be gained by arguing with the law. He whirled instead on Bland and the three reporters, standing just within the open door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded hotly. “Who asked you to tag around after me? Get out!” Whereupon he bundled Bland out without ceremony or gentleness, and the three scribes with him; slammed the door shut and turned the key which the clerk had left in the lock. “Now,” he stated truculently, “I want that marriage license and I want it quick!”
The sheriff was humped over the telephone waiting for his connection. He cocked an eye toward Johnny, looked at his colleague, and jerked his head sidewise. The man immediately stepped up alongside the irate one and tapped him on the arm.
“No rough stuff, see. We can arrest—”
“Don’t you dare arrest Johnny!” Mary V cried indignantly. “What has he done, for gracious sake? Is it a crime for people to get married? Johnny and I have been engaged for a long, long while. A month, at least!—and dad knows it, and has thought it was perfectly all right. I told him just this afternoon that I intended to marry Johnny. He has no right to tell everybody in the country that I am not old enough. Why didn’t he tell me, if he thought I should wait until after my birthday?”
“If that’s my father you’re talking to,” she attacked the sheriff who was attempting to carry on a conversation and listen to Mary V also, “I’d just like to say a few things to him myself!”
The sheriff waved her off and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Your girl, here, says she wants to say a few things . . . What’s that? . . . Oh. All right, Mr. Selmer, you’re the doctor.”
He turned to Mary V with that exasperating chuckle of his. “Your father says he’d rather not talk to you. He says you can’t get married, because you’re under age, and you can’t marry without his consent. So if I was you I’d just wait like a good girl and not make any trouble. Your father is coming after you, and in the meantime I’ll take charge of you myself.”
“You will like hell,” gritted Johnny, and hit the sheriff on the jaw, sending him full tilt against the clerk, who fell over a chair so that the two sprawled on the floor.
For that, the third man, who was a deputy sheriff as it happened, grappled with Johnny from behind, and slipped a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. The deadly finality of the smooth steel against his skin froze Johnny into a semblance of calm. He stood white and very still until the deputy took him away down a corridor into another building and up a steep flight of dirty stairs to a barren, sweltering little room under the roof.
Baffled, stunned with the humiliation of his plight, he had not even spoken a good-by to Mary V, who had looked upon him strangely when he stood manacled before her.
“Now you’ve made a nice mess of things!” she had exclaimed, half crying. And Johnny had inwardly agreed with her more sweepingly than Mary V suspected. A nice mess he had made of things, truly! Everything was a muddle, and like the fool he was, he went right on muddling things worse. Even Mary V could see it, he told himself bitterly, and forgot that Mary V had said other things,—tender, pitying things,—before they had led him away from her.
He had no delusions regarding the seriousness of his plight. Assaulting an officer was a madness he should have avoided above all else, and because he had yielded to that madness he expected to pay more dearly than he was paying old Sudden for his folly of the early summer. It seemed to him that the rest of his life would be spent in paying for his own blunders. It was like a nightmare that held him struggling futilely to attain some vital object; for how could he ever hope to achieve great things if he were forever atoning for past mistakes?
Now, instead of earning money wherewith to pay his debt to Sudden, he would be sweltering indefinitely in jail. And when they did finally turn him loose, Mary V would be ashamed of her jailbird sweetheart, and his airplane would be—where?
He thought of Bland, having things his own way with the plane. Dissipated, dishonest, with an instinct for petty graft—Johnny would be helpless, caged there under the roof of their jail while Bland made free with his property. It did not occur to him that that he could call the law to his aid and have the airplane stored safe from Bland’s pilfering fingers. That little gleam of brightness could not penetrate his gloom; for, once Johnny’s indomitable optimism failed him, he fell deep indeed into the black pit of despair.
Strangely, the failure of his impromptu elopement troubled him the least of all. It had been a crazy idea, born of Mary V’s presence in the airplane and his angry impulse to spite old Sudden. He had known all along that it was a crazy idea, and that it was likely to breed complications and jeopardize his dearest ambition, though he had never dreamed just what form the complications would take. Even when he landed it was mostly his stubbornness that had sent him on after the marriage license. He simply would not consider taking Mary V back to the ranch. It was much easier for him to face the future with a wife and ten dollars and a mortgaged airplane than to face Sudden’s impassive face and maddening sarcasm.
Darkness settled muggily upon him, but he did not move from the cot where he had flung himself when the door closed behind his jailer. He still felt the smooth hardness of the handcuffs, though they had been removed before he was left there alone.
He did not sleep that night. He lay face down and thought and thought, until his brain whirled, and his emotions dulled to an apathetic hopelessness. That he was tired with a long day’s unpleasant occurrences failed to bring forgetfulness of his plight. Until the morning crept grayly in through his barred window he lay awake, and then slid swiftly down into slumber so deep that it held no dreams to soothe or to torment with their semblance of reality.
Two hours later the jailer tried to shake him awake so that he could have his breakfast and the morning paper, but Johnny swore incoherently and turned over with his face to the wall.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JOHNNY WILL NOT BE A NICE BOY
The jailer reappeared later, and finding Johnny sitting on the edge of the cot with his tousled head between his two palms, scowling moodily at his feet, advised him not unkindly to buck up.
Without moving, Johnny told him to get somewhere out of there.
“Your girl’s father is here and wants to talk to you,” the jailer informed him, overlooking the snub.
“Tell him to go to hell,” Johnny expanded his invitation. “If you bring him up here I’ll kick him down-stairs. And that goes, too. Now, get out of here before I—”
“Aw, say, you ain’t in any position to get flossy. Look where you are,” the jailer reminded him good-naturedly as he closed the door.
He must have repeated Johnny’s words verbatim, for Sudden did not insist upon the interview, and no one else came near him. At noon the jailer brought him a note from Mary V, along with his lunch, but Johnny had no heart for either. He had just finished reading the front-page
account of his exploits, and his mood was blacker than ever.
No man likes to see his private affairs garbled and exaggerated and dished to the public with the sauce of a heartless reporter’s wit. The headlines themselves struck his young dignity a deadly blow:
BIRDMAN FURNISHES NEW SENSATION!
Modern Lochinvar Lands in Jail!
Thunder Bird Carries Maiden Off.
Telephone Halts Flight in County Clerk’s Office, Where Couple is Arrested. Abductor Attacks Sheriff Viciously. Is Manacled in Presence of Hysterical Young Heiress Who Faints as Her Lover is Overpowered. Irate Father Hurries to the Scene.
After keeping the country in a turmoil of excitement over his disappearance in an airplane, the Skyrider, young Jewel, flies boldly to Rolling R ranch and abducts beautiful Mary V Selmer, only daughter of the rich rancher who led the search for the missing birdman.
Romance is not dead, though airplanes have taken the place of horses when young Lochinvar goes boldly out to steal himself a bride. Modern inventions cannot cool the hot blood of youth, as young Jewel has once more proven. This sensational young man, apparently not content with the uproar of the country for the past three days, when he was believed to be lost on the desert with his airplane, attempts one adventure too many. When he brazenly carried off his sweetheart in his airplane he forgot to first cut the telephone wire. That oversight cost him dear, for now he languishes in jail, while the young lady, who is under age, is being held by the sheriff—
It was sickening, because in a measure it was true, though he had never thought of emulating Lochinvar or any one else. He had neither thought nor cared about the public and what it would think, and the blatant way in which he had been made to entertain the country at large humiliated him beyond words.
He picked up the square, white envelope tightly sealed and addressed in Mary V’s straight, uncompromising chirography, turned it over, reconsidered opening it, and flipped it upon the cot.
“There was an answer expected,” the jailer lingered to hint broadly. “The young lady is waiting, and she seemed right anxious.”
But Johnny merely walked to the barred window and stared across at the blank wall of another building fifteen feet away, and in a moment the jailer went away and left him alone, which was what Johnny wanted most.
After a while he opened Mary V’s letter and read it, scowling and biting his lips. Mary V, it would seem, had read all that the papers had to say, and was considerably upset by the facetious tone of most of the articles.
“. . . and I think it’s perfectly terrible, the way everybody stares and whispers and grins. What in the world made you act the way you did and get arrested. And those were reporters that you shoved out of the office, too, and that is why they wrote about us in such a horrid way. And I shall never be able to live it down. I shall be considered hysterical and always fainting, which is not true and a perfect libel which they ought to be sent to jail for printing. I shall probably have that horrid Lochinvar piece recited at me the rest of my life, Johnny, and I should think you would be willing to apologize to the sheriff and be nice now and make them let you off easy. And dad blames me for eloping with you and thinks we had it planned before he got home yesterday, and he says there was no excuse and it showed a lack of confidence in his judgment. He says you are a d. fool and take yourself too seriously, and it is a pity you couldn’t have some sense knocked into you. But you must not mind him now because he is angry and will get over it. But Johnny, please do be a good boy now and don’t make us any more trouble. I am sure I never dreamed what you had in mind, but I would have married you since we started to, but now it is perfectly odious to have it turn out such a fizzle, with you in jail and I being preached at every waking moment by dad and mommie. If you had only kept your temper and waited until dad and mommie got here, I am sure we would be married by now, because I could have made them give their consent and be present at the Wedding and everything go off pleasantly instead of such a horrid mess as this is.
“I want you to promise me now that you will be good, and I will make dad get the judge to let you off. Won’t you please see dad and be nice to him? His calling you a d. fool does not mean anything. That is dad’s way when he is peeved, and the jailer says you told him dad could go to h. That is why he said it and not on general principles, because he does really like you, Johnny. Of course we could see you anyway, because you couldn’t help yourself, but dad won’t do it unless you are willing to be good. So please, dear, won’t you let us come up and talk nicely together? I am sure the sheriff bears no ill will though his jaw is swelled a little but not much. So we can get you out of this scrape if you will meet us halfway and be a nice sensible boy. Please, Johnny.
“Your loving Mary V.”
Johnny read that last paragraph three times, and gave a snort with each reading. If being let off easy involved the intercession of Mary V’s father, Johnny would prefer imprisonment for life. At least, that is what he told himself. And if being a nice sensible boy meant that he was to apologize to the sheriff and say pretty please to Sudden, the chance of Johnny’s ever being nice and sensible was extremely remote. His loving Mary V had said too much—a common mistake. What she should have done was confine her letter to a ten-word message, and tear the message up. A fellow in Johnny’s frame of mind were better left alone for a while.
He sulked until he was taken down into the police court, where his crime was duly presented to the judge and his sentence duly pronounced. Knowing nothing whatever of the seamy side of life, as it is seen inside those dismal houses with barred windows, Johnny thought he was being treated with much severity. As a matter of fact, his offence was being almost forgiven, and the six days’ sentence was merely a bit of discipline applied by the judge because Johnny sulked and scowled and scarcely deigned to answer when he was spoken to.
The judge had a boy of his own, and it seemed to him that Johnny needed time to think, and to recover from his sulks. Six days, in his opinion, would be about right. The first two would be spent in revilings; the third and fourth in realizing that he had only himself to blame for his predicament, and the fifth and sixth days would stretch themselves out like months and he would come out a considerably chastened young man.
Another thing Johnny did not know was that, thanks to Mary V’s father, he was not herded with the other prisoners, where the air was bad and the company was worse. He went back to his room under the roof, where the jailer presently visited him and brought fruit and magazines and a great box of candy, sent by Mary V with a doleful little note of good-by as tragic as though he were going to be hanged.
Johnny was sulkier than ever, but his stomach ached from fasting. He ate the fruit and the candy and gloomed in comparative comfort for the rest of that day.
The next day, when the jailer invited him down into the jail yard for a half hour or so, Johnny experienced a fresh shock. Somewhere, high in the air, he heard the droning hum of his airplane. Bland was not neglecting the opportunity Johnny had inadvertently given him, then.
Johnny craned his neck, but he could not see the plane in the patch of sky visible from the yard. He listened, and fancied the sound was diminishing with the distance. Bland was probably leaving the country, though Johnny could not quite understand how Bland had managed to get the funds for a trip. Perhaps he had taken up a passenger or two—or if not that, Bland undoubtedly had ways of raising money unknown to the honest.
Oh, well, what did it matter? What did anything matter? All the world was against John Ivan Jewel, and one treachery more or less could not alter greatly the black total. Not one friendly face had he seen in the police court—since he did not call the reporters friendly. Mary V had not been there, as he had half expected; nor Sudden, as he had feared. The sheriff had not been friendly, in spite of his chuckle. Bland had not shown up—the pop-eyed little sneak!—probably because he had already planned this treachery.
He went back to his lonely room too utterly depressed to think. Apathetically he
read the paper which his jailer brought him along with the tobacco which Johnny had sent for. Smoke was a dreary comfort—the paper was not. The reporters had lost interest in him. Whereas two columns had been given to his personal affairs the day before, his troubles today had been dismissed with a couple of paragraphs. They told him, however, that the “irate father” had taken the weeping maiden out of town and left the “truculent young birdman pining in captivity.” It was a sordid end to a most romantic exploit, declared the paper. And in that Johnny agreed. He could not quite visualize Mary V as a weeping maiden, unless she had wept tears of anger. But the fact that her irate father had taken her away without a word to him seemed to Johnny a silent notice served upon him that he was to be banished definitely and forever from her life. So be it, he told himself proudly. They need not think that he would ever attempt to break down the barrier again. He would bide his time. And perhaps some day—
There hope crept in,—a faint, weary-winged, bedraggled hope, it is true,—to comfort him a little. He was not down and out—yet! He could still show them that he had the stuff in him to make good.
He went to the window and listened eagerly. Once more he heard the high, strident droning of the Thunder Bird. He watched, pressing his forehead against the bars. The sound increased steadily, and Johnny, gripping the bars until his fingers cramped afterwards, felt a suffocating beat in his throat. A great revulsion seized him, an overwhelming desire to master a situation that had so far mastered him. What were six days—five days now? Why, already one day had gone, and the Thunder Bird was still in town.
Johnny let go the bars and returned to his cot. The brief spasm of hope had passed. What good would it do him if Bland carried passengers from morning until night, every day of the six? Bland couldn’t save a cent. The more he made, the more he would spend. He would simply go on a spree and perhaps wreck the plane before Johnny was free to hold him in check.
