Skyrider

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER SIX

  SALVAGE

  The brother of Tomaso came back. Mary V, cannily watching the wide wastebehind her as she rode homeward, saw him and made sure of him through herglasses. The brother of Tomaso seemed to be in a hurry, and he seemed tohave been waiting in some convenient covert until she had left. His horsewas trotting too nimbly through the sage to have come far at that pace.Mary V could tell a tired horse as far as she could tell that it was ahorse.

  She did not turn back, for the simple reason that she knew very well hermother would have all the boys out hunting her if she failed to reachhome by sundown. That would have meant deep humiliation for Mary V anda curtailment of future freedom. So she put up her glasses and went herway, talking to herself by way of comforting her thwarted curiosity, andaccusing Johnny Jewel of all sorts of intrigues; and never dreaming thetruth, of course.

  "Me, I'm willing to sell, all right. What you pay me?" Tomaso's brotherwas sitting in Johnny's doorway where he could watch the trail, and hewas smoking a cigarette made with Johnny's tobacco.

  "She's no good to nobody, setting there in the sand, but she's all right,you bet, for fly. Them fellers, they get lost, I think. They get away offthere, and no gas to fly back. No place to buy none, you bet." He grinnedsardonically up at Johnny who was leaning against the adobe wall. "Theyget the big scare, you bet. They take all the water, and they walk andwalk, drink the water and walk and walk and walk--loco, that's what.Don't know where they go, don't know where they come from, don't knownothin' no more atall. So that flyin' machine, that's lost. Me, I findout. It don't belong to nobody no more only just the feller that finds.Me, I take you there, I show you. You see I'm telling the truth, allright. You pay me half. I help you drag it over here to your camp, allright. You pay me other half. That's right way to fix him--yes?"

  "Sounds fair enough, far as that goes." Johnny's voice had the huskinessof suppressed excitement. The cigarette he was studying so criticallyquivered in his fingers like a twig in the wind. "But the thing mustbelong to _somebody_."

  "No, I'm find out from lawyer. Only I'm say maybe it's automobile. Cos'me fi' dollar, which is hold-up, you bet. Some day I get even that fi'dollar. That flyin' machine goes into Mexico, that's los' by law.Sal--what you call--oh!" He snapped his fingers as men do when tryingto recall a word. "She cos' me fi' dollar, that word! Jus' minute--it'slike wreck on ocean, that is left and somebody brings it--"

  "Salvage?" Johnny jerked the word out abruptly.

  "That's him! Salvage. Belongs anybody that finds. Mexico, she's foreigncountree. She could take; it's hers if she want. But what she wants?Nobody can make it go. No Mexicans can fly, you bet. Me, I don't knowdamn t'ing about flyin' nothin' but monee. Monee, I make it fly, yes." Hechuckled at his little joke, but Johnny did not even hear it.

  Johnny was seeing a real, military airplane in his possession, cachedaway in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole--a wall thatfeatured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing--whatwonderful things was Johnny not seeing?

  "Like them buried treasure," Tomaso's brother went on purring comfortablyto Johnny's doubts. "The _hombre_ what finds, it belongs to him, youbet. What you say? You pay me--" The eyes of Tomaso's brother dweltcalculatingly upon Johnny's half-averted face. "You pay me fifty dollarwhen I show you I don't lie. I help you drag him back home, you--"

  "Nothing doing." Johnny pulled himself from his dreams to bargain for hisheart's desire--because he knew Mexicans. "I ain't sure I want the thing,anyway. It's probably broke, and it takes _money_ to fix a busted plane,let me tell you. And there might be complications; and besides, I've gotto ride this range. I can't go rambling around all over Mexico hunting anairplane that probably wouldn't be any good when I found it."

  Tomaso's brother rose from the doorsill to gesticulate while he arguedthose points and others which Johnny thought of later. It was a beautifulflying machine. By every object impressive enough to make oath upon,Tomaso's brother swore that it was as he said. Look! Not one peso wouldhe accept until Johnny had seen. And the range? Would it run off in twodays, perhaps? Look, then! Tomaso's brother would make the bet. He wouldagree. They would go for the airship, and they would return with it, andof the fifty pesos that was the full price he asked, not one centavowould he accept until the senor had seen that all was as he had left it.Look! That very night they would go, and by noon to-morrow they would bethere. And under the great wings would they rest. And they would returnin two more days--such a little while it would take--

  Johnny's jaw lengthened. Making due allowance for the lying tongue ofTomaso's brother, it would take a week to get the thing home. And thatwould mean that Johnny would have no job when he returned; which wouldmean that he would have no fifty dollars a month coming in; which wouldmean that he would be broke and would have to hunt another job. And youcouldn't pack a government airplane around under your arm. Not once didit occur to Johnny that he might sell it for more money than he had everpossessed in his life, for more than what a full course in aviation wouldcost him. As his own precious plane he saw it. His to keep. His to fly,his to worship--but never to sell.

  He looked away to the southward where the land stretched gray and drearyto the low skyline broken here and there with the pale outline of distanthills. A night and half a day of riding to take them there, and anairplane to haul back through brush and rocks, maybe, and across drawsand gulches--Good Lord! The thing might almost as well be in Honolulu!

  "But the desert places--me, I'm making the plan how it can be broughtacross the sand, with little brush to cut away." Tomaso's brother beganarguing away his unspoken fears. "We fix that, you bet! Two days, that'sall. You got strong, good fence; horses, they don't go away in suchlittle time, you bet!"

  Johnny stood irresolute, tempted, weakly trying to beat back thetemptation while he hugged it to his soul.

  "Why don't you--" Johnny was on the point of asking Tomaso's brother whyhe didn't sell it to the government, but he shut his teeth on the words.Tomaso's brother evidently had not thought of that; and why put the ideainto his head? "Why don't you and Tomaso go after it and bring it here?Then if it's all right, I might buy it--for fifty dollars. I can give youa check on the Arizona State Bank in Tucson."

  Tomaso's brother shrugged his shoulders in true Mexican eloquence. "Thatputs me all the troubles for notheeng, maybe. Maybe you say she's nogood--what I'm going to do? Not drag it back for notheeng? Not leave herset here for notheeng." He shrugged again with an air of finality thatsent a shiver over Johnny's nerves. "Twenty-fi' dollar when you look ather and say she's all right. Twenty-fi' dollar when she's here. Thatsuits me. It don't suit you, _no importa_."

  It did matter, though. It mattered a great deal to Johnny, hard as hetried to hide the fact.

  "Well, I'll think about it. I'd have to ride fence first, anyway, andmake sure everything's all right. And you'd have to tell Tomaso to driftover this way and kinda keep an eye out. I--you come back to-morrow. IfI take the offer at all, which I ain't sure of, we can start to-morrownight. But I'm not making any promises. It's a gamble; I've got tothink it over first."

  In that way did Johnny invite temptation to tarry with him and waxstronger while it fed on his resistance, while thinking that he was beingvery firm and businesslike and cautious, and that he was in no dangerwhatever of yielding unless his reason thoroughly approved.

  His manner of thinking it over calmly was rather pathetic. It consistedof building anew his air castle, and in riding out to the forbidden lavaridge that rose like a wall out of the sandy plain west of Sinkhole tochoose the niche which might best be converted into a secret hangar.Since first he heard of the derelict airplane, his mind had several timesstrayed toward those deep clefts, but his feet had heretofore refrainedfrom following his thoughts.

  Niches there were many, but they were too prone to yawn wide-mouthed atthe world so that whatever treasure they might have contained would berevealed to any chance passer-by. These Johnny disdained without a secondglanc
e. Others he investigated by riding in a little way, sending aglance around and riding out again.

  Just before dusk, as he was returning disappointedly after looking as faras was practicable, his horse Sandy swung into one of the open-moutheddepressions of his own accord. Probably he had become convinced that theywere hunting stock, and that every niche must be entered. (Range horsesare quick to form opinions of that sort and to act upon them.) Johnny wasdreaming along, and let Sandy go back toward the wall, but Sandy, pokingalong with his head bobbing contentedly at the end of his long neck,swerved to the right, into a nature-built ell that had a fine-sifted sandfloor, walls that converged toward the top, and an entrance which no onewould suspect, surely, since Johnny himself had passed it by not half anhour before.

  Johnny did not say a word. He sat there and gazed, a little awed by thediscovery, thrilled with the feeling that this place had been plannedespecially for him; that Nature had built it and kept it until he neededit--in other words, that luck was with him and that it would be madnessto go against his luck.

  He got down, went to the left wall and, taking long strides, stepped offthe width of the place. Wide enough, plenty; he couldn't have ordered itany better himself. From the mouth he started to step the depth, butstopped when he had gone a third farther than the length of a militarytype fuselage. He turned and looked back toward the entrance, his handson his hips, his eyes wide and glowing, his lips trembling and eager. Helooked up at the top; with cottonwood poles and brush he could roof itagainst the sun and the winds. He looked at the fine, hard-packed sandfloor that the winds never stirred. He looked at the walls.

  But he would put his luck to another test. He would abide by it--so hetold himself bravely. He felt in his pocket for a coin, pulled out a halfdollar, balanced it on his bent thumb and forefinger. He turned whitearound the mouth, as he always did when deep emotion gripped him. Hehesitated. What if--? But if his luck was any good, it would hold. It hadto hold!

  "Heads, I go. Tails, I stay." He muttered the fateful six words andsnapped his thumb up straight. The half dollar went spinning, clinkedagainst a high projection of rock, fell back to the sand floor.

  Johnny stood where he was and stared at it. From where he was he couldnot see which side was uppermost, and he was afraid to go and look. Buthe had to look. He had to know, for he was still boy enough to feelsolemnly bound by the toss. He walked slowly toward it, stared hard--andpounced like a kid after a hard-won marble.

  "Heads, I go! That's the way I flipped 'er; it's a fair throw."

  At the sound of his voice ringing in the confined space, Sandy lifted hishead and looked at Johnny tolerantly. Johnny came toward him grinning,tossing the half-dollar and catching it, his steps springy. The last fewyards he took in a run, and vaulted into the saddle without touching thestirrups at all. Even that did not seem to ease him quite. So he gave awhoop that echoed and re-echoed from the rock walls and made Sandy squat,lay back his ears, and shake his head violently.

  At the mouth of the hidden nook Johnny turned to take a last, gloatingsurvey of the place in the deepening dusk. "She sure will make one birdof a hangar!" he told Sandy glowingly. "Golly! Oh, good _golly_!"