The Thunder Bird

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TEE HEGIRA OF JOHN IVAN JEWEL

  Fiction would give to the venture a hairbreadth escape or two and manyinsurmountable obstacles which would, of course, be triumphantlysurmounted by the hero. But fact will have it otherwise, and thechronicler of events must not be blamed if the hegira of John IvanJewel lacked excitement.

  The Thunder Bird flew high, with a steady air current behind which gavethe plane more speed than Johnny had hoped for, and brought them closeto Yuma before the gas gauge began to worry him. They descendedcautiously, circled over the town like a wild duck over a pond,choosing their landing. They alighted without mishap and Johnny hireda decent-looking Mexican to watch the plane and protect it from curiousmeddlers while he and Bland went into town and ate their fill, andbought gas and oil to be delivered immediately. Before the town hadfairly awakened to the fact that an airplane had descended in itsimmediate vicinity, they were off again, climbing once more to the highair lanes that made smoother going.

  The motor worked smoothly, the hand of the tachometer wavering aroundtwelve hundred, and the altometer registering nine thousand feet, savewhen they dipped and lifted to the uneven currents over the mountains.The Thunder Bird seemed alive, glorying in her native element. Theearth slid away like a map unrolled endlessly beneath them. Desert andlittle towns on the railroad like broken beads strung loosely on a tautwire. Salton Sea was cool and tempting, though the air shimmered allaround it with heat. They flew the full length of it and on up thevalley. Then they climbed higher and so breasted the currents flowingover the San Jacintos. And over a little town set in level countrythey wheeled, descending and searching for a field. Again they landedand filled their gas tank and went on. Always it was the distanceahead that called them. Always they grudged the minutes lost, asthough they were racing against time and the stakes were high.

  After the last stop, exaltation seized Johnny and lifted him high abovethe sordid things of earth. Trouble dropped away from him; rather, itwas left behind as he flew toward the sunset, He lost the sense ofweight that clogs the bodies of human creatures plodding over theearth's uneven surface and became as an eagle, soaring high on wingsthat never tired. Never before had he remained so long in flight,wherefore he had never attained so completely that birdlike feeling ofmastery in the air. Falling seemed impossible; as easily could hissenses have visualized falling through the earth in the old days ofcrawling. There was no earth. There was only a sliding relief map farbelow to guide him in his triumphant flight. Tucson, the RollingR--they were clouds that hovered far back on the horizon of his mind.Mary V was a dim vision that came and went but never quite tookdefinite form. The roar of the motor he had long ceased to hear.Godlike he floated with wings outspread, straight into the sunset.

  The sliding map below took on strange, beautiful colors of purple andgold and rose, with sometimes a wonderful blending of all. Before himthe sky was a gorgeous, piled radiance. The earth colors changed,softened, deepened to a mysterious shadowy expanse, with here and therea brightness where the sun touched a hilltop.

  "We better drop a little," Bland shouted. "I gotta keep my bearings!"

  Swiftly the vague outlines sharpened. Groves and groves and grovesappeared beneath them. And small islands of twinkling stars, set inpatterns and squares, with here and there a splotch of brightness. Andsingle stars that had somehow strayed and lay twinkling, lost in thegreat squares of dark green.

  "We gotta make it before dark," Bland yelled. "I been away a year. Ineed daylight--"

  They gave her more gas, and Johnny became conscious of the motor'svoice. Eighty miles she was doing now, on a gentle incline that liftedthe earth a little nearer. The glory before them was deepening to rubyred that glowed and darkened. Beneath the heaped radiance lay a sea ofstars--and beyond, a smooth floor of polished purple.

  "There's Los Angeles--and over beyond is the ocean!" called Bland,turning his head a little.

  Johnny sucked in his breath and nodded, forgetting that Bland could notsee the motion.

  "Gimme the control--I gotta pick out a landing! I'll head forInglewood. They's a big field--"

  Inglewood meant nothing at all to Johnny, even had he heard the namedistinctly, which he did not. It cost him an effort to yield thecontrol, but he pulled hands and feet away and sat passive, breathingquickly, gazing down at the wonders spread beneath him. For this washis first amazed sight of Los Angeles, though he had twice passedthrough the city in a train that clung to dingy streets and left him animpression of grime and lumbering trucks and clanging street cars andmore grime, and Chinese signs painted on shacks, and slinking figures.

  But this was a magic city spread beneath him. It glowed and twinkledbehind the thin veil of dusk. There seemed no end to the lights whichoverflowed the lower slopes of the cupped hills at their right andhesitated on the very brink of the purpling ocean before them.

  Bland shut off the motor and they glided, the plane silent as a greatbat. The city disclosed houses, and streets down which lighted carsseemed to be standing still, so much greater was the speed of theThunder Bird. They passed the thickest sprinkle of lights and headedfor dark slopes midway between the indrawing hills. Many pairs ofbright lights crawled along a narrow black pathway. Now the ocean wasnearer, so that Johnny could see a fringe of white along its edge wherewaves lapped up to the lights.

  They swooped, flattened out, and glided again while Bland picked upcertain landmarks. The motor spoke, its voice increased while theybanked in a circle and swooped again. Now a long bare stretch lay justahead. The motor stopped, and they volplaned steeply; flattened,dipped a little, skimmed close to earth, touched, lifted again.

  "F'r cat's sake, what they went and done to this field?" Bland'swhining voice complained, and he swung the Thunder Bird away from along windrow of dried vines, just in time to avoid entangling thewheels. They settled, ran along uneven surface for a space. A smallloose pile lay just ahead, and Bland veered sharply away. Another pileto the left caught the wheels just as the tail was settling. TheThunder Bird jerked, staggered drunkenly, wheeled over the pile andthen, with a gentle determination quite unexpected in so docile a bird,turned itself up on its nose and with a splintering crash of thepropeller tilted on over until it lay flat on its back. Which was asilly ending to so glorious a flight.

  Johnny, hanging upside down with the strap strained tight across hisloins, with Bland dangling before him, felt even sillier than theThunder Bird looked. He freed himself after the first paralyzing shockof surprise, dropped on all fours upon the upper wing covering, andcrawled out between the front braces. A minute later Bland followed,looking extremely foolish.

  "That's a hell of a way to land!" Johnny snorted. "What kinda pilotare you, for gosh sake?"

  "Aw, how was I to know they'd went and planted this field to beans? Ibeen away a year, almost. It was a good field when I was here before.Come on and let's turn her back, bo, before all the cylinders is fullof oil." Then Bland added with a surprising optimism in one so givento complaining, "We're here, and we ain't hurt, and Los Angeles is justback there a ways. I'm satisfied."

  "Yes, and we shelled the beans--that's something more," Johnnysarcastically added to the sum of their blessings.

  With some labor they turned the Thunder Bird right side up. It was toodark to estimate the damage, and Bland suggested that they catch astreet car and ride into town. He did not inform Johnny then how farthey must walk before they would be within catching distance, andJohnny started off willingly enough, after Bland had convinced him thatthe Thunder Bird would be perfectly safe until morning. It was a quietneighborhood, he declared, and no one would be likely to come near theplace. If they did, they could not fly off with the Thunder Birdunless they happened to be carrying an extra propeller around withthem. This, Johnny suspected, was Bland's best attempt at irony.

  They walked and they walked, at first along a rough country road thatseemed real boulevard to Johnny, who was
accustomed to the trails ofArizona. Later they emerged upon asphalt, and trudged along the edgeof that for a time, moving aside as swift bars of light bathed thembriefly, with the swish of speeding automobiles brushing close.Johnny's head was roaring with the remembered beat of the ThunderBird's motor. In the silence between automobiles it deafened him sothat Bland's drawling voice came to him dully, the words muffled.

  "We'll have to get us a car," Bland repeated three times before Johnnyunderstood.

  "Oh. I thought you meant we're getting close to a car," Johnnygrumbled. "How much farther we got to walk, for gosh sake?"

  "About a mile now, bo. It's only--"

  "A mile! Good golly! I thought we was flying to Los Angeles! Younever said we had to walk half the way from Tucson. What in thundermade you fly forty miles beyond the darned place! Just so you'd have achance to wreck the plane? A hell of a pilot you are!"

  Bland protested, trailing a step behind Johnny, whose stride hadlengthened with the bad news. Did Johnny think, f'r cat's sake, hecould light in front of the Alexandria and call a bell-hop to take theplane? Did he think they could put the darn thing in an auto park?What about telephone wires and electric light wires and trolley wires?Bland would like to know. Leave it to Johnny, the crowd would now beroped off the spot and the cops fighting to make a gangway for theambulance, and women would edge up and faint at the ghastly sight.Leave it to Johnny--

  "Leave it to me," Johnny cut in acrimoniously, "and we'd have landedright side up, anyway. I wouldn't have lit in the middle of a mess ofbeans. Beans! Good gosh! For half a cent I'd go back and make campthere. That's what we ought to do, anyway, instead of walking allnight, getting to town. We've got grub enough--and there's _beans_!"

  "Aw, now, bo, have a heart! You wait till I lead you into the Frolic,and you won't say beans no more. You wait till you git your kneespushed under the mahogany and the head waiter scatters the glassesaround your plate, and you lamp the dames--"

  He stopped abruptly, his jaw going slack with dismay. "Only we ain'tgot the scenery for no such place as the Frolic," he mourned. "Lookin'the way we do, we'd be eyed suspicious if we went to grab a tray inBoos Brothers! Some Main Street waffle joint is about our number,unless--"

  "A waffle joint sounds good to me," Johnny said. "I didn't come outhere to spend money. I'm here to make it."

  "That's all right, bo. I ain't going to hit any flowery path either.But listen, old top. We've had a hard day, and before that a bunch of'em. We've earned one good meal, ain't we? That ain't going to hurtnobody, bo. Just to celebrate our arrival and git the taste of thedesert out of our mouths. I'll say we've earned it. And it needn'tcost so much. And listen here, bo. I know a place on Main where wecan rent the scenery. Lots of fellers do that, and nobody the wiser.I don't mean open-face coats, neither. Just some good clothes thathave got class will do fine. And we can git a shave there, and go tothe Frolic and have some regular chow, bo, and listen to the tra-la-lagirlies warble whilst we eat. Come on. Be a regular guy for oncet!"

  "Do regular guys wear borrowed clothes? Not where I come from, theydon't."

  "Aw, them hicks! Well, you can buy what you want, if that suits youbetter. I'll take you to a place that keeps open evenings. There'llbe time enough. The Frolic don't hardly git woke up till ten or'leven, anyway."

  "At that it will be closed for the night before we arrive," Johnnystated morosely. "It's a wonder to me you let the ocean stop you,Bland.

  "Why didn't you go on and light in Japan? We could have caught a boatback then, instead of walking."

  Once more Bland protested and explained and defended himself. ButJohnny had already drifted off into troubled meditation renderedsomewhat vague and inconsequential by his rapid changes of financialcondition, moods, environment--the brief ecstasy of his triumphantflight that had so ridiculous a climax. Small wonder that Bland'swhining voice failed to register anything but a dreary monotone ofmeaningless words in Johnny's ears. Small wonder that Johnny'sthoughts dwelt upon little worries that could have no possible bearingupon the big things he meant to do.

  How much would a new propeller cost? Would all the barber shops beclosed when they reached town? He needed a haircut and a hot bathbefore he would feel fit to walk the streets. Should he take at oncethe position he meant to maintain, and stop at the best hotel in town,as an aviator who owned the plane he flew and had a roll of money inhis pocket might be expected to do? Or should he go to some cheaprooming house and save a few dollars, and sink into obscurity among thecity's strange thousands?

  He remembered the headlines concerning him--front-page headlines thatcrowded Europe's war into second place! He had not seen anything muchabout himself lately, though the jailer had brought him a paper everymorning. Certainly his misfortune had not been given the prominenceaccorded to his disappearance. If he should go to some good hotel andregister as John Ivan Jewel, Tucson, Arizona, the reporters mightremember the name. Probably they would, and his arrival would beannounced--

  What would they think, if he walked in just as he was; leather coat,aviator's cap with the ear-tabs flapping, corduroy breeches tucked intoriding boots that needed a shine and the heels straightened? Wouldthey put him out, or would they think he was so rich and famous hedidn't give a darn?

  He wondered what Mary V would think, if she knew that he was here inLos Angeles. Would she care whether she ever saw him again? Or couldgirls forget a fellow all at once? Were they still engaged, so long asshe did not return his ring? He wished he knew what was the rule incases like this. Then it struck him that Mary V could not return thering now if she wanted to. She would not know where to send it. Shemight have sent it to him while he was in jail--but probably she fearedthat the reporters might hear about it. How much would a propellercost, any way? There would probably be more than that broken--theThunder Bird had turned over with quite a jolt.

  No, certainly he should not spend money on high-priced hotels until hehad things moving again. There would be no more money coming in untilthe plane was repaired--darn it, there was always that big hump in thetrail; always something in the way, something to postpone his graspingat success! Now he'd have to sleep in some hot, frowsy little room forabout four bits, instead of luxuriating in a suite as he would like todo.

  They reached the little suburban village and the street car. Johnnyhad an impulse to stop there for the night and leave the city to a morepropitious time, but Bland was already licking lips in anticipation ofthe joys of Spring Street, and made such vehement protest that Johnnyyielded. If he stayed in Inglewood Bland would go on without him, andJohnny did not want that, for Bland might not come back. And whateverhis mental and moral shortcomings, Bland was somebody whom Johnny knew;if not a friend, yet a familiar personality in a city filled withstrangers.

  Perhaps it was the night that veiled the city's big human workaday sideand showed only the cold, blue-white residence streets palm-shaded andremote, and the inhospitable closed stores and shops of the businessdistrict, that gave Johnny a lost, lonesome feeling of utterhomelessness. For the matter of that, Johnny could not remember whenhe was not homeless--but he did not often feel depressed by the fact.He followed Bland down the car steps at Fifth Street, walked with himpast a delicatessen store whence apartment dwellers were trickling,their hands full of small paper bags and packages. They looked paleand sickly and harassed to Johnny, to whom desert-browned faces were astandard by which he measured all others.

  A barber shop reminded him of grime and untrimmed hair, and he haltedso abruptly that Bland forged several paces ahead before he missed him.He turned back grumbling, just as Johnny went in at the door, andfollowed grudgingly. He had wanted a glass of beer first of all, butyielded the point and took his shave resignedly.

  Johnny spent a full hour in that shop, and when he emerged he was worththe second glance he got from the girls hurrying homeward. Tubbed,shaven, trimmed, a fresh shine on boots that still showed the marks ofspurs worn from da
wn to dark when those boots were new, he toweredabove Bland Halliday, who looked dingier and more down-at-heel thanever by contrast. It would take more than shaven jowls to make agentleman of Bland.

  They went on to Broadway, crossed it precariously, and reached thepavement by what Johnny considered a hair's-breadth of safety as a bigcar slid past his heels. They passed lighted plate-glass windowswherein silver and gold gleamed richly. Then Bland unwittingly pushedJohnny Jewel from the edge of obscurity into the bright light ofnotoriety again.

  Bland said, "I know a joint where we can git a good room for fiftycents--and no questions asked, bo."

  They happened at that moment to be nearing the immaculate white-gloveddoorman who stands ward over the entrance to the Alexandria. Johnnylooked at him, saw what exclusive hostelry was named upon his cap band,and stopped. "You can go to your joint where they don't askquestions," he said somewhat loftily to Bland. "I'll stop here wherethey don't have to."

  Bland gasped, but Johnny was already turning in past the immaculatewhite-gloved one who bowed as Johnny brushed him by. Bland had onlytime enough to mutter, "I'll wait here till you register," beforeJohnny disappeared into the subdued elegance where Bland would notventure. "Till they throw yuh out, you boob," Bland amended hisparting sentence. "Stoppin' at the Alexandria--hnm!"

  Johnny, secure in his fresh cleanness and his ignorance of thetraditions of the place, strode through the onyx-pillared lobby peopledwith well-fed, modish human beings who conversed in modulated voices orbustled in and out, engrossed with affairs which might or might not beof national importance. At the desk a perfectly groomed, worldly wisearistocrat proffered a pen well inked and gave Johnny what Bland wouldhave termed the double O.

  Before he had finished pressing blotter upon "John Ivan Jewel, Tucson,Arizona", his brain had registered certain details and his smile hadattained a certain quality of deference.

  "We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Jewel. Ah--a room and bath, sayon the sixth floor? Ah--did you have a good flight, Mr. Jewel?"

  Oh, the adaptability of American youth! "Made it in seven hourscontinuous flight," Johnny informed him carelessly. "Nothing to it.Yes, the sixth floor will be all right. Didn't bring anybaggage--didn't want to load the plane down."

  And that clerk, to whom baggageless guests are ever objects ofsuspicion, smiled understandingly and called his favorite boy, and whenJohnny's back was turned, immediately whispered the news that thatArizona flyer who had been so much in the public eye lately, was aguest of the hotel, having flown over in five hours.