Skyrider Part 8

"Oh, golly! Oh-h, good golly!" he murmured ecstatically, his eyes taking in the full sweep of the great wings. "It's too good to be true. No, it ain't; it's too good _not_ to be true! You wait. I'll show the Rolling R bunch--you wait!"

He rolled to an elbow and looked back along the fuselage to the tail, his eyes dwelling fondly on the clean lines of her, the perfect symmetry, the glossy, unharmed covering. His glance went farther, to where the brother of Tomaso plodded toward the basin's rim, peering here and there, pausing to look under a bush, swerving to make sure the lost fuselage was not behind a rock.

Johnny's grin widened. Presently it exploded into a laugh, which he smothered with both hands clapped over his mouth. He writhed and kicked and rolled in the sand. His round, blue eyes grew moist with the tears of a boy's exuberant mirth. From behind his palms came m.u.f.fled _who-who-who-oo-oos_ of laughter.

He believed that he was laughing at the trick he had played on Tomaso's brother. He was doing more than that: he was making up for all the sober longing, for all the fears and the discouragements of his barren life.

There had been so much hoping and sighing and futile wishing--it had been so long since Johnny Jewel had really laughed--and he was young, and youth is the time of carefree laughter. Now nature was striking a balance for him.

Tomaso's brother went up over the rim of the basin, disappeared, and then came plodding back through the heat. Johnny had laughed all that while; laughed until his sides were sore; until his eyes were red with the tears he had shed; until he was so weak he staggered when he first crawled out from under the plane and stood up. But it did him good, for all that, to have laughed so hard and so long over an impish trick that came from the boy in him.

"Me, I don't find him that d.a.m.n fuz'lawge," said the brother of Tomaso, wiping his swarthy countenance that was beaded with sweat. "That Tomaso, he has took, I bet. He brings it to you queeck when I'm through with him." He looked at Johnny expectantly. "I'm promise you it comes back all right, if perhaps Tomaso has take. Perhaps now you pay twenty-fi'

dollar?"

"No, I don't; I pay you ten dollars now." Johnny, remember, had a full two days' acquaintance with the brother of Tomaso. He was taking a certain precaution, rather than an unfair advantage. He honestly believed that the brother of Tomaso was best dealt with cautiously.

"When this airplane is safe at Sinkhole, and you've brought me every darned thing that's been packed off, I'll pay you the rest of the fifty.

There's more," he added meaningly, "that's missing. The fuselage ain't all."

The brother of Tomaso seemed unhappy. He took the ten dollars with a sigh, promised himself much unpleasantness for Tomaso, and wearily set about making camp, too dispirited to care that Johnny spent the time in fussing around the machine, making a thin pretense of looking it over for breakages and defects when all the while he was simply adoring it.

"At daybreak," Johnny announced with a new dignity in his voice--the dignity of one having valuable possessions and a potential power--"we'll start back. But I don't think much of your idea that we can drag this machine home with our saddle horses. We can't--not and have anything but a bundle of junk when we get there. There's a ranch over south here, a mile or so. Better see if you can't get a wagon and team. We'll have to haul it home somehow."

The brother of Tomaso started perceptibly. "A rancho? But that is not possible, senor!"

"Oh, ain't it? I'll show yuh, then."

"Oh, no! _No importa._ If it is a rancho in this countree, me, I'm find it without trobles for you."

Even Johnny's absorption in his treasure-trove could not altogether blind him to the fact that Tomaso's brother was perturbed. He wondered a little. But after all, there was only one thing now that really interested him, and he straightway returned to it, leaving the Mexican to find the ranch and hire a team. He was not afraid that the brother of Tomaso would fail him in that detail. Thirty American dollars look big to a Mexican.

He knew when Tomaso's brother mounted and rode away in the direction of the ranch, and he knew when he returned. But he failed to observe that the brother of Tomaso was gone long enough to have crawled there and back on his hands and knees, and that he returned in a much better humor than when he had left.

"The wagon and mules, it will come at daytime," was his brief report. He crawled into his blankets and left Johnny perched up in the pilot's seat, planning and dreaming in the moonlight. The brother of Tomaso lifted his head once and looked at Johnny's head and shoulders, which was all of him that showed. Through half-closed lids he studied Johnny's profile and the look of exaltation in his wide-open eyes.

"Tex, he's one smart _hombre_," Tomaso's brother paid tribute. "The plan it works aw-right, I bet."

CHAPTER EIGHT

OVER THE TELEPHONE

That night Johnny spread his blankets in a spot where he could lie and look at his airplane with the moon shining full upon it and throwing a shadow like a great, black bird with outstretched wings on the sand. He had to lie where he could look at it, else he could not have lain there at all. He was like a child that falls asleep with a new, long-coveted toy clasped tight in its two hands. He worried himself into a headache over the difficulties of transporting it unharmed over the miles of untracked desert country to Sinkhole. He was afraid the mules would run away with it, or upset it somehow. It looked so fragile, so easily broken. Already the tail was broken, where the flyers in landing had swerved against a rock. He pictured mishaps and disasters enough to fill a journey of five times that length over country twice as rough. He wished that he could fly it home. Picturing that, his lips softened into a smile, and the pucker eased out of his forehead.

But he couldn't fly it. He didn't know how, though I honestly believe he would have tried it anyway, had there been even a gallon of gasoline in the tank. But the tank was bone dry, and the tail was knocked askew, so Johnny had to give up thinking about it.

When he slept, the airplane filled his dreams so that he talked in his sleep and wakened the brother of Tomaso, who sat up in his blankets to listen.

"That plan, she's work fine, I bet!" grinned the brother of Tomaso when Johnny had droned off into mumbling and then silence. "That Tex, she's smart _hombre_." He laid himself down to sleep again.

Speaking of Tex; that same night he lay awake for a long while, staring at the moon-lighted window and wishing that his eyesight could follow his thoughts and show him what he wanted to see. His thoughts took the trail to Sinkhole, dwelt there for a s.p.a.ce in anxious speculation, drifted on to the Border and beyond and sought out Johnny Jewel, dwelling upon his quest with even more anxious speculation. Then, when sleep had dulled somewhat his reasoning faculties, Tex began to vision himself in Tucson--well, perhaps in Los Angeles, that Mecca of pleasure lovers--spending money freely, living for a little while the life of ease and idleness gemmed with the smiles of those beautiful women who hover gaily around the money pots in any country, in any clime.

For a hard-working cowpuncher with no visible a.s.sets save his riding gear and his skill with horses, the half-waking dreams of Tex were florid and as impossible, in the cold light of reason, as had been the dreams of Johnny Jewel in that bunk house.

That night others were awake in the moonlight. Down at Sinkhole camp five or six riders were driving a bunch of Rolling R horses into the corral where Johnny kept his riding horse overnight. They were not dreaming vaguely of the future, these riders. Instead they were very much awake to the present and the risks thereof. On the nearest ridge that gave an outlook to the north, a sentinel was stationed in the shade of a rocky out-cropping, ready to wheel and gallop back with a warning if any rode that way.

When the horses were corralled and the gate closed, one man climbed upon the fence and gave orders. This horse was to be turned outside--and the gate-tender swung open the barrier to let it through. That horse could go, and that and that.

"A dozen or so is about as many as we better take," he said to one who worked near him. "No--turn that one back. I know--he's a good one, but his mane and tail, and them white stockings behind, they're too easy reco'nized. That long-legged bay, over there--he's got wind; look at the chest on 'im! Forequarters like a lion. Haze him out, boys." He turned himself on the fence and squinted over the bewildered little group of freed horses. He swung back and squinted over the bunch in the corral, weighing a delicate problem in his mind, to judge by the look of him.

"All right, boys. We kain't afford to be hawgs, this trip. Straddle your hosses and take 'em over to that far corner where we laid the fence down.

Remember what I said about keepin' to the rocky draws. I'll wait here and turn these loose, and foller along and set up the fence after yuh. And keep agoin'--only don't swing over toward Baptista's place, mind. Keep to the left all you can. And keep a lookout ahead. Yuh don't want that kid to get a squint at yuh."

One answered him in Mexican while they slipped out and mounted. They rode away, driving the horses they had chosen. Un.o.btrusive horses as to color; bays and browns, mostly, of the commonplace type that would not easily be missed from the herd. The man on the fence smoked a cigarette and studied the horses milling restlessly below him in the corral.

From the adobe cabin squatting in the moonlight came the shrill, insistent jingling of a bell. The man looked that way thoughtfully, climbed down and went to the cabin, keeping carefully in the beaten trail.

The door was not locked. A rawhide thong tied it fast to a staple in the door jamb. With the bell shrilling its summons inside, the man paused long enough to study the knotting of the thong before he untied it and stepped inside. He went to the telephone slowly, thoughtfully, his cigarette held between two fingers, his forehead drawn down so that his eyebrows were pinched together. He hesitated perceptibly before he took down the receiver. Then he grinned.

"h.e.l.lo!" His voice was hoa.r.s.e, slightly m.u.f.fled. He grinned again when he caught the mildly querulous tones of Sudden Selmer, sharpened a little by the transmitter.

"Where the d.i.c.kens have you been? I've been trying all evening to get you," Sudden complained.

"Huh? Oh, I just got in. I been fixing fence over west of here. Took me till dark--No, the stock's all in--wind had blowed down a couple of them rotten posts--well, they was rotten enough to sag over, so I had to reset them--Had to reset them, I said! Dig new holes!" He turned his face a little away from the transmitter and coughed, then grinned while he listened.

"Oh, nothing--just a cold I caught--Don't amount to anything. I'm doctoring it. I always get hoa.r.s.e when I catch a little cold--Sure, everything's all right. I'm going to ride fence to-morrow--That so? It blowed to beat the cars, down here all night--Why, they're lookin'

fine--No, ain't saw a soul. I guess they know better than to bother our stock--All right, Mr. Selmer, I will--and say! I might be late in getting in to-morrow, but everything's fine as silk--All right--G' bye!"

He hung up the receiver before he started to laugh, but once he did start, he laughed all the time he was re-tying the door in the same kind of knot Johnny had used, and all the while he was returning to the corral.

"Fell for it, all right. Nothing can beat having a cold right handy," he chuckled when he had turned out the stock, whistled for the sentinel, and mounted his horse. "Guess I better happen around to-morrow evening. They won't be back--not if they bring it with 'em."

While he waited for the guard to come in, he eyed the corral and its immediate neighborhood, and afterward inspected the cloud-flecked sky.

"Corral shows a bunch of stock has been penned here," he muttered. "But the wind'll raise before sun-up. I guess it'll be all right."

The sentinel came trotting around the corner. "How many?" he asked, riding alongside the other.

"Fifteen, all told. To-morrow night we'll cull that bunch that ranges west of here. Won't do to trim out too many at a time, and they may be back here to-morrow night. They will if they can't get it over. I don't much expect they will, at that--unless they bring it in pieces. Still, yuh can't tell what a crazy kid'll take a notion to do; not when he's got a bug like Tex says this one has got."

"Tex is pretty cute, aw-right. Me, I'd never a thought of that."

The boss grunted. "Tex is paid for being cute. He's on the inside, where he's got a chance to know these things. He wouldn't be worth a nickel to us if he wasn't cute."

"And it's us that takes the chances," readily agreed the guard.

"Yeah--look at the chance I took jus' now! Talked to old Sudden over the 'phone, stalling along like I was the kid. Got away with it, at that. I'd like to see Tex--"