"Oh--Skyrider! I can only talk a minute. Mom"s in the kitchen, and dad"s gone to hunt up Bill Hayden. Is it true, Johnny, that a lot of horses have been stolen?"
"Yes."
"I heard dad talking. Oh, I wish I could help hunt them, but I"m in an awful mess, Skyrider! Bill Hayden knew I"d taken Jake, because my saddle was gone, and none of the other horses were. I never _saw_ any one so mean and suspicious! And he knows Jake got away from me, too, because I was trying to catch him when Bill rode up, just perfectly furious over the horses stampeding. And Bill told dad--he certainly is the _meanest_ thing! And now dad won"t let me go out of sight of the house unless he or mom are with me. And mommie never goes anywhere, it"s so hot. And dad only goes to town. But they don"t know it was us in the aeroplane--and I"m just glad of it if we did scatter their old herd for them.
Everybody"s so mean to me! And I was planning how you"d teach me to fly, and we"d have the duckiest times--and now--"
She hung up so abruptly that Johnny knew as well as though he had been in the room with her, what had happened. She had heard her dad coming.
Before Johnny had sat down again to his brooding, Sudden called him.
"You spoke about a greaser telling you about an aeroplane, and that you went with him and got it." Sudden"s voice was cool and even--an inexorable voice. "Do you remember my telling you not to let a greaser on the Rolling R range if you could help it?"
"Yes, sir. This one"s brother came first. He was just a kid, and he wanted--a drink." It struck Johnny quite suddenly that Tomaso"s reason for coming had been a very poor one indeed. For there was water much nearer Tucker Bly"s range, which was to the east of Sinkhole. And Tomaso should have had no occasion whatever to be riding to Sinkhole.
"Oh. He wanted a drink, did he? Where did he come from?"
"He works for Tucker Bly. So he said. And he told me about the airplane that had been lost, across the line. His brother had found it."
"And you went to see his brother?"
"His brother came to see me. The kid told him I was--interested."
"You went after the flying machine when? Over two weeks ago, eh? And you were gone--I see. Approximately two days and two nights--nearer three days. Who answered the telephone while you were gone? It happens that I have not missed calling you every night; did the man have a cold?"
"I--I don"t know. I didn"t know anybody--" Johnny frowned. It would be just as well, he felt, to keep Mary V out of it.
"You didn"t know the "phone was answered in your absence. Well, it was.
By a man with a bad cold, who represented himself to be you. Did you notice any signs of any one being there while you were gone?"
"N-no, I can"t say I did. Well, the string was tied different on the door, but I didn"t think much about that."
"No--you wouldn"t think much about that." Sudden"s tone made a mental lash of the words. "You had your own affairs to think about. You were merely being--_paid_ to think of my affairs."
"Yes, sir--that"s the kind of a hound I"ve been."
Johnny"s abject tone--he who had been so high-chested in the past--may have had its effect upon the boss. When Sudden spoke again his voice was almost kind, which is unusual, surely, for a man who has been robbed.
"Well, I shall have to investigate those greasers, I think. It looks to me as though they had used that flying machine for a bait to get you out of the way, and that looks to me too clever for greasers. It looks to me as though some one knew what bait you would jump at the quickest, young man. Do some thinking along those lines, will you? The horses are gone; but there might be some slight satisfaction in catching the thieves."
"Yes, sir. What shall I do to-morrow? Am I fired, or what?"
"You are--_what_!" Sudden was sarcastic again. "I believe, since you have been doing pretty much as you please down there, I shall expect you to go on doing as you please. I don"t see how you are going to do any more damage than you have already done. On the other hand, I don"t see how you are going to do much good--unless I could take those horses out of your hide!"
Johnny stared round-eyed at the "phone, even after Sudden had hung up his receiver.
"Good golly!" he muttered, with a faint return of his normal spirit. "Old Sudden oughta been a lawyer." Then he went back to holding his jaws in two spread palms, and brooding over the trouble he was in.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"WE FLY SOUTH"
Johnny did a great deal of thinking along the line suggested by old Sudden. At first he thought merely how groundless was any suspicion that the airplane was in any way connected with the horse-stealing, except that it might justly be accused of contributing to his negligence.
Even so, Johnny could not see how one man could possibly protect the whole of Sinkhole range from thieves. He could have been on his guard, could have noticed when the first horses were missing, and notified Sudden at once. That, of course, was what had been expected of him.
But as to Tomaso and his oily brother, Johnny did not at first see any possible connection between them and his present trouble, save that they also had innocently contributed to his neglect. But Sudden had told him to think about it, and the suggestion kept swinging his thoughts that way. Finally, for want of something better, he went back to the very beginning and reconstructed his first meeting with Tomaso. Sudden had hinted that they must have known how deeply he was interested in aviation. But Johnny did not see how that could be. He had not talked much about his ambition, even at the Rolling R, he remembered; not enough to set him apart from the others as one who dreamed day and night of flying. Until the boys got hold of that doggerel he wrote, Johnny was sure they had not paid any attention to his occasional vague rhapsodies on the subject.
Tomaso had seen the letterhead of that correspondence school, and had just accidentally mentioned it. Or was it accidental? To make sure, Johnny got out the circular which Tomaso had seen, laid it where he remembered it to have been that day, and sat down at the table where Tomaso had been sitting. He placed the lamp where the light fell full upon the paper and studied the letterhead for several minutes, scowling.
Tomaso, he decided, had remarkably sharp eyes. Seen from that angle, the letterhead was not conspicuous. The volplaning machine was not at all striking to the eye. Unless a person knew beforehand what it represented, or was looking for something of the sort, Johnny was forced to admit that he would be likely to pa.s.s it over without a second glance.
Tomaso, then, must have come there with the intention of leading adroitly to the subject of airplanes. He must have brought those little, steel pliers purposely. And after all, he really had no business on the Rolling R range, if he was riding for the Forty-seven. He had come a good five miles inside the line. And when you looked at it that way, how had he got inside the line? There was no gate on the east side of the fence.
It looked rather far-fetched, improbable. Johnny was slow to accept the theory that he had been led to that airplane just as a toy is given to a child, to keep its attention engrossed with a harmless pastime while other business is afoot. It hurt his self-esteem to believe that--wherefore he prospected his memory for some other theory to take its place.
"Well! If that"s why they did it--it sure worked like a charm," he summed up his cogitations disgustedly. "I"ll say I swallowed the bait whole!"
And he added grimly: "I wish I knew who put them wise."
Youth began to make its demands. He started a fire, boiled coffee, fried bacon, made fresh bread, and ate a belated supper. Sudden had told him to do as he pleased. "Well," Johnny muttered, "I will take him at his word."
He did not know just what he would please to do, but he realized that fasting would not help him any; nor would sleeplessness. He ate, therefore, washed his few dishes and went straight to bed. And although he lay for a long while looking at his trouble through the magnifying gla.s.s of worry, he did sleep finally--and without one definite plan for the morrow.
Half an hour before dawn, Johnny went stumbling along the ledge to the cleft. On his broad shoulder was balanced the propeller. On his face was a look of fixed determination. He scared Bland Halliday out of a sleep in which his dreams were all of a certain cabaret in Los Angeles--dreams which made Bland"s waking all the more disagreeable. Johnny tilted the propeller carefully against the rock wall, lighted a match, and cupped the blaze in his palms so that the light shone on Bland.
"Where"s the lantern? You better get up--it"s most daylight."
"Aw, f"r cat"s sake! What more new meanness you got on your mind? Me, I come down here in good faith to help fix a plane that"s to take me back home--and I work like a dog--"
"Yeah--I know that song by heart, Bland. You in your faith and your innocence, how you were basely betrayed. I can sing it backward. Lay off it now for a few minutes. I want to talk to yuh."
He lighted the lantern, and Bland lay blinking at it lugubriously. "And me--I dreamed I was in to Lemare"s just after a big exhibition flight, and a bunch of movie queens was givin" me the glad eye."
"Yes, I"ve done some dreaming myself," Johnny interposed dryly. "I"m awake now. Listen here, Bland. I"ve been playing square with you, all along. I want you to get that. I can see how you being so darn crooked yourself, you may always be looking for some one to do you, so I ain"t kicking at the stand you take. You"ve got no call, either, to kick against my opinion of you. I"m satisfied you"d steal my airplane and make your getaway, and lie till your tongue wore out, proving it was yours.
You"d do it if you got a chance. That"s why I hid the gas on you. That"s why you couldn"t take Miss Selmer home. I knew darn well you wouldn"t come back. And that"s why I took off the propeller and hid it. It ain"t why I licked you yesterday--that was for what you said about Miss--"
"Aw, f"r cat"s sake! Did yuh have to come and wake me up in the middle of the night just to--"
"No--oh, no. I"m merely explaining to you that I don"t trust you for one holy minute. I don"t want you to think you can put anything over on me by getting on my blind side. I haven"t got any, so far as you"re concerned.
Now listen. I meant, and if possible I still mean, to keep my promise and take you to the Coast in the plane; but something"s come up that is going to hold up the trip for a few days, maybe--"
"Aw, yes! I had a hunch you"d--"
"Shut up! I told you I"d go as soon as I could without leaving the boss in the hole. Well, it happens that--well, some horses were stolen off this range, and I"m the one that"s responsible. So--"
"Say, bo, you don"t, f"r cat"s sake, think _I_ stole your d.a.m.n horses?
Why, honest, bo, I wouldn"t have a horse on a bet! I--"
"Oh, shut _up_!" thundered the distracted Johnny above the other"s whine.