The Thunder Bird

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BUT JOHNNY WAS NEITHER FOOL NOR KNAVE

  Cliff smiled faintly one morning and handed Johnny a long manilaenvelope over their breakfast table in Mateo's cabin. "Your thirdweek's salary," he idly explained. "Do you want it?"

  "Well, I ain't refusing it," Johnny grinned back. "I guess maybe I'llstick for another week, anyway." He emptied his coffee cup and held itup for Mateo's woman to refill, trying to match Cliff Lowell's carelessair of indifference to the presence of seventeen hundred dollars onthat table. "That is, if you think I'm making good," he addedboyishly, looking for praise.

  "Your third week's salary answers that, doesn't it? From now on it maynot be quite so easy to make good. Perhaps, since I want to go acrossthis evening as late as you can make a safe landing over there, I oughtto tell you that a border patrol saw us yesterday, coming back, andwondered a little at a government plane getting over the line. He didnot report it, so far as I know. But he will make a report the nexttime he sees the same thing happen."

  "I wish I didn't have that name painted clear across her belly," Johnnyfretted. "But if I went and painted it out it would all be black, andthat would be just as bad. And if I took off the letters withsomething, I'm afraid I'd eat off the sizing too, or weaken the fabricor something. I ought to recover the wings, but that takes time--"

  Cliff gave him that tolerant smile which Johnny found so intolerable."It is not at all necessary. I thought of all possible contingencieswhen I first saw the Thunder Bird. Across the line the name absolutelyidentifies it, which is rather important. On this side it is known asa bird fond of doing the unusual. Your reputation, old man, may helpyou out of a tight place yet. Now we are duck hunters, remember.Hereafter we shall be hunting ducks with an airplane--something new,but not at all improbable, especially when it is the Thunder Bird doingthe hunting. We must carry our shotguns along with us, and a few ducksas circumstantial evidence. If we stray across the line accidentally,that will be because you do not always look where you are flying, andwatch the landmarks."

  "This, of course, in case we are actually caught. Though I do not seewhy that should happen. They have no anti-aircraft guns to bring usdown. It may be a good idea to carry an auxiliary tank of gasoline incase of an emergency."

  "I don't see why--not if I fill up over there every time I land. I canstay up three hours--longer, if I can glide a lot. Of course that highaltitude takes more, in climbing up, and flying while you're up there,but the distance is short. I'll chance running outa gas. I don't wantthe extra weight, flying high as we have to. The motor's doing all shewants to do, just carrying us."

  Cliff did not argue the point, but went out to his car, fussed with itfor a few minutes, and then drove off on one of the mysterious tripsthat took him away from Mateo's cabin and sometimes kept him away fortwo days at a time. Johnny did not know where Cliff went; to see theboss, perhaps, and turn in what news he had gleaned--if indeed he hadsucceeded in gleaning any. Sometimes the long waits were tiresome to ayouth who loved action. But Johnny had been schooled to the monotonyof a range line-camp, and if he could have ridden over the countrywhile he waited, he would not have minded being left idle most of thetime.

  But he did not dare leave camp for more than half an hour or so at atime, because he never knew what minute Cliff might return and wanthim; and when one is being paid something like ten dollars an hour,waking or sleeping, for his time, one feels constrained to keep thatprecious time absolutely available to his employer. At least, Johnnyfelt constrained to do so. He could not even go duck hunting. Mateohunted the ducks, using Johnny's gun or Cliff's, and seldom failing tobring back game. It would be ducks shot by Mateo which would furnishthe circumstantial evidence which Cliff mentioned that morning.

  Johnny went out to the Thunder Bird, shooed three kids from under thewings, and began to fuss with the motor. One advantage of being idlemost of the time was the easy life the Thunder Bird was leading. Themotor was not being worn out on this job, at any rate.

  So far he had not spent a hundred dollars of his salary on the upkeepof his machine. He was glad of that, because he already had enough topay old Sudden and have the price of a car left over. With the ThunderBird clear, and a couple of thousand dollars to the good--why, he wouldnot change places with the owner of the Rolling R himself! He could goback any time and vindicate himself to the whole outfit. He could pickMary V up and carry her off now, without feeling that he was taking anyrisk with her future. Poor little girl, she would be wondering whathad become of him; he'd write, or send a wire, if Cliff would ever openhis heart enough to take a fellow with him to where there was apost-office or something.

  He was beginning to feel a deep need of some word from Mary V, wasJohnny. He was beginning to worry, to grow restive down here in thewilderness, seeing nothing, doing nothing save kill time between thoseshort, surreptitious flights across to the notched ridge and backagain. Two weeks of that was beginning to pall.

  But the money he was receiving did not pall. It held him in leash,silenced the doubts that troubled him now and then, kept himtemporizing with that uneasy thing we call conscience.

  He climbed now into the cockpit, testing the controls absent-mindedlywhile he pondered certain small incidents that caused him a certainvague discomfort whenever he thought of them. For one thing, why musta gatherer of news carry mysterious packages into Mexico and leave themthere, sometimes throwing them overboard with a tiny parachutearrangement, as Cliff had done on the first trip, and flying backwithout stopping? Why must a newspaper man bring back certainmysterious packages, and straightway disappear with them in the car?That he should confer long and secretly with men of florid complexionsand an accent which hardens its g's and sharpens its s's, might veryplausibly be a part of his gathering of legitimate news ofinternational import. Though Johnny rather doubted its legitimacy, hehad no doubt whatever of its world-wide importance. Certain nationswere at war--and he was no fool, once he stopped dreaming long enoughto think logically.

  Those packages bothered him more than the florid gentlemen, however.At first he suspected smuggling, or something like that. Butgun-running, that staple form of border lawbreaking, did not fit intoany part of Cliff's activities, though opium might. But when he hadmade an excuse for handling one or two of the packages, they routed theopium theory. They were flat and loosely solid, as packages of paperwould be. Not state documents such as melodramas use to keep thevillains sweating--they did not come in reams, so far as Johnny knew.He could think of no other papers that would need smuggling into or outof a country as free as ours where freedom of the press has become awatchword; yet the idea persisted stubbornly that those were packagesof paper which he had managed to take in his hands.

  As a pleasing relief from useless cogitation on the subject, Johnnytook his bank roll from a pocket he had sewed inside his shirt. Like amiser he fingered the magic paper, counting and recounting, spending itover and over in anticipatory daydreams. Thirty-two hundred dollars hecounted in bills of large denomination--impressively clean, crispbills, some of them--and mentally placed that amount to one side. Thatwould pay old Sudden, interest and all. What was left he could do withas he pleased. He counted it again. There were three hundred dollarsleft from what Bland had earned--Bland-- What had become of Bland,anyway? Little runt might be broke again; in fact, it was practicallycertain that he would be broke again, though he must have had close toa hundred dollars when they landed in Los Angeles. Oh, well--forgetBland!

  So there were the three hundred--gee golly, but it had cost, that shortstay in the burg of Bland's dreams. A hundred dollars gone like thepuff of a cigarette! Well, there were the three hundred left--he'dhave been broke, pronto, if he had stayed there much longer. Anotherhundred he had spent on the Thunder Bird--golly, but propellers do costa lot! And that shotgun he never had had a chance to shoot--Cliff surewas a queer guy, making him buy all that scenery, and then caching himaway so no one ever got a ch
ance to size him up and see whether helooked like a duck hunter or not. Well, anyway, let's see. There werea thousand in big juicy hundreds; and five hundred more in fifties andtwenties--

  Out beyond the oak's leafy screen the dogs were barking and growlingand the children were calling shrilly. Johnny hastily put away hiswealth and eased himself up so that he could peer out through thebranches. He had not consciously feared the coming of strangers, yetnow he felt his heart thumping noisily because of the clamor out in theyard. While he looked, two horsemen rode past and stopped at the cabin.

  Now Johnny had been telling himself what a godsend some new face wouldbe to him, yet he did not rush out to welcome the callers and ask thenews of the outside world which Cliff was so chary of giving. He didnot by any sound or movement declare his presence. He simply cranedand listened.

  One of the men he could not see because of a great, overhanging limbthat barred his vision. The other happened to stop just opposite avery good peephole through the leaves. The kiddies were standing backshyly, patently interrupted in their pretended play of trundling thewheelbarrow and dragging the stick horses over the yard. Rosa, thethin-legged girl, stood shyly back with her finger in her mouth, inplain sight of Johnny, though she could not see him in the deep shadowof the leaves.

  It was the man that interested Johnny, however. He was a soldier,probably one of the border patrol. He sat his horse easily, erect inthe saddle, straight-limbed and alert, with lean hard jaw and a grayeye that kept glancing here, there, everywhere while the other talked.It was only a profile view that Johnny saw, but he did not need a lookat the rest of his face with the other gray eye to be uncomfortablyconvinced that not much would escape him.

  "It circled and seemed to come down somewhere on this side the Potrerosand it has not been seen since. Ask the kids if they saw somethingthat looked like a big bird flying." This from the unseen one, who hadraised his voice as impatience seized him. These Mexicans were soslow-witted!

  Johnny heard Mateo's voice, speaking at length. He saw Rosa take herfinger from her mouth, catch up a corner of her ragged, apron and twistit in an agony of confusion, and then as if suddenly comprehending whatit was these senores wished to know, she pointed jerkily toward thenorth. Perhaps the others also pointed to the north, for thelean-jawed soldier tilted his head backward and stared up that way, andMateo spoke in very fair English.

  "The kids, she's see. No, I dunno. I'm busy I don' make attenshions.I'm fine out when--"

  "We know when," the efficient looking soldier interrupted. "You keepwatch. If you see it fly back, see just where it comes from and whereit goes, and ride like hell down to camp and tell us. You will getmore money than you can make here in a year. You sabe that?"

  "Yo se, senor--me, I'm onderstan'."

  "You know where our camp is?"

  "Si, senor capitan. Me, I'm go lak hell."

  "Well, there's nothing more to be got here. Let's get along." And asthey moved off Johnny caught a fragmentary phrase "from Riverside."

  The children had taken up their industrious play again, and theirmother had turned from the open doorway to hush the crying of Mateo'syoungest in the cabin. Mateo called the children to him and pattedthem on the head, and the senora, their mother, brought candy and gaveit to them. They ran off, sucking the sweets, gabbling gleefully toone another. Cliff Lowell had been right, nothing is so disarming as awoman and children about a place where secrets are kept.

  There had been no suspicion of Mateo's cabin and the family that livedthere in squalid content. The incident was closed.

  But Johnny slumped down in the seat again and glowered through thelittle, curved windshield at the crisply wavering leaves beyond theThunder Bird's nose. He was not a fool, any more than he was a crook.He was young and too confiding, too apt to take things for granted andlet the other fellow do the worrying, so long as things were fairlypleasant for Johnny Jewel. But right now his eyes were open in moresenses than one, and they were very wide open at that.

  There was something very radically wrong with this job. The fiction oflegitimate news gathering in Mexico could no longer give him anyfeeling save disgust for his own culpability. News gathering did notrequire armed guards--not in this country, at least--and such mysteriesas Cliff Lowell dealt in. The money in his possession ceased to givehim any little glow of pleasure. Instead, his face grew all at oncehot with shame and humiliation. It was not honest money, although hehad earned it honestly enough. If it had been honest money, why shouldthose soldiers go riding through the valleys, looking for him and hisplane? It was not for the pleasure of saying howdy, if Johnny mightjudge from the hard-eyed glances of that one who had stopped in plainview.

  It was not honest money that he had been taking. Why, even the kidsout there knew it was not honest! Look at Rosa, playing shrewdly herpart of dumb shyness in the presence of strangers--and she thinking allthe while how best she could lie to them, the little imp! It was notthe first time she had shown her shrewdness. Why, nearly every timeCliff wanted to make a trip across the line, those kids climbed thehill to where they could look all over the flat and the near-by hills,and if they saw any one they would yell down to Mateo. If theinterloper happened to be close, they had orders to roll small rocksdown for a warning, so Cliff one day told Johnny with that insufferablytolerant smile. Cliff brought them candy and petted them, just forwhat use he could make of them as watchdogs. Would all that benecessary for a legitimate enterprise? Wouldn't the guards have ordersto shut their eyes when an airplane flew high, bearing a man whogathered news vital to the government?

  Once before Johnny had been made a fool of by horse thieves who pliedtheir trade across the line. They had given him this very sameairplane to keep him occupied and tempt him away from his duty whilethey stole Rolling R horses at their leisure. Wasn't this verymoney--thirty-two hundred dollars of it--going to pay for that bit ofgullibility? Gulled into earning money to pay for an earlier piece ofgross stupidity!

  "The prize--mark!" he branded himself. "By golly, they've got mehelping 'em do worse than steal horses from the Rolling R, this time;putting something over on the government is their little stunt--and bygolly, I fell for the bait just like I done the other time! _Huhn_!"Then he added a hopeful threat. "But they had me on the hip, thattime--this time it's going to be different!"

  For the rest of that day he brooded, waiting for Cliff. What he woulddo he himself did not know, but he was absolutely determined that hewould do something.