The Thunder Bird

The Thunder Bird

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Title: The Thunder Bird
Author: B. M. Bower
Release Date: December 27, 2004 [eBook #14486]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
THUNDER BIRD***
E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE THUNDER BIRD
by
B. M. BOWER

Author of Chip of The Flying-U, Starr of the Desert, Skyrider, etc.
Frontispiece by Anton Otto Fischer
Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York
1919,

[Frontispiece: Still Schwab hung back. "I'll wait until he can come. I--I
can't leave."]

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
JOHNNY ASSUMES A DEBT OF HONOR II AND THE CAT
CAME BACK III JOHNNY WOULD DO STUNTS IV MARY V TO
THE RESCUE V GODS OR SOMETHING VI FAME WAITS UPON
JOHNNY VII MERELY TWO POINTS OF VIEW VIII SUDDEN
MUST DO SOMETHING IX GIVING THE COLT HIS HEAD X
LOCHINVAR UP TO DATE XI JOHNNY WILL NOT BE A NICE
BOY XII THE THUNDER BIRD TAKES WING XIII THE HEGIRA
OF JOHN IVAN JEWEL XIV FATE MEETS JOHNNY SMILING
XV ONE MORE PLUNGE FOR JOHNNY XVI WITH HIS HANDS
FULL OF MONEY AND HIS EYES SHUT XVII "MY JOB'S
FLYING" XVIII INTO MEXICO AND RETURN XIX BUT JOHNNY
WAS NEITHER FOOL NOR KNAVE XX MARY V TAKES THE
TRAIL XXI JOHNNY IS NOT PAID TO THINK XXII JOHNNY
MAKES UP HIS MIND XXIII JOHNNY ACTS BOLDLY XXIV
THE THUNDER BIRD'S LAST FLIGHT FOR JOHNNY XXV OVER
THE TELEPHONE
CHAPTER ONE

JOHNNY ASSUMES A DEBT OF HONOR
Since Life is no more than a series of achievements and failures, this
story is going to begin exactly where the teller of tales usually stops. It
is going to begin with Johnny Jewel an accepted lover and with one of
his dearest ambitions realized. It is going to begin there because Johnny
himself was just beginning to climb, and the top of his desires was still
a long way off, and the higher you go the harder is the climbing. Even
love does not rest at peace with the slipping on of the engagement ring.
I leave it to Life, the supreme judge, to bear me out in the statement
that Love must straightway gird himself for a life struggle when he has
passed the flowered gateway of a woman's tremulous yes.
To Johnny Jewel the achievement of possessing himself of so coveted a
piece of mechanism as an airplane, and of flying it with rapidly
increasing skill, began to lose a little of its power to thrill. The getting
had filled his thoughts waking and sleeping, had brought him some
danger, many thrills, a good deal of reproach and much
self-condemnation. Now he had it--that episode was diminishing
rapidly in importance as it slid into the past, and Johnny was facing a
problem quite as great, was harboring ambitions quite as dazzling, as
when he rode a sweaty horse across the barren stretches of the Rolling
R Ranch and dreamed the while of soaring far above the barrenness.
Well, he had soared high above many miles of barrenness. That dream
could be dreamed no more, since its magic vapors had been dissipated
in the bright sun of reality. He could no longer dream of flying, any
more than he could build air castles over riding a horse. Neither could
he rack his soul with thoughts of Mary V Selmer, wondering whether
she would ever get to caring much for a fellow. Mary V had
demonstrated with much frankness that she cared. He knew the feel of
her arms around his neck, the look of her face close to his own, the
sweet thrill of her warm young lips against his. He had bought her a
modest little ring, and had watched the shine of it on the third finger of
her tanned left hand when she left him--going gloveless that the ring
might shine up at her.
The first episode of her life thus happily finished, Johnny was looking

with round, boyish, troubled eyes upon the second.
"Long-distance call for you, Mr. Jewel," the clerk announced, when
Johnny strolled into the Argonaut hotel in Tucson for his mail. "Just
came in. The girl at the switchboard will connect you with the party."
Johnny glanced into his empty key box and went on to the telephone
desk. It was Mary V, he guessed. He had promised to call her up, but
there hadn't been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of
inaction, which meant failure,