The Thunder Bird | Page 4

Johnny, you'll be here. I'll have dinner all ready, so you
needn't wait to eat." Then she hung up.
Johnny rattled the hook impatiently, called hello with irritated
insistence, and finally succeeded in raising Central's impersonal:
"Number, please?" Whereupon he flung himself angrily out of the
booth.
"Do you want to pay at this end?" The girl at the desk looked up at him
with a gleam of curiosity. Mentally Johnny accused her of "listening
in." He snapped an affirmative at her and waited until "long distance"
told her the amount.
"Four dollars and eighty-five cents," she announced, giving him a pert
little smile. Johnny flipped a small gold piece to the desk and marched
off, scorning his fifteen cents change with the air of a millionaire.
Johnny was angry, grieved, disappointed, worried--and would have
been wholly miserable had not his anger so dominated his other

emotions that he could continue mentally his argument against the
attitude of Mary V and the Rolling R.
They refused to take him seriously, which hurt Johnny's self-esteem
terribly. Were he older, were he a property owner, Sudden Selmer
would not so lightly wave aside that debt. He would pay Johnny the
respect of fighting for his just rights. But no--just because he was
barely of age, just because he was Johnny Jewel, they all acted as
though--why, darn 'em, they acted as though he was a kid offering to
earn money to pay for a broken plate! And Mary V--
Well, Mary V was a great little girl, but she would have to learn some
day that Johnny was master. He considered this as good a day as any
for the lesson. Better, because he was really upholding his principles by
not going to the ranch meekly submissive, because Mary V had
announced that she would be looking for him. Johnny winced from the
thought of Mary V, out on the porch, watching the sky toward Tucson
for the black speck that would be his airplane; listening for the high,
strident drone that would herald his coming. She would cry herself to
sleep.
But she had deliberately sentenced herself to tears and disappointment,
he told himself sternly. She must have known he was in earnest about
not coming. She had no right to think she could kid him out of
something big and vital to his honor. She ought to know him by this
time.
Briefly he considered returning to the hotel and calling up the ranch,
just to tell her not to look for him because he was not coming. But the
small matter of paying the toll deterred him. It was humiliating to admit,
even to himself, that he could not afford another long-distance
conversation with Mary V, but he had come to the point in his finances
where a two-bit piece looked large as a dollar. He would miss that
small gold piece.
Since the government had refused to consider accepting his services
and paying him a bonus for his plane, he would have to sell it--if he
could.

There it sat, reared up on its two little wheels, its nose poked rakishly
out of an old shed that had been remodelled to accommodate it, its tail
sticking out at the other side so that it slightly resembled a turtle with
its shell not quite covering its extremities. The Mexican boy whom
Johnny had hired to watch the plane in his absence lay asleep under one
wing. A faint odor of varnish testified to the heat of the day that was
waning toward a sultry night.
Without disturbing the boy Johnny rolled a smoke and stood, as he had
stood many and many a time, staring at his prize and wondering what
to do with it. He had to have money. That was flat, final, admitting no
argument. At a reasonable estimate, three thousand dollars were tied up
in that machine. He could not afford to sell it for any less. Yet there did
not seem to be a man in the country willing to pay three thousand
dollars for it. It was a curiosity, a thing to come out and stare at, a thing
to admire; but not to buy, even though Johnny had as an added
inducement offered to teach the buyer to fly before the purchase price
was taken from the bank.
The stalking shadow of a man moving slowly warned Johnny of an
approaching visitor. He did not trouble to turn his head; he even moved
farther into the shed, to tighten a turnbuckle that was letting a cable sag
a little.
"Hello, old top--how they using yuh?" greeted a voice that had in it a
familiar, whining note.
Johnny's muscles stiffened. Hostility, suspicion, surprise surged
confusingly through his brain. He turned as one who was bracing
himself