The Thunder Bird | Page 7

said Johnny drily, "I aim to sleep with the
plane." Bland may have read Johnny's reason for sleeping with his
airplane, but beyond one quick look he made no sign. "Still nuts over
it--I'll say you are," he grunted. "You wait till you've been in the game
long as I have, bo."
With a blanket and pillow bought on his way through the town, Johnny
disposed himself for the night under the nose of the plane with the
wheels of the landing gear at his back. He was not by nature a
suspicious young man, but he knew Bland Halliday; and to know Bland
was to distrust him.
He felt that he was taking a necessary precaution, now that he knew
Bland was in Tucson. With the landing gear behind him, no one could
move the airplane in the night without first moving him.
Now that he thought of it, Bland had been left fifty miles farther down
the line, to catch his train. Tucson was a perfectly illogical place for
him to be in, even for the purpose of carousing. One would certainly
expect him to hurry to the city of his desires and take his pleasure there.
Johnny decided that Bland must still have an eye on the plane.
That he was secretly envious of Bland as an aviator did not add to his
mental comfort. Bland could speak with slighting familiarity of "the
game," and assume a boredom not altogether a pose. Bland had drunk
deep and satisfyingly of the cup which Johnny, to save his honor, must
put away from him after a tantalising sip or two. Not until Bland had
said, "Wait till you've been in the game as long as I have," had Johnny

realized to the full just what it would mean to him to part with his
airplane without being accepted by the government as an aviator.
At the Rolling R, when his conscience debt to Sudden pressed so
heavily, he had figured very nicely and had found the answer to his
problem without much trouble. To enlist as an aviator with his airplane,
or to sell the plane in Tucson, turn the proceeds over to Sudden to pay
his debt and enlist as an aviator without the machine, had seemed
perfectly simple. Either way would be making good the mistakes of his
past and paving the way for future achievements. Parting with the plane
had not promised to so wrench the very heart out of him when he fully
expected to fly faster and farther in airplanes owned by the government;
faster and farther toward the goal of all red-blooded young males: glory
or wealth, the hero's wreath of laurel or the smile of dame Fortune.
Mary V stood on the heights waiting for him, as Johnny had planned
and dreamed. He would come back to her a captain, maybe--perhaps
even a major, in these hot times of swift achievement. They would all
be proud to shake his hand, those jeering ones who called him Skyrider
for a joke. Captain Jewel would not have sounded bad at all. But--
There is no dodging the finality of Uncle Sam's no. They had not
wanted Johnny Jewel to fly for fame and his country's honor. And if he
sold his own airplane, how then would he fly? How could he ever hope
to be in the game as long as Bland had been? How could he do
anything but go back meekly to the Rolling R Ranch and ride bronks
for Mary V's father, and be hailed as Skyrider still, who had no more
any hope of riding the sky?
Gloom at last plumbed the depths of Johnny's soul, and showed him
where grew the root of his unalterable determination to combat Mary
V's plan to have him at the ranch. Much as he loved Mary V he would
hate going back to the dull routine of ranch life. (And after all, a youth
like Johnny loves nothing quite so much as his air castles.) As a rider of
bronks he was spoiled, he who had ridden triumphant the high air lanes.
He had talked of paying his debt to Sudden, he had talked of his
self-respect and his honesty and his pride--but above and beyond them
all he was fighting to save his castle in the air. Debt or no debt, he

could never go back to the Rolling R and be a rancher. Lying there
under his airplane and staring up at the starred purple of the night he
knew that he could not go back.
Yet he knew too that once he had sold his airplane he would be almost
as helpless financially as Bland Halliday, unless he returned to the only
trade he knew, the trade of riding bronks and performing