a trance. He, his conscious inward self, was not riding a sweating bronk along a trail that wound more-or-less southward across the desert. That was his body, chained by grim necessity to work for a wage. He, Johnny Jewel’s ego, was soaring up and up and up—up till the eagles themselves gazed enviously after. He was darting in and out among the convolutions of fluffy white clouds; was looping earthward in great, invisible volutes; catching himself on the upward curve and zigzagging away again, swimming ecstatically the high, clean air currents which the poor, crawling, earthbound ones never know.
Johnny jarred back to earth and to the sordid realities of life. He had ridden half way to Sinkhole without knowing it, and now his horse had stopped, facing another horse whose rider was staring curiously at Johnny. This was Pete, on his way in from Sinkhole.
“Say-y! Yuh snake-bit, or what?” Pete asked. “Ridin’ glassy-eyed right at a feller! If my hawse had been a mite shorter, I expect you’d of rode right on over me and never of saw me. What’s bitin’ yuh, Johnny?”
“Me? Nothing!” No daydreamer likes being pulled out of his dream by so ugly a reality as Pete, and Johnny was petulant. “Why didn’t you get outa the way, then? You saw me coming, didn’t you?”
“Me? Sure! I ain’t loco. I seen yuh five mile back, about. I knowed it was somebody from the ranch. Sudden ‘phoned in and said I could drag it. And you can bet yore sweet young life I hailed them words with joy! What yuh done to ‘im that he’s sendin’ yuh off down to Sinkhole? Me, I ‘phoned in and much as told ‘em he’d have to double my pay if he wanted me to stay down there any longer. That was a coupla days ago. Didn’t git no satisfaction atall till to-day. Me, I’d ruther go to jail, twicet over, than stay here a week longer. Ain’t saw a soul in two weeks down there. Well, I’ll be pushin’ along. Adios—and here’s hopin’ you like it better than what I done.”
Johnny told him good-bye and straightway forgot him. Once he had his two horses “lined out” in their shuffling little trail-trot that was their natural gait, he picked up his dream where he had been interrupted. Where his body went mattered little to Johnny Jewel, so long as he was left alone with his thoughts. So presently his eyes were once more staring vacantly at the dim trail, while in spirit he was soaring high and swooping downward with the ease of a desert lark, while thousands thrilled to watch his flight.
What did he care about Sinkhole Camp? Loneliness meant long, uninterrupted hours in which to ride and read and dream of the great things he meant some day to do.
A THING THAT SETS LIKE A HAWK
Six days are not many when they are lived with companions and the numberless details of one’s everyday occupation. They may seem a month if you pass them in jail, or in waiting for some great event,—or at Sinkhole Camp, down near the Border.
Three days of the six Johnny spent in familiarizing himself with the two or three detached horse herds that watered along the meager little stream that sunk finally under a ledge and was seen no more in Arizona. He counted the horses as best he could while they loitered at their watering places, and he noticed where they fed habitually—also that they ranged far and usually came in to water in the late afternoon or closer to dusk, when the yellow-jackets that swarmed along the muddy banks of the stream did not worry them so much, nor the flies that were a torment.
He reported by telephone to his employer, who seemed relieved to know that everything was so quiet and untroubled down at that end of his range. And once, quite inadvertently, he reported to Mary V; or was going to, when he recognized a feminine note in the masculine gruffness that spoke over the wire. And when she found he had discovered her:
“Oh, Johnny! I’ve thought of another verse!” she began animatedly.
Johnny hung up, and although the telephone rang twice after that he would not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the ranch, but now he thanked heaven, emphatically enough to make up for any lack of sincerity, that he was where he was.
He got out his aviation circulars again and went over them one by one, though he could almost repeat them with his eyes’ shut. He tried to dream of future greatness, but instead he could only feel depressed and hopeless. It would take a long, long time to save enough money to learn the game. And the earning was dreary work at best. The little adobe cabin became straightway a squalid prison, the monotonous waste around him a void that spread like a great, impassable gulf between himself and the dreams he dreamed. He wished, fervently and profanely, that the greasers would try to steal some horses, so that he could be doing something.
People thought the Border was a tumultuous belt of violence drawn from Coast to Gulf, he meditated morosely. They ought to camp at Sinkhole for awhile. Why, he could ride in an hour or two to Mexico—and see nothing more than he could see from the door of his cabin. He wished he could see something. A fight—anything that had action in it. But the revolution, boiling intermittently over there, did not so much as float a wisp of steam in his direction.
He wished that he had not “hung up” on Mary V before he had told her a few things. He couldn’t see why she didn’t leave him alone. The Lord knew he was willing to leave her alone.
A few days more of that he had before he saw a living soul. Then a Mexican youth came wandering in on a scrawny pony that seemed to have its heart set on drinking the creek dry, before his rider could drink it all. Johnny watched the boy lie down on the flat of his lean stomach with his face to the sluggish stream, and drink as if he, too, were trying to cheat the pony. Together they lifted their heads and looked at Johnny. The Mexican boy smiled, white-toothed, while deep pools of eyes regarded Johnny soberly.
“She’s damn hot to-day, señor,” he said. “Thank you for the so good water to drink.”
“That’s all right. Help yourself,” Johnny said languidly. “Had your dinner?”
“Not this day. I’m come from Tucker Bly, his rancho. I ride to see if horses feed quiet.”
“Well, come in and eat. I cooked some peaches this morning.”
The youth went eagerly, his somewhat stilted English easing off into a mixture of good American slang and the Mexican dialect spoken by peons and some a grade higher up the ladder. He was not more than seventeen, and while Johnny recalled his instructions to put any greaser on the run, he took the liberty of interpreting those instructions to please himself. This kid was harmless enough. He talked the range gossip that proved to Johnny’s satisfaction that he was what he professed to be—a young rider for Tucker Bly, who owned the “Forty-Seven” brand that ranged just east of the Rolling R. Johnny had never seen this Tomaso—plain Tom, he called him presently—but he knew Tucker Bly; and a few leading questions served to set at rest any incipient suspicions Johnny may have had.
They were doing the same work, he and Tomaso. The only difference was that Johnny camped alone, and Tomaso rode out from the Forty-Seven ranch every day, taking whatever direction Tucker Bly might choose for him. But the freemasonry of the range land held Johnny to the feeling that there was a common bond between them, in spite of Tomaso’s swarthy skin. Besides, he was lonely. His tongue loosened while Tomaso ate and praised Johnny’s cookery with the innate flattery of his race.
“Wha’s that pic’shur? What you call that thing?” Tomaso pointed a slender, brown finger at a circular heading, whereon a pink aeroplane did a “nose dive” toward the date line through voluted blue clouds.
“That? Say! Didn’t you ever see a flying machine?” Johnny stared at him pityingly.
Tomaso shook his head vaguely. “Me, I’m never saw one of them things. My brother, he’s tell me. He knows the spot where there’s one fell down. My brother, he says she’s awful bad luck, them thing. This-a one, she’s fell ‘cross the line. She’s set there like a big hawk, my brother says. Nobody wants. She’s bad luck.”
“Bad luck nothing.” Johnny’s eyes had widened a bit. “What you mean, one fell across the line? You don’t mean—say what ‘n thunder do yuh mean? Where’s there a flying machine