"No, I'm find out from lawyer. Only I'm say maybe it's automobile. Cos'
me fi' dollar, which is hold-up, you bet. Some day I get even that fi'
dollar. That flyin' machine goes into Mexico, that's los' by law.
Sal--what you call--oh!" He snapped his fingers as men do when trying
to recall a word. "She cos' me fi' dollar, that word! Jus' minute--it's
like wreck on ocean, that is left and somebody brings it--"
"Salvage?" Johnny jerked the word out abruptly.
"That's him! Salvage. Belongs anybody that finds. Mexico, she's foreign
countree. She could take; it's hers if she want. But what she wants?
Nobody can make it go. No Mexicans can fly, you bet. Me, I don't know
damn t'ing about flyin' nothin' but monee. Monee, I make it fly, yes." He
chuckled at his little joke, but Johnny did not even hear it.
Johnny was seeing a real, military airplane in his possession, cached
away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole--a wall that
featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing--what
wonderful things was Johnny not seeing?
"Like them buried treasure," Tomaso's brother went on purring comfortably
to Johnny's doubts. "The _hombre_ what finds, it belongs to him, you
bet. What you say? You pay me--" The eyes of Tomaso's brother dwelt
calculatingly upon Johnny's half-averted face. "You pay me fifty dollar
when I show you I don't lie. I help you drag him back home, you--"
"Nothing doing." Johnny pulled himself from his dreams to bargain for his
heart's desire--because he knew Mexicans. "I ain't sure I want the thing,
anyway. It's probably broke, and it takes _money_ to fix a busted plane,
let me tell you. And there might be complications; and besides, I've got
to ride this range. I can't go rambling around all over Mexico hunting an
airplane that probably wouldn't be any good when I found it."
Tomaso's brother rose from the doorsill to gesticulate while he argued
those points and others which Johnny thought of later. It was a beautiful
flying machine. By every object impressive enough to make oath upon,
Tomaso's brother swore that it was as he said. Look! Not one peso would
he accept until Johnny had seen. And the range? Would it run off in two
days, perhaps? Look, then! Tomaso's brother would make the bet. He would
agree. They would go for the airship, and they would return with it, and
of the fifty pesos that was the full price he asked, not one centavo
would he accept until the senor had seen that all was as he had left it.
Look! That very night they would go, and by noon to-morrow they would be
there. And under the great wings would they rest. And they would return
in two more days--such a little while it would take--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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