"Me, I don't find him that damn fuz'lawge," said the brother of Tomaso,
wiping his swarthy countenance that was beaded with sweat. "That Tomaso,
he has took, I bet. He brings it to you queeck when I'm through with
him." He looked at Johnny expectantly. "I'm promise you it comes back
all right, if perhaps Tomaso has take. Perhaps now you pay twenty-fi'
dollar?"
"No, I don't; I pay you ten dollars now." Johnny, remember, had a full
two days' acquaintance with the brother of Tomaso. He was taking a
certain precaution, rather than an unfair advantage. He honestly believed
that the brother of Tomaso was best dealt with cautiously.
"When this airplane is safe at Sinkhole, and you've brought me every
darned thing that's been packed off, I'll pay you the rest of the fifty.
There's more," he added meaningly, "that's missing. The fuselage ain't
all."
The brother of Tomaso seemed unhappy. He took the ten dollars with a
sigh, promised himself much unpleasantness for Tomaso, and wearily set
about making camp, too dispirited to care that Johnny spent the time in
fussing around the machine, making a thin pretense of looking it over for
breakages and defects when all the while he was simply adoring it.
"At daybreak," Johnny announced with a new dignity in his voice--the
dignity of one having valuable possessions and a potential power--"we'll
start back. But I don't think much of your idea that we can drag this
machine home with our saddle horses. We can't--not and have anything but
a bundle of junk when we get there. There's a ranch over south here, a
mile or so. Better see if you can't get a wagon and team. We'll have to
haul it home somehow."
The brother of Tomaso started perceptibly. "A rancho? But that is not
possible, senor!"
"Oh, ain't it? I'll show yuh, then."
"Oh, no! _No importa._ If it is a rancho in this countree, me, I'm find
it without trobles for you."
Even Johnny's absorption in his treasure-trove could not altogether
blind him to the fact that Tomaso's brother was perturbed. He wondered
a little. But after all, there was only one thing now that really
interested him, and he straightway returned to it, leaving the Mexican
to find the ranch and hire a team. He was not afraid that the brother of
Tomaso would fail him in that detail. Thirty American dollars look big to
a Mexican.
He knew when Tomaso's brother mounted and rode away in the direction of
the ranch, and he knew when he returned. But he failed to observe that
the brother of Tomaso was gone long enough to have crawled there and back
on his hands and knees, and that he returned in a much better humor than
when he had left.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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