Johnny was gazing reverently upon the pilot's license which he held in
his hand, and he did not hear the last two or three sentences of the
hobo's lament. He was busy breaking one of the ten commandments; the one
which says, "Thou shalt not covet." That he had never heard of Bland
Halliday did not disturb him, for in Arizona's wide spaces one does not
hear of all that goes on in the world. He was sufficiently impressed by
the license and what it implied, and he was thinking very fast. Here was
a man, down on his luck it is true, but a man who actually knew how to
fly; a fellow who spoke of Smith Brothers Supply Factory with the
contempt of familiarity; a fellow who had used some of the very same
linen.
Johnny Jewel forgot his pose of expert aviator. He forgot that Bland
Halliday was absolutely unknown to him and that his personality was not
altogether prepossessing. As a rule Johnny did not like pale eyes that
seemed always to wear a veiled, opaque look. Heretofore he had not liked
those new-fangled little mustaches which the Rolling R boys had dubbed
slipped eyebrows. And ordinarily he would have objected to a mouth drawn
at the corners in a permanent whine. To offset these objectionable
features there were the greasy, brown overalls and the cap which
certainly looked bird-mannish enough for any one, and there was the
pilot's license--no fake about that--and the fact that the fellow had
known all about Abe Smith and the linen.
Johnny threw away his cigarette and his caution together. "Say, I might
be able to take you to Los Angeles, all right--provided you will take a
hand on the little old boat and help me put her in shape again. It
oughtn't to take long, if we go right after it. I--er--to tell the truth,
it's hard to get hold of any one around here that knows anything about
it. Why, I had one fellow working for me, Mr. Halliday, and just for a
josh I asked him where the fuselage was. And he went hunting all over the
place and finally brought me a monkey wrench! He--"
"No brains--that's the main trouble with the game," commented Bland
Halliday, after he had exhaled a long, thin wreath of smoke which he
watched dreamily. "What you got?"
"Hunh? What kind of a plane? Why, it's a tractor. A military--"
"Unh-huh. Dual dep control, or have you monkeyed with it and--?"
"It's a regular military type tractor. It--well, it has been in
government service before--"
"You an army flier? Then what 'n hell you doing here? Say, put over
something I can take, bo. You don't look the part. Only for that stuff
you unwrapped, I'd tag you for a wild and woolly cowboy."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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