Skyrider (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 setting like a hawk?”

      Tomaso waved a brown hand comprehensively from east to west. “Somewhere—me, I dunno. My brother, he’s know. He’s saw it set there. It’s what them soldiers got lost. It’s bad luck. Them soldiers most dead when somebody find. They don’t know where that thing is no more. They don’t want it no more. My brother, she’s tol’ me them soldiers flew like birds and then they fell down. It’s bad luck. My brother took one hammer from that thing, and one pliers. Them hammer, she’s take a nail off my brother’s thumb. And them pliers, she’s lost right away.”

      Johnny’s hand trembled when he tried to shake a little tobacco into a cigarette paper. His lips, too, quivered slightly. But he laughed unbelievingly.

      “Your brother was kidding you, Tom. Nobody would go off and leave an airplane setting in the desert. Those soldiers that got lost were away over east of here. Three or four hundred miles. He was kidding you.”

      “No-o, my brother, she’s saw that thing! She’s hunt cattle what got across, and she’s saw that what them soldiers flew. Me, I know.” He looked at Johnny appraisingly, hesitated and leaned forward, impelled yet not quite daring to give the proof.

      “Well, what do you know?” Johnny returned the look steadfastly.

      “You don’t tell my brother—I—” He fumbled in his trousers pocket, hesitated a little longer, and grew more trustful. “Them pliers—I’m got.”

      He laid them on the table, and Johnny let his stool tilt forward abruptly on its four legs. He took up the pliers, examined them with one eye squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, weighed them in his hand, bent to read the trade-mark. Then he looked at Tomaso. Those pliers may or may not have come from the emergency kit of an airplane, but they certainly were not of the kind or quality that ranchmen were in the habit of owning. To Johnny they looked convincing. When he had an airplane of his own, he would find a hundred uses for a pair of pliers exactly like those.

      “I thought you said your brother lost ‘em,” he observed drily.

      Tomaso shrugged, flung out his hands, smiled with his lips, and frowned with his eyes. “S’pose he did lost. Somebody could find.”

      Johnny laughed. “All right; we’ll let it ride that way. I ain’t going to tell your brother. Want to sell ‘em?”

      Tomaso took up the pliers, caressed their bright steel with his long fingers, nipped them open and shut.

      “What you pay me?” he countered.

      “Two bits.”

      Tomaso turned them over, gazed upon them fondly. He shook his head regretfully. “No quero. Them pliers, she’s bueno,” he said. “You could find more things. My brother, she’s tell lots of things is where that sets like a hawk. Lots of things. You don’t tell my brother?”

      “Sure not. I don’t want the things anyway. And I don’t know your brother.”

      Tomaso thoughtfully nipped the pliers upon the oilcloth table cover. He looked at the airplane picture, he looked at Johnny. He sighed.

      “Me, I’m like see those thing fly like birds. I’m like see that what sets over there. My brother, she’s tell me it’s so big like here to that water hole. She’s tell me some day it maybe flies. I go see it some day.”

      Johnny laughed. “You’ll have some trip if you do. You take it from me, Tom, I don’t know your brother, but I know he was kiddin’ you. It СКАЧАТЬ