B. M. Bower - Skyrider

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SKYRIDER

by

B. M. BOWER

with frontispiece by Anton Otto Fischer

1919

[Illustration: Johnny dared a volplane, slanting steeply down at the
herd.]

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company

CONTENTS

Chapter

I A Poet without Honor

II One Fight, Two Quarrels, and a Riddle

III Johnny Goes Gaily Enough to Sinkhole

IV A Thing that Sets like a Hawk

V Desert Glimpses

VI Salvage

VII Finder, Keeper

VIII Over the Telephone

IX A Midnight Ride

X Signs, and No One to Read Them

XI Thieves Ride Boldly

XII Johnny's Amazing Run of Luck Still Holds its Pace

XIII Mary V Confronts Johnny

XIV Johnny Would Serve Two Masters

XV The Fire that Made the Smoke

XVI Let's Go

XVII A Rider of the Sky

XVIII Flying Comes High

XIX "We Fly South"

XX Men Are Stupid

XXI Mary V Will not be Bluffed

XXII Luck Turns Traitor

XXIII Dreams and Darkness

XXIV Johnny's Dilemma

XXV Skyrider "Has Flew"!

SKYRIDER

CHAPTER ONE

A POET WITHOUT HONOR

Before I die, I'll ride the sky;
I'll part the clouds like foam.
I'll brand each star with the Rolling R,
And lead the Great Bear home.

I'll circle Mars to beat the cars,
On Venus I will call.
If she greets me fair as I ride the air,
To meet her I will stall.

I'll circle high--as if passing by--
Then volplane, bank, and land.
Then if she'll smile I'll stop awhile,
And kiss her snow-white hand.

To toast her health and wish her wealth
I'll drink the Dipper dry.
Then say, "Hop in, and we'll take a spin,
For I'm a rider of the sky."

Through the clouds we'll float in my airplane boat--

Mary V flipped the rough paper over with so little tenderness that a
corner tore in her fingers, but the next page was blank. She made a sound
suspiciously like a snort, and threw the tablet down on the littered
table of the bunk house. After all, what did she care where they
floated--Venus and Johnny Jewel? Riding the sky with Venus when he knew
very well that his place was out in the big corral, riding some of those
broom-tail bronks that he was being paid a salary--a _good_ salary--for
breaking! Mary V thought that her father ought to be told about the way
Johnny was spending all his time--writing silly poetry about Venus. It
was the first she had ever known about his being a poet. Though it was
pretty punk, in Mary V's opinion. She was glad and thankful that Johnny
had refrained from writing any such doggerel about _her_. That would have
been perfectly intolerable. That he should write poetry at all was
intolerable. The more she thought of it, the more intolerable it became.

Just for punishment, and as a subtle way of letting him know what she
thought of him and his idiotic jingle, she picked up the tablet, found
the pencil Johnny had used, and did a little poetizing herself. She could
have rhymed it much better, of course, if she had condescended to give
any thought whatever to the matter, which she did not. Condescension went
far enough when she stooped to reprove the idiot by finishing the verse
that he had failed to finish, because he had already overtaxed his poor
little brain.

Stooping, then, to reprove, and flout, and ridicule, Mary V finished the
verse so that it read thus:

"Through the clouds we'll float in my airplane boat--
For Venus I am truly sorry!
All the stars you sight, you witless wight,
You'll see when you and Venus light!
But then--I'm sure that I should worry!"

Mary V was tempted to write more. She rather fancied that term "witless
wight" as applied to Johnny Jewel. It had a classical dignity which
atoned for the slang made necessary by her instant need of a rhyme for
sorry.

But there was the danger of being caught in the act by some meddlesome
fellow who loved to come snooping around where he had no business, so
Mary V placed the tablet open on the table just as she had found it, and
left the bunk house without deigning to fulfill the errand of mercy that
had taken her there. Why should she trouble to sew the lining in a coat
sleeve for a fellow who pined for a silly flirtation with Venus? Let
Johnny Jewel paw and struggle to get into his coat. Better, let Venus sew
that lining for him!

Mary V stopped halfway to the house, and hesitated. It had occurred to
her that she might add another perfectly withering verse to that poem. It
could start: "While sailing in my airplane boat, I'll ask Venus to mend
my coat."

Mary V started back, searing couplets forming with incredible swiftness
in her brain. How she would flay Johnny Jewel with the keen blade of her
wit! If he thought he was the only person at the Rolling R ranch who
could write poetry, it would be a real kindness to show him his mistake.

Just then Bud Norris and Bill Hayden came up from the corrals, heading
straight for the bunk house. Mary V walked on, past the bunk house and
across the narrow flat opposite the corrals and up on the first bench of
the bluff that sheltered the ranch buildings from the worst of the desert
winds. She did it very innocently, and as though she had never in her
life had any thought of invading the squat, adobe building kept sacred to
the leisure hours of the Rolling R boys.

There was a certain ledge where she had played when she was a child, and
which she favored nowadays as a place to sit and look down upon the
activities in the big corral--whenever activities were taking place
therein--an interested spectator who was not suspected of being within
hearing. As a matter of fact, Mary V could hear nearly everything that
was said in that corral, if the wind was right. She could also see very
well indeed, as the boys had learned to their cost when their riding did
not come quite up to the mark. She made for that ledge now.

She had no more than settled herself comfortably when Bud and Bill came
cackling from the bunk house. A little chill of apprehension went up Mary
V's spine and into the roots of her hair. She had not thought of the
possibilities of that open tablet falling into other hands than Johnny
Jewel's.

"Hyah! You gol-darn witless wight," bawled Bud Norris, and slapped Bill
Hayden on the back and roared. "Hee-yah! Skyrider! When yo' all git done
kissin' Venus's snow-white hand, come and listen at what's been wrote for
yo' all by Mary V! Whoo-_ee_! Where's the Great Bear at that yo' all was
goin' to lead home, Skyrider?" Then they laughed like two maniacs. Mary V
gritted her teeth at them and wished aloud that she had her shotgun with
her.

A youth, whose sagging chaps pulled in his waistline until he looked
almost as slim as a girl, ceased dragging at the bridle reins of a balky
bronk and glanced across the corral. His three companions were hurrying
that way, lured by a paper which Bud was waving high above his head as he
straddled the top rail of the fence.

"Johnny's a poet, and we didn't know it!" bawled Bud. "Listen here at
what the witless wight's been a-writin'!" Then, seated upon the top rail
and with his hat set far back on his head, Bud Norris began to declaim
inexorably the first two verses, until the indignant author came over and
interfered with voice and a vicious yank at Bud's foot, which brought
that young man down forthwith.

"Aw, le' me alone while I read the rest! Honest, it's swell po'try, and I
want the boys to hear it. Listen--get out, Johnny! '_I'll circle high as
if passing by, then--v-o-l--then vollup, bank, an' land--_' Hold him
off'n me, boys! This is rich stuff I'm readin'! Hey, hold your hand over
his mouth, why don't yuh, Aleck? Yo' all want to wait till I git to
where--"

"I can't," wailed Aleck. "He bit me!"

"Well, take 'im down an' set on him, then. I tell yuh, boys, this is
rich--"

"You give that back here, or I'll murder yuh!" a full-throated young
voice cried hoarsely.

"Here, quit yore kickin'!" Bill admonished.

"Go on, Bud; the boys have got to hear it--it's _rich_!"

"Yeh--shut up, Johnny! Po'try is wrote to be read--go on, Bud. Start
'er over again. I never got to hear half of it on account of Johnny's
cussin'. Go on--I got him chewin' on my hat now. Read 'er from the
start-off."

"The best is yet to come," Bill gloated pantingly, while he held the
author's legs much as he would hold down a yearling. "All set, Bud--let
'er go!"

Whereupon Bud cleared his throat and began again, rolling the words out
sonorously, so that Mary V heard every word distinctly:

"'Before I die, I'll ride the sky;
I'll part the clouds like foam.
I'll brand each star with the Rolling R,
And lead the Great Bear home.'"

"Say, that's _swell_!" a little fellow they called Curley interjected.
"By gosh, that's darned good po'try! I never knowed Johnny could--"

He was frowned into silence by the reader, who went on exuberantly, the
lines punctuated by profane gurgles from the author.

"Now this here," Bud paused to explain, "was c'lab'rated on by Mary V.
The first line was wrote by our 'steemed young friend an' skyrider poet,
but the balance is in Mary V's handwritin'. And I claim she's some poet!
Quit cussin' and listen, Johnny; yo' all never heard this 'un, and I'll
gamble on it:

"'_Through the clouds we'll float in my airplane boat--_' That, there's
by Skyrider. And here Mary V finishes it up:

"'For Venus I am truly sorry!
All the stars you sight, you witless wight,
You'll see when you and Venus light!
But then--I'm sure that I should worry!'"

"I don't believe she ever wrote that!" Johnny struggled up to declare
passionately. "You give that here, Bud Norris. Worry--sorry--they don't
even rhyme!"

"Aw, ferget that stuff! Witless wight's all right, ain't it? I claim Mary
V's some poetry writer. Don't you go actin' up jealous. She ain't got the
jingle, mebby, but she shore is there with the big idee."

"'_Drink the dipper dry_'--that shore does hit me where I live!" cried
little Curley. "Did you make it up outa yore own head, Johnny?"

"Naw. I made it up out of a spellin' book!" Johnny, being outnumbered
five to one, decided to treat the whole matter with lofty unconcern.
"Hand it over, Bud."

Bud did not want to hand it over. He had just discovered that he could
sing it, which he proceeded to do to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" and the
full capacity of his lungs. Bill and Aleck surged up to look over his
shoulder and join their efforts to his, and the half dozen horses held
captive in that corral stampeded to a far corner and huddled there,
shrinking at the uproar.

"_And kiss 'er snow-white ha-a-and, and kiss 'er snow-white ha-and_,"
howled the quartet inharmoniously, at least two of them off key; for Tex
Martin had joined the concert and was performing with a bull bellow that
could be heard across a section. Then Bud began suddenly to improvise,
and his voice rose valiantly that his words might carry their meaning to
the ears of Johnny Jewel, who had stalked back across the corral and was
striving now to catch the horse he had let go, while his one champion,
little Curley, shooed the animal into a corner for him.

"_It would be grand to kiss her hand, her snow-white hand, if I had the
sand!_" Bud chanted vain-gloriously. "How's that, Skyrider? Ain't that
purty fair po'try?"

"It don't fit into the tune with a cuss," Tex criticized jealously. "Pass
over that po'try of Johnny's. Yo' all ain't needin' it--not if you aims
to make up yore own words."

"C'm _'ere_! You wall-eyed weiner-wurst!" Johnny harshly addressed the
horse he was after. "You've got about as much brains as the rest of this
outfit--and that's putting it strong! If I owned you--"

"_I'd cir-cle high 's if pass-in' by, then vol-lup bank an' la-a-and_,"
the voice of Tex roared out in a huge wave that drowned all other sounds,
the voices of Bill, Aleck, and Bud trailing raucously after.

Johnny, goaded out of his lofty contempt of them, whirled suddenly and
picked up a rock. Johnny could pitch a very fair ball for an amateur, and
the rock went true without any frills or curving deception. It landed in
the middle of Bud Norris's back, and Bud's vocal efforts ended in a howl
of pain.

"Serves you right, you devil!" Mary V commented unsympathetically from
her perch on the ledge.

Three more rocks ended the concert abruptly and started something else.
Curley had laughed hysterically until the four faced belligerently
Johnny's bombardment and started for him. "Beat it, Johnny! Beat it!"
cried Curley then, and made for the fence.

"I will like hell!" snarled Johnny, and gathered more rocks.

"Oh, Johnny! Sudden's comin'!" wailed Curley from the top rail. "Quit it,
Johnny, or you'll git fired!"

"I don't give a damn if I do!" Johnny's full, young voice shouted
ragefully. "It'll save me firing myself. Before I'll work with a bunch of
yellow-bellied, pin-headed fools--" He threw a clod of dirt that caught
Tex on the chin and filled his mouth so that he nearly choked, and a
jagged pebble that hit Aleck just over the ear a glancing blow that sent
him reeling. The third was aimed at Bill, but Bill ducked in time, and
the rock went on over his head and very nearly laid out Mary V's father,
he whom the boys called "Sudden" for some inexplicable reason.

Mary V's father dodged successfully the rock, saw a couple of sheets of
paper lying on the ground, and methodically picked them up before he
advanced to where his men were trying to appear very busy with the
horses, or with their ropes, or with anything save what had held their
attention just previous to his coming.

All save Johnny, who was too mad to care a rap what old Sudden Selmer
thought of him or did to him. He went straight up to the boss.

"I'll thank you for that paper," he said hardily. "It's mine, and the
boys have been acting the fool with it."

"Yeh? They have?" Selmer turned from the first page and read the second
without any apparent emotion. "You write that?"

Johnny flushed. "Yes, sir, I did. Do you mind letting--"

"That what I heard them yawping here in the corral?" Selmer folded the
paper with care, his fingers smoothing out the wrinkles and pausing to
observe the place where Mary V had torn off a corner.

"Poets and song birds on the pay roll, eh? Thought I hired you boys to
handle horses." Having folded the papers as though they were to be placed
in an envelope, Sudden held the verses out to Johnny. "As riders," he
observed judicially, "I know just about what you boys are worth to me. As
poets and singers, I doubt whether the Rolling R can find use for you.
What capacity do I find you in, Curley? Director of the orchestra, or
umpire?"

Curley climbed shamefacedly off the fence and picked up his rope. The
business of taming bronks was resumed in a dead silence broken only by
the trampling of the horses and a muttered oath now and then. A lump over
Aleck's ear was swelling so that the hair lifted there, and Bud limped
and sent scowling glances at Johnny Jewel. Tex spat dirt off his tongue
and scowled while he did it; indeed, no eyes save those of little Curley
seemed able to look upon Johnny with a kindly light.

Mary V's father stood dispassionately watching them for five minutes or
so before he turned back to the gate. Not once had he smiled or shown any
emotion whatever. But he had a new story to tell his friends in the clubs
of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles. And whenever he told it, Sudden
Selmer would repeat what he called _The Skyrider's Dream_ from the first
verse to Mary V's last--even unto Bud's improvisation. He would paint
Johnny's bombardment of the choir practice until his audience could
almost hear the thud of the rocks when they landed. He would describe the
welt on Aleck's head, the exact shade of purple in Curley's face when his
boss called him off the fence. He would not smile at all during the
recital, but his audience would shout and splutter and roar, and when he
paused as though the story was done, some one would be sure to demand
more.

Then a little twitching smile would show at the corner of Sudden's lips,
and he would drawl whimsically: "Those boys were so scared they never
chirped when the poet actually went sky-riding to an altitude of about
ten feet above the saddle horn, and lit on the back of his neck. Johnny's
a good rider, too, but he was mad. He was so mad I don't believe he knows
yet that he was piled. Afterwards? Oh, well, they came to along about
supper time and yawped his poetry all over the place, I heard. But that
was after I had left the ranch."

There were a few details which Sudden, being only human, could not
possibly give his friends. He could not know that Mary V went back down
the hill, sneaked into the bunk house and got Johnny's coat, and sewed
the sleeve lining in very neatly, and took the coat back without being
seen. Nor did he know that she violently regretted the deed of kindness,
when she discovered that Johnny remained perfectly unconscious of the
fact that his coat sleeve no longer troubled him.

CHAPTER TWO

ONE FIGHT, TWO QUARRELS, AND A RIDDLE

Rolling R ranch lies down near the border of Mexico--near as distances
are counted in Arizona. Possibly a hawk could make it in one flight
straight across that jagged, sandy, spiney waste of scenery which the
chance traveler visions the moment you mention southern Arizona, but if
you wanted to ride to the Border from the Rolling R corrals, you would
find the trip a half-day proposition. As to the exact location, never
mind about that.

The Selmer Stock Company had other ranches where they raised other
animals, but the Rolling R raised horses almost exclusively, the few
hundred head of cattle not being counted as a real ranch industry, but
rather an incidental by-product. Rolling R Ranch was the place Sudden
Selmer called home, although there was a bungalow out in the Wilshire
District in Los Angeles about which Sudden would grumble when the tax
notice came in his mail. There was a big touring car in the garage on the
back of the lot, and there was a colored couple who lived in two rooms of
the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against
thieves, and to keep the lawn watered and clipped and the dust off the
furniture. They admitted that they had a snap, for they were seldom
disturbed in their leisurely caretaking routine save in the winter. Even
Mary V always tired of the place after a month or two in it, and would
pack her trunk and "hit the trail" for the Rolling R.

Speaking of Mary V, you would know that a girl with modern upbringing
lived a good deal at the ranch. You could tell by the low, green bungalow
with wide, screened porches and light cream trim, that was almost an
exact reproduction of the bungalow in Los Angeles. A man and woman who
have lived long together on a ranch like the Rolling R would have gone on
living contentedly in the adobe house which was now abandoned to the sole
occupancy of the boys. It is the young lady of the family who demands
up-to-date housing.

So the bungalow stood there in the glaring sun, surrounded by a scrap of
lawn which the Arizona winds whipped and buffeted with sand and wind all
summer, and vines which the wind tousled into discouragement. And fifty
yards away squatted the old adobe house in the sand, with a tree at each
front corner and a narrow porch extending from one to the other.

Beyond the adobe, toward the sheltering bluff, a clutter of low sheds,
round-pole corrals, a modern barn of fair size, and beside it a square
corral of planks and stout, new posts, continued the tale of how progress
was joggling the elbow of picturesqueness. Sudden's father had built the
adobe and the oldest sheds and corrals, when he took all the land he
could lawfully hold under government claims. Later he had bought more;
and Sudden, growing up and falling heir to it all, had added tract after
tract by purchase and lease and whatever other devices a good politician
may be able to command.

Sudden's father had been a simple man, content to run his ranch along
the lines of least resistance, and to take what prosperity came to him
in the natural course of events. Sudden had organized a Company, had
commercialized his legacy, had "married money," and had made money. Far
to the north and to the east and west ran the lines of other great
ranches, where sheep were handled in great, blatting bands and yielded
a fortune in wool. There were hills where Selmer cattle were wild as
deer--cattle that never heard the whistle of a locomotive until they were
trailed down to the railroad to market.

These made the money for Selmer and his Company. But it was the Rolling
R, where the profits were smaller, that stood closest to Sudden's heart.
There was not so much money in horses as there was in sheep; Sudden
admitted it readily enough. But he hated sheep; hated the sound of them
and the smell of them and the insipid, questioning faces of them. And
he loved horses; loved the big-jointed, wabbly legged colts and the
round-bodied, anxious mothers; loved the grade geldings and fillies and
the registered stock that he kept close to home in fenced pastures; loved
the broom-tail bronks that ranged far afield and came in a dust cloud
moiling up from their staccato hoof beats, circled by hoarse, shouting
riders seen vaguely through the cloud.

There was a thrill in watching a corral full of wild horses milling round
and round, dodging the whispering ropes that writhed here and there
overhead to settle and draw tight over some unlucky head. There was a
thrill in the taming--more thrills than dollars, for until the war
overseas brought eager buyers, the net profits of the horse ranch would
scarcely have paid for Mary V's clothes and school and what she demurely
set down as "recreation."

But Sudden loved it, and Mary V loved it, and Mary V's mother loved
whatever they loved. So the Rolling R was home. And that is why the
Rolling R boys looked upon Mary V with unglamoured eyes, being thoroughly
accustomed to the sight of her and to the sharp tongue of her and to the
frequent discomfort of having her about.

They liked her, of course. They would have fought for her if ever the
need of fighting came, just as they would have fought for anything else
in their outfit. But they took her very calmly and as a matter of course,
and were not inclined to that worshipful bearing which romancers would
have us accept as the inevitable attitude of cowboys toward the daughter
of the rancho.

Wherefore Johnny Jewel was not committing any heinous act of treason when
he walked past Mary V with stiffened spine and head averted. Johnny was
mad at the whole outfit, and that included Mary V. Indeed, his anger
particularly included Mary V. A young man who has finished high school
and one year at a university, and who reads technical books rather than
fiction and has ambitions for something much higher than his present
calling,--oh, very much higher!--would naturally object to being called
a witless wight.

Johnny objected. He had cussed Aleck for repeating the epithet in the
bunk house, and he had tried to lick Bud Norris, and had failed. He
blamed Mary V for his skinned knuckles and the cut on his lip, and for
all his other troubles. Johnny did not know about the coat, though he had
it on; and if he had known, I doubt whether it would have softened his
mood. He was a terribly incensed young man.

Mary V had let her steps lag a little, knowing that Johnny must overtake
her presently unless he turned short around and went the other way, which
would not be like Johnny. She had meant to say something that would lead
the conversation gently toward the verses, and then she meant to say
something else about the difficulty of making two lines rhyme, and the
necessity of using perfectly idiotic words--such as wight. Mary V was
disgusted with the boys for the way they had acted. She meant to tell
Johnny that she thought his verses were very clever, and that she, too,
was keen for flying. And would he like to borrow a late magazine she had
in the house, that had an article about the growth of the "game"? Mary
V did not know that she would have sounded rather patronizing. Her girl
friends in Los Angeles had filled her head with romantic ideas about
cowboys, especially her father's cowboys. They had taken it so for
granted that the Rolling R boys must simply worship the ground she walked
on, that Mary V had unconsciously come to believe that adoration was her
birthright.

And then Johnny stepped out of the trail and passed her as though she
had been a cactus or a rock that he must walk around! Mary V went hot
all over, with rage before her wits came back. Johnny had not gone ten
feet ahead of her when she was humming softly to herself a little,
old-fashioned tune. And the tune was "Auld Lang Syne."

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