ch close to three
hundred dollars before I turned her over to him, ready to take the air
again. That's including what he paid me, of course. But I guess you
know what it cost, when he handed you the bill."

This was news to Johnny, news that made his soul squirm. Lying there
sick at the Rolling R ranch, he had not known what was taking place.
He had found his airplane ready to fly, when he was at last able to
walk out to the corrals, but no one seemed to know how much the
repairing had cost. Certainly Sudden Selmer himself had suffered a
lapse of memory on the subject. All the more reason then why Johnny
should repay his debt.

"What I'm wondering about is why you aren't in Los Angeles," he evaded
the unpleasant subject awkwardly. "Old Sudden gave you money to go,
and dumped you at the depot, didn't he? That's what Mary V told me."

"He did--and I missed my train. And while I was waiting for the next I
must 'a' et something poison. I was awful sick. I guess it was ten
days or so before I come to enough to know where I was. I've had hard
luck, bo--I'll say I have. I was robbed while I was sick, and only for
a tambourine queen I got acquainted with, I guess I'd 'a' died.
They're treacherous as hell, though. Long as she thought I had
money--oh, well, they's no use expecting kindness in this world. Or
gratitude. I'm always helpin' folks out and gittin' kicked and cussed
for my pay. Lookit the way I lived with snakes and lizards--lived in a
cave, like a coyote!--to help you git this plane in shape. You was to
take me to Los for pay--but I ain't there yet. I'm stuck here, sick
and hungry--I ain't et a mouthful since last night, and then I only had
a dish of sour beans that damn' Mex. hussy handed out to me through a
window! Me, Bland Halliday, a flyer that has made his hundreds doing
exhibition work; that has had his picture on the front page of big city
papers, and folks followin' him down the street just to get a look at
him! Me--why, a yellow dawg has got the edge on me for luck! I might
better be dead--" His loose lips quivered. Tears of self-pity welled
up into his pale blue eyes. He turned away and stared across the
barren calf lot that Johnny used for a flying field.

Johnny began to have premonitory qualms of a sympathy which he knew was
undeserved. Bland Halliday had got a square deal--more than a square
deal; for Sudden, Johnny knew, had paid him generously for repairing
the plane while