were seemingly waiting far his
appearance.

"Oh, Mr. Jewel! I wish you'd tell me--"

"I'm in a hurry! Good golly, folks seem to think talking is all there
is to do in this world! Come on, Bland." He hurried on, his mind
absorbed in grasping the full significance of Bedelia's excited report
of events at the Rolling R and this curious crowd that gaped at him.
The thought of Mary V lying unconscious, stricken by the sound of his
voice over the telephone, nagged at him persistently and unpleasantly.
He had not told Bedelia that he was coming, and now he feared that his
unheralded appearance might be another shock to Mary V; but he would
not take the time to go back and warn her, for all that. Instead, he
walked a little faster to where his plane was waiting.

"I think you're making a bad play, bo--duckin' out when all them
newspaper guys are hot after dope on us," Bland expostulated while he
drilled along beside his boss. "I give 'em some scarehead stuff, but
they'd lap up a lot more. We can get a lot of valuable publicity right
now if we play 'em right. I give 'em that gawd stuff for a start-off,
and I made--"

"Shut up and save your breath," snapped Johnny. "I'm not chasing up
any newspaper notoriety now."

"Well, it'd be better business if yah did, bo--I'll say it would. Why,
it's free advertising we couldn't have pulled off on a bet, if we'd
tried to frame it. Absolutely not. Well, mebby your duckin' out right
now is a good play, too. It'll keep 'em chasin' yuh for more--and I'll
say that's about the only way to handle them smart guys. Oncet you
chase them, the stuff's off. You can bust your spine in four different
places and wreck your machine, and mebby get a four- or five-line
notice down in a corner next the dentist ads. It's worse, too, since
the war begun. There ain't no more chance, hardly, of getting
front-page publicity. Say, a couple of 'em took your picture. D' yuh
know that?"

"No, and I don't care," Johnny retorted.

Just now nothing mattered save getting to the Rolling R as soon as
possible and stopping that idiotic search for him. He hustled Bland
around to such good purpose that by the time the reporters had trailed
him to the hangar he was already in his seat and was barking "Contact!"
at Bland, who was unhappily turning the propeller at stated intervals
and wondering when he would ever again have a square meal, and hoping
that no misfortune would delay their arrival at th