CHAPTER SIX

FAME WAITS UPON JOHNNY

That day was a terrible one for Mary V. The big car went lurching here and there over roads that never expected an automobile to travel them, and Mary V watched and hoped and would not give up when even her dad showed signs of yielding to heat and discouragement.

Before noon they had met the sheriff and some of his men, and had compared notes and given what information they could.  The sheriff, in a desert-scarred Ford loaded mostly with water and some emergency rations, had managed to scatter his men and yet keep in fairly close touch with them, and he seemed very sure that the search had been thorough as far as they had gone.  Young Jewel, he asserted, had not so much as dropped a handkerchief on the ground they had covered, or his men would certainly have found it.

This, while it served as a temporary relief from the dread of hearing the worst, merely postponed the full knowledge of a disaster which Mary V could not bear to contemplate.  They drove to a rendezvous previously agreed upon with Bill Hayden and gleaned what news the boys had to tell.  Which was no news at all.  Their search had been as barren of results as the sheriff’s, and Mary V’s eyes, when they turned from face to face, were hard to meet.  Little Curley, who had been Johnny Jewel’s especial admirer and champion when that youth was spending his days more or less tumultuously at the Rolling R Ranch, was seen to draw his shirt sleeve hastily across his eyes after he had confronted Mary V for a minute’s questioning.

She watched with painful interest a car that came bouncing toward them over the rough trail they had taken.  When it arrived their fears might become a terrible certainty.  Two men occupied the dusty roadster, and neither was Johnny, and their haste implied great urgency.  Mary V weakened to the point of covering her face with her hands as they drew near.  But they were merely reporters anxious for news.

That afternoon other reporters appeared, and the next day an enterprising motion-picture concern had a camera man on the job.  The mystery of the vanished airplane grew with the passing hours.  The desert fairly swarmed with men, and theories were thick as lizards.  On the second night beacon fires were burning on every hilltop, and water was being hauled in barrels to certain rest stations where the searchers could come and recuperate.  Old Sudden achieved some front-page fame himself as a stalwart Napoleon of the desert—­which he profanely resented, by the way.

On the third day Mary V was ordered to stay at home.  There were reasons which her father did not care to dwell upon, which made it extremely undesirable that the girl should be present when her lover was discovered.  And, since the search had narrowed to a point where discovery was practically certain within a few hours, Sudden was not to be cajoled or bullied.