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"Straight toward Mateo's camp, first flying very high. From there on I'll direct you. Shall we start?" "You're the doctor," grunted Johnny, not much pleased with Cliff's habit of giving information a bit at a time as it was needed.
Lorry sank down on the other chair. "No. the telephone isn't working. We can't get any word to anyone." "She'll be all right," said Aunt Ellen, lifting the silver coffee pot. "San Mateo's a long way off." It was an unfortunate moment for a heavy shock to send its rocking vibrations along the ground. Aunt Ellen collapsed against the chair back, the coffee pot swaying from her limp grasp.
On a scrawny little sorrel that Mateo brought up from some hidden pasture where the feed was apparently short, Johnny departed, aware of Mateo's curious, half-suspicious stare. He had a full canteen from the car and a few ragged slices of bread wrapped in paper with a little boiled ham.
Cliff did not argue the point, but went out to his car, fussed with it for a few minutes, and then drove off on one of the mysterious trips that took him away from Mateo's cabin and sometimes kept him away for two days at a time. Johnny did not know where Cliff went; to see the boss, perhaps, and turn in what news he had gleaned if indeed he had succeeded in gleaning any.
The woman was staggering under the weight of an enormous sack of chestnuts, while her husband was sauntering along, carrying one gun in his hands, while another was slung across his shoulders, for it is unworthy of a man to carry other burdens than his arms. At the sight of the soldiers Mateo's first thought was that they had come to arrest him. But why this thought?
"Mille gracias, senor!" answered Carlos; "we should greatly like to stay here for the night, and rest, for this day has been an exceptionally trying and fatiguing one for us; but Mateo's instructions that we should rejoin him at the earliest possible moment were imperative and must not be neglected.
It was fairly smooth, though Mateo's kids might well be set gathering rocks. The hills encircled it, green where the rocks were not piled too ruggedly. He inspected the great oak which Cliff had pointed out as a hiding place for the plane. Truly it was a wonder of an oak tree.
There had been no suspicion of Mateo's cabin and the family that lived there in squalid content. The incident was closed. But Johnny slumped down in the seat again and glowered through the little, curved windshield at the crisply wavering leaves beyond the Thunder Bird's nose. He was not a fool, any more than he was a crook.
He was half a mile off, Johnny judged, estimating the distance with an accuracy born of long living in the country of far skylines. The spy would need sharp ears indeed to hear anything less than a shout. Johnny picked up a pebble, aimed, and threw it at the roof of Mateo's cabin. The pebble landed true and rattled off, hitting the ground with a bounce and rolling away in the grass.
He was popular with the men, and his wife would hear him chucklingly completing arrangements with them for this affair or that, even while she was frantically indicating, with everything short of actual speech, that she did not want to go to Little Mateo's to dinner; she did not want to be put into the Fieldings' car, while he went off with Oliver Rose in his roadster.
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