“Look here, colored boy!” Jim spoke. “What are you and all the other negroes wearing that feather in your hat for?”
“Dat sign is fer aviators, boss,” Little Bit answered.
Miss Juan Chieniere turned and shot a significant glance at the young man sitting beside her.
That young man’s face turned as white as milk. The lines of gentleness and good nature around his mouth changed until the whole face was drawn in lineaments of desperate recklessness. The one thought in his mind, of course, was that a scouting party had been sent out to look for the lost airplane, and the aviators had come to Tickfall. He had no idea what punishment would await him at the aviation camp if he was captured in Tickfall and taken back.
Something of his great danger was conceived by the girl, and she asked in a nervous voice:
“I dunno, Miss Jew-ann,” Little Bit answered. “But all de niggers has gone out to the Little Moccasin prairie to see the airships. Dey wouldn’t let me go. Dey made me stay at home and take keer of de saloon.”
This remark confirmed Jim Gannaway’s fears that the scouting party had really arrived in Tickfall. He had scanned the horizon many times since his arrival in that neighborhood on the evening before, and he wondered how that scouting party had arrived without his seeing them. His soul was tormented with anxiety, and he turned and looked at the girl as if he was seeing her for the last time. Dismounting from the buggy, he stood close beside her and said:
“Juan, I took a desperate risk in coming from the aviation camp to see you. I could not borrow a machine for the purpose, and could not have got leave of absence, so I had to swipe a machine. I told you I had come to get your promise to marry me, but I cannot ask you now because I have no idea what they will do to me when they take me back to camp.”
“What about that beautiful lie, Jim?” she asked with trembling lips.
“It would have been all right if I had made my way back to the camp without being caught; but now they have come after me, and there is nothing for me to tell but the beautiful truth.”
“What is the beautiful truth, Jim?” she asked.
“It is that I loved you so much that I was willing to take the most desperate chances to see you. Whatever may happen to me for what I have done will be but a small payment exacted from me in return for the pleasure I have had.”