“Things went along quite perfectly until one night—this was after we had been in the camp for a couple of weeks—there was a radio call ‘Plane carrying doctor and infantile paralysis serum to Canadian outpost in Northwest down. Position approximately’—Oh, I’ve forgotten what it was now, but it was not far from our camp.
“The next morning we were up at daybreak and by the next afternoon we had located the plane. The pilot was dead, but the doctor, though suffering from a broken leg and shock, was still living. After we had fixed him up, we spent the night trying to get the plane’s radio to the point where it would function, so that we could get the news back to civilization.
“But things were so radically wrong with it, that my pal finally decided that he would set out for the nearest outpost, traveling as we had when we came, walking and by canoe. In the meantime, the doctor was fretting and stewing because he couldn’t get to the station that was in such urgent need of medical aid, so partly on this insistence, partly because I’m a stubborn fool when I start out to do anything, I kept tinkering around with the radio.
“Finally, the thing came to life, and we were able to get in touch with the outside world. You know as well as I what happens in such cases. It wasn’t long before I was up to my neck, sending exclusive stories back to my old sheet and then, when another plane came to take the doctor and brought with it a whole flock of reporters, I was swamped with work.
“I grumbled, but I loved it, and when the story died down and I was called back to work on an assignment that I was more than proud to accept I was like a kid with a new toy. Never so glad to get back into harness in my life.
“I feel now, a little the way I did then. Mexico and the land of mañana spelled romance and rest to me in the city room where I do my daily stint. But now I want neither of them. I smell a story.”
With this, he sniffed the air as though he was actually trying to get the direction of the scent. Alice laughed and held her hand on the handle of the door. “Maybe you do,” she said, “but you’re not leaving us today, at least not this minute. Walker Jamieson, we’re headed for a bullfight and you’re going along with us whether you want to or not.”
There was no protest, and Walker was glad afterwards when he pieced the little sections of the plot together that he hadn’t struck out on the trail of the story before that memorable bull-fight.
“And what’s the man with the wheelbarrow doing in the parade?” Nan asked the question of Walker Jamieson.
They were all sitting now in the huge arena, “Plaza de Toros,” the most important bull-fighting ring in all Mexico. The place was packed and Nan thought as she looked out over the people that she had never in her life seen such a gay colorful crowd, nor one in such an excited mood.