"This is an outrage!" Schwab shouted.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Oh, up in the air a ways," Johnny told him, but the roar of the motor so filled Schwab's unaccustomed ears that he could hear nothing else. And presently his mind became engrossed with something more immediately vital than was his destination.
They were getting too high up, he shouted. Johnny must come down at once—or if he would not do that, at least he must fly lower. Did Johnny mean to commit suicide?
For answer Johnny grinned and went higher, and the face of Schwab became not mottled but a sickly white. He sat gripping the edges of the cockpit and gazing fearfully downward, save when he turned to implore, threaten, and command. He would report Johnny to his employers. He could make him sorry for this. He would make it worth his while to land. He would do great things for Johnny—he would make him rich.
From five thousand feet Johnny volplaned steeply to four thousand, and Schwab's sentences became disconnected phrases that ended mostly in exclamation points. So pleased was Johnny with the effect that he flew in scallops from there on—not unmindful of the two scouting planes that picked him up when he recrossed the line and dogged him from there on.
"I suppose," snorted Johnny to the Thunder Bird, "they think they're about the only real flyers in the air this morning. What? Can't you show 'em an Arizona sample of flying? What you loafing for? Think you're heading a funeral? Well, now, this is just about the proudest moment you've spent for quite some time. This man Schwab—-he craves excitement. Can't you hear him holler for thrills? And don't you reckon that Captain Riley will be cocking an eye up at the sky about now, looking to see you come back. Come, come—shake a wing, here, and show 'em what you're good for!"
Whether the Thunder Bird heard and actually did shake a wing does not matter. Johnny remembered that he had yet some miles to fly, and proceeded to put those miles behind him in as straight a line as possible. Schwab's voice came back to him in snatches, though the words were mostly foreign to Johnny's ears. Schwab seemed to be indulging in expletives of some sort.
"Don't worry, sauerkraut, we'll show you a good time soon as we get along a few miles. There's some birds behind us I'm leading home first."
"My God, don't go straight down again! It makes me sick," wailed
Schwab.