“You certainly do yourself well here,” said Captain Cornell, looking from the beautifully levelled landing field, with its hanger and piped gas flares for night lighting, to the radio tower and the comfortable ranch house. The stables and corrals were out of sight in a draw, hidden by the dwelling.
Mr. Hampton nodded.
“Why not?” he asked. “I have all the money I need and more. Besides, as I told you, Jack is out here experimenting for the radio people, and they paid for doing over my little station and equipping it anew.”
By now they had reached the landing field, and Mr. Hampton raising his voice shouted: “Ho Tom.”
A figure, followed by another, rounded the corner of the hanger. Tom Bodine and his new assistant had been lounging on the shaded side.
“A great old-timer,” commented Mr. Hampton in a low voice as Tom Bodine approached in response to his beckoning wave of a hand. “Tell you some time about how he saved the lives of Jack and his pals, Bob Temple and Frank Merrick. It was down in old Mexico, when the boys were all several years younger.”
The flyer noted with approval the sinewy muscular figure of the ex-cowpuncher who approached without self-consciousness, alone, his assistant having dropped back. Grizzled, sun-browned, walking with the rolling gait of the man who had spent a lifetime in the saddle, Tom Bodine looked what he was—an outdoor man of the wide open ranges.
Mr. Hampton introduced them, and the two men shook hands. Each noted with a pleasurable thrill the firm grip of the other.
“Jack radioed he’d be landing soon,” said Mr. Hampton.
Through puckered eyelids his sharp blue eyes swept the sky to the south. A haze which had filled the sky for days, telling of sand whipped off of the Mexican desert hundreds of miles away by a wind storm, obscured the air.