“Gee, that must have been tough,” one of the Marines sympathized, “hopin’ around this trick country all night and then not seein’ what you went after.”
“You said it,” another chirped. “The least that Sandino guy might have done was to be a little obligin’ and light up a couple of fires so you’d discover where he was!”
Panama shook his head and laughed heartily. “Maybe if we’d ’a’ sent him a telegram sayin’ I was comin’, he might have been considerate enough to help me out. Then we could send a squadron of planes over his camp to-day and blow ’em all to hell.”
Just then, Lefty came sauntering along, still carrying a pretty bad hang-over from the night before. When he saw the ground men grouped around Panama’s plane, he joined them.
“Say, Pete!” the sergeant called to the chief mechanic at the base, “just after sunrise this morning, one of them plugs started missin’. Will you get after it?”
“Right after breakfast,” the man announced, “I’ll put a couple of boys on to overhaul the whole motor anyway.”
Panama looked up and saw Lefty for the first time and beckoned to him. “Come on over to the tent, kid. I think I’ve got it!”
Williams waved to the others and started across the field, followed by Lefty.
Once inside of their tent, Panama threw his helmet on his cot and pulled off his windjammer as the boy sat on a box, silent and indifferent, rolling himself a cigarette. Free of his flying togs at last, the sergeant turned and confronted his friend with a familiar eagerness and suppressed excitement lighting his face that was still dirty from smoke, wind and oil.
“I’ve got the whole thing solved,” he announced with enthusiasm. “All night long, while I flew over those mountains and across valleys, searching for a sign of them greaser bandits, the idea preyed upon my mind!”