. The fiction of
legitimate news gathering in Mexico could no longer give him any
feeling save disgust for his own culpability. News gathering did not
require armed guards--not in this country, at least--and such mysteries
as Cliff Lowell dealt in. The money in his possession ceased to give
him any little glow of pleasure. Instead, his face grew all at once
hot with shame and humiliation. It was not honest money, although he
had earned it honestly enough. If it had been honest money, why should
those soldiers go riding through the valleys, looking for him and his
plane? It was not for the pleasure of saying howdy, if Johnny might
judge from the hard-eyed glances of that one who had stopped in plain
view.

It was not honest money that he had been taking. Why, even the kids
out there knew it was not honest! Look at Rosa, playing shrewdly her
part of dumb shyness in the presence of strangers--and she thinking all
the while how best she could lie to them, the little imp! It was not
the first time she had shown her shrewdness. Why, nearly every time
Cliff wanted to make a trip across the line, those kids climbed the
hill to where they could look all over the flat and the near-by hills,
and if they saw any one they would yell down to Mateo. If the
interloper happened to be close, they had orders to roll small rocks
down for a warning, so Cliff one day told Johnny with that insufferably
tolerant smile. Cliff brought them candy and petted them, just for
what use he could make of them as watchdogs. Would all that be
necessary for a legitimate enterprise? Wouldn't the guards have orders
to shut their eyes when an airplane flew high, bearing a man who
gathered news vital to the government?

Once before Johnny had been made a fool of by horse thieves who plied
their trade across the line. They had given him this very same
airplane to keep him occupied and tempt him away from his duty while
they stole Rolling R horses at their leisure. Wasn't this very
money--thirty-two hundred dollars of it--going to pay for that bit of
gullibility? Gulled into earning money to pay for an earlier piece of
gross stupidity!

"The prize--mark!" he branded himself. "By golly, they've got me
helping 'em do worse than steal horses from the Rolling R, this time;
putting something over on the government is their little stunt--and by
golly, I fell for the bait just like I done the other time! _Huhn_!"
Then he added a hopeful threat.