Chapter VI

32

STRANGE FISH

He got out a Tulsa sectional aëronautical chart and tried to locate the S−slash−S. The Stevens ranch. Large ranches sometimes had landing fields marked as auxiliary fields on the chart. But this one didn't.

It was late afternoon when they let down on the runway at Tulsa Municipal. They faced the tower, got the green light and taxied over to the line.

“Someone around here should know if the Stevens ranch has a field,” Doc said, and went to ask.

He found a man wearing cowboy boots. Or the man found him. He wondered, later. At the moment, he didn't see a thing suspicious about it. The man looked like a native and willing to talk.

“S−slash−S ranch?” the man said. “Oh, sure. They got a field, but it's not designated so it's not on the chart.

Got your chart? I'll show you.”

The man in the cowboy boots indicated the field on the chart. He was a slender man who spoke English carefully, and not with an Oklahoma twang. He was full of information.

Doc thanked him, and they gassed and took off.

HAM said, “Somebody's there.” He said this as they were doing a rectangular course, dragging the S−slash−S

landing area.

It was a man. They couldn't tell much about him from the plane. Gaudy shirt. Light hat. He was alone.

Doc put the ship into the wind, did a slip, a fishtail, and the wheels were on the ground. They rattled along for a while. Monk and Ham got out with stakes and lines to tie down the ship. There didn't seem to be a hangar large enough. There was one hangar, not too new, but it obviously wouldn't take anything larger than a lightplane.

The man with the loud shirt and light hat came toward them.

“Howdy,” he said. “I'm Johnny Toms.”

His voice was enough like the voice Doc had heard over the telephone for him to be Johnny Toms. He was a young man, leathery, brown, black−haired.

He added, “I'm glad to see you. Heap glad. But I'm damned surprised you came.”

“What surprises you?” Doc asked.

“We,” Johnny Toms said, “ain't important people. I was just surprised when you said you'd help us, is all.”

“You're not so unimportant,” Doc told him. “The minute you had called us, almost, we started having trouble in New York.”

“The hell you say!”

“They began trying to decoy us to South America, or murder us,” Doc said.