He hoped the boys would not guess that Bland was in
earnest; a poor, cheap joke is sometimes better than tactless
sincerity. He was even ashamed now of the name he was painting on the
wings. That, too, seemed cheap and pointless. He felt nauseated with
Bland Halliday and his petty grafting.
A little more and he would have told Bland so and sent him about his
business. At that moment of revulsion against Bland he was almost in
the mood to give up the whole scheme and do as Mary V wished him to do:
settle down there at the ranch and work out his debt where he had made
it. Looking down into the grimy, friendly faces of those who had
braved desert wind and sun for him, the sallow, shifty-eyed face of
Bland Halliday seemed to epitomize the sordid avariciousness of the man
and made him wonder if any measure of success would atone for the
forced intimacy with the fellow. Mary V, had she known his mood then,
might have won her way with him and altered immeasurably the future.
But Mary V knew only that he was staying down there with that
unbearable Bland Halliday, fussing around his horrid old airplane
instead of coming to the house and telling her he was sorry.
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