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down on the prairie. Spanning the roof of the building was a gigantic silver sign that, treated with some magic chemical, shone day and night so that the words JETT RINK AIRPORT could be seen from the air and from the ground for miles across the flat plains from noon to midnight to noon.
    “Oh, look!” cried Adarene Morey. A trail of heaven-blue as if a streamer of sky had been tossed like a scarf to the earth spelled out the omnipresent name of Jett Rink.
    “It’s bluebonnets!” Leslie said, and her voice vibrated with resentment. “He has had bluebonnets planted and clipped and they spell his name. In bluebonnets!”
    “How cute!” said Lona Lane. “It’s simply fabulous! I’m dying to meet him.”
    It was the pallid Queen who put forward the query this time. “We ask a great many questions, I am afraid. But bluebonnets—what is it that this is?” In a literal translation from the French.
    “Why girlie!” bawled Bale Clinch—he had had three bourbons—“girlie, you been neglected in your Texas education downthere at the Benedicts’. Bick, you old sonofagun, what’s a matter with that old schoolhouse you got on your country you’re always bragging on!” He beamed now on the Queen. “Bluebonnets! Everybody knows they’re the national state flower of Texas. The most beautiful flower in the most wonderful state in the world. That’s all bluebonnets is.” He pondered a moment. “Are.”
    The huge craft touched the runaway as delicately, as sensitively as a moth on a windowpane. The clank of metal as straps were unbuckled. The Texans strolled to the door as casually as one would proceed from the house to the street. The visitors breathed a sigh of relief. They stood ready to disembark, huddled at the door, king and cowboy and rancher and politician and actress and statesman and shrewd operator and housewife. Royalty in the lead.
    At the door, smiling but military in bearing, stood the slim young steward and the pretty stewardess. “Come back quick now!” the girl chirped.
    “I beg your pardon!” said the King, startled.
    “It’s a—a phrase,” Leslie explained. “It’s the Texas way of saying good-bye.”
    Just before they descended the aluminum stairway that had been trundled quickly across the field for their land Bick Benedict made a little speech, as host.
    “Look, I’m going to brief you, kind of. Those of you who aren’t Texans. This is the old airport, you know. The new one isn’t open for traffic until after tonight. That’s where the party’s to be. I’m afraid there’ll be photographers and so forth waiting out there; and reporters.”
    “You don’t think Jett Rink’s going to lose a chance like this for publicity, do you, Bick?” Lucius Morey called out, and a little laugh went up among the Texans.
    “This is going to be a stampede,” Gabe Target predicted.
    “No, now, Gabe. Everything’ll be fine if you’ll just trail me, you know I’m a good top hand, Gabe. There’s a flock of cars waiting, we’ll pile right in and head for the hotel. And remember, everything’s pilone. No one touches a pocket—except to pull a gun of course.”
    Even the outsiders knew this was a standard laugh. But, “Pilone?” inquired Joe Glotch.
    “Means everything free,” yelled Congressman Bale Clinch, “from Jett Rink’s hotel and back again.”
    “Yes,” drawled Pinky Snyth. “And I’ll give anybody odds that Gabe Target here will own the hotel and the airport and the whole outfit away from Jett Rink inside of three years.”
    There were the photographers kneeling for close shots, standing on trucks for far shots. There were planes and planes and planes overhead and underfoot. A Texas big town commercial airfield. Squalling kids, cattlemen in big hats and high-heeled boots—the old-timers. The modern young business and professional men, hatless, their faces set and serious behind bone-rimmed spectacles, their brief cases under their arms as they descended the planes from