The incident was closed.
But Johnny slumped down in the seat again and glowered through the little, curved windshield at the crisply wavering leaves beyond the Thunder Bird's nose.

He was not a fool, any more than he was a crook.
He was young and too confiding, too apt to take things for granted and let the other fellow do the worrying, so long as things were fairly pleasant for Johnny Jewel.

But right now his eyes were open in more senses than one, and they were very wide open at that.
There was something very radically wrong with this job.

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.