She gave me a hug, too, but then said, “Don’t you two mind me. I’m just going to slip over to the operations room to see what the weather’s looking like for tomorrow.”

I told Beatty, “I’m sorry you went to the cost of telegraphing. I should have answered the letter you sent about coming up here.”

“But that wasn’t why we wired you,” she said. “It was to tell you the airport’s holding your old job for you. You do want it, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, of course. Beatty, I don’t understand. What happened to the man who replaced me?”

“Mr. Kliber’s cousin? He should never have been hired. He thought he was too good to do things like cleaning, got high-handed with customers, wouldn’t take instructions from anybody. Then he misplaced a mail pouch, and all the trouble that caused was the last straw. He quit about one second ahead of being fired.”

I was only half taking in the details. The rest of my mind was thinking how this solved everything. I had something to do when my hitch was up. And facing the fellows back at camp wouldn’t be so bad. Now I could tell them, Yeah, I’d lost my junior leader job, but I had a real job waiting.

“So you’ll come back to Muddy Springs?” Beatty asked.

“My hitch is up in another ten days,” I answered. “Right after that.”

“The airport board won’t hold it open that long,” Beatty said. “That’s why we telegraphed you. We want you to go back with us.”

“Well, I guess I could go,” I said, thinking aloud. “I’m close enough to getting out anyway, and probably my CO would just as soon have me gone. I doubt he’d try to get me back.

“There’s some guys I’d like to say good-bye to, but I guess I can write them.”

Beatty said, “Maybe you can do that tomorrow. First, now that the airport job’s settled, you’ve got some catching up to do.” She slid me a look. “And some explaining, maybe? Why you never did write? I worried, just a little, you might have found a girl up in Montana.”

I was saved from having to answer by Annie’s return. “The forecast isn’t good,” she said. “Occasional rain through the night, getting heavier through the weekend, with increasing likelihood of thunderstorms. I think we better wrap our business up here as quickly as possible in the morning and then head out.”

She turned to me. “Are you going with us, Moss?”

“Well, if there’s room.”

“Sure. We flew up a four-seater, and Beatty and I just make two.” Annie made a production of yawning. “I think I’ll turn in.”