“Let it go at that.  Are you about ready?  It will be dark in another half hour—­dark enough to fly, at least.”  Cliff was moving about restlessly in the gloom under the tree.  For all his earlier exhilaration he seemed nervous, in haste to be done.

“You said moonlight,” Johnny reminded him, putting away the pump.

“I know, but it’s best to get out of here and over the line in the dark, I think.  The moon will be up in less than an hour.  Be ready to leave in half an hour—­and don’t start the motor until the very last minute.  Mateo has not come back yet.  If they are holding him—­”

“I’m ready to go when you are.  Let’s run her out before it’s plumb dark under here.  She can’t be seen in this light very far—­and if a man comes close enough to see her, he’d get wise anyway.  Uh course,” he apologized quickly, “that’s more thinking than I’m paid to do, but you got to let me think a little bit now and then, or I can’t fly no two thousand dollars worth to-night.”

“I meant thinking about my part in the game.  All right, I’ve got her right, on this side.  Take up the tail and let’s run her out.”

In the open the children were running back and forth, playing tag and squealing over the hazards of the game.  When the Thunder Bird rolled out with its outspread wings and its head high and haughty, they gave a final dash at one another and rushed off to get wheelbarrow and stick horses.  They were well trained—­shamefully well trained in the game of cheating.

Johnny looked at them glumly, with an aversion born of their uncanny obedience, their unchildlike shrewdness.  Fine conspirators they would make later on, when they grew a few years older and more cunning!

“Head her into the wind so I can take the air right away quick,” he ordered Cliff, and helped swing the Thunder Bird round.

Dusk was settling upon the very heels of a sunset that had no clouds to glorify and therefore dulled and darkened quickly into night, as is the way of sunsets in the southern rim of States.

Already the shadows were deep against the hill, and in the deepest stood the Thunder Bird, slim, delicately sturdy, every wire taut, every bit of aluminum in her motor clean and shining, a gracefully potent creature of the air.  Across her back her name was lettered crudely, blatantly, with the blobbed period where Johnny had his first mental shock of Sudden’s changed attitude toward him.

While he pulled on his leather helmet and tied the flaps under his chin, and buttoned his leather coat and pulled on his gloves, Johnny stood off and eyed the Thunder Bird with wistful affection.  She was going into the night for the first time, going into danger, perhaps into annihilation.  She might never fly again!  He went up and laid a hand caressingly on her slanted propeller, just as he used to stroke the nose of his horse Sandy before a hard ride.

“Good old Thunder Bird!  Good old Mile High!  You’ve got your work cut out for yuh to-night, old girl.  Go to it—­eat it up.”