They started to climb, got fifty feet from the ground and the motor began to spit and pop again.  Then it stalled completely, and they came down and went bouncing over the uneven surface and stopped again, a rod or so nearer the willows than before.

Several scuttling figures left that particular hiding place like rabbits scared out of a covert, and Bland took heart again.  A few minutes he spent crouched down in the cockpit, watching the willows, and when nothing happened he ventured forth, armed with pliers and wrench, and went at the motor.

“Sounds to me like poor contact,” he diagnosed the trouble.  “Like the breaker-points are roughened, maybe.  You’ll have to work the gawd stuff, bo, and work it right.  Because if I start tearing into the hull ignition system, we ain’t going to be able to hop outa here at a minute’s notice, nor even start the motor and buzz at ’em.”

“Fly at it,” said Johnny, eyeing the huts speculatively.  He was hungry, and certain odors floated to his nostrils.  Something left cooking over a fire was beginning to scorch, if his nose told the truth, and it seemed a shame to let food burn when his stomach clamored to be filled.

With Bland watching him nervously, he crossed the little open space and entered the hut nearest, presently emerging with two flat cakes in his hand.  Another hut yielded a pot of stew which he thought it wise not to analyze too closely.  It was this which had begun to burn, but it was still fairly palatable.  So, with a can of water from a muddy spring, they breakfasted, their hunger charitably covering much distrust and dulling for the time even Bland’s fear of the place.

The sun, shining its Arizona fiercest though the season was early fall, brought a cooked-varnish smell from the wings.  There was no shade save the scant shadow which the scraggly willows and brush cast over the edge of the parched field, and of that Bland refused to avail himself.  He would rather roast, he said.

Johnny conscientiously carried the kettle back to the hut, then set to work helping Bland.  Which help consisted mainly of turning the propeller whenever Bland wanted to start the motor; a heartbreaking task in that broiling heat, especially since the motor half the time would not start at all.  Crimson, the perspiration streaming down his cheeks like tears, Johnny swung on that propeller until Bland’s grating voice singing out “Contact!” stirred murder within his soul and he balked with the motor and crawled under a wing.

“Yon can start her yourself if you want to start,” he growled when Bland expostulated.  “I’ve turned that darned propeller enough to fly from here to New York.  Why don’t you get in and locate the trouble?”

“There ain’t any trouble—­not according to the look of things.  Acts like water in the gas, or something.  F’r cat’s sake, don’t lay down on the job now, bo!  We gotta beat it outa here.”