“I’m ready to go any time you are,” Johnny retorted, mopping neck and chest while he lay sprawled on his back.  “But I’d rather stay here till Christmas than get sun-struck trying to start, I’m all in.”

Bland could not budge him and swore voluminously while he worked over the motor.  Finally he too gave up and crawled under a wing where the heat was not quite so unendurable, and tried to think of something he had not done but which he might do to correct the motor trouble.  No Indians having been sighted since their second landing, he could push his fear of them into the back of his mind until a dark face peered out at him again.

Miles away to the west men were sweating while they rode, searching for this very airplane that sat so placidly in the midst of an Indian corn field.  Farther away the news went humming along the wires, of a young aviator lost with his airplane on the desert.  The fame of that young aviator was growing apace while he lay there, casually wishing there was a telephone handy so he could call up Mary V and tell her he had a plan which might make him big money without his having to sell his plane.

Not once did it occur to him that any one would be especially concerned over his absence.  Not once did he look upon this mishap as anything more serious than an unpleasant incident in the life of a flyer.  He went to sleep, lying there under a wing of his plane, and presently Bland himself drifted off into dreams that would have been much less agreeable had he known that a full two dozen Indians had crawled into the willows and were peering timorously out at them.

It was past noon when Bland awoke.  Johnny was still sound asleep, snoring a little now and then.  Bland grumbled more profanity, sent a questing glance toward the willows and saw nothing to alarm him, crawled out into the searing sunlight and tried to work.  But the motor was so hot he could not touch it anywhere.  His pliers and wrenches were too hot to hold, and his face felt scorched where the sun fell upon it.  So Bland crawled back again and cursed the land that knew such heat, and himself for being in it, and presently slept again.

Hunger woke Johnny at last, and he straight-way woke Bland, politely intimating that it was about time he got busy and did something.  Johnny did not propose to settle down for life in that neighborhood, he pointed out.  There must be something they could do, if the darned engine wasn’t broken anywhere.

Bland, too miserable to argue, sat up and pushed greasy fingers through his lank hair.  Having remained alive and unharmed for so long in that neighborhood, his faith in Johnny’s knowledge of Indians waxed stronger.  He began to think less of his danger and more about the motor.

The thing mystified him, who could tear a motor apart and put it together again.  What he felt he ought to do was impossible for lack of the proper tools, Johnny’s emergency kit being quite as useless for any real emergency as such kits usually are.  Merely as an experiment he removed the needle valve and washed several specks of dirt off it with gasoline.  Without hesitation the motor started, and Bland cursed himself quite sincerely for not having sooner thought of the simple expedient.  He must be getting feeble-minded, he said, while he adjusted the mixture and made ready to fly.