“I think you’re making a bad play, bo—­duckin’ out when all them newspaper guys are hot after dope on us,” Bland expostulated while he drilled along beside his boss.  “I give ’em some scarehead stuff, but they’d lap up a lot more.  We can get a lot of valuable publicity right now if we play ’em right.  I give ’em that gawd stuff for a start-off, and I made—­”

“Shut up and save your breath,” snapped Johnny.  “I’m not chasing up any newspaper notoriety now.”

“Well, it’d be better business if yah did, bo—­I’ll say it would.  Why, it’s free advertising we couldn’t have pulled off on a bet, if we’d tried to frame it.  Absolutely not.  Well, mebby your duckin’ out right now is a good play, too.  It’ll keep ’em chasin’ yuh for more—­and I’ll say that’s about the only way to handle them smart guys.  Oncet you chase them, the stuff’s off.  You can bust your spine in four different places and wreck your machine, and mebby get a four- or five-line notice down in a corner next the dentist ads.  It’s worse, too, since the war begun.  There ain’t no more chance, hardly, of getting front-page publicity.  Say, a couple of ’em took your picture.  D’ yuh know that?”

“No, and I don’t care,” Johnny retorted.

Just now nothing mattered save getting to the Rolling R as soon as possible and stopping that idiotic search for him.  He hustled Bland around to such good purpose that by the time the reporters had trailed him to the hangar he was already in his seat and was barking “Contact!” at Bland, who was unhappily turning the propeller at stated intervals and wondering when he would ever again have a square meal, and hoping that no misfortune would delay their arrival at the Rolling R, where he remembered hungrily certain past achievements of the cook.

“Going back to your Indian tribe?” one smiling, sandy-haired fellow called out to Johnny.

“No.  I’m going to the Rolling R!” Johnny retorted unguardedly.  “Ready, Bland?  Contact!”

The motor started, and Bland pulled down his cap.  “His best girl lives at the Rolling R. He’s goin’ to see her,” he informed the sandy-haired man as he passed him.  “They’re engaged.”  He climbed up and took his place, tickled at the chance to hand out more “dope.”  The sandy-haired one seemed tickled, too, until he saw that his ears had not been the only ones to drink in Bland’s words.

They moved hastily aside as the big plane swung round and went down the field like a running plover.  They watched it swing and come back, taking the air easily, thrumming its high, triumphant note.  They tilted heads backward and followed it as Johnny circled, getting his altitude.  They squinted into the sun to see the plane head straight away toward the Rolling R, its little wheels looking very much like the tucked-up feet of some gigantic bird, until it had dwindled to the rigid, dragon-fly outline.

“He’s got nerve, that kid!” the sandy-haired one declared to his fellows.  “Didn’t care a whoop for publicity—­did you fellows get that?  I’d been wondering if it wasn’t some frame-up, but it’s on the level.  That boy couldn’t frame anything.”