Bland lied, and promised again that he would try and find Johnny and tell him to hurry to a telephone.  Bland had shaved seconds off every minute thereafter, getting through with his errand and back to the hangar.  He had expected to be followed out there, and he was in a secret agony of haste which he betrayed in every move he made.

But Johnny was himself in a hurry to be gone, and excitement over the adventure and a troubled sense of running away occupied his mind so that he gave little heed to Bland.  He climbed in, and Bland raised his two arms to the propeller blade and waited with visible impatience for the word.  He had that word.  And Bland, who had glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed some one coming,—­some one who much resembled a messenger boy,—­turned the motor over with one mighty pull, and made the cockpit in two jumps and a straddle.

“We’re off, bo!  Give it to ’er!” he shouted, in a tone quite foreign to his usual languid whine, and fastened his safety belt.

Johnny settled himself, felt out his controls, gave her more gas.  A uniformed young fellow, running toward them, shouted something, but Johnny gave no heed.  Uniforms did not appeal to him, anyway.  He scowled at this one and went taxieing down the field, spurned the earth, and whirred off into the air.

“We want to climb to about ten thousand,” Bland shouted over his shoulder, “and f’r cat’s sake, don’t let’s lose sight of the railroad.”

Rapidly the earth dropped away.  The town shrunk to a handful of toy houses flung carelessly down upon a dingy gray carpet, with a yellow seam stretched across—­which was the railroad—­and yellow gashes here and there.  The toy houses dwindled to mere dots on a relief map of gray with green splotches here and there for groves and orchards not yet denuded of leaves.  Their ears were filled with the pulsing roar of the motor, their faces tingled with the keen wind of their passing through the higher spaces.

Away down below, where the dust they had kicked up had not yet settled, the messenger boy stood open-mouthed, with his cap tilted precariously on the bulge of his head, a damp lock of hair straggling down into his right eyebrow, while he craned his neck to stare after the dwindling speck.

He waited, leaning against the shady side of the shed with his feet crossed; but the Thunder Bird did not circle back and prepare to descend the invisible spiral it had climbed so ardently.  Two cigarettes he smoked leisurely, now and then tilting back his head and squinting into the silent blue depth above.  He drew out his book and looked at the slip saying that Johnny Jewel was being called by the Rolling R Ranch on long-distance telephone.  He squinted again at the sky, cocked his ear like a spaniel and got no faint humming, replaced the slip in his book and the book in his torn-down pocket, and presently meandered back to town.