“F’r cat’s sake, what they went and done to this field?” Bland’s whining voice complained, and he swung the Thunder Bird away from a long windrow of dried vines, just in time to avoid entangling the wheels.  They settled, ran along uneven surface for a space.  A small loose pile lay just ahead, and Bland veered sharply away.  Another pile to the left caught the wheels just as the tail was settling.  The Thunder Bird jerked, staggered drunkenly, wheeled over the pile and then, with a gentle determination quite unexpected in so docile a bird, turned itself up on its nose and with a splintering crash of the propeller tilted on over until it lay flat on its back.  Which was a silly ending to so glorious a flight.

Johnny, hanging upside down with the strap strained tight across his loins, with Bland dangling before him, felt even sillier than the Thunder Bird looked.  He freed himself after the first paralyzing shock of surprise, dropped on all fours upon the upper wing covering, and crawled out between the front braces.  A minute later Bland followed, looking extremely foolish.

“That’s a hell of a way to land!” Johnny snorted.  “What kinda pilot are you, for gosh sake?”

“Aw, how was I to know they’d went and planted this field to beans?  I been away a year, almost.  It was a good field when I was here before.  Come on and let’s turn her back, bo, before all the cylinders is full of oil.”  Then Bland added with a surprising optimism in one so given to complaining, “We’re here, and we ain’t hurt, and Los Angeles is just back there a ways.  I’m satisfied.”

“Yes, and we shelled the beans—­that’s something more,” Johnny sarcastically added to the sum of their blessings.

With some labor they turned the Thunder Bird right side up.  It was too dark to estimate the damage, and Bland suggested that they catch a street car and ride into town.  He did not inform Johnny then how far they must walk before they would be within catching distance, and Johnny started off willingly enough, after Bland had convinced him that the Thunder Bird would be perfectly safe until morning.  It was a quiet neighborhood, he declared, and no one would be likely to come near the place.  If they did, they could not fly off with the Thunder Bird unless they happened to be carrying an extra propeller around with them.  This, Johnny suspected, was Bland’s best attempt at irony.

They walked and they walked, at first along a rough country road that seemed real boulevard to Johnny, who was accustomed to the trails of Arizona.  Later they emerged upon asphalt, and trudged along the edge of that for a time, moving aside as swift bars of light bathed them briefly, with the swish of speeding automobiles brushing close.  Johnny’s head was roaring with the remembered beat of the Thunder Bird’s motor.  In the silence between automobiles it deafened him so that Bland’s drawling voice came to him dully, the words muffled.