“We’ll have to get us a car,” Bland repeated three times before Johnny understood.

“Oh.  I thought you meant we’re getting close to a car,” Johnny grumbled.  “How much farther we got to walk, for gosh sake?”

“About a mile now, bo.  It’s only—­”

“A mile!  Good golly!  I thought we was flying to Los Angeles!  You never said we had to walk half the way from Tucson.  What in thunder made you fly forty miles beyond the darned place!  Just so you’d have a chance to wreck the plane?  A hell of a pilot you are!”

Bland protested, trailing a step behind Johnny, whose stride had lengthened with the bad news.  Did Johnny think, f’r cat’s sake, he could light in front of the Alexandria and call a bell-hop to take the plane?  Did he think they could put the darn thing in an auto park?  What about telephone wires and electric light wires and trolley wires?  Bland would like to know.  Leave it to Johnny, the crowd would now be roped off the spot and the cops fighting to make a gangway for the ambulance, and women would edge up and faint at the ghastly sight.  Leave it to Johnny—­

“Leave it to me,” Johnny cut in acrimoniously, “and we’d have landed right side up, anyway.  I wouldn’t have lit in the middle of a mess of beans.  Beans!  Good gosh!  For half a cent I’d go back and make camp there.  That’s what we ought to do, anyway, instead of walking all night, getting to town.  We’ve got grub enough—­and there’s beans!”

“Aw, now, bo, have a heart!  You wait till I lead you into the Frolic, and you won’t say beans no more.  You wait till you git your knees pushed under the mahogany and the head waiter scatters the glasses around your plate, and you lamp the dames—­”

He stopped abruptly, his jaw going slack with dismay.  “Only we ain’t got the scenery for no such place as the Frolic,” he mourned.  “Lookin’ the way we do, we’d be eyed suspicious if we went to grab a tray in Boos Brothers!  Some Main Street waffle joint is about our number, unless—­”

“A waffle joint sounds good to me,” Johnny said.  “I didn’t come out here to spend money.  I’m here to make it.”

“That’s all right, bo.  I ain’t going to hit any flowery path either.  But listen, old top.  We’ve had a hard day, and before that a bunch of ’em.  We’ve earned one good meal, ain’t we?  That ain’t going to hurt nobody, bo.  Just to celebrate our arrival and git the taste of the desert out of our mouths.  I’ll say we’ve earned it.  And it needn’t cost so much.  And listen here, bo.  I know a place on Main where we can rent the scenery.  Lots of fellers do that, and nobody the wiser.  I don’t mean open-face coats, neither.  Just some good clothes that have got class will do fine.  And we can git a shave there, and go to the Frolic and have some regular chow, bo, and listen to the tra-la-la girlies warble whilst we eat.  Come on.  Be a regular guy for oncet!”