“There’s a cabin somewhere near here that we can use for headquarters,” Cliff further explained.  “And to-day a Mexican will come and take charge of camp and look after our interests while we are over the line.  I have ordered a quantity of gas that will be brought here and stored in a safe place, and there is a shelter for the plane.  I merely want you to look over the ground, make sure of the landing possibilities, and fix certain landmarks in your mind so that you can drop down here without making any mistake as to the spot.  When that is done we will return and bring your airplane over.  It is only about a hundred and forty miles from Los Angeles, air line.  You can make that easily enough, I suppose?”

“I don’t see why not.  A hundred and forty miles ain’t far, when you’re lined out and flying straight for where you’re going.”

“No.  Well, one step at a time.  We’ll just repack this, so that we can move on to the cabin as soon as it’s light enough.  I don’t think it can be far.”

Daylight came and showed them that the cabin was no more than a long pistol shot away.  Johnny looked at Cliff queerly.  City man he might be—­city man he certainly looked and acted and talked, but he did not appear to rely altogether upon signposts and street-corner labels to show him his way about.  Just who and what was the fellow, anyway?  Something more than a high-class newspaper man, Johnny suspected.

That cabin, for instance, might have been built and the surroundings ordered to suit their purpose.  It was a commonplace cabin, set against a hill rock-hewn and rugged, with a queer, double-pointed top like twin steeples tumbled by an earthquake; or like two “sheep herders’ monuments” built painstakingly by giants.  The lower slope of the hill was grassy, with scattered live oaks and here and there a huge bowlder.  It was one of these live oaks, the biggest of them all, with wide-spreading branches drooping almost to the ground, that Cliff pointed out as an excellent concealment for an airplane.

“Run it under there, and who would ever suspect?  Mateo is there already with his woman and the kiddies.  Has it ever occurred to you, old man, how thoroughly disarming a woman and kiddies are in any enterprise that requires secrecy?”

“Can’t say it has.  It has occurred to me that kids are the limit for blabbing things.  And women—­”

“Not these,” Cliff smiled serenely.  “These are trained kiddies.  They do their blabbing at home, you’ll find.  They’re better than dogs, to give warning of strangers prowling about.”

He must have meant during the day they were better than dogs.  They drove up to the cabin, swung around the end and turned under a live oak whose branches scraped the car’s top, while four dogs circled the machine, barking and growling.  Still no kiddies appeared, but their father came out of a back door and drove the dogs back.  He was low-browed, swart and silent, with a heavy black mustache and a mop of hair to match.  Cliff left the car and walked away with him, speaking in an undertone what Johnny knew to be Spanish.  The low-browed one interpolated an occasional “Si, si, senor!” and gesticulated much.