“Don’t you worry, Mr. Selmer, we’ll get right out after her.  Which way did she go?  There’s times when an airplane comes in kinda handy, after all!”

“You young hound, there wouldn’t be all this hell a-poppin’ if it wasn’t for you and your bederned airplane!  Don’t overlook that fact.  You’ve managed to hold up all my plans, and lose me Lord-knows-how-many horses that are probably the pick of the herds; and you’ve got the gall to crow because your flying machine will fly!  And if that girl of mine’s in any trouble, it’ll be your fault more than anybody’s.  If you’d stuck to your job and done what I’ve been paying you wages to do—­”

“You don’t have to rub all that in, Mr. Selmer.  I guess I know it better than you do.  Just because I don’t come crying around you with a lot of please-forgive-me stuff, you think I don’t give a cuss!  Which way did Mary V go?  That’s more important right now than naming over all the kinds of damn fools I’ve been.  I can sing that song backwards.  Which way—­”

“She went east.  Damn yuh, don’t yuh stand there talking back to me, or I’ll—­”

“Oh, go to—­war,” said Johnny sullenly, and hitched the propeller to a better balance on his shoulder, and went striding back whence he had come.

He had not meant to crow.  He knew perfectly well what harm he had wrought.  He was doing what he could to undo that harm, and he was at that high pitch of self-torment when the lash of another was unbearable.  He did not want to quarrel with the boss, but no human being could have reproached Johnny then without receiving some of the bitterness which filled Johnny’s soul.

He routed Bland out of nap and commanded him to make ready for another flight.  Bland protested, with his usual whine against extra work, and got a look from Johnny that sent him hurrying around the plane to make his regular before-flying inspection.

Fifteen minutes after Johnny’s arrival the plane was quivering outside on the flying field, and Bland was pulling down his goggles while Johnny kicked a small rock away from a wheel and climbed up to straddle into the rear seat, carrying his rifle with him—­to the manifest discomfort of Bland, who was “gun-shy.”

“Fly a kinda zigzag course east till I tell yuh to swing south,” Johnny called, close to Bland’s ear.  “Miss Selmer’s off that way somewhere.  If you see her, don’t fly low enough to scare her horse—­keep away a little and hunt a landing.  I’ll tell yuh when to land, same as before.”

He settled back, and Bland nodded, glanced right and left, eased the motor on and started.  They took the air and climbed steadily, circling until they had the altitude Johnny wanted.  Then, swinging away toward Snake Ridge, they worked eastward.  Johnny did not use the controls at all.  He wanted all his mind for scanning the country spread out below them.