Ridges, arroyos, brushy flats—­Johnny’s eyes went over them all.  Almost before they had completed the first circle he spied a rider, then two—­and over to the right a couple more, scattered out and riding eastward.  Johnny wished that he could have speech with the boys, could tell them what he meant to do.  But he knew too well how the horses would feel about the plane, so he kept on, skimming high over their heads like a great, humming dragon fly.  He saw them crane necks to watch him, saw the horses plunge and try to bolt.  Then they were far behind, and his eyes were searching anxiously the landscape below.

Mary V, it occurred to him suddenly, might be lying hurt.  Jake might have thrown her—­though on second thought that was not likely, for Mary V was too good a rider to be thrown unless a horse pitched rather viciously.  Jake would run away, would rear and plunge and sidle when fear gripped him or his temper was up, but Johnny had never heard of his pitching.  Jake was not a range-bred horse, and if there was a buck-jump in his system, it had never betrayed itself.  After all, Mary V’s chance of lying hurt was minimized by the very fact that she rode Jake.

Red hill came sliding rapidly toward them.  Now it was beneath, and the plane had risen sharply to the air current that flowed steadily over the hill.  It swooped down again—­they were over the flat where he had seen the riders.  The line of fence showed like knotted thread drawn across the land.  And within it was no Mary V.

Johnny tapped Bland’s shoulder for a circle to the north, hoping that she might be riding back that way.  He strained his eyes, and saw tiny dots of horses feeding quietly, but no rider moving anywhere.  He sent Bland swinging southward, while he leaned a little and watched the swift-sliding panorama of arid land beneath.  It was a rough country, as Tex had said.  To look for one little moving speck in all that veined network of little ridges and draws was enough to tax quicker, keener eyes than Johnny Jewel’s.

But Johnny would not think of failure.  Somewhere he would see her; he would circle and seek until he did find her—­if she were there.

Twice they sailed round, keeping within the boundaries of the east and south fences.  Then, flying as low as was safe, Johnny turned south, along the course which he believed the horse thieves to have followed.  It did not seem possible—­rather, he did not want to think it possible—­that they should have met Mary V. But Mexico is always Mexico, and sinister things do happen along its border.  The boys were coming on horseback, and they would scatter and comb the draws which Johnny had looked down into as he passed over.  He would leave that closer search to the boys, while he himself went farther—­as far as Jake could travel in half a day.

They reached the south fence, left it dwindling behind them.  Minutes brought them over the invisible line which divides lawful country from lawless.  They went on, until Johnny spied again the group of stolen horses being herded loosely in a shallow arroyo where there was a little sparse grass.  The men he did not at first see, save the one on herd.  Then he thought he could detect them sprawled in the shade of a few stunted trees.