Johnny’s hand trembled when he tried to shake a little tobacco into a cigarette paper.  His lips, too, quivered slightly.  But he laughed unbelievingly.

“Your brother was kidding you, Tom.  Nobody would go off and leave an airplane setting in the desert.  Those soldiers that got lost were away over east of here.  Three or four hundred miles.  He was kidding you.”

“No-o, my brother, she’s saw that thing!  She’s hunt cattle what got across, and she’s saw that what them soldiers flew.  Me, I know.”  He looked at Johnny appraisingly, hesitated and leaned forward, impelled yet not quite daring to give the proof.

“Well, what do you know?” Johnny returned the look steadfastly.

“You don’t tell my brother—­I—­” He fumbled in his trousers pocket, hesitated a little longer, and grew more trustful.  “Them pliers—­I’m got.”

He laid them on the table, and Johnny let his stool tilt forward abruptly on its four legs.  He took up the pliers, examined them with one eye squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, weighed them in his hand, bent to read the trade-mark.  Then he looked at Tomaso.  Those pliers may or may not have come from the emergency kit of an airplane, but they certainly were not of the kind or quality that ranchmen were in the habit of owning.  To Johnny they looked convincing.  When he had an airplane of his own, he would find a hundred uses for a pair of pliers exactly like those.

“I thought you said your brother lost ’em,” he observed drily.

Tomaso shrugged, flung out his hands, smiled with his lips, and frowned with his eyes.  “S’pose he did lost.  Somebody could find.”

Johnny laughed.  “All right; we’ll let it ride that way.  I ain’t going to tell your brother.  Want to sell ’em?”

Tomaso took up the pliers, caressed their bright steel with his long fingers, nipped them open and shut.

“What you pay me?” he countered.

“Two bits.”

Tomaso turned them over, gazed upon them fondly.  He shook his head regretfully. “No quero. Them pliers, she’s bueno,” he said.  “You could find more things.  My brother, she’s tell lots of things is where that sets like a hawk.  Lots of things.  You don’t tell my brother?”

“Sure not.  I don’t want the things anyway.  And I don’t know your brother.”

Tomaso thoughtfully nipped the pliers upon the oilcloth table cover.  He looked at the airplane picture, he looked at Johnny.  He sighed.

“Me, I’m like see those thing fly like birds.  I’m like see that what sets over there.  My brother, she’s tell me it’s so big like here to that water hole.  She’s tell me some day it maybe flies.  I go see it some day.”

Johnny laughed.  “You’ll have some trip if you do.  You take it from me, Tom, I don’t know your brother, but I know he was kiddin’ you.  It was away over east of here that those fellows got lost.”