The brother of Tomaso started perceptibly.  “A rancho?  But that is not possible, senor!”

“Oh, ain’t it?  I’ll show yuh, then.”

“Oh, no! No importa. If it is a rancho in this countree, me, I’m find it without trobles for you.”

Even Johnny’s absorption in his treasure-trove could not altogether blind him to the fact that Tomaso’s brother was perturbed.  He wondered a little.  But after all, there was only one thing now that really interested him, and he straightway returned to it, leaving the Mexican to find the ranch and hire a team.  He was not afraid that the brother of Tomaso would fail him in that detail.  Thirty American dollars look big to a Mexican.

He knew when Tomaso’s brother mounted and rode away in the direction of the ranch, and he knew when he returned.  But he failed to observe that the brother of Tomaso was gone long enough to have crawled there and back on his hands and knees, and that he returned in a much better humor than when he had left.

“The wagon and mules, it will come at daytime,” was his brief report.  He crawled into his blankets and left Johnny perched up in the pilot’s seat, planning and dreaming in the moonlight.  The brother of Tomaso lifted his head once and looked at Johnny’s head and shoulders, which was all of him that showed.  Through half-closed lids he studied Johnny’s profile and the look of exaltation in his wide-open eyes.

“Tex, he’s one smart hombre,” Tomaso’s brother paid tribute.  “The plan it works aw-right, I bet.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

OVER THE TELEPHONE

That night Johnny spread his blankets in a spot where he could lie and look at his airplane with the moon shining full upon it and throwing a shadow like a great, black bird with outstretched wings on the sand.  He had to lie where he could look at it, else he could not have lain there at all.  He was like a child that falls asleep with a new, long-coveted toy clasped tight in its two hands.  He worried himself into a headache over the difficulties of transporting it unharmed over the miles of untracked desert country to Sinkhole.  He was afraid the mules would run away with it, or upset it somehow.  It looked so fragile, so easily broken.  Already the tail was broken, where the flyers in landing had swerved against a rock.  He pictured mishaps and disasters enough to fill a journey of five times that length over country twice as rough.  He wished that he could fly it home.  Picturing that, his lips softened into a smile, and the pucker eased out of his forehead.

But he couldn’t fly it.  He didn’t know how, though I honestly believe he would have tried it anyway, had there been even a gallon of gasoline in the tank.  But the tank was bone dry, and the tail was knocked askew, so Johnny had to give up thinking about it.

When he slept, the airplane filled his dreams so that he talked in his sleep and wakened the brother of Tomaso, who sat up in his blankets to listen.