As it was, he rode over tracks and traces and bits of sinister evidence here and there, and because the fence did not lie flat on the ground, and because many horses were scattered in the creek bottom and the draws and dry arroyos, he returned to camp satisfied that all was well on the Sinkhole range.  He passed the cabin by and headed straight for his secret hangar, gloated and touched and patted and planned until the shadows crept in so thick he could not see, and then remembered how hungry he was.  He returned to the cabin, turned his tired horse loose in the pasture, with Sandy standing disconsolately beside the wire gate, his haltered head drooping in the dusk and his mind visioning heat and sand and sweaty saddle blankets for the morrow.

Dark had painted out the opal tints of the afterglow.  The desert lay quiet, empty, lonesome under the first stars.  Johnny’s eyes strained to see the ridge that held close his treasure.  He had a nervous fear that something might happen to it in the night, and he fought a desire to take his blankets and sleep over there in that niche.  Tomaso’s brother knew where it was, and the Mexican who had driven the mules that hauled it there.  What if they tried to steal it, or something?

That night, before he went to bed, he saddled Sandy and rode over to make sure that the airplane was still there.  He carried a lantern because he feared the moon would not shine in where it was.  It was there, just as he had placed it, but Johnny could not convince himself that it was safe.  He had an uneasy feeling that thieves were abroad that night, and he stayed on guard for an hour or more before he finally consoled himself with the remembrance of the difficulties to be surmounted before even the most persistent of thieves could despoil him.

After that he rode back to the cabin and studied his blue prints and his typed lessons, and made a tentative list of the materials for repairs, and hunted diligently through certain magazine advertisements, hoping to find some firm to which he might logically address the order.

Obstacles loomed large in the path of research.  The Instructions for Repairing an Airplane (Lesson XVII) were vague as to costs and quantities and such details, and Johnny’s judgment and experience were even more vague than the instructions.  He gnawed all the rubber off his pencil before he hit upon the happy expedient of sending a check for all he could afford to spend for repairs, explaining just what damage had been wrought to his plane, and casting himself upon the experience, honesty and mercy of the supply house.  Remained only the problem of discovering the name and address of the firm to be so trusted, but that took him far past midnight.

He was just finishing his somewhat lengthy letter of explanations and directions and a passable diagram of the impertinent twist to the tail of his machine.  The moon was up, wallowing through a bank of clouds that made weird shadows on the plain, sweeping across greasewood and sage and barren sand like great, ungainly troops of horsemen; filling the arroyos and the little, deep washes with inky blackness.