“Ride a horse?  Me?” the spine of the expert stiffened with horror, so that he sat up straight.

“Sure, ride a horse.  You.  Think you were going out on the street car?” Johnny’s lips puckered.  “Say, it won’t prove fatal.  He’s a nice, gentle horse.  And,” he added meaningly, “you’ll learn to ride, all right, on the way to camp.  That is, if you’ve got it in you.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MARY V CONFRONTS JOHNNY

Johnny was in one of his hurry-up moods now.  He had the material to repair his plane, he had the aviator who could help him far, far better than could his cold-blooded, printed instructions.  Remained only the small matter of annihilating time and distance so that the work could start.

In his zeal Johnny nearly annihilated the aviator as well.  He rode fast for two reasons:  He was in a great hurry to get back to camp, and he had a long way to go:  and the long-legged, half-broken bronk he was riding was in a greater hurry than Johnny, and did not care how far he had to go.  So far as they two were concerned, the pace suited.  But Sandy refused to be left behind, and he also objected to a rider that rode soggily, ka-lump, ka-lump, like a bag of meal tied to the horn with one saddle string.  Sandy pounded along with his ears laid flat against his skull, for spite keeping to the roughest gait he knew, short of pitching.  Bland Halliday pounded along in the saddle, tears of pain in his opaque eyes, caused by having bitten his tongue twice.

“For cat’s sake, is this the only way of getting to your camp?” he gasped, when Johnny and the bronk mercifully slowed to climb a steep arroyo bank.

“Unless yuh fly,” Johnny assured him happily, hugging the thought that, however awkward he might be when he first essayed to fly, it would be humanly impossible to surpass the awkwardness of Bland Halliday in the saddle.

“Believe me, bo, we’ll fly, then, if I have to build a plane!” Halliday let go the saddle horn just long enough to draw the back of his grimy wrist across his perspiring face.  “And I’ve heard folks claim they liked to ride on a horse!” he added perplexedly.

Johnny grinned and turned off the road to ride straight across the country.  It would be rough going for the aviator, but it would shorten the journey ten or twelve miles, which meant a good deal to Johnny’s peace of mind.

He did not feel it necessary to inform his expert assistant that Sinkhole Camp was accessible to wagons, carts, buckboards—­automobiles, even, if one was lucky in dodging rocks, and the tires held out.  It had occurred to him that it might be very good policy to make this a trip of unpleasant memories for Bland Halliday.  He would work on that plane with more interest in the job.  The alternative of a ticket and “eating money” to Los Angeles had been altogether too easy, Johnny thought.  There should be certain obstacles placed between Sinkhole and the ticket.