“Aw, you’ll be all right when you stir around a little,” was the scant comfort he gave.  “It’s a good big half mile over to where I’ve got it cached.  A ride’ll limber you up—­”

“Ride?  On a horse?  Not on your life!  Honest, old top, I’m all in; I couldn’t walk if you was to pay me a million a step.  On the square, bo—­”

“Say, I wish you’d cut out that ‘bo’ and ‘old top’ and call me Johnny.  That’s my name.  And I wish you’d cut out the misery talk too.  Why, good golly!  What do you think I brought yuh down here for?  Just to give you a ride?  I’ve got an airplane to repair, and you claimed you could repair it.  If you do, I promised to take you to the Coast with it.  That’s the understanding, and she still rides that way.  Get up and come eat.  We’ve got to get busy.  I ain’t taking summer boarders.”

“Aw, have a heart, bo—­”

Johnny’s code was simple and direct, and therefore effective.  He had brought this fellow to Sinkhole for a purpose, and he did not intend to be thwarted in that purpose just because the man happened to be a whiner.  Johnny went over to the bunk, grabbed Bland Halliday by a shoulder and a leg, and hauled him into the middle of the cabin.

“Maybe you can fly; you sure don’t hit me as being good for anything else,” he said in deep disgust.  “And I wouldn’t be surprised right now to hear you swiped that pilot’s license.  If you did, and if you don’t know airplanes, the Lord help yuh—­that’s all I got to say.  Get into your pants.  I’m in a hurry this morning.”

Bland Halliday nearly cried, but he managed to insert his aching limbs into his trousers, and somehow he managed to move to the washbasin, and afterwards to hobble to the table.  He let himself down by slow and painful degrees into a chair, swore that he’d lie on the track and let a train run over him before he would sit again on the back of a horse, and began to eat voraciously.

Johnny listened, watched the food disappear, gave a snort, and fried more bacon for himself.  His mood was not optimistic that morning.  He was not even hopeful.  He had held an exalted respect for aviators, believing them all supermen, gifted beyond the common herd and certainly owning a fine valor, a gameness that surpassed the best courage of men content to remain close to earth.  He had brought Bland Halliday away down here only to find that he lacked all the fine qualities which Johnny had taken for granted he possessed.

“Say!  On the square, did you ever get any farther away from the ground than an elevator could take you?” he asked bluntly, when he was finishing his coffee after a heavy silence.

“Ten thousand feet—­well, once I went twelve, but I didn’t stay up.  There was a heavy cross-current up there, and I didn’t stay.  Why?”

Johnny looked him over with round, unfriendly eyes.  “I was just wondering,” he said.  “You seem so scared about getting on the back of a horse—­”