“Well, I can’t ride in to town for a week, anyway.  I’ve got to—­”

“That’s your funeral, what you got to do.  I’ve got to have the stuff to work with, and I’ve got to have it right off.  At that, there’s two weeks’ work here, even if the motor’s all right.  I haven’t looked ’er over yet—­but seeing the gas tank is empty, I’m guessing she run as long as she had anything to run on, and that they landed for lack of gas.  If that’s the case, the motor’s probably all right.  I’ll turn ’er over and see, soon as you get gas and oil down here.  And that better be right off.  I can be working on the tail in the meantime.  But believe me, it’s going to be fierce, working without half tools enough.”  Then he added, fixing Johnny with his unpleasant stare, “You’ll have to hustle that stuff along.  I’ll be ready for it before it gets here, best you can do.  Send to the Pacific Supply Company.  Here, I’ll write down the address.  Better send ’em—­lessee, a minute.  Gimme the list again.  You send ’em thirty bucks; what’s left, if there is any, they’ll return.  Some of that stuff may have gone up since I bought last.  War’s boosting everything.  All right—­get a move on yuh, bo.  This is going to be some job, believe me!”

“All right.  There’s grub and blankets for you.  You’ll have to camp right here, I guess.  I don’t aim to let the whole country know I’ve got an airplane—­and besides, it will save the walk back and forth from your work.  I’ll see you again this evening.”

Bland Halliday looked around him at the blank rock walls and opened his mouth for protest.  But Johnny was in the saddle and gone, and even when Halliday cried, “Aw, say!” after him he did not look back.  He followed Johnny to the mouth of the cleft and stood there looking after him with a long face until Johnny disappeared into a slight depression, loped out again and presently became, to the aviator’s eyes, an indistinguishable, wavering object against the sky line.  Whereupon Bland gazed no more, but went thoughtfully back to his task.

It was some time after that when Mary V, riding up on a ridge a mile or so north of the stage road that linked a tiny village in the foothills with the railroad, stopped to reconnoiter before going farther.  Reconnoitering had come to be so much of a habit with Mary V that every little height meant merely a vantage point from which she might gaze out over the country to see what she could see.

She gazed now, and she saw Johnny Jewel—­or so she named the rider to herself—­hover briefly beside the Sinkhole mail box nailed to a post beside the stage road, and then go loping back toward the south as though he were in a great hurry.  Mary V watched him for a minute, turned to survey the country to the southwest, and discerned far off on the horizon a wavering speck which she rightly guessed was the stage.

She rode straight down the ridge to the mail box, grimly determined to let no little clue to Johnny Jewel’s insufferable behavior escape her.  Johnny was up to something, and it might be that the mail box was worth inspecting that morning.  So Mary V rode up and inspected it.