Johnny’s lips twitched humorously.  “I got it where it was setting like a hawk—­a broken-winged hawk—­on the burning sands of Mexico.  I hauled it over here with four of the orneriest mules that ever flapped an ear at white men.  It cost me just sixty dollars, all told—­not counting repairs.  And I’m going to ride the sky, and part the clouds like foam—­”

  “’And brand each star with the Rolling R,
   An-d lead the Great Bear ho-ome,’”

Mary V chanted promptly.  “Oh, Skyrider, won’t you take me along too?  I’ve always been just dying to fly!”

“You’ll have to stave off death till I learn how—­and then maybe you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Oh, won’t the boys be just wild!  Where have you got it, Johnny?  I’ve looked every place I could think of, the last two weeks, and I couldn’t—­”

“Oh—­hoh!” cried Johnny.  “So it was you I’ve been trailing, was it?  I wondered who was doing so much riding down this way.  You had me guessing, and that’s a fact.”

“Well, you’ve had me; now ’fess up the whole mystery of it, Johnny.  You know that wasn’t you, telephoning with a cold, that night.  You know very well you weren’t at camp at all; not for a couple of days, anyway.  Probably that was while you went to the burning sands of Mexico.  I don’t understand that part, either; how you found out, and all.  But who was it ’phoned for you?  There were things he said—­”

“Huh?  What things?  On the square, I don’t know, Mary V. I never told anybody to ’phone—­nobody knew I was going, except a greaser that told me about the plane, and went with me to see it.”

“Well, I don’t understand it at all.  He certainly pretended he was you, and he must have ’phoned from Sinkhole, because there’s no other ’phone on that wire.  And the way he talked—­”

“Oh, I think I know who it could have been,” Johnny interposed hastily, thinking of Tomaso.  “He—­”

Just then the travois hung itself on a lava out-cropping which Sandy himself had dodged with his feet, and Johnny had a few busy minutes.  By the time they were again moving forward, Mary V’s curiosity had seized upon something else.  She wanted to know if Johnny wasn’t afraid Bland Halliday might steal his aeroplane and fly off with it in the night.

“Well, he might, at that—­if he got a chance,” Johnny admitted.  “Which he won’t—­take it from me.”

“Which he will—­take it from you, if you don’t keep an eye on him.  From all Jerry said about him, he couldn’t be honest to save his life.  And I’m sure Jerry—­”

“Good golly!  You sure do seem to bank a lot on this Jerry person.  At that, he may be wrong.  Bland Halliday is all right if you treat him right.  I ought to know; I’ve worked right alongside him for over two weeks now.  And I’ll say, he has worked!  I’d have been all summer doing what he’s done in a couple of weeks; and then it wouldn’t have been done right.  This said Jerry is welcome to his opinions, and you’re welcome to swallow them whole, but me, I’ve got to hand it to Bland Halliday for sticking right on the job and doing his level best.  Why, he couldn’t have gone after the job any harder if it was his own plane.”