“You know a lot you just think.  I’ll send for some, right off.  Let’s go.  No use burning gas standing still!”

Mary V, her camera sagging in her two hands so that the lens looked at the wheels, gazed wistfully after them as they rose and went humming away toward the rising sun, that had just cleared the jagged rim of mountains and was gilding the ledge behind her.  They climbed and swerved a little to the south, evidently to avoid looking straight into the sun.

Sandy stamped and snorted, tugging at the rope that tied him.  Mary V looked down, away from the diminishing airplane, and gave a shrill cry of dismay.

“Jake!  You come back here—­Whoa!”

She stood with her mouth partly open, staring down along the ledge to where Jake, whom she had daringly borrowed again because of his strength and his speed that could bring her to Sinkhole in time to watch the trial flight, was clattering away with broken bridle reins snapping.  Sandy wanted to follow.  When she ran toward him to catch him before he broke loose, he, too, snapped a rein and went racing away after Jake.

Mary V stamped her foot, and cried a little, and blamed Bland Halliday for flying down that way where Jake could see him and get scared.  She had been very careful to tie Jake back out of sight of the strip of sand where Johnny had told her they would make their start and their landing.  It wasn’t her fault that she was set afoot—­but Bland Halliday just knew Jake would be scared stiff if he went down past where he was, and he had done it deliberately.  And now Sandy was gone, too—­and Johnny only had a couple of bronks in the little pasture—­and she would just like to know what she was going to do?  She should think that the least Johnny and Bland could do would be to come back and—­do something about the horses.  They surely must have seen Jake running away, and Johnny would have sense enough to know what that meant.

But Johnny, as it happened, was wholly absorbed in other things.  He was not thinking of horses, nor of Mary V, nor of anything except flying.  He was crowding into a few precious minutes all the pent emotions of his dearest dreams.  He was getting the “feel” of the controls, putting his theoretical learning to the test, finding just how much and how little it took to guide, to climb, to dip.  Bland Halliday was a good flyer, and he was doing his best, showing off his skill before Johnny.

He shut off the motor for a minute and volplaned.  “Great way to see the country!” he shouted, and climbed back in an easy spiral.

Johnny looked down.  They were still within the lines of the Rolling R range, he could tell by a certain red hill that, from that height, looked small and insignificant, but red still and perfect in its contour.  Beyond he could see the small thread stretched across a half-barren slope—­the fence he meant to inspect that day.  Between the red hill and the fence were four moving dots, following behind several other smaller dots, which his range-trained eyes recognized as horses driven by men on horseback.