“But please don’t let me interrupt your very fascinating new pastime.  Of course, since you are a young man of leisure, playing with your new toy must seem far more important than the fact that I have about twenty miles to walk—­through the sand and the heat, and not even a canteen of water to save me from parching with thirst.  I—­I must ask you to pardon me for—­for thrusting my merely personal affairs upon your notice.  Well, what are you grinning about?  Do you think it’s funny?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A RIDER OF THE SKY

“I could take her home, old top—­if I had the gas.”  Bland turned his pale stare significantly from Mary V to Johnny.  “Come through, bo.  You know you’ve got more gas hid out on me somewhere.  I got a slant at the bill of it, so I know.  It wouldn’t be polite to let the young lady walk home.”

Johnny stilled him to silence with a round-eyed stare.

“Thank you, I’d much prefer to walk—­if it was forty miles instead of twenty!” Mary V chilled him further.  “What are we going to do, Johnny?  I don’t know what will happen if Bill Hayden finds out that I borrowed Jake.  And then letting him get away, like that—­”

“Sandy’s at the pasture fence, I’d be willing to bet; but at that it’s going to be the devil’s own job to catch him, me afoot.  And he wouldn’t let you on him if I did.  I guess it’s a case of ride the sky or walk, Mary V.”

“Then we better be stepping, bo, before the wind comes up, as I’ve noticed it’s liable to, late in the forenoon.  You dig up the gas, and I’ll take her home.”

“Thank you, I do not wish to trouble you, Mr. Halliday.  Johnny can take me, if anybody—­”

“Who—­him?” Bland Halliday’s smile was twisted far to the left.  “Say, where do you get that idea—­him flyin’ after one lesson?  Gee, you must think flyin’ is like driving a Ford!”

“You could go to the shack and ’phone home for some one to come after you,” Johnny suggested uncertainly.

“And let them know where I am?  You must be absolutely crazy, if you think I’d consider such a thing.  I’m supposed to be getting ’Desert Glimpses’—­”

“Well, you sure got your glimpse,” tittered Bland.

Mary V turned her back on him, took Johnny by the arm, and walked him away for private conference.

“You better let him take you home, Mary V. He’s all right—­for flying.  I’ve got to hand it to him there.”

“And give him a chance to steal your aeroplane?  He’d never bring it back.  I know he wouldn’t.”

“He’d have to.  I’d only give him gas enough to make the trip on, and—­”

“And if he had enough to come back with, he’d have enough to get to the railroad with.  Don’t be stupid.  You can take me; couldn’t you, now, honest?”

“Well,—­I feel as if I could, all right.  But a fellow’s supposed to practice a lot with an instructor before he gets gay and goes to flying alone.  Bland says—­”