“Are you all ready, Johnny?” Mary V’s voice was rather alarmingly sweet.  “I’m not going to touch this ducky little wheel.  I’m afraid I might think it was my car and do something queer.  I shall let you drive—­if you call it driving.  Now if Mr. Halliday will crank up for us, we’ll go.”

“Mr. Halliday will let you set there till you get enough,” Bland grinned sourly.  “I’m thinking of your safety, sister.  I’m thinkin’ more of you than that piece of cheese in the pilot’s seat.”

“Mr. Halliday, won’t you please start the motor?” There was a remarkable stress upon the “please,” considering the gun in Mary V’s steady little right hand.  She peered down owl-eyed at Bland through the big goggles.  “This is Arizona—­where guns are not loaded with blanks, Mr. Halliday.  I’ll prove it if you like.  I’d just love to shoot you!”

Bland Halliday drew his feet together as though he intended to run.  Mary V, still peering down through the goggles, shot a spurt of sand over the toe of one scuffed shoe.  Bland stepped aside hastily.

“I can’t see well enough to be sure of missing you next time,” Mary V assured him.  “Generally I can shoot awfully close and miss, but—­I’d like to shoot you, really.  You’d better crank the motor.”

Bland saw the hammer lift again, ominously deliberate.  He sidled hurriedly down to the propeller.  His pale stare never left the gun, which kept him inexorably before its muzzle.

Johnny’s eyes looked as big as his goggles, but he did not say a word.  And presently, after three rather hysterical attempts, Bland set the propeller whirring, and ran out to one side, his hands up as though he feared for his life if he lowered them.  The motor’s hum increased to the steady roar which Johnny’s ear recognized as the sound Bland got from it when he started.  And with an erratic wabbling the plane moved forward jerkily, steadied a bit as Johnny set his teeth and all his stubbornness to the work, and gradually—­very gradually—­lifted and went whirring away through the sunlight.

They say that Providence protects children and fools.  Johnny Jewel, I think, could justly claim protection on both grounds.  He was certainly attempting a foolhardy feat, and he was doing it with a childlike confidence in himself.  As for Mary V—­oh, well, Mary V was very young and a woman, and therefore not to be held accountable for her rash faith that the man would take care of her.  Mary V had centuries of dependent womanhood behind her, and must be excused.

Johnny wished that he had warned her about the peculiar tendency of the air currents to follow the contour of the ground.  He climbed as high as Bland had climbed at first, hoping to escape the abruptness of the waves such as he had studied patiently from charts, and which he had felt when they flew over arroyos and rough ground.  He did not want Mary V to be alarmed, but the noise of the motor made speech impossible,