Half an hour before dawn, Johnny went stumbling along the ledge to the cleft.  On his broad shoulder was balanced the propeller.  On his face was a look of fixed determination.  He scared Bland Halliday out of a sleep in which his dreams were all of a certain cabaret in Los Angeles—­dreams which made Bland’s waking all the more disagreeable.  Johnny tilted the propeller carefully against the rock wall, lighted a match, and cupped the blaze in his palms so that the light shone on Bland.

“Where’s the lantern?  You better get up—­it’s most daylight.”

“Aw, f’r cat’s sake!  What more new meanness you got on your mind?  Me, I come down here in good faith to help fix a plane that’s to take me back home—­and I work like a dog—­”

“Yeah—­I know that song by heart, Bland.  You in your faith and your innocence, how you were basely betrayed.  I can sing it backward.  Lay off it now for a few minutes.  I want to talk to yuh.”

He lighted the lantern, and Bland lay blinking at it lugubriously.  “And me—­I dreamed I was in to Lemare’s just after a big exhibition flight, and a bunch of movie queens was givin’ me the glad eye.”

“Yes, I’ve done some dreaming myself,” Johnny interposed dryly.  “I’m awake now.  Listen here, Bland.  I’ve been playing square with you, all along.  I want you to get that.  I can see how you being so darn crooked yourself, you may always be looking for some one to do you, so I ain’t kicking at the stand you take.  You’ve got no call, either, to kick against my opinion of you.  I’m satisfied you’d steal my airplane and make your getaway, and lie till your tongue wore out, proving it was yours.  You’d do it if you got a chance.  That’s why I hid the gas on you.  That’s why you couldn’t take Miss Selmer home.  I knew darn well you wouldn’t come back.  And that’s why I took off the propeller and hid it.  It ain’t why I licked you yesterday—­that was for what you said about Miss—­”

“Aw, f’r cat’s sake!  Did yuh have to come and wake me up in the middle of the night just to—­”

“No—­oh, no.  I’m merely explaining to you that I don’t trust you for one holy minute.  I don’t want you to think you can put anything over on me by getting on my blind side.  I haven’t got any, so far as you’re concerned.  Now listen.  I meant, and if possible I still mean, to keep my promise and take you to the Coast in the plane; but something’s come up that is going to hold up the trip for a few days, maybe—­”

“Aw, yes!  I had a hunch you’d—­”

“Shut up!  I told you I’d go as soon as I could without leaving the boss in the hole.  Well, it happens that—­well, some horses were stolen off this range, and I’m the one that’s responsible.  So—­”

“Say, bo, you don’t, f’r cat’s sake, think I stole your damn horses?  Why, honest, bo, I wouldn’t have a horse on a bet!  I—­”

“Oh, shut up!” thundered the distracted Johnny above the other’s whine.  “Of course I know you didn’t steal ’em.  Horses ain’t in your line, or I wouldn’t be so sure.  The point is this.  I’ve got to get out and get ’em back, or get a line on who did it.  I can’t go off without doing something about it.  This range was in my charge.  I was supposed to report anything that looked suspicious, and I—­well, the point is this—­”