The grin of Tomaso’s brother changed its expression a bit, but he did not trouble to answer.  Tomaso’s brother knew far better than did Johnny all the rules of commerce.  Johnny’s clumsy attempt to depreciate what he wanted very much to buy merely convinced Tomaso’s brother of the extreme youthfulness of Johnny.

“Well, I might as well give her the once-over, now I’m here,” Johnny added with a fine air of indifference, and urged Sandy into a trot.

Now Sandy had discovered the secret hangar for Johnny without having the slightest imagining of the use which Johnny hoped to make of it.  That he should ever have to face a thing like this was beyond his most fevered imagination.  He had been a tired, sweaty, head-hanging horse when he started down the slope.  He had trotted along with his half-closed eyes on the ground before him, picking the smoothest path for his desert-weary feet.  He did not look up until Johnny pulled sharply on the reins and gave a startling whoop built around the word “Whoa.”

Sandy’s bulging eyes got a full-front, close-up view of the “thing what set.”  He saw a wicked nose with a feeler about twice as high as he was.  He saw great, terrible, outspread wings and a long slim body.  It looked poised, ready to come at him and snatch him with one frightful swoop, as he had seen prairie hawks snatch little birds from the grass.

Sandy forgot that he was a tired, sweaty, head-hanging horse.  He forgot everything except the four unbroken legs under him.  He wheeled half away and went lunging up the far side of the little basin as if he felt the horrible creature close behind him.

Johnny’s mind had been so absorbed by the airplane that it took him a few seconds to comprehend that Sandy was actually running away with him.  It took him a few seconds longer to realize that Sandy’s jaw was set like iron, with the bit gripped tight in his teeth.  By the time he was thoroughly convinced that Sandy was going to be hard to stop, Sandy had topped the rise and was streaking it across an expanse of barrenness that rose gently in spite of the fact that it looked perfectly level.  A sliding streak of gray dust rising into the heat waves marked his passing.

Nearly a mile he ran before the slight grade and a rocky strip slowed him down to a heavy gallop.  Johnny had been in the mind to let the fool run himself down just for punishment, but the rocks and an eagerness to return to the stranded plane urged him to forego the discipline.

He stopped just where the scattered rocks ended abruptly in a wall that rimmed a sunken, green valley, narrowing near where Johnny stood looking down, but broadening farther along, and seeming to extend southward with many twistings and windings.  Johnny viewed the place with a passing surprise, familiar though he was with the freakish topography of Arizona.  It was the greenness, and the little winding creek, and the huddle of adobe buildings among the cottonwoods