“Oh, plague take Bland!  What would you have done if you hadn’t run across him at all?  Would you have tried to fly?”

“You know it!” Johnny laughed.  “I’ve sat in that seat and worked the controls every day since I got it.  I know ’em by heart.  I’ve studied the theory of flying till I’ll bet I could stick Bland himself on some of the principles.  And I’ve been flying in my sleep for months and months.  Sure, I’d have tackled it.  But I wouldn’t have had you along when I started in.”

“You know how the thing works, then.  Well, come on back and work it!  Unless you’re scared.”

“Me scared?  Of an airplane?  It’s you I’m thinking about.  I’d go alone, quick enough.  Maybe we could both crowd into the front seat, and let Bland pilot the machine.  Then—­”

“I abso-lutely will not—­fly with—­Bland Halliday!  If you won’t take me home, I’ll walk!” Mary V pinched in her lips, which meant stubbornness.

Johnny heaved a sigh.  “Oh, shoot!  I’m game to tackle it if you are.  Far as I’m personally concerned, I know I can fly.”  His lips, too, set themselves in the line of stubbornness.  And he added with perfect seriousness, “It ain’t half as hard as topping a bronk.”

He glanced back, saw that Bland had gone into the cleft, and hurried on to where he had buried the gasoline in the sand behind a jagged splinter of rock in a shallow niche.

“Well, the Jane changed her mind, did she?” Bland commented when Johnny arrived at the plane with the gas.  “Thought she would.  Walking twenty miles ain’t no sunshine, if you ask me.  Better have the tank full-up, bo.  It’s always safer.”

A suppressed jubilance such as had seized and held him when he first beheld the disabled airplane in the desert valley, filled Johnny now.  As he climbed up and filled the tank his lips were pursed into a soundless whistle, his eyes were wide and shining, his whole tanned face glowed.  Bland Halliday regarded him curiously, his opaque blue eyes shifting inquiringly to Mary V, halted at a sufficient distance to take a picture.  They were very young, these two—­wholly inexperienced in the byways of life, confident, with the supreme assurance of ignorance.  It had been a queer idea, hiding the gasoline; and threatened to be awkward, since Bland was practically helpless out here in the sand and rocks.  But things always turned out the right way, give them time enough.  The kid was filling the tank—­at present Bland asked no more of the gods than that.  His sour lips drew up at the corners, as they had done when Johnny had made him the proposition in Agua Dulce.  Mary V closed her camera and came toward them, walking springily through the sand, looking more than ever like a slim boy in her riding breeches and boots.

“All right.  You lend Miss Selmer your goggles and cap, Bland.  You won’t need ’em yourself till I get back.”

“Till you—­what?”

“Till I get back.  I aim to take Miss Selmer home.”  Johnny’s lips were still puckered; his face still held the glow of elation.  But his eyes looked down sidelong, searching Bland’s face for his inmost thought.