Or--isn't it to be a round trip?"

Johnny's eyes flew wide open. Then he laughed to cover his embarra.s.sment.

"You're not up on sky-riding, are you, Mary V? I'll have to train you a little. I expect to 'vollup, bank and la-and,' coming back."

"Poor Bud isn't singing to-day. A bronk slammed him against the fence and hurt his leg so he's going around with a limp. What is that contraption, for gracious sake?"

"That? Why, that's a travois. You ask Sandy what it is, though, and he'll give you a different name, I reckon. Sandy's beginning to think life is just one thing after another. But he's getting educated."

Surrept.i.tiously they eyed each other.

"Why do you buy your gas that way?" Mary V inquired with extreme casualness. "It's a lot cheaper if you get a drum, the way we do."

"I know; but it's a lot harder to handle a drum too. Besides--" Johnny broke his speech abruptly, hiding his confusion by straining to carry a case over to the travois.

Mary V studied his reply carefully, keeping silence until Johnny had loaded the other cases and was roping them to the travois frame.

"Is that Bland Halliday with you yet?" she asked him suddenly.

"Yeh--er--how do _you_ know anything about Bl--" Johnny was plainly swept off his guard.

"Why, why shouldn't I know about BL?" Mary V's smile was exasperating.

"I've seen Bland Halliday fly--and fall, too, once. Because he was drunk, they said. I've seen him drunk, and trying to do figure eights with a car on Wilshire Boulevard. He almost put me in the ditch, trying to dodge him. He was arrested for that, and his car was taken away from him. And I've heard--oh, all kinds of scandal about him. I was awfully surprised at your taking up with him. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Johnny Jewel."

"He sure knows airplanes," Johnny blurted unwisely.

"Yours must be ready to fly--the amount of gas you're taking to camp."

"She goes in the air--say, good golly, Mary V! How do _you_ know anything about my--er--"

"I hope," said Mary V very mildly, "that I have _some_ brains. At any rate, I have brains enough to wonder how in the world you can afford to build yourself an aeroplane; I haven't heard a word about any rich uncle dying and leaving you a fortune. And I know it takes a tremendous lot of money to build and fly aeroplanes."

"Didn't set me back so much," Johnny bragged. "I didn't have to build one, you see."

Mary V needed time enough to study that statement also. She mounted Tango and waited until Johnny was ready to start with his queer load. "How did you get it--if I may ask?" she began then. "Did Bland Halliday happen along and have a wreck, and sell you the pieces? You want to be careful, because I know he's an awful grafter, and he'll cheat you, just as sure as you live, Skyrider."

"He can't," Johnny declared with confidence. "He's working for his pa.s.sage--er--"

"Er--yes?" Mary V smiled demurely. "You may just as well tell me the whole thing, now. _Have_ you got an aeroplane? Really truly? I mean, where did you get it? I know, of course, you must have one, or you wouldn't buy all that gas."

"Some deductionist," grinned Johnny, tickled with the very human interest he had roused in himself and his doings. "Where I got it is a secret--but I've got it, all right!"

"Johnny Jewel! You didn't let that Bland Halliday sell you--"

"I picked Bland Halliday up at the station in Agua Dulce," Johnny explained tolerantly. "He'd wrecked his plane back East somewhere. He was beating his way to the Coast, and was waiting to hit a freight.

They'd dumped him off there. It was just pure luck. I had some stuff for repairing mine, and he saw me undo it and started talking. I saw he knew the game" (Johnny's tone would have amused the birdman!) "and when he showed me his pilot's license, I got him to help me. That's where Bland Halliday comes in--just helping me get 'er ready to fly. And he's going to teach me. You say you've seen him fly, so--"

"Oh, he can fly," Mary V admitted slightingly. "But he's so tricky, so--so absolutely impossible! A girl friend of mine has a brother that goes in for that sort of thing. I think he invented something that goes on a motor, or something. And I know he was terribly cheated by Bland Halliday. I think Bland borrowed a lot of money, or used a lot that was intended for something else--anyway, Jerry just hates the _name_ of Bland Halliday. I didn't know him that day I met him with you, because they look so different all togged up to fly. But I remembered him afterwards, and I was going to warn you, only," she looked at Johnny sidelong, "you're a very difficult person to warn, or to do anything with. You are always so--so pugnacious!"

"I like that," said Johnny, in a tone that meant he did not like it at all.

"Well, you always argue and disagree with a person. Besides," she added vaguely, "you weren't there. And I can't be riding every day to Sinkhole."

"You could have seen me when I took those last horses back the other day," Johnny reminded her. "You did see me, only you pretended to be blind. Deaf, too, for I hollered h.e.l.lo when I pa.s.sed, and you never looked around!"

"Did you?" Mary V smiled innocently. "Well, I'm here now; and I came just on purpose to warn you about that fellow. And you haven't told me the stingiest little bit about your aeroplane yet, or where you got it, or what you're going to do with it, or anything."

Johnny's lips twitched humorously. "I got it where it was setting like a hawk--a broken-winged hawk--on the burning sands of Mexico. I hauled it over here with four of the orneriest mules that ever flapped an ear at white men. It cost me just sixty dollars, all told--not counting repairs.

And I'm going to ride the sky, and part the clouds like foam--"

"'And brand each star with the Rolling R, An-d lead the Great Bear ho-ome,'"

Mary V chanted promptly. "Oh, Skyrider, won't you take me along too? I've always been just _dying_ to fly!"

"You'll have to stave off death till I learn how--and then maybe you'll wish you hadn't."

"Oh, won't the boys be just _wild_! Where have you got it, Johnny?

I've looked every place I could think of, the last two weeks, and I couldn't--"

"Oh--_hoh!_" cried Johnny. "So it was you I've been trailing, was it? I wondered who was doing so much riding down this way. You had me guessing, and that's a fact."

"Well, you've had me; now 'fess up the whole mystery of it, Johnny. You _know_ that wasn't you, telephoning with a cold, that night. You know very well you weren't at camp at all; not for a couple of days, anyway.

Probably that was while you went to the burning sands of Mexico. I don't understand that part, either; how you found out, and all. But who was it 'phoned for you? There were things he said--"

"Huh? What things? On the square, I don't know, Mary V. I never told anybody to 'phone--n.o.body knew I was going, except a greaser that told me about the plane, and went with me to see it."

"Well, I don't understand it at all. He certainly pretended he was you, and he must have 'phoned from Sinkhole, because there's no other 'phone on that wire. And the way he talked--"

"Oh, I think I know who it could have been," Johnny interposed hastily, thinking of Tomaso. "He--"

Just then the travois hung itself on a lava out-cropping which Sandy himself had dodged with his feet, and Johnny had a few busy minutes. By the time they were again moving forward, Mary V's curiosity had seized upon something else. She wanted to know if Johnny wasn't afraid Bland Halliday might steal his aeroplane and fly off with it in the night.

"Well, he might, at that--if he got a chance," Johnny admitted. "Which he won't--take it from me."

"Which he will--take it from you, if you don't keep an eye on him. From all Jerry said about him, he couldn't be honest to save his life. And I'm sure Jerry--"

"Good golly! You sure do seem to bank a lot on this Jerry person. At that, he may be wrong. Bland Halliday is all right if you treat him right. I ought to know; I've worked right alongside him for over two weeks now. And I'll say, he has _worked_! I'd have been all summer doing what he's done in a couple of weeks; and then it wouldn't have been done right. This said Jerry is welcome to his opinions, and you're welcome to swallow them whole, but me, I've got to hand it to Bland Halliday for sticking right on the job and doing his level best. Why, he couldn't have gone after the job any harder if it was his own plane."

"Which he probably intends that it shall be," Mary V retorted. "Before he does fly off with it, I might like to take a look at it--and a picture.

May I, if you please, Mr. Jewel?"

"On one condition only, Miss Selmer. You must promise that you won't show the picture to a living soul till I give the word."

"Well, for gracious sake! How is the photographer going to develop and print it without seeing it?"

"I mean--you know what I mean. Come on, we'll swing over this way. I've got it cached in a secret hangar, over in that ledge. I've got to haul the gas over there, anyway, and you may go along if you like."

With a surprising docility Mary V accepted the somewhat patronizing invitation. Perhaps she really appreciated the fact that Johnny was proving how much confidence he had in her. Presently she urged that confidence to further disclosures. What did he really and truly intend to do with his aeroplane, after he had learned to fly?

"Well, I promised Bland I'd take him to the Coast. I intend to make aviation my real profession, of course. You surely didn't think, Mary V, that I'd be satisfied to bog down in a job that just barely pays living wages? It's all right for fellows like Bud and Curley and Bill, maybe; but I couldn't go on all my life riding bronks and mending fence and such as that. I've just got to ride the sky, and that's all there is to it.