"Where'd you get the idea we could pack a fifty-gallon drum on horseback?" Johnny retorted. "Believe me, you're lucky to get any at all!"
"I'll say this is some country!" Bland observed sourly. "Here we are—all ready to go—and not enough gas to take us to the railroad, even! Well, get in. I'll joy-ride yuh up and down this damn' scenery till the gas gives out."
"You'll teach me to fly. There's enough gas for one good lesson, anyway."
"Oh, all right. Sure, I'll teach you, if you're able to learn. But you hustle more gas down here, see? I'm all fed up on this country, and I ain't denying it. First off, we'll do a straightaway. I spotted a good level strip of ground over there a ways; that'll do to teach you how to land. Then we'll come back and fly straight off east for a ways, and circle and come back. How does that suit?"
"Fine and dandy. Hold my hat, Mary V." Johnny went to the front, reached high and caught the propeller blade. "All ready?" he cried, with the air of a veteran.
"A'right!" answered Bland, and Johnny put his weight into the pull, failed to "turn 'er over," took a deep breath and tried it again. The third attempt set the propeller whirling in a blurred circle. The motor woke to throbbing life again.
"Help me turn 'er first," called Bland, with a gesture to make his meaning clear.
"'Bye, Mary V! Now's your chance to get a picture—but you'll have to hurry!"
Johnny climbed up, straddled into the seat ahead of Bland. He placed his feet, pulled down his goggles, grasped the wheel and felt himself balanced—poised, with a drumming beat in his throat, a suffocating fulness in his chest. His moment had come, he thought swiftly, as one thinks when facing a sudden, whelming event. The biggest moment in his life—the moment that he had dreamed of—the culmination of all his hopes while he studied and worked—the moment when he took flight in an airplane of his own!
"Easy on the controls, bo, till you get the feel of it." Bland leaned to shout in his ear. "You can over-control, if yuh don't watch out. You feel my control. Don't try to do anything yourself at first. You'll come into it gradual."