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.
Bland was staring, loose-lipped, incredulous. "Aw, say! D'yuh think I'll swallow that?" There was a threatening note beneath the whine of his voice.
"If you don't choke. Come on, Mary V; 'hop in, and we'll take a spin,' and all the rest of it. Venus'll have nothing on you. Here's my goggles; put 'em on. I'm going to borrow Bland's." It had occurred to Johnny that Mary V would probably shrink from wearing anything belonging to Bland Halliday; girls were queer that way.
Bland stepped pugnaciously forward; his pale eyes were unpleasantly filmed with anger. "Aw, I see your game, bo; but you can't get away with it. Not for a minute, you can't. You think I'm such a mark as that? Come down here and work like a dog to get the plane ready to fly, and then kiss yuh good-bye and watch yuh go off with it—and leave me here to rot with the snakes and lizards? Oh, no! I'll take the young lady—"