and ate their fill, and
bought gas and oil to be delivered immediately. Before the town had
fairly awakened to the fact that an airplane had descended in its
immediate vicinity, they were off again, climbing once more to the high
air lanes that made smoother going.

The motor worked smoothly, the hand of the tachometer wavering around
twelve hundred, and the altometer registering nine thousand feet, save
when they dipped and lifted to the uneven currents over the mountains.
The Thunder Bird seemed alive, glorying in her native element. The
earth slid away like a map unrolled endlessly beneath them. Desert and
little towns on the railroad like broken beads strung loosely on a taut
wire. Salton Sea was cool and tempting, though the air shimmered all
around it with heat. They flew the full length of it and on up the
valley. Then they climbed higher and so breasted the currents flowing
over the San Jacintos. And over a little town set in level country
they wheeled, descending and searching for a field. Again they landed
and filled their gas tank and went on. Always it was the distance
ahead that called them. Always they grudged the minutes lost, as
though they were racing against time and the stakes were high.

After the last stop, exaltation seized Johnny and lifted him high above
the sordid things of earth. Trouble dropped away from him; rather, it
was left behind as he flew toward the sunset, He lost the sense of
weight that clogs the bodies of human creatures plodding over the
earth's uneven surface and became as an eagle, soaring high on wings
that never tired. Never before had he remained so long in flight,
wherefore he had never attained so completely that birdlike feeling of
mastery in the air. Falling seemed impossible; as easily could his
senses have visualized falling through the earth in the old days of
crawling. There was no earth. There was only a sliding relief map far
below to guide him in his triumphant flight. Tucson, the Rolling
R--they were clouds that hovered far back on the horizon of his mind.
Mary V was a dim vision that came and went but never quite took
definite form. The roar of the motor he had long ceased to hear.
Godlike he floated with wings outspread, straight into the sunset.

The sliding map below took on strange, beautiful colors of purple and
gold and rose, with sometimes a wonderful blending of all. Before him
the sky was a gorgeous, piled radiance. The earth colors