h, after Bland had convinced him that
the Thunder Bird would be perfectly safe until morning. It was a quiet
neighborhood, he declared, and no one would be likely to come near the
place. If they did, they could not fly off with the Thunder Bird
unless they happened to be carrying an extra propeller around with
them. This, Johnny suspected, was Bland's best attempt at irony.

They walked and they walked, at first along a rough country road that
seemed real boulevard to Johnny, who was accustomed to the trails of
Arizona. Later they emerged upon asphalt, and trudged along the edge
of that for a time, moving aside as swift bars of light bathed them
briefly, with the swish of speeding automobiles brushing close.
Johnny's head was roaring with the remembered beat of the Thunder
Bird's motor. In the silence between automobiles it deafened him so
that Bland's drawling voice came to him dully, the words muffled.

"We'll have to get us a car," Bland repeated three times before Johnny
understood.

"Oh. I thought you meant we're getting close to a car," Johnny
grumbled. "How much farther we got to walk, for gosh sake?"

"About a mile now, bo. It's only--"

"A mile! Good golly! I thought we was flying to Los Angeles! You
never said we had to walk half the way from Tucson. What in thunder
made you fly forty miles beyond the darned place! Just so you'd have a
chance to wreck the plane? A hell of a pilot you are!"

Bland protested, trailing a step behind Johnny, whose stride had
lengthened with the bad news. Did Johnny think, f'r cat's sake, he
could light in front of the Alexandria and call a bell-hop to take the
plane? Did he think they could put the darn thing in an auto park?
What about telephone wires and electric light wires and trolley wires?
Bland would like to know. Leave it to Johnny, the crowd would now be
roped off the spot and the cops fighting to make a gangway for the
ambulance, and women would edge up and faint at the ghastly sight.
Leave it to Johnny--

"Leave it to me," Johnny cut in acrimoniously, "and we'd have landed
right side up, anyway. I wouldn't have lit in the middle of a mess of
beans. Beans! Good gosh! For half a cent I'd go back and make camp
there. That's what we ought to do, anyway, instead of walking all
night, getting to town. We've got grub enough--and there's _beans_!"

"Aw, now, bo, have a heart! You wait till I lead you into the Frolic,
and you won't say beans no m