, and turned
on the reading light by his bed. It was five-thirty--red dawn in
Arizona where his dreaming had borne him swiftly to his old camp at
Sinkhole. Five-thirty would be getting-up time on the range, but in
Los Angeles the hour seemed an ungodly time to crawl out of bed. He
reached for his "makings" and rolled a cigarette which he smoked with
no more than one arm and his head exposed to the clamminess of the
atmosphere.

He ought to return to the Thunder Bird by daylight, he mused, but he
did not know how to get there. He needed Bland for pilot, but he did
not know where to find Bland. Now that he came to consider finding
people and places, it occurred to him that neither did he know where to
find Cliff Lowell. Thinking of him made Johnny wonder what kind of
news gathering it was that could make it worth a thousand dollars a
week to a man to have a swift, secret means of locomotion at his
command. It had sounded plausible enough last night, but now he was
not so sure of it. It might be some graft--it might even be a scheme
to rob him of his plane. It would be a good idea to look into matters
a little before he went any farther, he decided. When Bland showed up,
he'd go out and take a look at the Thunder Bird, and get her in shape
to fly. Then they'd get to work. But a thousand dollars a week sure
did sound good, and if the proposition was on the square--

He snuggled down and began to build an air castle. Suppose it was
straight, and he went into the deal with Lowell; and suppose he worked
for two months, say. That would be eight--well, say nine thousand, the
way weeks lap over on the calendar. Suppose by Christmas he had eight
thousand dollars clear money. (Five hundred a month ought to run the
plane, with any kind of luck.) Well, what if he took the Thunder Bird
and his eight thousand, and flew back to the Rolling R and lit in the
yard just about when they were sitting down to their Christmas dinner.
He'd walk in and lay three thousand dollars down on the table by old
Sudden, and tell him kind of careless, "I happened to have a little
extra cash on hand, so I thought I'd take up that note while I thought
of it. No use letting it go on drawing interest."

Say, maybe Sudden's eyes wouldn't stick out! And Mary V would kind of
catch her breath and open her eyes wide at him, and say, "Why,
Johnny--?" And say--no, jump up and put her arms around his neck
and--slide her lips along his cheek and