le around the big touring car where the boss
sat behind the wheel, and Mary V, fidgeting on the seat beside him, was
telling them all for gracious sake to hurry up and get started, and not
fool around until dark.

Bill Hayden got his orders, leaning down from his horse so that Mary
V's impatient young voice should not submerge her father's in Bill's
big, sun-peeled ears. "All right--better scatter out right now, soon
as we git past the fence. You foller along about in the middle." He
wheeled and was gone, overtaking the boys who were already starting for
the gate, which little Curley held open until the last man should pass.

Sudden stepped on the starter, the big car began to gurgle. The search
was on. A hundred men were presently combing the desert land and
looking for an airplane that had not flown that way--just because
Johnny Jewel was true to his supreme purpose in life. And just because
Johnny's whole heart and soul were set upon repaying a conscience debt
to Mary V's father, Mary V herself was innocently saddling his
conscience with a still greater debt. For that is the way Fate loves
to set us playing at cross-purposes with each other.

CHAPTER FIVE

GODS OR SOMETHING

"Well, here we are," Johnny announced with more cheerfulness than the
occasion warranted. "Now what?"

Bland was staring slack-jawed after the squaws. "Wasn't them Injuns?"
he wanted to know, and his voice showed some anxiety. "We want to get
outa here, bo, while the gittin's good. You bring any guns?" His pale
eyes turned to Johnny's face. "I'll bet they've gone after the rest of
the bunch, and we don't want to be here when they git back. I'll say
we don't!"

Johnny laughed at him while he climbed down. "We made a dandy landing
anyway," he said. "What ails that darned motor? She didn't do that
yesterday."

Bland grunted and straddled out over the edge of the cockpit, keeping
an eye slanted toward the brush fringe. What Johnny did not know about
motors would at any other time have stirred him to acrimonious
eloquence. Just now, however, a deeper problem filled his mind. Could
he locate the fault and correct it before that brush-fringe belched
forth painted warriors bent on massacre? He pushed up his goggles and
stepped forward to the motor.

"I put in new spark plugs just the other day," Johnny volunteered
helpfully. "Maybe a connection worked loose--or something." He got up
on the side opposite Bland, mea