it. Look at what I was handed the
other time I throwed in with you! Got stuck in a cave and had to live
like a darned animal, and double-crossed when I'd helped you outa the
hole you was in. And now you wish this job on to me and begin to lay
the blame on me when this mess of junk fails to act like a motor. Come
off down here with a monkey wrench and a can opener and expect me to
rebuild a motor that oughta been junked ten year ago!"

"Aw, shut up!" snapped Johnny, and stalked off to find something they
could eat. "Monkey wrench and can opener are about as many tools as
you know how to use--unless maybe it's a corkscrew."

He went on, muttering because he had ever let himself be imposed upon
by Bland Halliday. Muttering too because he had started out that
morning to do stunts, instead of trying to find a buyer for the machine
as he had first planned. Now the prospect of getting back to Tucson
that night looked very remote indeed. And the winning of a fortune
doing exhibition work looked even more remote. "Unless we take up a
collection amongst the Injuns cached out in the brush," he grinned
ruefully to himself. "We're liable to take up a collection all right,
if we have to sleep here--but it won't be money."

CHAPTER SIX

FAME WAITS UPON JOHNNY

That day was a terrible one for Mary V. The big car went lurching here
and there over roads that never expected an automobile to travel them,
and Mary V watched and hoped and would not give up when even her dad
showed signs of yielding to heat and discouragement.

Before noon they had met the sheriff and some of his men, and had
compared notes and given what information they could. The sheriff, in
a desert-scarred Ford loaded mostly with water and some emergency
rations, had managed to scatter his men and yet keep in fairly close
touch with them, and he seemed very sure that the search had been
thorough as far as they had gone. Young Jewel, he asserted, had not so
much as dropped a handkerchief on the ground they had covered, or his
men would certainly have found it.

This, while it served as a temporary relief from the dread of hearing
the worst, merely postponed the full knowledge of a disaster which Mary
V could not bear to contemplate. They drove to a rendezvous previously
agreed upon with Bill Hayden and gleaned what news the boys had to
tell. Which was no news at all. Their search had been as barren of
results as the sheriff's, and Mary V's ey