cond
glance. Others he investigated by riding in a little way, sending a
glance around and riding out again.

Just before dusk, as he was returning disappointedly after looking as far
as was practicable, his horse Sandy swung into one of the open-mouthed
depressions of his own accord. Probably he had become convinced that they
were hunting stock, and that every niche must be entered. (Range horses
are quick to form opinions of that sort and to act upon them.) Johnny was
dreaming along, and let Sandy go back toward the wall, but Sandy, poking
along with his head bobbing contentedly at the end of his long neck,
swerved to the right, into a nature-built ell that had a fine-sifted sand
floor, walls that converged toward the top, and an entrance which no one
would suspect, surely, since Johnny himself had passed it by not half an
hour before.

Johnny did not say a word. He sat there and gazed, a little awed by the
discovery, thrilled with the feeling that this place had been planned
especially for him; that Nature had built it and kept it until he needed
it--in other words, that luck was with him and that it would be madness
to go against his luck.

He got down, went to the left wall and, taking long strides, stepped off
the width of the place. Wide enough, plenty; he couldn't have ordered it
any better himself. From the mouth he started to step the depth, but
stopped when he had gone a third farther than the length of a military
type fuselage. He turned and looked back toward the entrance, his hands
on his hips, his eyes wide and glowing, his lips trembling and eager. He
looked up at the top; with cottonwood poles and brush he could roof it
against the sun and the winds. He looked at the fine, hard-packed sand
floor that the winds never stirred. He looked at the walls.

But he would put his luck to another test. He would abide by it--so he
told himself bravely. He felt in his pocket for a coin, pulled out a half
dollar, balanced it on his bent thumb and forefinger. He turned white
around the mouth, as he always did when deep emotion gripped him. He
hesitated. What if--? But if his luck was any good, it would hold. It had
to hold!

"Heads, I go. Tails, I stay." He muttered the fateful six words and
snapped his thumb up straight. The half dollar went spinning, clinked
against a high projection of rock, fell back to the sand floor.

Johnny stood where he was and stared at it. From where he was he could
not see which sid