ng into the heat waves marked his
passing.

Nearly a mile he ran before the slight grade and a rocky strip slowed him
down to a heavy gallop. Johnny had been in the mind to let the fool run
himself down just for punishment, but the rocks and an eagerness to
return to the stranded plane urged him to forego the discipline.

He stopped just where the scattered rocks ended abruptly in a wall that
rimmed a sunken, green valley, narrowing near where Johnny stood looking
down, but broadening farther along, and seeming to extend southward with
many twistings and windings. Johnny viewed the place with a passing
surprise, familiar though he was with the freakish topography of Arizona.
It was the greenness, and the little winding creek, and the huddle of
adobe buildings among the cottonwoods that struck him oddly. The creek
might be a continuation of Sinkhole Creek, that disappeared into the
sands away back there near his camp. There was nothing particularly
strange about that, or the green growth that water made possible wherever
the soil held latent fertility. It was the fact that those poor devils
who lost the airplane--and themselves--should have wandered on and on,
crazed with hunger and thirst when food and water and perhaps a guide
were to be found within a mile or so of where they landed.

It was a pity, thought Johnny. But, being very human, he also thought
that if the airmen had found this place, that plane would not be sitting
back there waiting his grave if inexpert inspection. So with his pity
cooled a little with self-interest, Johnny turned the puffing Sandy upon
the backward trail and followed his tracks across the apparently level
stretch of barrenness to the basin where waited the plane and Tomaso's
brother. Only for Sandy's tracks, Johnny knew he might have had a little
trouble in finding the place again, the country looked so unbroken and
monotonous.

However, he found it too soon for Sandy's comfort. There it sat--the
giant bird that had seemed ready to swoop and rise. But now its back was
turned toward him, and it did not look quite so fearsome. He circled and
plunged awhile, and even made shift to pitch a little, tired as he was.
But man's mastery prevailed, just as it had always done, and Sandy found
himself edging closer and closer to the thing. The horse of Tomaso's
brother, standing quiet in the very shade of a great wing, reassured him
further, so that presently he stood subdued but wall-eyed still,