where
Johnny could dismount and hand the reins to the brother of Tomaso while
he examined the prize.

His manner was impressive, and the brother of Tomaso stopped grinning to
himself and began to look somewhat worried. He watched Johnny's face--and
I assure you that Johnny's face would have been worth any one's watching.
A cigarette slanted from the corner of his boyish lips, and the eye on
that side was squinted to keep out the smoke; which was merely an
impressive bit of byplay, because there was no smoke. The cigarette was
not burning, though Johnny had made a hasty dab at it with a lighted
match. The other eye was as coldly critical as was humanly possible when
the whole heart of Johnny was swelling with ecstasy. His head was tilted
a little, his hands were on his hips except when he used them to push and
test and try some reachable part.

Johnny thrust out a foot and gently kicked the flattened tire on one
wheel. "Umh-humh," he muttered to himself. "Flat tire." Never in his life
had Johnny enjoyed the privilege of kicking a wheel on the landing gear
of an airplane, but you would have thought that this was his business,
and that it bored him intensely to do so. He took one hand off his hip
long enough to lift the drooping wing that canted toward the south.
"Mhm-hmh--busted skid," he observed, in a tone which, to the brother of
Tomaso, shaved several dollars off the coveted fifty. Close behind Johnny
he stayed, following him around the plane in a secret agony of
apprehension.

Johnny, primed by the two rides he had taken--for a price--the fall
before, stepped nimbly up and straddled into the pilot's seat. He found
out, by actual experimentation, what wires tilted the ailerons, which
ones operated the elevators. "Mhm-hmh--dep control here," he commented;
whereupon the brother of Tomaso squirmed, thinking Johnny had discovered
a fatal flaw somewhere.

With one eye still squinted against cigarette smoke that did not rise,
Johnny climbed out and walked back along the fuselage to the tail.
"Mhm-hmh--I thought so!" he ejaculated, staring severely at the
elevators. "This is bad--pret-ty darn bad! They musta done a tail-slide
and pancaked. That's ba-ad." He removed the smokeless cigarette from his
lips, looked at it, felt for a match, and shook his head slowly while he
drew the match across a hot rock at his feet.

"Jus' broke little small," Tomaso's brother's voice came pleadingly from
behind Johnny. "You can feex him