otential power--"we'll
start back. But I don't think much of your idea that we can drag this
machine home with our saddle horses. We can't--not and have anything but
a bundle of junk when we get there. There's a ranch over south here, a
mile or so. Better see if you can't get a wagon and team. We'll have to
haul it home somehow."

The brother of Tomaso started perceptibly. "A rancho? But that is not
possible, senor!"

"Oh, ain't it? I'll show yuh, then."

"Oh, no! _No importa._ If it is a rancho in this countree, me, I'm find
it without trobles for you."

Even Johnny's absorption in his treasure-trove could not altogether
blind him to the fact that Tomaso's brother was perturbed. He wondered
a little. But after all, there was only one thing now that really
interested him, and he straightway returned to it, leaving the Mexican
to find the ranch and hire a team. He was not afraid that the brother of
Tomaso would fail him in that detail. Thirty American dollars look big to
a Mexican.

He knew when Tomaso's brother mounted and rode away in the direction of
the ranch, and he knew when he returned. But he failed to observe that
the brother of Tomaso was gone long enough to have crawled there and back
on his hands and knees, and that he returned in a much better humor than
when he had left.

"The wagon and mules, it will come at daytime," was his brief report. He
crawled into his blankets and left Johnny perched up in the pilot's seat,
planning and dreaming in the moonlight. The brother of Tomaso lifted his
head once and looked at Johnny's head and shoulders, which was all of him
that showed. Through half-closed lids he studied Johnny's profile and the
look of exaltation in his wide-open eyes.

"Tex, he's one smart _hombre_," Tomaso's brother paid tribute. "The plan
it works aw-right, I bet."

CHAPTER EIGHT

OVER THE TELEPHONE

That night Johnny spread his blankets in a spot where he could lie and
look at his airplane with the moon shining full upon it and throwing a
shadow like a great, black bird with outstretched wings on the sand. He
had to lie where he could look at it, else he could not have lain there
at all. He was like a child that falls asleep with a new, long-coveted
toy clasped tight in its two hands. He worried himself into a headache
over the difficulties of transporting it unharmed over the miles of
untracked desert country to Sinkhole. He was afraid the mules would run
away with it, or ups