s Angeles.

"All right, that goes," he said when he returned. "Come on and eat. We've
got to do some hustling to get back before sundown. You make out a list
of what we've got to have besides this--you said hammer and tacks--and
I'll see if the hardware store has got it. Lucky I brought an extra horse
along to pack this stuff on. You can ride him out."

"Ride a _horse? Me?_" the spine of the expert stiffened with horror, so
that he sat up straight.

"Sure, ride a horse. You. Think you were going out on the street car?"
Johnny's lips puckered. "Say, it won't prove fatal. He's a nice, gentle
horse. And," he added meaningly, "you'll learn to ride, all right, on the
way to camp. That is, if you've got it in you."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MARY V CONFRONTS JOHNNY

Johnny was in one of his hurry-up moods now. He had the material to
repair his plane, he had the aviator who could help him far, far better
than could his cold-blooded, printed instructions. Remained only the
small matter of annihilating time and distance so that the work could
start.

In his zeal Johnny nearly annihilated the aviator as well. He rode fast
for two reasons: He was in a great hurry to get back to camp, and he had
a long way to go: and the long-legged, half-broken bronk he was riding
was in a greater hurry than Johnny, and did not care how far he had to
go. So far as they two were concerned, the pace suited. But Sandy refused
to be left behind, and he also objected to a rider that rode soggily,
ka-lump, ka-lump, like a bag of meal tied to the horn with one saddle
string. Sandy pounded along with his ears laid flat against his skull,
for spite keeping to the roughest gait he knew, short of pitching. Bland
Halliday pounded along in the saddle, tears of pain in his opaque eyes,
caused by having bitten his tongue twice.

"For cat's sake, is this the only way of getting to your camp?" he
gasped, when Johnny and the bronk mercifully slowed to climb a steep
arroyo bank.

"Unless yuh fly," Johnny assured him happily, hugging the thought that,
however awkward he might be when he first essayed to fly, it would be
humanly impossible to surpass the awkwardness of Bland Halliday in the
saddle.

"Believe me, bo, we'll fly, then, if I have to _build_ a plane!" Halliday
let go the saddle horn just long enough to draw the back of his grimy
wrist across his perspiring face. "And I've heard folks claim they
_liked_ to ride on a horse!" he added perplexedly