d told him. It would be extremely
simple to fly straight toward this particular hill, circle, and land
down there in front of the oak. Cliff had spoken of risk, bat Johnny
could not see much risk here. It must be across the line, he thought.
Still, Cliff had said he had friends there, which did not sound like
danger. They had considered it worth fifteen hundred a week, though,
to fly across these fifteen miles into Mexico and back again. Johnny
shook his head slowly, gave up the puzzle, and took out his wallet to
count the money again.

Half an hour he spent, fingering those bank notes, gloating over them,
wondering what Mary V would say if she knew he had them, wishing he had
another fifteen hundred, so he could pay old Sudden and be done with
it. An unpleasant thought came to him and nagged at him, though he
tried to push it from him; the thought that it would be Sudden's
security that he would be risking--that the Thunder Bird was not really
his until he had paid that note.

The thought troubled him. He got up and moved restlessly along the
base of the towering rock, when something whined past his ear and
spatted against a bowlder beyond. Johnny did not think; he acted
instinctively, dropping as though he had been shot and lying there
until he had time to plan his next move. He had not been raised in gun
smoke, but nevertheless he knew a bullet when he heard it, and he did
not think himself conceited when he believed this particular bullet had
been presented to him. Why?

On his stomach he inched down out of range unless the shooter moved his
position, and then, impelled by a keen desire to know for sure, he
adopted the old, old trick of sending his hat scouting for him. A dead
bush near by furnished the necessary stick, and the steep slope gave
him shelter while he tested the real purpose of the man who had shot.
It might be just a hunter, of course--only this was a poor place for
hunting anything but one inoffensive young flyer who meant harm to no
one. He put his hat on the stick, pushed the stick slowly up past a
rock, and tried to make the hat act as though its owner was crawling
laboriously to some fancied shelter.

For a minute or two the hat crawled unmolested. Then, _pang-g_ came
another bullet and bored a neat, brown-rimmed hole through the uphill
side of the hat, and tore a ragged hole on its way out through the
downhill side. Johnny let the hat slide down to him, looked at the
holes wit