Cliff did not notice, and a little
judicious manoeuvering brought him into the little valley and headed
straight for the oak, easily identified because Mateo was standing
directly in front of it waving a large white cloth.

They landed smoothly and stopped exactly where Johnny had planned to
stop. He climbed out, Cliff following more awkwardly, and the three of
them wheeled the Thunder Bird under the oak where it was completely
hidden.

It was not until he had come out again into the warm sunshine of
mid-morning that Johnny observed how the kiddies were playing their
part. They had a curious little homemade wheelbarrow rigged, and were
trundling it solemnly up and down and over and around the single mark
made by the tail drag. A boy of ten or twelve rode the barrow solidly
and with dignity, while a thin-legged girl pushed the vehicle. Behind
them trotted two smaller ones, gravely bestriding stick horses.
Casually it resembled play. It would have been play had not Mateo gone
out where they were and inspected the result of stick-dragging and
barrow-wheeling, and afterwards, with a wave of his hand and a few
swift Mexican words, directed them to play farther out from the oak,
where the Thunder Bird had first come to earth. Solemn-eyed, they
extended the route of their procession, and Johnny, watching them with
a queer grin on his face, knew that when those children stopped
"playing" there would be no mark of the Thunder Bird's landing left
upon that soil.

"I've sure got to hand it to the kids," he told Cliff, who merely
smiled and pulled out his cigarette case for a smoke.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

BUT JOHNNY WAS NEITHER FOOL NOR KNAVE

Cliff smiled faintly one morning and handed Johnny a long manila
envelope over their breakfast table in Mateo's cabin. "Your third
week's salary," he idly explained. "Do you want it?"

"Well, I ain't refusing it," Johnny grinned back. "I guess maybe I'll
stick for another week, anyway." He emptied his coffee cup and held it
up for Mateo's woman to refill, trying to match Cliff Lowell's careless
air of indifference to the presence of seventeen hundred dollars on
that table. "That is, if you think I'm making good," he added
boyishly, looking for praise.

"Your third week's salary answers that, doesn't it? From now on it may
not be quite so easy to make good. Perhaps, since I want to go across
this evening as late as you can make a safe landing over there, I ought
to te