easy. She's fine airship, you bet!"

Johnny turned and looked at him pityingly. "Say, where do you get that
stuff?" he inquired. "A hell of a lot _you_ know about airships--bringing
me off down here to see _this_! Say! where's the fuselage at?" he
abruptly demanded.

Tomaso's brother gazed at the machine with tragic eyes. "Me, I'm seen it
here ontil this time I come," he declared virtuously. "I'm not touch
notheeng. That fuz'lawge, she's right here las' time I'm here. I'm not
touch notheeng but one little small hammer, one pliers. You find him up
there, I bet." Tomaso's brother pointed to the pilot's seat.

"Hunh! a lot you know about it!" snorted Johnny, and turned and walked
away to the other side of the machine where Tomaso's brother could not
see him grin.

"No matter what kind of a cheese you are, you must know an airplane can't
fly without a fuselage," he grumbled to the unhappy brother of Tomaso.
"Without that the plane's no good to me or anybody else. You better get
busy and hunt it up."

Tomaso's brother tied the horses to the nearest bush and got busy,
volubly protesting all the while that he had not touched a thing, and
that if Tomaso really had carried off the fuz'lawge, he would presently
make that young devil wish he had never been born.

"Maybe the aviators dropped it back there on the edge of the basin when
they were coming down," Johnny suggested, and laid himself down in the
shade of the plane to smoke and dream and gloat. He felt that he would
burst into insane and costly whoops if he attempted another minute's
repression. And he knew that Tomaso's brother would bleed him of his last
dollar if he guessed one half of Johnny's exultation; wherefore the ruse
to send Tomaso's brother off on a senseless quest.

"Oh, golly! Oh-h, good golly!" he murmured ecstatically, his eyes taking
in the full sweep of the great wings. "It's too good to be true. No, it
ain't; it's too good _not_ to be true! You wait. I'll show the Rolling R
bunch--you wait!"

He rolled to an elbow and looked back along the fuselage to the tail, his
eyes dwelling fondly on the clean lines of her, the perfect symmetry, the
glossy, unharmed covering. His glance went farther, to where the brother
of Tomaso plodded toward the basin's rim, peering here and there, pausing
to look under a bush, swerving to make sure the lost fuselage was not
behind a rock.

Johnny's grin widened. Presently it exploded into a laugh, which he
smothered