et it somehow. It looked so fragile, so easily
broken. Already the tail was broken, where the flyers in landing had
swerved against a rock. He pictured mishaps and disasters enough to fill
a journey of five times that length over country twice as rough. He
wished that he could fly it home. Picturing that, his lips softened into
a smile, and the pucker eased out of his forehead.

But he couldn't fly it. He didn't know how, though I honestly believe he
would have tried it anyway, had there been even a gallon of gasoline in
the tank. But the tank was bone dry, and the tail was knocked askew, so
Johnny had to give up thinking about it.

When he slept, the airplane filled his dreams so that he talked in his
sleep and wakened the brother of Tomaso, who sat up in his blankets to
listen.

"That plan, she's work fine, I bet!" grinned the brother of Tomaso when
Johnny had droned off into mumbling and then silence. "That Tex, she's
smart _hombre_." He laid himself down to sleep again.

Speaking of Tex; that same night he lay awake for a long while, staring
at the moon-lighted window and wishing that his eyesight could follow
his thoughts and show him what he wanted to see. His thoughts took the
trail to Sinkhole, dwelt there for a space in anxious speculation,
drifted on to the Border and beyond and sought out Johnny Jewel, dwelling
upon his quest with even more anxious speculation. Then, when sleep
had dulled somewhat his reasoning faculties, Tex began to vision himself
in Tucson--well, perhaps in Los Angeles, that Mecca of pleasure
lovers--spending money freely, living for a little while the life of ease
and idleness gemmed with the smiles of those beautiful women who hover
gaily around the money pots in any country, in any clime.

For a hard-working cowpuncher with no visible assets save his riding gear
and his skill with horses, the half-waking dreams of Tex were florid and
as impossible, in the cold light of reason, as had been the dreams of
Johnny Jewel in that bunk house.

That night others were awake in the moonlight. Down at Sinkhole camp five
or six riders were driving a bunch of Rolling R horses into the corral
where Johnny kept his riding horse overnight. They were not dreaming
vaguely of the future, these riders. Instead they were very much awake to
the present and the risks thereof. On the nearest ridge that gave an
outlook to the north, a sentinel was stationed in the shade of a rocky
out-cropping, ready to wh