the point of saying, "when I learn to fly it."
But pride and his experience with the Rolling R boys checked him in time.

The hobo looked hungrily at the "makin's" Johnny was pulling from the
pocket of his shirt. "At that you're lucky," he said. "Having a plane
_to_ repair. Mine's junk, and I'm just outa the hospital myself. I was
a fool to ever go east, anyway. They are sure a cold proposition, believe
me. Long as you're lousy with money, and making pretty flights, you're
all right. But let bad luck hit yuh once--say, they don't know you any
more a-tall. I was doing fine on the Coast, too, but a fellow's never
satisfied with what he's got. The game looked bigger back East, and I
went. Now look at me! Bumming my way back when I planned to make a
record flight! Kicked off the train in this flyspeck on the desert;
nothing to eat since yesterday, not even a smoke left on me, nor the
price of one!" He accepted with a nod the tobacco and papers Johnny held
out to him, and proceeded languidly to roll a cigarette.

"Down to straight bumming--when I ought to be making my little old
thousand dollars a flight. Maybe you've kept in touch with things on the
Coast. I'm known there, well enough. Bland Halliday's my name. Here's my
pilot's license--about all them sharks didn't pry off me in the hospital!
I sure do wish I had of let well enough alone! But no, I had to go get
gay with myself and try and beat a sure thing."

Johnny was gazing reverently upon the pilot's license which he held in
his hand, and he did not hear the last two or three sentences of the
hobo's lament. He was busy breaking one of the ten commandments; the one
which says, "Thou shalt not covet." That he had never heard of Bland
Halliday did not disturb him, for in Arizona's wide spaces one does not
hear of all that goes on in the world. He was sufficiently impressed by
the license and what it implied, and he was thinking very fast. Here was
a man, down on his luck it is true, but a man who actually knew how to
fly; a fellow who spoke of Smith Brothers Supply Factory with the
contempt of familiarity; a fellow who had used some of the very same
linen.

Johnny Jewel forgot his pose of expert aviator. He forgot that Bland
Halliday was absolutely unknown to him and that his personality was not
altogether prepossessing. As a rule Johnny did not like pale eyes that
seemed always to wear a veiled, opaque look. Heretofore he had not liked
those new-fangled little musta