o gas to fly back. No place to buy none, you bet." He grinned
sardonically up at Johnny who was leaning against the adobe wall. "They
get the big scare, you bet. They take all the water, and they walk and
walk, drink the water and walk and walk and walk--loco, that's what.
Don't know where they go, don't know where they come from, don't know
nothin' no more atall. So that flyin' machine, that's lost. Me, I find
out. It don't belong to nobody no more only just the feller that finds.
Me, I take you there, I show you. You see I'm telling the truth, all
right. You pay me half. I help you drag it over here to your camp, all
right. You pay me other half. That's right way to fix him--yes?"

"Sounds fair enough, far as that goes." Johnny's voice had the huskiness
of suppressed excitement. The cigarette he was studying so critically
quivered in his fingers like a twig in the wind. "But the thing must
belong to _somebody_."

"No, I'm find out from lawyer. Only I'm say maybe it's automobile. Cos'
me fi' dollar, which is hold-up, you bet. Some day I get even that fi'
dollar. That flyin' machine goes into Mexico, that's los' by law.
Sal--what you call--oh!" He snapped his fingers as men do when trying
to recall a word. "She cos' me fi' dollar, that word! Jus' minute--it's
like wreck on ocean, that is left and somebody brings it--"

"Salvage?" Johnny jerked the word out abruptly.

"That's him! Salvage. Belongs anybody that finds. Mexico, she's foreign
countree. She could take; it's hers if she want. But what she wants?
Nobody can make it go. No Mexicans can fly, you bet. Me, I don't know
damn t'ing about flyin' nothin' but monee. Monee, I make it fly, yes." He
chuckled at his little joke, but Johnny did not even hear it.

Johnny was seeing a real, military airplane in his possession, cached
away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole--a wall that
featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing--what
wonderful things was Johnny not seeing?

"Like them buried treasure," Tomaso's brother went on purring comfortably
to Johnny's doubts. "The _hombre_ what finds, it belongs to him, you
bet. What you say? You pay me--" The eyes of Tomaso's brother dwelt
calculatingly upon Johnny's half-averted face. "You pay me fifty dollar
when I show you I don't lie. I help you drag him back home, you--"

"Nothing doing." Johnny pulled himself from his dreams to bargain for his
heart's desire--because he knew Mexicans. "I