He had an uneasy feeling that thieves were abroad that night, and he stayed on guard for an hour or more before he finally consoled himself with the remembrance of the difficulties to be surmounted before even the most persistent of thieves could despoil him.
After that he rode back to the cabin and studied his blue prints and his typed lessons, and made a tentative list of the materials for repairs, and hunted diligently through certain magazine advertisements, hoping to find some firm to which he might logically address the order.
Obstacles loomed large in the path of research.

The Instructions for Repairing an Airplane (Lesson XVII) were vague as to costs and quantities and such details, and Johnny's judgment and experience were even more vague than the instructions.

He gnawed all the rubber off his pencil before he hit upon the happy expedient of sending a check for all he could afford to spend for repairs, explaining just what damage had been wrought to his plane, and casting himself upon the experience, honesty and mercy of the supply house.

Remained only the problem of discovering the name and address of the firm to be so trusted, but that took him far past midnight.
He was just finishing his somewhat lengthy letter of explanations and directions and a passable diagram of the impertinent twist to the tail of his machine.

The moon was up, wallowing through a bank of clouds that made weird shadows on the plain, sweeping across greasewood and sage and barren sand like great, ungainly troops of horsemen; filling the arroyos and the little, deep washes with inky blackness.
Up from one deep washout a close-gathered troop of shadows came thrusting forward toward the lighter slope beyond.