Mary V stood on the heights waiting for him, as Johnny had planned and dreamed.  He would come back to her a captain, maybe—­perhaps even a major, in these hot times of swift achievement.  They would all be proud to shake his hand, those jeering ones who called him Skyrider for a joke.  Captain Jewel would not have sounded bad at all.  But—­

There is no dodging the finality of Uncle Sam’s no.  They had not wanted Johnny Jewel to fly for fame and his country’s honor.  And if he sold his own airplane, how then would he fly?  How could he ever hope to be in the game as long as Bland had been?  How could he do anything but go back meekly to the Rolling R Ranch and ride bronks for Mary V’s father, and be hailed as Skyrider still, who had no more any hope of riding the sky?

Gloom at last plumbed the depths of Johnny’s soul, and showed him where grew the root of his unalterable determination to combat Mary V’s plan to have him at the ranch.  Much as he loved Mary V he would hate going back to the dull routine of ranch life. (And after all, a youth like Johnny loves nothing quite so much as his air castles.) As a rider of bronks he was spoiled, he who had ridden triumphant the high air lanes.  He had talked of paying his debt to Sudden, he had talked of his self-respect and his honesty and his pride—­but above and beyond them all he was fighting to save his castle in the air.  Debt or no debt, he could never go back to the Rolling R and be a rancher.  Lying there under his airplane and staring up at the starred purple of the night he knew that he could not go back.

Yet he knew too that once he had sold his airplane he would be almost as helpless financially as Bland Halliday, unless he returned to the only trade he knew, the trade of riding bronks and performing the various other duties that would be his portion at the Rolling R.

Johnny pictured himself back at the Rolling R; pictured himself riding out with the boys at dawn after horses, or sweating in the corrals, spitting dust and profanity through long, hot hours.  There was a lure, of course; a picturesque, intangible attraction that calls to the wild blood of youth.  But not as calls this other life which he had tasted.  There was no gainsaying the fact—­ranch life had grown too tame, too stale for Johnny Jewel.  And there was no gainsaying that other fact—­that Mary V would have to reconcile herself to being an aviator’s wife, if she would mate with Johnny.

He went to sleep thinking bitterly that neither he nor Mary V need concern themselves at present over that point.  It would be some time before the issue need be faced, judging from Johnny’s present prospects.

CHAPTER THREE

JOHNNY WOULD DO STUNTS

Bland woke him, just as day was coming.  A new Bland, fresh shaven,—­with Johnny’s razor,—­and with a certain languid animation in his manner that was in sharp contrast to his extreme dejection of the night before.