This perfectly heartless statement served to distract Mary V’s mind from her mother’s lack of feeling.  She obediently turned out the lights,—­all the lights, since they meant to kill Johnny in cold blood!—­and wept anew upon the darkened porch, while swarms of mosquitoes hummed just without the screen, sending a slim scout through now and then to torment Mary V, who spatted her chiffon-covered arms viciously and wished that she were dead, since no one had any feelings or any heart or any conscience on that ranch.

It was midnight before healthy youth demanded sleep and dulled her half-feigned agonies of self-pity.  It was morning before she began to feel really uneasy about Johnny.  After her tantrum she slept late, so that when she awoke it was past time for Johnny’s arrival, supposing he had started at sunrise, which she now admitted to herself was the most sensible time for the flight.  Eight o’clock—­and he must have started, else he would have called her up on the ’phone and told her he was not coming.  For that matter, he would have called up the night before if he had not meant to do as she wanted him to do.  Of course, Johnny was awfully stubborn sometimes, and he might have waited until morning, just to worry her.  But he would have called up if he hadn’t intended to come.  A little thing like hanging up her receiver would not bother him, she argued, and a little obstacle like long-distance toll never occurred to Mary V, whose idea of poverty was vague indeed.

He must have started this morning, at the latest.  And he should have been here before now.  To make sure that he had not come while she slept Mary V went to a window overlooking the open space between the house and corrals.  It was empty, but to make doubly sure she asked Bedelia.  For answer, Bedelia threatened to quit, declaring shrilly that she would not work where nothing was safe under lock and key, and a girl might work her fingers to the bone putting up jell for spoiled, ungrateful, meddlesome Matties to waste, and so forth and so on.

Mary V wisely withdrew from the kitchen without having her question answered.  She asked no more questions of any one.  In silk kimono and Indian moccasins, one of her pet incongruities, she forthwith explored the yard down by the corrals which the bunk house had hidden from her view.  There was no sign of Johnny Jewel’s airplane anywhere.  Mary V was thorough, even to the point of looking for tracks of the little wheels, but at last she was convinced, and returned to the porch to digest the ominous fact of Johnny’s failure to arrive.

He must have started,—­she would not admit the possibility that he had deliberately ignored her ultimatum,—­but she would make sure.  So she called Tucson on the telephone and was presently in conversation with the clerk at Johnny’s hotel.