The first episode of her life thus happily finished, Johnny was looking with round, boyish, troubled eyes upon the second.

“Long-distance call for you, Mr. Jewel,” the clerk announced, when Johnny strolled into the Argonaut hotel in Tucson for his mail.  “Just came in.  The girl at the switchboard will connect you with the party.”

Johnny glanced into his empty key box and went on to the telephone desk.  It was Mary V, he guessed.  He had promised to call her up, but there hadn’t been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of inaction, which meant failure, and Johnny Jewel never liked talking of his failures, even to Mary V.

“Oh, Johnny, is that you?  I’ve been waiting and waiting, and I just wondered if you had enlisted and gone off to war without even calling up to say good-by.  I’ve been perfectly frantic.  There’s something—­”

“You needn’t worry about me enlisting,” Johnny broke in, his voice the essence of gloom.  “They won’t have me.”

“Won’t have—­why, Johnny Jewel!  How can the United States Army be so stupid?  Why, I should think they would be glad to get—­”

“They don’t look at me from your point of view, Mary V.”  Johnny’s lips softened into a smile.  She was a great little girl, all right.  If it were left to her, the world would get down on its marrow bones and worship Johnny Jewel.  “Why?  Well, they won’t take me and my airplane as a gift.  Won’t have us around.  They’ll take me on as a common buck trooper, and that’s all.  And I can’t afford—­”

“Well, but Johnny!  Don’t they know what a perfectly wonderful flyer you are?  Why, I should think—­”

“They won’t have me in aviation at all, even without the plane,” said Johnny.  “The papers came back to-day.  I was turned down—­flat on my face!  Gol darn ’em, they can do without me now!”

“Well, I should say so!” cried Mary V’s thin, indignant voice in his ear.  “How perfectly idiotic!  I didn’t want you to go, anyway.  Now you’ll come back to the ranch, won’t you, Johnny?” The voice had turned wheedling.  “We can have the duckiest times, flying around!  Dad’ll give you a tremendously good—­”

“You seem to forget I owe your dad three or four thousand dollars,” Johnny cut in.  “I’ll come back to the ranch when that’s paid, and not before.”

“Well, but listen, Johnny!  Dad doesn’t look at it that way at all.  He knows you didn’t mean to let those horses be stolen.  He doesn’t feel you owe him anything at all, Johnny.  Now we’re engaged, he’ll give you a good—­”

“You don’t get me, Mary V. I don’t care what your father thinks.  It’s what I think that counts.  This airplane of mine cost your dad a lot of good horses, and I’ve got to make that good to him.  If I can’t sell the darned thing and pay him up, I’ll have to—­”

“I suppose what I think doesn’t count anything at all!  I say you don’t owe dad a cent.  Now that you are going to marry me—­”