At another time Mary V would have deeply resented the implication that she never approached her dad save when she wanted something; or more likely she would have stated her want before her dad had time to speak.  Just now she was hopefully watching a buzzard that sailed on outstretched, rigid wings, high in the sky.  It seemed to be circling toward the ranch, and it looked like an airplane flying very high.  Mary V’s heart forgot to beat while she watched it.  But the buzzard sighted something, flapped its wings and went off in another direction, and the girl winced as though some one had dropped a leaden weight on her chest.

“Dad!” The voice did not sound like Mary V’s, and her father ducked his head out where he could look up at her with startled attention.  “We must have the car—­and all the boys—­and get out and find Johnny.  He—­he started in his airplane, to come to the ranch.  And they haven’t seen him since last night, and—­and you know what happened at Sinkhole!”

Sudden got heavily to his feet and stood looking down at her, his whimsical mouth slack with dismay.  But he pulled himself together and took the dominant, cool initiative which was so much a part of his nature.

“You say he started last night.  How do you know?”

“The hotel clerk—­I ’phoned—­oh, don’t start cross-questioning, dad!  I know!  His plane is gone, and—­he should have been here last night!  He was alone, and—­oh, get the boys and start them out!  There isn’t a minute—­he may be dead somewhere—­or hurt—­”

“Now, now, we’ll only bungle things by getting excited, Mary V. I’ll send the cook after the boys while I fix this brake and fill up the gas tank.  You go get some clothes on, and tell your mother to get the emergency box ready, in case he’s hurt.  And if you can be calm enough, you ’phone to Tucson to the sheriff, and tell him to send out a party from that end, and work this way.  Tell them to scatter out, but keep the general airline to the ranch.  We’ll start in from here.  And for Lord’s sake, baby, don’t look like that!  We’ll find him—­and the chances are he’s all right; maybe landed for some little repair or something.  Now hurry along, if you expect to go with me, because I won’t wait a minute.”

Mary V looked at her dad, standing there grease-smudged and calm and capable, and half the terror went out of her eyes to leave room for hope.  Her dad had such a way of gathering up the threads of logic and drawing them firmly into coherent action—­just as a skilled driver would take the slack reins of a runaway team and pull them down to a steady pace.  It seemed to her that Johnny Jewel was half found before ever her dad laid down the wrench and began unscrewing the cap of the gas tank.

Like a fluttering bluebird she flew back to the house to do his bidding.  Excited she was, and worried, and more than ever inclined to exclamation points and unfinished sentences; but she was no longer panic-stricken.  She was the Mary V who would move heaven and earth and slosh all the water out of our five oceans in her headlong determination to do what she had set out to do.