“Not with those eyes,” a sallow companion agreed.  “I seem to know that other bird.  He’s a crook, if I know faces.”

“He’s just the mechanic.  He don’t count.  But that kid—­say, I like that kid!” And he added enthusiastically, “Great story, that stuff the mechanic doped out for us.  We’d never have pulled it out of the kid.”

“I wish I could remember that bird.  I ought to know him.  Leaves a bad taste in my memory, somehow.  You’re right—­it’s some story.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

MERELY TWO POINTS OF VIEW

Mary V wadded a soft cushion under the nape of her neck, looked again at Johnny sprawled in her dad’s pet chair and smoking a cigarette after a very ample meal that had been served him half-way between dinner and supper, and stifled a sigh.  Johnny was alive and well and full of enthusiasm as ever.  He had just finished telling her all the wonderful things he could do and would do with his airplane, and the earnings he had hopefully mentioned ran into thousands of dollars, and left a nice marrying balance after her father’s debt was paid.  Yet Mary V felt a heaviness in her heart, and though she listened to all the wonderful things Johnny meant to do, she could not feel that they were really possible.

Something else troubled Mary V, but just now, with Johnny there before her almost like one risen from the grave, she dreaded to recognize the thing that shadowed the back of her mind.  Johnny turned his head and looked at her, and she forced a smile that held so little joy that even Johnny was perturbed.

“What’s the matter?  Don’t you believe I can do it?” he challenged her instantly.  “There’s no reason why I can’t.  It’s being done all the time.  Other flyers make as much money as your dad makes here on the ranch.  And—­you know yourself, Mary V, I couldn’t settle down and be just a rider again.  Fighting bronks is too tame, now—­too slow.  I’ll have to make a flyer of you, Mary V, and then you’ll know—­”

Mary V suddenly buried her face in a cushion.  Johnny heard a smothered sob and got up, looking very much astonished and perturbed.  With a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him, ho put an arm awkwardly around her shaking shoulders.

“If you don’t want to fly, you needn’t,” he reassured her.  “I didn’t mean you had to.  I only meant—­”

“It—­it isn’t that at all,” Mary V managed to enunciate more or less clearly.  “But we’ve been simply crazy, worrying about you and thinking all kinds of horrible things, and—­”

“Well, but I’m all right, you see, so you don’t need to worry any more.  I was all right all the time, if you had only known it.  You don’t want to let that give you a prejudice against flying.  It’s just as safe as riding bronks.”

“It—­it isn’t the safeness.”  Mary V choked back a sob and wiped her eyes.  “But you don’t seem to take it seriously at all!”