“The expense I have been under in hiring men, letting my own work go to the devil, and so forth, while we thought you were lost, I shall not expect you to pay.  As I understand the matter, you had no intention of coming to the ranch and had not said that you were coming.  The expense of looking for you really ought to come out of Mary V—­and serve her right for having so much faith in you.  I am lucky in one sense—­I shan’t have to pay the thousand-dollar reward the kid so generously offered in my name for your recovery.  The bonus she offered that sheriff’s posse will mighty near eat up that new automobile she’s been wanting, though.  Maybe next time—­”

“I’ll buy Mary V an automobile if she wants one—­when I get the note paid,” Johnny stated boyishly, to show his disapproval of Sudden’s hardness.

Sudden once more passed his palm thoughtfully over the lower half of his face.  “Mary V ought to appreciate that,” he said dryly, and Johnny flushed.

“Anyway, it ain’t right to make her suffer for being worried about me.  That was my fault, in a way.  If you’ll tell me how much you’re out—?”

“That’s all right.  It’s on me, for falling so easy for one of Mary V’s spasms.  I was led to believe you had actually started for the ranch—­in which case I was justified in supposing you had come to grief somewhere en route.  We’ll let it go.”  He cleared his throat, glanced at Johnny from under his eyebrows, took a cigar out of a drawer, and bit off the end.

“Now under the circumstances, I think I have a right to know how you expect to pay that note.  I realize that if I leave the flying machine in your hands it’s going to depreciate in value, and the chances are it’ll go smash and I’ll be out my security.  Don’t you think you had better run it under a shed somewhere and go to work?  Of course it’s nothing to me, so long as I get my money, just how you earn it.  Working for me you couldn’t earn any three thousand dollars in a year—­you ain’t worth it to anybody.  You’re too much a kid.  You ain’t grown up yet, and I couldn’t depend on you like I can on Bill.  But I could strain a point, and pay you a thousand dollars a year, and split the debt into three or four yearly payments.  In four years,” he pointed out relentlessly, “you might come clear—­with hard work and good luck.”

“On the other hand, when Mary V marries with our consent she gets a third interest in the Rolling R. Her husband will naturally fall into a pretty good layout.  So you might fix it with the kid to jump down the four years some.  That’s between you and—­”

“That’s an insult!  I’ll pay you, and it won’t be any Rolling R money that does it, either.  When I marry Mary V or any other girl it’s my money that will support her.  I may be a kid, all right—­but I ain’t that kind of a hound.  I don’t know the law on such things, but there ain’t anything in that Bill of Sale that says I’ve got to stand