CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

DREAMS AND DARKNESS

Johnny dreamed two separate dreams.  The first dream was confused and fragmentary.  He seemed to hear certain sentences spoken while he was whirling through space with the Milky Way flinging stars at him.  As nearly as he could remember afterwards, this is what he heard.

Mary V’s voice:  “Don’t be so stupid!  If a girl happens to bring in two perfectly bandittish outlaws that imagine they are kidnaping her, why must she be lectured, pray tell?  If a man had done it—­”

Mumble, mumble, and a buzzing in Johnny’s head.

Bland’s voice:  “I don’t know as I could tell.  He could, if he should come to.  We got ’em headed this way—­”

Bill’s voice:  “—­and I seen him hittin’ for the line and headed him off—­”

More mumbling.

Mary V’s voice:  “I can’t see why he doesn’t hurry!  Why, for gracious sake, must a person lie forever out in the sun when he’s all smashed—­”

Bland’s voice:  “—­not as much as yuh might think, in all this brush.  I ain’t gone over it yet—­” (mumble) “—­short circuit—­” (mumble, buzz-buzz) “went past me so close I could feel the wind—­” (mumble) “—­I dunno.  I’ve seen ’em hurt worse and get over it, and I’ve seen ’em die when you’d think—­”

After that it was all mumble and buzz, and then more stars, and blackness and silence.

Piecing together the fragments, as Johnny could not do, here is the interpretation.

The three riders whom Johnny had seen as the plane was dipping to its final fall were Mary V, Tomaso, and Tomaso’s brother.  Mary V had gone off to ride the country which Tex had said was too difficult for her—­“and it was not too difficult for a person who had any brains or any gumption and who did not lose all the sense a person had,” etc.  She had gone some distance toward the southeast boundary, and Jake was behaving like a perfect dear.  She had seen a few horses, and they had all run every which way when they got sight of her, so she was keeping right along and planning to just gently urge them toward Sinkhole as she came back.

Well, and on the way back she had seen the young Mexican riding along, and he had looked perfectly harmless and innocent, and he had a rag tied around his head besides, and kept putting his hand up, and wabbling in the saddle exactly as though he was just about ready to fall off his horse.  And how, for gracious sake, was a person going to know he was only pretending and not sick or hurt a speck, but merely taking a low and mean advantage of a person’s kindness of heart?

Well, and so she had let him come up to her, and he had asked her if she had any water with her.  And she had, and so she twisted around in the saddle to untie the canteen, and Jake kept stepping around, so the young Mexican just reached out and held Jake by the bridle while she got the water—­and how was a person to know that he was not trying to help but was kidnaping a person’s horse and herself in the most treacherous manner ever heard of?