Johnny’s next dream was a nightmare of pain and jolting.  He did not know where he was, but it seemed to him that something kept pounding him on the head; something very hot and very heavy—­something he could not escape because his head was being held in a vice of some sort.  The pain and the jolting seemed to have no relation to this steady beating.  The dream lasted a long, long while.  And after that there was darkness and silence.

That came when he had been put to bed at the Rolling R ranch house, in a guest room that faced north.  A doctor was there, waiting for them when they arrived, because Sudden had telephoned him when he had finished calling for the sheriff.  The boys had told him soberly that Skyrider was bad off, and that his whole head was smashed, and that the flyin’ machine was busted all to pieces.  They didn’t hardly think it would be worth while getting a doctor to the ranch, because they didn’t see how Skyrider was goin’ to last long enough for a doctor to git to work on him.  It was a damn shame.  Skyrider was one fine boy—­and did anybody know where his folks lived?

But the doctor was sent for just the same, and he was ready to do what could be done.  It looked at first as though that was not much.  Mary V had kept cold cloths on Johnny’s head during the whole drive, and the doctor told her that she had made it a little more possible to pull the young man through.  He certainly had received a terrible blow, and—­well, the doctor refused to predict anything at all.  Johnny was a strong-looking, healthy young man—­it took a lot to kill a youngster like that.  He advised a nurse, and gave the name of a young woman who was very good, he said.

Sudden telephoned straightway for the nurse, and Mary V locked herself into her room to cry about it.

The nurse came that night, and went briskly in and out of the guest room.  She wore her hair parted and slicked back from her face, and rubber heels; and she smiled reassuringly whenever she saw Mary V or Mrs. Selmer or any one else who looked anxious.  And she never once failed to close the door of the guest room gently but firmly behind her.  Mary V hated that nurse with a vindictiveness wholly out of proportion to the cause.

None of these things did Johnny know.  Johnny lay quietly on his back with a neat, white bandage around his head.  His eyes were closed, his face was placid with the inscrutable calm of death or deep unconsciousness.  The next day it was the same, and the day after that—­except that his cheeks began to hollow a little, and his eye sockets to deepen and darken.

And that pesky nurse wouldn’t let Mary V stay in the room two minutes!  She just shooed her out with that encouraging smile of hers, that Mary V wanted to slap.  Did she think, for gracious sake, that Mary V was going to murder Johnny?  Mary V was just going to tell the doctor that she had learned all about nursing, in her “Useful Knowledge” class at school.  She should think she was just exactly as well qualified to moisten that bandage with whatever it was they put on it, and keep the flies out of the room, and little things like that, as any old tow-headed nurse that ever shook down a thermometer.