Mary V had rather an unhappy time of it, the next week or so.  She had, for some reason, lost all interest in collecting “Desert Glimpses”; so much so that when her mother told her she must stay close to the ranch lest she meet more of those terrible Mexican bandits, Mary V was very sweet about it and did not argue with her mother at all.  She seldom went farther than the ledge, these days, and she could not keep her mind off Johnny Jewel, even when there was no doubt at all that he was nearly as well as ever.

Of course, it did not really matter—­but why was Johnny so glum with her?  Why wouldn’t he talk, or at least quarrel the way he used to do?  He did not seem angry about anything.  He simply did not seem to care whether she was with him or not.  She might as well be a stick or a stone, she told herself viciously, for all the attention Johnny Jewel ever paid to her.  She did not mind in the least; but it did seem perfectly silly and unaccountable; she wondered merely because she hated mysteries.

It really should not have been mysterious.  Mary V made the mistake of not putting herself in Johnny’s place and from that angle interpreting his preoccupation.  Had she done that she would have seen at once that Johnny was fighting a battle within himself.  All his ideas, his plans, and his hopes had been turned bottom up, and Johnny was working over the wreck.

She sat and watched him from the ledge one day, and wondered why he did not act more pleased when he walked down toward the corral and discovered his airplane all repaired, just exactly as good as it had been before.  He stood there looking at it with the same apathetic gloom in his bearing that had marked him ever since he was able to be out of bed.  Mary V thought he might at least show a little gratitude—­not to herself, but toward her dad, because he had kept Bland and had paid him to repair the machine for Johnny, when Johnny was too sick to know anything about it—­too sick even to hear the noise of it when Bland tried out the motor—­and the nurse was so afraid it would disturb “her patient.”

She saw her dad stroll down that way, and stop and look at the airplane with Johnny.  Johnny seemed to be asking a few questions.  But they did not talk five minutes until Johnny went off by himself to the bunk house, and stayed there.  He did not even come back to the house for supper, but ate with the boys.

Mary V would have died before she would ask Johnny what was the matter, but she took what measures she could to find out, nevertheless.  She asked her dad, that evening, what Johnny thought about his aeroplane being all fixed up again.

Sudden smoked for a minute or two before he answered.  “Well, I don’t know, kitten.  He didn’t say.”  Sudden’s tone was drawling and comfortable, but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather disappointed in Johnny’s lack of appreciation.

“Well, but what’s he going to do with it, dad?”