“He didn’t say, kitten.”

“Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn’t he say anything, for gracious sake?” Mary V could not have kept the exasperation out of her voice if she had tried.

Sudden’s lips quirked with the beginning of a smile.  He looked at the end of his cigar, looked toward the bunk house, scraped off the cigar’s ash collar on the porch rail, looked at Mary V.

“Well, he asked me how it got here to the ranch, and I told him with a wagon and team and so on.  And he said, ‘Mh-hum, I see.’  Then he asked me who repaired it, and I told him that buttermilk-eyed aviator he’d had with him.  He replied, ‘I—­see.’  Then he asked me what the repairing had cost, and the fellow’s wages or whatever he had got, and I told him, ‘Dam-fi recollect, Johnny.’  And he didn’t say a word.  Just strolled off as if he’d talked himself tired—­which I guess maybe he had.”

“Well, but dad, what do you suppose he’s going to do?  He—­he’s awfully queer since he was hurt.  Do you suppose—?”

“Kitten,” said her dad quietly, “when you’re breaking a high-strung colt he sometimes sorta resents his schooling and sulks.  Then you’ve just got to wait till he figures things out for himself a little.  If you force him you’re liable to spoil him and make him mean.  Johnny’s like that.  He’s just a high-strung human colt that life is breaking.  I guess, kitten, we better not crowd him right now.”

“Well, I don’t see why he should act that way with me,” Mary V complained, and thereby proved herself altogether human and feminine in her point of view.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SKYRIDER “HAS FLEW”!

Just at dawn the humming of the airplane motor woke Mary V. She sat up in bed and listened, a little fear gripping at her heart; a fear which she fought with her reason, her hopes, and all her natural optimism.  Surely Johnny would not be foolish enough to attempt a flight that morning.  He must be just trying put the motor.  He would know he was not yet in condition to bear any physical or nervous strain, sick as he had been.  Of course he wouldn’t be so selfish as to make a flight without so much as asking her if she would like to go with him.  He knew she was simply crazy over flying.

By that time she was out on the porch, where she was immediately joined by her father and mother, also awakened by the motor.  They were just in time.  From the neighborhood of the corral came an increasing roar.  A sudden rush of cool morning wind brought dust and bits of hay and gravel flying in a cloud.  A great, wide-winged, teetering bird-thing went racing out into sight, spurned the earth and lifted, climbed steadily, circling like a hungry hawk over a meadow full of mice.

“By heck, the boy can fly, all right!” Sudden paid tribute to Johnny’s skill in one unpremeditated ejaculation.  “An airplane using our very dooryard for a flying field, mommie!  Times are certainly changing.”