Mary V bit her lip and blinked very fast while she watched the plane go circling up and up, the motor droning its monotonous song like a hive of honey bees at work.  It was pure madness for Johnny to attempt flying so soon again.  He would be killed; anything could happen that was terrible.  She shut her eyes for a minute, trying to rout a swift vision of Johnny crumpled down limp in the pilot’s seat as she had seen him that day—­nearly a month ago—­with Bland, white-faced and helpless, walking aimlessly around the crippled plane, so sure Johnny was dead that he would not touch him to find out.  If anything like that should happen again, Mary V believed that she would go crazy.  She simply couldn’t stand it to go through such a horror again.

The plane was circling around once more and flew straight northeast.  They watched it until they could not hear the humming; until it looked like a bird against the glow of sunrise.

“Hm-mm, I wonder where—­” Sudden began, but Mary V did not stay to hear the rest of the sentence.

She went back and crept into her bed, sick at heart with an unnamed fear and a hurt that went deep into her soul.  She gave a little, dry sob or two and lay very still, her face crushed into a pillow.

But Mary V was not born to take life’s hurts passively.  Presently she dressed and went straight down to the bunk house, where she knew the boys would be at their breakfast—­unless they had finished and gone to the corral.  She walked into the old-fashioned, low-ceiled living room where she had first learned to walk, and stood just inside the door, smiling a little.

Bud had just finished eating, and was rolling a cigarette before he got up from the long table.  The others were finishing their coffee and hot biscuits, and they said hello to Mary V and went on undisturbed.

“Hello—­what’s all that racket I heard as I was getting up?” Mary V inquired lightly.  “My good gracious, I thought you boys had started a sawmill—­or maybe somebody had overslept down here and was snoring.  It sounded like Aleck.”

They laughed, and Curley spoke.  “That there was Skyrider.  He has flew—­”

Bud, fumbling for a match, had a fit of genius.  He grinned, cleared his throat, and began to warble unexpectedly.

  “Skyrider-r has flew into-o the blew
     Ta-da, da-da, da-daa-a-a—­
   No-obody knew what he aimed to do
     Till he went and said adieu.

  “Says he, ’Good-bye, I aim to fly
     To foreign lands, ta da-a—­’”

“Oh, for gracious sake, Bud!  I always knew you were queer at times, but I really didn’t know you had fits.  So it was Skyrider riding off to call on Venus, was it?  I wish I had seen him start; but that’s just my luck, of course.  Er—­where was he going?  Or didn’t he say?”

“He didn’t say.  But he shook hands with us and told us we had treated him white at times, and that some day he’d write—­”