“I don’t give a damn if I do!” Johnny’s full, young voice shouted ragefully.  “It’ll save me firing myself.  Before I’ll work with a bunch of yellow-bellied, pin-headed fools—­” He threw a clod of dirt that caught Tex on the chin and filled his mouth so that he nearly choked, and a jagged pebble that hit Aleck just over the ear a glancing blow that sent him reeling.  The third was aimed at Bill, but Bill ducked in time, and the rock went on over his head and very nearly laid out Mary V’s father, he whom the boys called “Sudden” for some inexplicable reason.

Mary V’s father dodged successfully the rock, saw a couple of sheets of paper lying on the ground, and methodically picked them up before he advanced to where his men were trying to appear very busy with the horses, or with their ropes, or with anything save what had held their attention just previous to his coming.

All save Johnny, who was too mad to care a rap what old Sudden Selmer thought of him or did to him.  He went straight up to the boss.

“I’ll thank you for that paper,” he said hardily.  “It’s mine, and the boys have been acting the fool with it.”

“Yeh?  They have?” Selmer turned from the first page and read the second without any apparent emotion.  “You write that?”

Johnny flushed.  “Yes, sir, I did.  Do you mind letting—­”

“That what I heard them yawping here in the corral?” Selmer folded the paper with care, his fingers smoothing out the wrinkles and pausing to observe the place where Mary V had torn off a corner.

“Poets and song birds on the pay roll, eh?  Thought I hired you boys to handle horses.”  Having folded the papers as though they were to be placed in an envelope, Sudden held the verses out to Johnny.  “As riders,” he observed judicially, “I know just about what you boys are worth to me.  As poets and singers, I doubt whether the Rolling R can find use for you.  What capacity do I find you in, Curley?  Director of the orchestra, or umpire?”

Curley climbed shamefacedly off the fence and picked up his rope.  The business of taming bronks was resumed in a dead silence broken only by the trampling of the horses and a muttered oath now and then.  A lump over Aleck’s ear was swelling so that the hair lifted there, and Bud limped and sent scowling glances at Johnny Jewel.  Tex spat dirt off his tongue and scowled while he did it; indeed, no eyes save those of little Curley seemed able to look upon Johnny with a kindly light.

Mary V’s father stood dispassionately watching them for five minutes or so before he turned back to the gate.  Not once had he smiled or shown any emotion whatever.  But he had a new story to tell his friends in the clubs of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles.  And whenever he told it, Sudden Selmer would repeat what he called The Skyrider’s Dream from the first verse to Mary V’s last—­even unto Bud’s improvisation.  He would paint Johnny’s bombardment of the choir practice until his audience could almost hear the thud of the rocks when they landed.  He would describe the welt on Aleck’s head, the exact shade of purple in Curley’s face when his boss called him off the fence.  He would not smile at all during the recital, but his audience would shout and splutter and roar, and when he paused as though the story was done, some one would be sure to demand more.