Sudden was not the man to overlook a sure profit while he guarded against a possible danger.  He needed all the riders he had, or could get, to break horses for the buyers that were beginning to make regular trips through the country.  He knew, too, that it would take more than two or three men at Sinkhole to stand off a raid, and that one man with a telephone and a rifle and six-shooter could do as much to protect his herds as three or four men, and with less personal risk.  Sudden banked rather heavily on that telephone.  He was prepared, at any alarming silence, to send the boys down there posthaste to investigate.  But so long as Johnny reported every evening that all was well, the horse-breaking would go on.

It is a pity that he had not impressed these facts more deeply upon Johnny.  A pity, too, that he had not confided in Mary V. Because Mary V might have had a little information for her dad, if she had understood the situation more thoroughly.  As thoroughly as Tex understood it, for instance.

Tex knew that any suspicion on the part of the line rider at Sinkhole, or any failure on his part to report every evening, would be the signal for Sudden to sweep the Sinkhole range clean of Rolling R horses.  He had worried a good deal because he had forgotten to tell his confederates that they must remember to take care of the telephone somehow, in case Johnny was lured away after the airplane.  It had been that worry which had sent him out in the night to find them and tell them—­and to learn just what was taking place, and how many horses they had got.  When a man is supposed to receive a commission on each horse that is stolen successfully, he may be expected to exhibit some anxiety over the truth of the tally.  You will see why it was necessary to the peace and prosperity of Tex that the surface should be kept very smooth and unruffled.

Tex, of course, overlooked one detail.  He should have worried over Mary V and her industrious gathering of “Desert Glimpses,” lest she glimpse something she was not wanted to see.  I suppose it never occurred to Tex that Mary V’s peregrinations would take her within sight of Sinkhole, or that she would recognize a suspicious circumstance if she met it face to face.  Mary V was still looked upon as a spoiled kid by the Rolling R boys, and she had not attained the distinction of being taken seriously by anyone save Johnny Jewel.  Which may explain, in a roundabout way, why her interest had settled upon him, though Johnny’s good looks and his peppery disposition may have had something to do with it too.

Mary V, having climbed to the top of Black Ridge, adjusted her field glasses and swept every bit of Sinkhole country that lay in sight.  Almost immediately she saw a suspicious circumstance, and she straightway recognized it as such.  Away over to the east of Sinkhole camp she saw two horsemen jogging along, just as the Rolling R boys jogged homeward after a hard day’s work at the round-up.  She could not recognize them, the distance was so great.  She therefore believed that one of them might be Johnny Jewel, and the suspicion made her head ache worse than before.  He had no business to be away at night, and then to go riding off somewhere with someone else so early in the morning, and she stamped her foot at him and declared that she would like to shake him.