Then a little twitching smile would show at the corner of Sudden’s lips, and he would drawl whimsically:  “Those boys were so scared they never chirped when the poet actually went sky-riding to an altitude of about ten feet above the saddle horn, and lit on the back of his neck.  Johnny’s a good rider, too, but he was mad.  He was so mad I don’t believe he knows yet that he was piled.  Afterwards?  Oh, well, they came to along about supper time and yawped his poetry all over the place, I heard.  But that was after I had left the ranch.”

There were a few details which Sudden, being only human, could not possibly give his friends.  He could not know that Mary V went back down the hill, sneaked into the bunk house and got Johnny’s coat, and sewed the sleeve lining in very neatly, and took the coat back without being seen.  Nor did he know that she violently regretted the deed of kindness, when she discovered that Johnny remained perfectly unconscious of the fact that his coat sleeve no longer troubled him.

CHAPTER TWO

ONE FIGHT, TWO QUARRELS, AND A RIDDLE

Rolling R ranch lies down near the border of Mexico—­near as distances are counted in Arizona.  Possibly a hawk could make it in one flight straight across that jagged, sandy, spiney waste of scenery which the chance traveler visions the moment you mention southern Arizona, but if you wanted to ride to the Border from the Rolling R corrals, you would find the trip a half-day proposition.  As to the exact location, never mind about that.

The Selmer Stock Company had other ranches where they raised other animals, but the Rolling R raised horses almost exclusively, the few hundred head of cattle not being counted as a real ranch industry, but rather an incidental by-product.  Rolling R Ranch was the place Sudden Selmer called home, although there was a bungalow out in the Wilshire District in Los Angeles about which Sudden would grumble when the tax notice came in his mail.  There was a big touring car in the garage on the back of the lot, and there was a colored couple who lived in two rooms of the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against thieves, and to keep the lawn watered and clipped and the dust off the furniture.  They admitted that they had a snap, for they were seldom disturbed in their leisurely caretaking routine save in the winter.  Even Mary V always tired of the place after a month or two in it, and would pack her trunk and “hit the trail” for the Rolling R.

Speaking of Mary V, you would know that a girl with modern upbringing lived a good deal at the ranch.  You could tell by the low, green bungalow with wide, screened porches and light cream trim, that was almost an exact reproduction of the bungalow in Los Angeles.  A man and woman who have lived long together on a ranch like the Rolling R would have gone on living contentedly in the adobe house which was now abandoned to the sole occupancy of the boys.  It is the young lady of the family who demands up-to-date housing.