“Promised?  I did?  Well, what did you expect?  Not me—­I’ll bet on it.”  Johnny had been nearly caught, but he recovered himself in time, he believed.

“I expected you wouldn’t know the first thing about it—­which you didn’t.  Oh, there’s something here I want to show you.”  She tilted her head backward, and gave him a warning scowl, and rode slowly away.

Johnny followed, uncomfortably mystified.  She did not go more than fifty yards—­just out of the hearing of the stranger.  She stopped and pointed her finger at a rock which was like any other rock in that locality.

“What is that fellow doing here?  He can’t ride.  I saw you, when you came out of the canon, so he isn’t a new hand.  And why did somebody answer your telephone for you, and pretend he had a cold so dad wouldn’t know he was a stranger?  Dad didn’t, for that matter, but I knew, the very first words he spoke.  And what are you up to, Johnny Jewel?  You better tell me, because I shall find out anyway.”

“Go to it!” Johnny defied her.  “If you’re going to find out anyway, what’s the use of me telling yuh?”

“Who was it answered your ’phone?  You better tell me that, because if I were to just hint to dad—­”

“What would you hint?  I’ve been answering the ’phone pretty regularly, seems to me.  And can’t I have a cold and get over it if I want to?  And can’t I fool you with my voice?  You’d pine away if you didn’t have some mystery to mill over.  You ought to be glad—­”

“You weren’t at Sinkhole camp that night I ’phoned.”  Mary V looked at him accusingly.

“Oh, weren’t I?” Johnny took refuge in mockery.  “How do you know?”

Naturally, Mary V disliked to tell him how she knew.  She shied from the subject.  “You’re the most secretive thing; you are doing something dad doesn’t know about, but you ought to know better than to think you can fool me.  Really, I should not like to see you get into trouble with my father, even though—­”

“Even though I am merely your father’s hired man.  I get you, perfectly.  Why not let papa’s hired man take care of himself?”

Mary V flushed angrily.  Johnny was reminding her of the very beginning of their serial quarrel, when he had overheard her telling a girl guest at the ranch that Johnny Jewel was “only one of my father’s hired men.”  Mary V had not been able to explain to Johnny that the girl guest had exhibited altogether too great an interest in his youth and his good looks, and had frankly threatened a flirtation.  The girl guest was something of the snob, and Mary V had taken the simplest, surest way of squelching her romantic interest.  She had done that effectually, but she had also given Johnny Jewel a mortal wound in the very vitals of his young egotism.

“We are so short-handed this season!” Mary V explained sweetly.  “And dad is so stubborn, he’d fire the last man on the ranch if he caught him doing things he didn’t like.  And if he doesn’t get all the horses broken and sold that he has set his heart on selling, he says he won’t be able to buy me a new car this fall.  There’s the dearest little sport Norman that I want—­”