“Hope you get it, I’m sure.  I’ll take an airplane for mine.  In the meantime, you’re holding up a hired hand when he’s in a hurry to get on the job again.  That won’t get you any sport Normans, nor buy gas for the one you’ve got.”

“That man—­” Mary V lowered her voice worriedly.  “I know something nasty and unpleasant about him.  I can’t remember what it is, but I shall.  I’ve seen him somewhere.  What is he doing here?  You might tell me that much.”

“Why, he’s going to stay over night with me.  Maybe a little longer.  I’m willing to pay for all he eats, if that—­”

“Shame on you!  Why must you be so perfectly intolerable?  I hope he stays long enough to steal the coat off your back.  He’s a crook.  He couldn’t be anything else, with those eyes.”

“Poor devil can’t change the color of his eyes; but that’s a girl’s reason, every time.  You better be fanning for home, Mary V. You’ve no business out this far alone.  I think I’ll have to put your dad wise to the way you drift around promiscuous.  You can’t tell when a stray greaser might happen along.  No, I mean it!  You’re always kicking about my doing things I shouldn’t; well, you’ve got to quit riding around alone the way you do.  What if I had been somebody else—­a greaser, maybe?”

Mary V had seen Johnny angry, often enough, but she had never seen just that look in his eyes; a stern anxiety that rather pleased her.

“Why, I should have said ‘Como esta Vd,’ and ridden right along.  If he had been half as disagreeable as you have been, I expect maybe I’d have shot him.  Go on home to Sinkhole, why don’t you?  I’m sure I don’t enjoy this continual bickering.”  She rode five steps away from him, and pulled up again.  “Of course you want me to tell dad you have a—­a guest at Sinkhole camp?”

Johnny gave a little start, opened his lips and closed them.  Opened them again and said, “You’ll suit yourself about that—­as usual.”  If she thought he would beg her to keep this secret or any other, she was mistaken.

“Oh, thank you so much.  I shall tell him, then—­of course.”

She gave her head a little tilt that Johnny knew of old, and rode away at as brisk a trot as Tango could manage on that rough ground.

“Some chicken!” Bland Halliday grinned wryly when Johnny waved him to come on.  “Great place to keep a date, I must say.”

Johnny turned upon him furiously.  “You cut that out—­quick!  Or hoof it back to the railroad after I’ve licked the stuffin’ outa you.  That girl is a real girl.  You don’t need to speak to her or about her.  She ain’t your kind.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JOHNNY WOULD SERVE TWO MASTERS

Bland Halliday objected to rising with the sun.  In fact, he objected to rising at all.  He groaned a great deal, and he swore with great fluency and complained of excruciating pains here and there.  The only thing to which he did not object was eating the breakfast that Johnny had cooked.  And since Johnny could not remember the time when riding had been really painful, and therefore discounted the misery of his guest, he refused to concede the point of Bland Halliday’s inability to get up and go about the business for which he had come so far.