He watched it a minute, knew it for a horse round-up, and chuckled to himself.  The Rolling R boys—­and revenge for the sneers and the fleers they had given him when he had only dared to dream of flying.  He wanted to tell Mary V, but then he thought that Mary V’s eyes were as sharp as his.  Yes, her fingers reluctantly loosened their hold and she tried to point—­and had her hand swept backward by the wind.  She tried again, and Johnny nodded, though Mary V could not see him without turning her head, which she seemed to think she must not do.

The Rolling R boys—­Tex and Bill Hayden and Curley and Aleck and one or two more whom this story has not met—­were driving a small herd of horses from which they meant to cut out a few chosen ones for breaking.  Away up toward where the sun would be at two o’clock, a little droning dragonfly thing coming swiftly, and a little imp of mischief whispering into the willing ear of one who felt that he had suffered much and patiently.  Mary V, hanging on tight, with her lips pressed together and her eyes big and bright behind her goggles, watched how swiftly the antlike creatures grew larger and took the form of horses and men.

Johnny dared a volplane, slanting steeply down at the herd.  He wanted to get close enough so that they could see who he was, and he wanted to fill his lungs and then shout down to them something that would make them squirm.  He meant to flatten out a hundred feet or so above them and shout, “For I’m a rider of the sky!” and then give a range yell and climb up away from them with arrogant indifference to their stunned amazement.

Well, Johnny did it.  That is, he volplaned, banked as much as he thought wise, and flattened out and yelled, “I’m a rider of the sky!” just as he had planned.

It happened that no one heard him, though Johnny did not know that.  Horses and men tilted heads comically and stared up at the great, swooping thing that came buzzing like a monstrous bumblebee that has learned to stutter.  Then the horses squatted cowering away from it, and scattered like drops of water when a stone is thrown into a pond.

Johnny did not see any more of it, for Johnny was busy.  Which was a pity, for the horse of Tex bolted a hundred yards and began to pitch so terrifically that Tex was catapulted from the saddle and had to walk home with a sprained ankle.  Little Curley’s horse took to the hills, and little Curley did not return in time for his dinner.  Aleck and Bill Hayden went careening away toward the north, and one of the two strangers went so far west that he got lost.  Since that day no horse that was present can see a hawk fly overhead without suffering convulsions of terror.

Johnny flew to a certain grassy spot he knew, not half a mile from the house, and landed.  I cannot say that he landed smoothly or expertly, but he landed with no worse mishap than a bent axle on the landing gear, and a squeal from Mary V, who thought they were going to keep on bouncing until they landed in a gully farther on.  Johnny climbed down and turned the plane around by hand, and Mary V helped him.  Then she took a picture of him and the plane, and climbed back and let Johnny take a picture of her in the plane.  It was rather tame, for by all the laws of logic they should have broken their necks.