“Well, we don’t want to be hasty.  In fact, you have not been hasty so far, from what I can gather.  Except in the matter of indulging yourself in aircraft at my expense.  Don’t leave the cabin.  I shall probably want to talk about this again to-night.”

That was all.  It was enough.  It was like Sudden to withhold condemnation until after he had digested the crime.  Johnny did not think much about what Sudden would do, but he had a settled conviction that condemnation was merely postponed for a little while.  It would come.  But Johnny sat already condemned by the harshest judge a man may have—­the harshness of his own youthful conscience.

He sat brooding, his palms holding his jaws, his eyes staring at the floor.  What was he going to do?  Sudden had asked him that.  Johnny had asked himself the same question; indeed, it had drummed insistently in his brain since he had inspected the fence that afternoon and had known just what had befallen him.  The bell rang—­Sudden was calling again.  He got up stolidly to answer more questions.

“Oh—­Skyrider!  I can only talk a minute.  Mom’s in the kitchen, and dad’s gone to hunt up Bill Hayden.  Is it true, Johnny, that a lot of horses have been stolen?”

“Yes.”

“I heard dad talking.  Oh, I wish I could help hunt them, but I’m in an awful mess, Skyrider!  Bill Hayden knew I’d taken Jake, because my saddle was gone, and none of the other horses were.  I never saw any one so mean and suspicious!  And he knows Jake got away from me, too, because I was trying to catch him when Bill rode up, just perfectly furious over the horses stampeding.  And Bill told dad—­he certainly is the meanest thing!  And now dad won’t let me go out of sight of the house unless he or mom are with me.  And mommie never goes anywhere, it’s so hot.  And dad only goes to town.  But they don’t know it was us in the aeroplane—­and I’m just glad of it if we did scatter their old herd for them.  Everybody’s so mean to me!  And I was planning how you’d teach me to fly, and we’d have the duckiest times—­and now—­”

She hung up so abruptly that Johnny knew as well as though he had been in the room with her, what had happened.  She had heard her dad coming.  Before Johnny had sat down again to his brooding, Sudden called him.

“You spoke about a greaser telling you about an aeroplane, and that you went with him and got it.”  Sudden’s voice was cool and even—­an inexorable voice.  “Do you remember my telling you not to let a greaser on the Rolling R range if you could help it?”

“Yes, sir.  This one’s brother came first.  He was just a kid, and he wanted—­a drink.”  It struck Johnny quite suddenly that Tomaso’s reason for coming had been a very poor one indeed.  For there was water much nearer Tucker Bly’s range, which was to the east of Sinkhole.  And Tomaso should have had no occasion whatever to be riding to Sinkhole.

“Oh.  He wanted a drink, did he?  Where did he come from?”