"I suppose you would imply that I have about as much brains as a meadow lark, perhaps!" Mary V rose valiantly to the argument. If Johnny would rather quarrel than talk about things that didn"t interest either of them a bit, why, a quarrel he should have.
But Johnny would not quarrel. He made no reply whatever to the tentative charge. When Mary V stopped scolding, she became aware that Johnny had not heard a word of what she had said.
"How many horses did your dad figure had been stolen? I mean, besides the ones he got back."
"Why--er--you"ll have to ask dad. I don"t see what that can have to do with meadow larks" brains."
"It hasn"t a thing to do with brains. I was merely wondering."
"Well," Mary V retorted flippantly, "I believe the wondering is very good to-day. Help yourself, Johnny."
Johnny looked at her unsmilingly. "That," he told her bitterly, "is what I"m trying to do."
He did not explain that somewhat cryptical remark, and presently he left her and went to his room. Mary V felt that she was not being trusted by a person who surely ought to know by this time that he needn"t be so secretive about his thoughts and intentions. If she had not proved her loyalty and her friendship by this time, what did a person want her to do, for gracious sake?
Mary V had rather an unhappy time of it, the next week or so. She had, for some reason, lost all interest in collecting "Desert Glimpses"; so much so that when her mother told her she must stay close to the ranch lest she meet more of those terrible Mexican bandits, Mary V was very sweet about it and did not argue with her mother at all. She seldom went farther than the ledge, these days, and she could not keep her mind off Johnny Jewel, even when there was no doubt at all that he was nearly as well as ever.
Of course, it did not really matter--but why was Johnny so glum with her?
Why wouldn"t he talk, or at least quarrel the way he used to do? He did not seem angry about anything. He simply did not seem to care whether she was with him or not. She might as well be a stick or a stone, she told herself viciously, for all the attention Johnny Jewel ever paid to her.
She did not mind in the least; but it did seem perfectly silly and unaccountable; she wondered merely because she hated mysteries.
It really should not have been mysterious. Mary V made the mistake of not putting herself in Johnny"s place and from that angle interpreting his preoccupation. Had she done that she would have seen at once that Johnny was fighting a battle within himself. All his ideas, his plans, and his hopes had been turned bottom up, and Johnny was working over the wreck.
She sat and watched him from the ledge one day, and wondered why he did not act more pleased when he walked down toward the corral and discovered his airplane all repaired, just exactly as good as it had been before. He stood there looking at it with the same apathetic gloom in his bearing that had marked him ever since he was able to be out of bed. Mary V thought he might at least show a little grat.i.tude--not to herself, but toward her dad, because he had kept Bland and had paid him to repair the machine for Johnny, when Johnny was too sick to know anything about it--too sick even to hear the noise of it when Bland tried out the motor--and the nurse was so afraid it would disturb "her patient."
She saw her dad stroll down that way, and stop and look at the airplane with Johnny. Johnny seemed to be asking a few questions. But they did not talk five minutes until Johnny went off by himself to the bunk house, and stayed there. He did not even come back to the house for supper, but ate with the boys.
Mary V would have died before she would ask Johnny what was the matter, but she took what measures she could to find out, nevertheless. She asked her dad, that evening, what Johnny thought about his aeroplane being all fixed up again.
Sudden smoked for a minute or two before he answered. "Well, I don"t know, kitten. He didn"t say." Sudden"s tone was drawling and comfortable, but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather disappointed in Johnny"s lack of appreciation.
"Well, but what"s he going to do with it, dad?"
"He didn"t say, kitten."
"Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn"t he say _anything_, for gracious sake?" Mary V could not have kept the exasperation out of her voice if she had tried.
Sudden"s lips quirked with the beginning of a smile. He looked at the end of his cigar, looked toward the bunk house, sc.r.a.ped off the cigar"s ash collar on the porch rail, looked at Mary V.
"Well, he asked me how it got here to the ranch, and I told him with a wagon and team and so on. And he said, "Mh-hum, I see." Then he asked me who repaired it, and I told him that b.u.t.termilk-eyed aviator he"d had with him. He replied, "I--see." Then he asked me what the repairing had cost, and the fellow"s wages or whatever he had got, and I told him, "Dam-fi recollect, Johnny." And he didn"t say a word. Just strolled off as if he"d talked himself tired--which I guess maybe he had."
"Well, but dad, what do you _suppose_ he"s going to do? He--he"s awfully queer since he was hurt. Do you suppose--?"
"Kitten," said her dad quietly, "when you"re breaking a high-strung colt he sometimes sorta resents his schooling and sulks. Then you"ve just got to wait till he figures things out for himself a little. If you force him you"re liable to spoil him and make him mean. Johnny"s like that. He"s just a high-strung human colt that life is breaking. I guess, kitten, we better not crowd him right now."
"Well, I don"t see why he should act that way with _me_," Mary V complained, and thereby proved herself altogether human and feminine in her point of view.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SKYRIDER "HAS FLEW"!
Just at dawn the humming of the airplane motor woke Mary V. She sat up in bed and listened, a little fear gripping at her heart; a fear which she fought with her reason, her hopes, and all her natural optimism. Surely Johnny would not be foolish enough to attempt a flight that morning. He must be just trying put the motor. He would know he was not yet in condition to bear any physical or nervous strain, sick as he had been. Of course he wouldn"t be so selfish as to make a flight without so much as asking her if she would like to go with him. He knew she was simply crazy over flying.
By that time she was out on the porch, where she was immediately joined by her father and mother, also awakened by the motor. They were just in time. From the neighborhood of the corral came an increasing roar. A sudden rush of cool morning wind brought dust and bits of hay and gravel flying in a cloud. A great, wide-winged, teetering bird-thing went racing out into sight, spurned the earth and lifted, climbed steadily, circling like a hungry hawk over a meadow full of mice.
"By heck, the boy can fly, all right!" Sudden paid tribute to Johnny"s skill in one unpremeditated e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. "An airplane using our very dooryard for a flying field, mommie! Times are certainly changing."
Mary V bit her lip and blinked very fast while she watched the plane go circling up and up, the motor droning its monotonous song like a hive of honey bees at work. It was pure madness for Johnny to attempt flying so soon again. He would be killed; anything could happen that was terrible. She shut her eyes for a minute, trying to rout a swift vision of Johnny crumpled down limp in the pilot"s seat as she had seen him that day--nearly a month ago--with Bland, white-faced and helpless, walking aimlessly around the crippled plane, so sure Johnny was dead that he would not touch him to find out. If anything like that should happen again, Mary V believed that she would go crazy. She simply couldn"t stand it to go through such a horror again.
The plane was circling around once more and flew straight northeast. They watched it until they could not hear the humming; until it looked like a bird against the glow of sunrise.
"Hm-mm, I wonder where--" Sudden began, but Mary V did not stay to hear the rest of the sentence.
She went back and crept into her bed, sick at heart with an unnamed fear and a hurt that went deep into her soul. She gave a little, dry sob or two and lay very still, her face crushed into a pillow.
But Mary V was not born to take life"s hurts pa.s.sively. Presently she dressed and went straight down to the bunk house, where she knew the boys would be at their breakfast--unless they had finished and gone to the corral. She walked into the old-fashioned, low-ceiled living room where she had first learned to walk, and stood just inside the door, smiling a little.
Bud had just finished eating, and was rolling a cigarette before he got up from the long table. The others were finishing their coffee and hot biscuits, and they said h.e.l.lo to Mary V and went on undisturbed.
"h.e.l.lo--what"s all that racket I heard as I was getting up?" Mary V inquired lightly. "My good gracious, I thought you boys had started a sawmill--or maybe somebody had overslept down here and was snoring. It sounded like Aleck."
They laughed, and Curley spoke. "That there was Skyrider. He has flew--"
Bud, fumbling for a match, had a fit of genius. He grinned, cleared his throat, and began to warble unexpectedly.
"Skyrider-r has flew into-o the blew Ta-da, da-da, da-daa-a-a-- No-obody knew what he aimed to do Till he went and said adieu.
"Says he, "Good-bye, I aim to fly To foreign lands, ta da-a--""
"Oh, for gracious _sake_, Bud! I always knew you were queer at times, but I really didn"t know you had fits. So it was Skyrider riding off to call on Venus, was it? I wish I had seen him start; but that"s just my luck, of course. Er--_where_ was he going? Or didn"t he say?"
"He didn"t say. But he shook hands with us and told us we had treated him white at times, and that some day he"d write--"
"Oh, say! I got a letter he left for your father," Curley broke in. "I"ll git it and you can take it up to the house." He gave Mary V a mysterious look and went into the room where he slept.
Mary V followed him as far as the door, and saw Curley take two letters from under his pillow. Her heart gave a jump at that, and it began to beat very fast when he turned and put them into her hand with another mysterious look. She thanked him and hurried out on the porch and straight to her pet ledge. Her dad"s letter could wait.
On the ledge she sat down, and with fingers that shook she tore open, an envelope addressed to "Miss Mary V. Selmer, care of Curley." It had been sealed very tightly, as though it contained secrets. Which it did.
Mary V read that letter through from beginning to end five times before she left the ledge. It was not exactly a love letter, either, though Mary V squeezed it between her palms and then kissed it before she put it away out of sight. After that she cried lonesomely and stared away into that part of the sky where Johnny and his airplane had last been a disappearing speck.
"_Dear Mary V_," (Johnny had written) "I"m not going to tell anybody good-bye. Not even you, or I might say especially not you. It"s hard enough to go as it is.
"Maybe you won"t care much, but I am a hopeful cuss, and I"m going to build air castles about you till I come back, which I hope to do when I have made good. I made an awful mess of things here, and it"s up to me to make good now before I say anything to you about air castles and so on.