settle a quarrel once and for all!) But though she had haunted all the
known and some of the unknown flying fields, she had found no trace of
Johnny. That messenger boy in Tucson had insisted that the plane
climbed high and then flew toward the Coast. And at Yuma she had
learned that the Thunder Bird had alighted there for gas and oil and
had flown toward Los Angeles. But so far as Mary V could discover, it
was still flying.

Hoping to wean her from worrying about Johnny, dad had bought the Bear
Cat. Mary V had owned it for ten days now, and its mileage stood at
1400 and was just about ready to slide another "1" into sight. The
Bear Cat had proven itself a useful little Cat.

Now she shifted from neutral to second, disdaining low speed
altogether, and swung boldly out into the stream of traffic. A Ford
shied off with a startled squawk to let the Bear Cat by. A hurrying
truck that was thinking of cutting in to get first chance within the
safety zone passage thought better of it when Mary V honked her big
Klaxon at him, and stopped with a jolt that nearly brought the Ford to
grief behind it.

But Mary V ignored these trifles. She was busy wondering where she
should go next, and she was scanning swiftly the faces of the
passers-by in the hope of glimpsing the one face she wished most of all
to see.

She reached the corner just as the frame closed against her, and with
one small foot on the clutch pedal and the other on the brake, she
leaned back and scanned the crowd. Abruptly she leaned and beckoned,
saw that her signal went unregarded, and gave three short but terrific
blasts of her Klaxon. Five hundred and forty-nine persons reacted
sharply to the sound and sent startled glances her way. The traffic
cop whirled and looked, the motorman on the car waiting beside her
leaned far out and craned, and the conductor grasped both handrails and
took a step down that he might see the better.

Mary V ignored these trifles. Bland, for whom she had meant it, jumped
and turned a pale, startled pair of eyes her way, and to him she
beckoned imperiously. He hesitated, glanced this way and that, making
a quick mental decision. Mary V had once been candidly tempted to
shoot him and had dallied with the temptation to the point of cocking
her sixshooter and aiming it directly at him. She looked now quite
capable of repeating the performance and of completing what she had
merely started last summer. He went to the ed