r his ring, Mary V
went restlessly out to watch the sky toward Tucson. Half an hour
slipped away. Mary V was just declaring pettishly that she could walk
to Tucson and find out, while she waited for that idiotic clerk, when
he called her. Mary V listened, hung up the receiver with trembling
fingers, and went to find her mother in the kitchen.

"Mommie, the plane is gone, and they are almost sure he went last
night, because he was seen going that way after he left the hotel. So
he did start, just as I told him to do--and something awful has
happened to him--and where's dad?"

Mary V's father, whom men for some unaccountable reason called "Sudden"
when he was not present, crawled out from under the rear end of his
battered touring car when Mary V's moccasins and the fluttering hem of
blue kimono moved within his range of vision. Sudden's face was
smudged with black grease and the dust of the desert, and in his hand
was a crescent wrench worn shiny where it had nipped nuts and bolts.

"You musta done some fancy driving the other day," he greeted his
anxious-faced daughter. "Didn't you know you was sliding a wheel every
time you threw on the brake? Wonder to me is you didn't skid off a
grade somewhere!" He hitched himself into a new and uncomfortable pose
and set the wrench on a nut, screwing his well-fed face into an
agonized grimace while he put his full strength into the turn. "If I
could find a man that I'd trust my life with on these roads, I'd have
me a chauffeur," he grumbled for the millionth time. "That reformed
blacksmith musta welded these nuts on to the bolts," he added, and
muttered something savage when the wrench slipped and he barked a
knuckle. "Well, what yuh want? Go ahead and have it, or do it--only
don't stand watching me when I'm trying to--" He gritted his teeth,
threw the wrench away and picked up another. "Go ask your mother," he
exclaimed. "Tell her I'll let you if she will."

At another time Mary V would have deeply resented the implication that
she never approached her dad save when she wanted something; or more
likely she would have stated her want before her dad had time to speak.
Just now she was hopefully watching a buzzard that sailed on
outstretched, rigid wings, high in the sky. It seemed to be circling
toward the ranch, and it looked like an airplane flying very high.
Mary V's heart forgot to beat while she watched it. But the buzzard
sighted something, flapped its win