es, when they turned from face
to face, were hard to meet. Little Curley, who had been Johnny Jewel's
especial admirer and champion when that youth was spending his days
more or less tumultuously at the Rolling R Ranch, was seen to draw his
shirt sleeve hastily across his eyes after he had confronted Mary V for
a minute's questioning.

She watched with painful interest a car that came bouncing toward them
over the rough trail they had taken. When it arrived their fears might
become a terrible certainty. Two men occupied the dusty roadster, and
neither was Johnny, and their haste implied great urgency. Mary V
weakened to the point of covering her face with her hands as they drew
near. But they were merely reporters anxious for news.

That afternoon other reporters appeared, and the next day an
enterprising motion-picture concern had a camera man on the job. The
mystery of the vanished airplane grew with the passing hours. The
desert fairly swarmed with men, and theories were thick as lizards. On
the second night beacon fires were burning on every hilltop, and water
was being hauled in barrels to certain rest stations where the
searchers could come and recuperate. Old Sudden achieved some
front-page fame himself as a stalwart Napoleon of the desert--which he
profanely resented, by the way.

On the third day Mary V was ordered to stay at home. There were
reasons which her father did not care to dwell upon, which made it
extremely undesirable that the girl should be present when her lover
was discovered. And, since the search had narrowed to a point where
discovery was practically certain within a few hours, Sudden was not to
be cajoled or bullied.

Mary V was lying on the porch, wondering dully when the nightmare would
end and she would wake up and find life just as it had always been,
with Johnny alive and full of fun and ready to argue with her over
every little thing. It seemed grotesquely impossible that her own
innocent command that he come to her should result in all this horror.

Upheld at first by a frenzied hope that they should find him, she now
dreaded the finding, and refused to reckon the time since she had last
heard his voice over the telephone. Hurt and without water or food on
the desert in all that heat--she set her teeth to stifle a groan. A
little while ago when he had been so sure that he could enlist as a
flyer, she had shrunk from the thought of his going to war. Before
that, whe