y _must_ you be so perfectly intolerable? I hope he
stays long enough to steal the coat off your back. He's a crook. He
couldn't be anything else, with those eyes."

"Poor devil can't change the color of his eyes; but that's a girl's
reason, every time. You better be fanning for home, Mary V. You've no
business out this far alone. I think I'll have to put your dad wise to
the way you drift around promiscuous. You can't tell when a stray greaser
might happen along. No, I mean it! You're always kicking about my doing
things I shouldn't; well, you've got to quit riding around alone the way
you do. What if I had been somebody else--a greaser, maybe?"

Mary V had seen Johnny angry, often enough, but she had never seen just
that look in his eyes; a stern anxiety that rather pleased her.

"Why, I should have said '_Como esta Vd_,' and ridden right along. If he
had been half as disagreeable as you have been, I expect maybe I'd have
shot him. Go on home to Sinkhole, why don't you? I'm sure _I_ don't enjoy
this continual bickering." She rode five steps away from him, and pulled
up again. "Of course you want me to tell dad you have a--a guest at
Sinkhole camp?"

Johnny gave a little start, opened his lips and closed them. Opened them
again and said, "You'll suit yourself about that--as usual." If she
thought he would beg her to keep this secret or any other, she was
mistaken.

"Oh, thank you so much. I shall tell him, then--of course."

She gave her head a little tilt that Johnny knew of old, and rode away at
as brisk a trot as Tango could manage on that rough ground.

"Some chicken!" Bland Halliday grinned wryly when Johnny waved him to
come on. "Great place to keep a date, I must say."

Johnny turned upon him furiously. "You cut that out--quick! Or hoof it
back to the railroad after I've licked the stuffin' outa you. That girl
is a real girl. You don't need to speak to her or about her. She ain't
your kind."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

JOHNNY WOULD SERVE TWO MASTERS

Bland Halliday objected to rising with the sun. In fact, he objected to
rising at all. He groaned a great deal, and he swore with great fluency
and complained of excruciating pains here and there. The only thing to
which he did not object was eating the breakfast that Johnny had cooked.
And since Johnny could not remember the time when riding had been really
painful, and therefore discounted the misery of his guest, he refused to
concede the point of Bla