latten out a hundred feet or so above them and
shout, "_For I'm a rider of the sky!_" and then give a range yell and
climb up away from them with arrogant indifference to their stunned
amazement.

Well, Johnny did it. That is, he volplaned, banked as much as he thought
wise, and flattened out and yelled, "_I'm a rider of the sky!_" just as
he had planned.

It happened that no one heard him, though Johnny did not know that.
Horses and men tilted heads comically and stared up at the great,
swooping thing that came buzzing like a monstrous bumblebee that has
learned to stutter. Then the horses squatted cowering away from it, and
scattered like drops of water when a stone is thrown into a pond.

Johnny did not see any more of it, for Johnny was busy. Which was a pity,
for the horse of Tex bolted a hundred yards and began to pitch so
terrifically that Tex was catapulted from the saddle and had to walk home
with a sprained ankle. Little Curley's horse took to the hills, and
little Curley did not return in time for his dinner. Aleck and Bill
Hayden went careening away toward the north, and one of the two strangers
went so far west that he got lost. Since that day no horse that was
present can see a hawk fly overhead without suffering convulsions of
terror.

Johnny flew to a certain grassy spot he knew, not half a mile from the
house, and landed. I cannot say that he landed smoothly or expertly, but
he landed with no worse mishap than a bent axle on the landing gear, and
a squeal from Mary V, who thought they were going to keep on bouncing
until they landed in a gully farther on. Johnny climbed down and turned
the plane around by hand, and Mary V helped him. Then she took a picture
of him and the plane, and climbed back and let Johnny take a picture of
her in the plane. It was rather tame, for by all the laws of logic they
should have broken their necks.

Before he started back, Johnny leaned over and shouted to Mary V: "You
can tell the boys they can sing that Skyrider thing all they want to,
now."

"They won't want to--now," Mary V yelled back.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FLYING COMES HIGH

Johnny Jewel reined his horse on a low ridge and stared dully down into
the little valley where a scattered herd of horses fed restlessly, their
uneven progress toward Sinkhole Creek vaguely indicated by the general
direction of their grazing. The pendulum of his spirits had swung farther
and farther away from his ecstasy of the