t miss them?"

"To-day. I was all taken up with that damned airplane before, and I
didn't pay much attention. This morning the fellow here took me for a
flight, and we went east. Beyond the red hill I happened to see four
riders driving a few horses. They were inside our fence. I didn't think
what it meant then, because Bland was climbing in a spiral and my mind
was on that. But I rode over there this afternoon, and I saw where they'd
let down the fence and then put it back up again. And they'd tried to
cover up the tracks of horses going through. So I rode all afternoon,
making a sort of tally of what horses ranged over that way. A lot of
'em's gone. I missed some of the best ones--some big geldings that I
think I'd know anywhere."

"You say they went through the fence on the east line?"

"Yes, sir. It was just after sunrise that I saw them."

"And it was afternoon, you say, before it occurred to you that they might
possibly have been stealing my horses. In the meantime, you were up this
way, playing hell with the round-up."

"Yes, sir, that's about the way it stacks up."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Try and get back what horses I can, I guess." Johnny did
not speak as though he had much faith.

"Going to go out and round them up with your flying machine, I suppose!
That sounds practical, perfectly plausible. As much so as the rest of the
story."

Johnny was too utterly miserable and hopeless to squirm at the sarcasm.

"Well, we don't want to be hasty. In fact, you have not been hasty so
far, from what I can gather. Except in the matter of indulging yourself
in aircraft at my expense. Don't leave the cabin. I shall probably want
to talk about this again to-night."

That was all. It was enough. It was like Sudden to withhold condemnation
until after he had digested the crime. Johnny did not think much about
what Sudden would do, but he had a settled conviction that condemnation
was merely postponed for a little while. It would come. But Johnny sat
already condemned by the harshest judge a man may have--the harshness of
his own youthful conscience.

He sat brooding, his palms holding his jaws, his eyes staring at the
floor. What was he going to do? Sudden had asked him that. Johnny had
asked himself the same question; indeed, it had drummed insistently
in his brain since he had inspected the fence that afternoon and had
known just what had befallen him. The bell rang--Sudden was calling
aga