the cabin, and Johnny didn't know him at all,
because the Mexican said right away, 'I am the brother of Tomaso,' which,
of course, was to introduce himself. And then he saw me, and he said he
had come to borrow some matches, and Johnny gave him some and he beat it.
And after I left, I had gone perhaps a mile when I happened to look back,
and the same Mexican was riding in a hurry to the cabin. So, of course,
he had waited until I left. And that was the man," she finished with some
attention to the dramatic effect, "who told Johnny he would take him to
where the airplane was sitting like a hawk--a broken-winged hawk--on the
burning sands of Mexico."

"Jerusalem!" Sudden paid tribute to the tale. But Bill said a shorter
word. "And which one of my--"

"And it was right after that," Mary V went on calmly, "that you found
your man at Sinkhole talking with a very bad cold. The second night, I--I
was curious. And so after you had called him up, I called him. I had to
wait a few minutes, as though he had to come into the house to answer.
And _I_ knew perfectly well that it was not Johnny speaking. I--tested
him to make sure. I spoke of things that were perfectly ridiculous, and
he was afraid to seem not to understand. I said I was Venus speaking, and
so he called me Miss Venus. And it was _not_ that Mexican," she added
quickly, seeing the guess in her dad's face. "He was a white man--an
American. I can _almost_ recognize the voice, in spite of his pretended
cold. I jarred him away from that once or twice. He said, 'Uh course I
knowed yer voice,' and no Mexican would say that."

"So then I was _very_ curious. I--I knew Johnny would never permit things
to be said that were said. So it was a beautiful moonlight evening, and I
wanted--I shall be expected to describe our Arizona plains by moonlight.
So I decided that I would solve a mystery and collect my material that
evening, and I--went riding."

"The deuce you--"

"So I had quite a distance to go, and I did not want to worry any one by
being gone long. So I--er--didn't like to wake Bill up--"

"Hunh!" from Bill, this time.

"I really intended to take Tango as usual," Mary V explained with
dignity. "I had no thought of intruding on a person's piggishness with
their old race horse, but Jake came right up and put his nose in the feed
pan, and--and acted so--sort of eager--and I knew he just suffers for
exercise, standing in that old corral, so it was very wrong, but I
yield