ng not to see the question Mary V's eyes were
asking because her lips would not form it in words. "Better, on the
whole, than I expected."

"Then you think--"

"I think we won't worry about it until we have to. They're tough, these
young devils."

Mary V tried and tried to wring encouragement from the words, but it was
very hard, with Johnny lying like that and never moving.

They brought the airplane to the ranch, much as Johnny had brought it up
from "the burning sands of Mexico." Mary V went out to look at it, but it
seemed too terrible to think of how high Johnny's hopes had been, how he
had worshiped that thing--and what it had done to him. She went to her
ledge on the bluff, and sat there and cried heart-brokenly.

There it stood, reared up on its silly little wheels, with its broken
propeller still pointing straight up at the sky. Its tail was broken
too--and served it right for thrashing around like that in the brush.

She had not known her dad was having it brought in, until she saw them
coming with it. Little Curley had driven the team, and he had looked as
though he was driving a hearse. She did not even know what her dad was
going to do with it. He hadn't said a word to anybody, about anything. He
just went ahead as if taking care of Johnny and Johnny's airplane was
part of the regular work on the ranch. Even Bill did not appear to know,
nor Bland. Perhaps Sudden himself did not know. It seemed to Mary V that
the whole ranch was just waiting, minute by minute, for Johnny to open
his eyes, or stop breathing. The unbearable part of it was, no one said
anything much about it. They just waited.

The doctor came again, and he did not say anything at all to Mary V. He
stayed at the ranch all night, mostly in the room with Johnny. The next
day another doctor came, and the nurse went in and out of the room
sterilizing things and looking very mysterious and important--but always
with that intolerably reassuring smile. Mary V gritted her teeth every
time she saw that nurse.

They were going to operate, the nurse said, when Mary V simply could not
stand it another minute. She went and sat all curled up in the hammock,
not letting it swing, but just keeping very, very still, and listening.
There were voices in there mumbling sentences she could not catch. After
awhile a sickly odor came drifting through the window, and more muttering
between the two doctors. Sudden came wandering up, tiptoed to his chair
on the