, walking
aimlessly around the crippled plane, so sure Johnny was dead that he
would not touch him to find out. If anything like that should happen
again, Mary V believed that she would go crazy. She simply couldn't
stand it to go through such a horror again.

The plane was circling around once more and flew straight northeast. They
watched it until they could not hear the humming; until it looked like a
bird against the glow of sunrise.

"Hm-mm, I wonder where--" Sudden began, but Mary V did not stay to hear
the rest of the sentence.

She went back and crept into her bed, sick at heart with an unnamed fear
and a hurt that went deep into her soul. She gave a little, dry sob or
two and lay very still, her face crushed into a pillow.

But Mary V was not born to take life's hurts passively. Presently she
dressed and went straight down to the bunk house, where she knew the boys
would be at their breakfast--unless they had finished and gone to the
corral. She walked into the old-fashioned, low-ceiled living room where
she had first learned to walk, and stood just inside the door, smiling a
little.

Bud had just finished eating, and was rolling a cigarette before he got
up from the long table. The others were finishing their coffee and hot
biscuits, and they said hello to Mary V and went on undisturbed.

"Hello--what's all that racket I heard as I was getting up?" Mary V
inquired lightly. "My good gracious, I thought you boys had started a
sawmill--or maybe somebody had overslept down here and was snoring. It
sounded like Aleck."

They laughed, and Curley spoke. "That there was Skyrider. He has flew--"

Bud, fumbling for a match, had a fit of genius. He grinned, cleared his
throat, and began to warble unexpectedly.

"Skyrider-r has flew into-o the blew
Ta-da, da-da, da-daa-a-a--
No-obody knew what he aimed to do
Till he went and said adieu.

"Says he, 'Good-bye, I aim to fly
To foreign lands, ta da-a--'"

"Oh, for gracious _sake_, Bud! I always knew you were queer at times, but
I really didn't know you had fits. So it was Skyrider riding off to call
on Venus, was it? I wish I had seen him start; but that's just my luck,
of course. Er--_where_ was he going? Or didn't he say?"

"He didn't say. But he shook hands with us and told us we had treated him
white at times, and that some day he'd write--"

"Oh, say! I got a letter he left for your father," Curley broke in. "I'll
git it and you ca