Skyrider Part 23

"Why, Jake's as gentle as a ki-kitten!" Mary V sobbed.

"Like h.e.l.l he's gentle!" muttered Bill, so far under his breath that he did not feel called upon to apologize.

"Well, now, we'll talk about Jake later on. Tell dad and Bill what it was you saw, and what you mean by a thief on the pay roll. I don't promise I'll be simply stunned with surprise; that story young Jewel told last night does seem to have some awful weak points in it--"

"Why dad _Selmer_! You know perfectly well that Johnny Jewel is the soul of honor! Why you owe an _apology_ to Johnny for ever _thinking_ such a thing about him! Why, for gracious sake, must everybody on this ranch be so blind and stupid?" Mary V asked the glorious sunrise that question, and straightway hid her face behind her handkerchief.

"Well, now, we're wasting time. I apologize to the soul of honor, and you may ride Jake--when Bill or I are with you to see how he behaves.

Now tell us what you know. This is a serious matter, Mary V. Far too serious--"

"I should think _I_ am the person who knows how serious it is," Mary V came from behind her handkerchief to remind him.

"Just who or what did you see, through your field gla.s.ses, when you looked from the top of Snake Ridge?" Sudden wisely chose to waive any irrelevant arguments.

"Why," said Mary V, "I first saw one of your men dodging along down a draw, to a place where there were some cottonwood trees. I saw him get off his horse and wait there for a few minutes, and then I saw another man riding along the gully from the other direction. And so I saw them meet, and talk a few minutes, and ride back. And--your man was in a great hurry, and the other man was a Mexican."

"H-m-m. And who was my--"

"And so I thought I'd ride a little farther, and see what they were waving their hands toward the south for. And so I did. And it was very hot," said Mary V pensively, "and I was so tired that when I found I was close to Sinkhole camp I went on and rested there. And before I left, that same Mexican came to 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 yielded to him. I rode him down to Sinkhole, and I found him a perfectly gentle lady's horse. So there now, Mr. Bill. You just--"

"And what did you find at Sinkhole?" Sudden led her firmly back to the subject.

"I found that the beans were sour, and the bread was hard as a rock, and there wasn't one thing to show that a meal had been cooked in that camp for two days, at least. And Johnny's bedding was gone--or some of it, anyway. And so was Sandy. So I came back, and changed horses, and took Tango. I knew, of course, how stingy a person can be about a horse. And as I was riding away, behind that line of rocks so Mr. Stingy wouldn't see me, I saw a certain person come sneaking up to the corral and turn his horse inside. It was just barely daylight then, but it was the same person I saw meet the Mexican.

"And I hurried hack to Snake Ridge, so I got there quite early in the morning. And I saw two men ride off toward the eastern line of Sinkhole range, and they were not Johnny Jewel at all, which would be perfectly impossible. Because soon afterwards I saw something very queer being hauled by mules, and that was Johnny bringing home his airplane, perfectly innocent."

"Who's the fellow--" Sudden and Bill spoke together, the question which harried the minds of both.

"Of course," said Mary V, "I understand that some one from the ranch would have to put them up to distracting Johnny's attention by letting him have that airplane. I can see that they would want to keep him busy so he wouldn't pay so much attention to the horses down there, and would not notice a few horses gone now and then. So somebody had heard about the airplane, and told them that Johnny was perfectly mad about aviation, and--"

Sudden turned, and took her by the shoulders. "Mary V, who was that man?

Don't try to s.h.i.+eld him, because I shall--"

"The very idea! I don't want to s.h.i.+eld him at all. I merely want Jake, without any strings on him whatever. Because he can go like the very d.i.c.kens, and I want to keep an eye on Tex myself. He won't pay any attention--"

"Tex! Good Lord! Bill, you--"

"Listen, dad, I think I _deserve_ to have Jake. You _know_ I can ride him, and you're so short-handed, and I can watch Tex--"

"Go saddle him up for her, Bill, will you? I guess the kid's done enough to put her on a par with the rest of us."

"I'll say she has," Bill surrendered, a grin splitting his leathery face straight across the middle. "I been watchin' Tex myself, but I didn't know it was horses he was after. I thought it was some woman."

"I can't see what _makes_ men so stupid!" Mary V observed pensively. "I never did like Tex. I don't like his eyes."

"I see," said her dad. "You ought to 've told me before." And he added disapprovingly, "There's a good deal you ought to 've told your dad. It would have saved the Rolling R some mighty fine horses, I reckon. I don't know what your mother's going to say about me letting you go--"

But Mary V had whisked into the house to complete her preparations for the day's ride. Also to escape whatever her dad would have to say in that particular tone. She saw him leave the porch and follow Bill to the corral, whereupon she immediately tried to call Johnny on the telephone.

Failing in that, she proceeded to powder her nose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MARY V WILL NOT BE BLUFFED

Old Sudden in the ranch Ford, and Bill and Mary V on horseback, overtook the jogging cavalcade of riders and loose horses. Sudden looked pained and full of determination, as he always did when necessity called him forth upon the range in a lurching mechanical conveyance where once he had ridden with the best of them. Too many winters had been spent luxuriously in the towns; a mile or two, at a comfortable trail trot, was all that Sudden cared to attempt nowadays on horseback. But that did not lessen his dislike of negotiating sand and rocks and washes and rough slopes with an automobile. Every mile that he traveled added something to his condemnation of that young reprobate, Johnny Jewel, who had let the Rolling R in for all this trouble.

A bend in the trail brought him close to the boys, who had ridden straight across country. Mary V and Bill had just joined the group, and Sudden gave a snort when he saw Mary V maneuver Jake so that he sidled in alongside Tex, who rode a little apart with his hat pulled over his eyes, evidently in deep thought. Sudden had all the arrogance of a strong man who has managed his life and his business successfully. He wanted to attend to Tex himself, without any meddling from Mary V.

He squawked the horn to attract her attention, and caused a wave of turbulence among the horses that made more than one of his men say unpleasant things about him. Mary V looked back, and he beckoned with one sweeping gesture that could scarcely be mistaken. Mary V turned to ride up to him, advanced a rod or two and abruptly retreated, bolting straight through the group of riders and careening away across the level, with Bill and Tex tearing after her. Presently they slowed, and later Bill was seen to lag behind. Tex and Mary V kept straight on, a furlong in advance of the others.

The road swung away to the right, to avoid a rough stretch of rocks and gullies, and Sudden perforce followed it, feelingly speaking his mind upon the subjects of spoiled daughters and good-for-nothing employees, and horses and the men that bestrode them, and Fords, and the roads of Arizona, and the curse of being too well fed and growing a paunch that made riding a martyrdom. He would put that girl in a convent, and he would see that she stayed there till she was old enough to have some sense. He would have that young hound at Sinkhole arrested as an accomplice of the horse thieves. He would put a bullet through that fool of a horse, Jake, and he would lynch Tex if he ever got his hands on him.

He would sell out, by glory, and buy himself a prune orchard.

And then he had a blow-out while he was down in a hollow a mile from the outfit. And some darned fool had lost the handle to the jack, and the best of the two extra tires was a darn poor excuse and wouldn't last a mile, probably, and he got hold of a tube that had a leaky valve, and had to hunt out another one after he had worked half an hour trying to pump up the first one. And what in the blinkety blink did any darn fool want to live in such a country for, anyway?

Thus it happened that Mary V was not forbidden to ride with Tex. And, not being forbidden, Mary V carried out her own ideas of diplomacy and tact.

Her idea was to make Tex believe that she liked him better than the other boys. Just what she would gain by that, Mary V did not stop to wonder. It was the approved form of diplomacy, employed by all the leading heroines of ancient and modern fiction and of film drama, and was warranted to produce results in the way of information, guilty secrets, stolen wills, plots and plans and papers.

Tex was inclined to eye her askance, just at first. He was also very curious about her riding Jake, and he seemed inquisitive about whether that was the first time she had ever ridden him. He was, too, very absent-minded at times, and would go off into vacant-eyed reveries that sealed his ears against her artfully artless chatter.

Some girls would have been discouraged. Mary V was merely stimulated to further efforts. Tex did not mention the stealing of any horses at Sinkhole. He seemed to take it for granted that they were going to work the range to get horses for breaking, and Mary V wondered if perhaps her dad had not thought it best to confine the knowledge of horse-stealing to himself and Bill--at least until he had made an investigation. That would be like dad--and also like Bill Hayden. Mary V was glad that she had not said anything about it. She thought she would try Tex out first on the subject of airplanes. None of the boys knew that Johnny had one, and she was perfectly sure that she would detect any guilty knowledge of it in the mind of Tex. She had just read a long article in a magazine about "How our Faces Betray our Thoughts," and this seemed a splendid chance to put it to the test.

"Bill says an aeroplane came and stampeded all you boys yesterday," she began with much innocence.

"Yeah. One did fly over our haids. I didn't git to see much of it. My fool hawse, he started in pitchin' right away, soon as he seen it."

Mary V paused, meditating upon the significance of his words, his tone, his profile. That there was no particular significance did not in the least affect her deliberate intention.