"No, is it?" she agreed sweetly. "Witless wight was rather good, I thought. Wight fits you so well."

"Oh, that!" Johnny turned defensively to a tolerant condescension. "That wasn't so bad, if it hadn't shown on the face of it that it was just dragged in to make a rhyme. Do you know what wight means, Miss Selmer?"

Mary V was inwardly shaken. She had always believed that wight was a synonym for dunce, but now that he put the question to her in that tone, she was not positive. Her angry eyes faltered a little.

"I see you don't--of course. Used as a noun--you know what a noun is, don't you? It means the name of anything. Wight means a person--any creature. Originally it meant a fairy, a supernatural being. As an adjective it means brave, valiant, strong or powerful. Or, it used to mean clever."

"Oh, _you_! I hate the sight of you, you great bully!" Mary V ducked past him and ran.

"I'll help you look it up in the dictionary if you don't know how,"

Johnny called after her maliciously, not at all minding the epithet she had hurled at him. He went on more cheerfully, telling himself unchivalrously that he had got Mary V's goat, all right. He began to whistle under his breath, until he discovered that he was whistling "Auld Lang Syne," and was mentally fitting to the tune the words: "_Before I die, I'll ride the sky. I'll part the clouds like foam!_"

He stopped whistling then, but the words went on repeating themselves over and over in his mind. "And by gosh, I will too," he stated defiantly. "I'll show 'em, the darned mutts! They can yawp and chortle and call me Skyrider as if it was a joke. That's as much as they know, the ignorant b.o.o.bs. Why, they couldn't tell an aileron from an elevator if it was to save their lives!--and still they think I'm crazy and don't know anything. Why, darn 'em, they'll _pay money_ some day to see me fly!

Boy, I'd like to circle over this ranch at about three or four thousand feet, and then do a loop or two and volplane right down _at_ 'em! Gosh, they'd be hunting holes to crawl into before I was through with 'em! I will, too--"

Johnny went off into a pet daydream and was almost happy for a little while. Some day the Rolling R boys would be telling with pride how they used to know Johnny Jewel, the wonderful birdman that had his picture in all the papers and was getting thousands of dollars for exhibition flights. Tex, Aleck, Bud, Bill--Mary V, too, gol darn her!--would go around bragging just because they used to know him! And right then he'd sure play even for some of the insults they were handing him now.

"Mary V Selmer? Let's see--the name sounds familiar, somehow. O-oh! You mean that little red-headed ranch girl from Arizona? Oh-h, yes! Well, give her a free pa.s.s--but I mustn't be bothered personally with her. The girl's all right, but no training, no manners. Hick stuff; no cla.s.s, you understand. But give her a good seat, where she can view the getaway."

Tex, Aleck, Bud, and Bill--little Curley was all right; Curley could have a job as watchman at the hangar. But the rest of the bunch could goggle at him from a distance and be darned to them. Old Sudden too. He'd be kind of nice to old Sudden--nice in an offhand, indifferent kind of way.

But Mary V could get down on her _knees_, and he wouldn't be nice to her.

He should say not!

So dreamed Johnny Jewel, all the way to the mail box out by the main road, and nearly all the way back again. But then his ears were a.s.sailed with lugubrious singing:

"An' dlead the Great Bear ho-o-ome, An' dlead the Great Bear hoo-me, I'll brand each star with the Rollin' R, An-n dlead the Great Bear home!"

That was Bud's contribution.

"Aw, for gosh sake, _shut up_!" yelled Johnny, his temper rising again.

From the bungalow, when he pa.s.sed it on his way to the bunk house, came the measured thump-thump of a piano playing the same old tune with a stress meant to mock him and madden him.

"Then if she'll smile I'll stop awhile, And kiss her snow-white hand."

That was Mary V, singing at the top of her voice, and Johnny walked stiff-backed down the path. He wanted to turn and repeat to Mary V what he had shouted to Bud, but he refrained, though not from any chivalry, I am sorry to say. Johnny feared that it would be playing into her hand too much if he took that much notice of her. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction of knowing he heard her.

"It would be grand to kiss 'er hand, Her-rr snow-white hand if I had the sand,"

Bud finished unctuously, adjusting the tune to fit the words.

Johnny swore, flung open the low door of the bunk house, went in, and slammed it shut after him, and began to pack his personal belongings.

Presently Tex came in, warbling like a lovesick crow:

"I'll cir-cle high 's if pa.s.s-in' by, Then vol-lup bank-an' la-a-and--"

"So will this la-and," Johnny said viciously and threw one of his new riding boots straight at the warbler. "For gosh sake, lay off that stuff!"

Tex caught the boot dexterously without interrupting his song, except that he forgot the words and sang ta-da-da-da to the end of the verse.

"Po'try was wrote to be read," he replied sententiously when he had finished. "And tunes was made to be sung. And yo' all oughta be proud to death at the way yo' all made a hit with yore po'try. It beats what Mary V wrote, Skyrider. If yo' all want to know my honest opinion, Mary V's plumb sore because yo' all made up po'try about Venus instid of about her." He sat down on a corner of the littered table and began to roll a cigarette, jerking his head towards the bungalow and lowering one eyelid slowly. "Girls, I'm plumb next to 'em, Skyrider. I growed up with four of 'em. Mary V loves that there Venus stuff, and kissin' her snow-white hand, same as a cat loves snow. Jealous--that's what's bitin' Mary V."

Johnny was sorting letters, mostly circulars and "follow up" letters from various aviation schools. He looked up suspiciously at Tex, but Tex manifested none of the symptoms of sly "kidding." Tex was smoking meditatively and gazing absently at Johnny's suitcase.

"Yo' all ain't quittin'?" Tex roused himself to ask. "Not over a little josh? Say, you're layin' yoreself wide open to more of the same. Yo' all wants to take it the way it's meant, Skyrider. Listen here, boy, if yo'

all wants to git away from the ranch right now, why don't yo' all speak for to stay at Sinkhole camp? Yo' all could have mo' time to write po'try an' study up on flyin' machines, down there. And Pete, he's aimin' to quit the first. He don't like it down there."

Johnny dropped the letters back into his suitcase and sat down on the side of his bed to smoke. His was not the nature to hold a grudge, and Tex seemed to be friendly. Still, his youthful dignity had been very much hurt, and by Tex as much as the other boys. He gave him a supercilious glance.

"I don't know where you get the idea that I'm a quitter," he said pettishly. "First I knew that a bunch of rough-necks could kid me out of a job. Go down to Sinkhole yourself, if you're so anxious about that camp. Furthermore," he added stiffly, "it's n.o.body's business but mine what I write or study, or where I write and study. So don't set there trying to look wise, Tex--telling me what to do and how to do it. You can't put anything over on me; your work is too raw. Al-to-gether too raw!"

He glanced sidewise at a circular letter he had dropped, picked it up and began reading it slowly, one eye squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, his manner that of supreme indifference to Tex and all his kind. Johnny could be very, very indifferent when he chose.

He did not really believe that Tex was trying to put anything over on him; he just said that to show Tex he didn't give a darn one way or the other. But Tex seemed to take it seriously, and glowered at Johnny from under his black eyebrows that had a hawklike arch.

"What yo' all think I'm trying to put over? Hey? What yo' all mean by that statement?"

Johnny looked up, one eye still squinted against the smoke. The other showed surprise back of the indifference. "You there yet?" he wanted to know. "What's the big idea? Gone to roost for the night?"

Tex leaned toward him, waggling one finger at Johnny. The outer end of his eyebrows were twitching--a sign of anger in Tex, as Johnny knew well.

"What yo' all got up yore sleeve--saying my work is raw! What yo' all aimin' at? That's what I'm roostin' here to learn."

Johnny fanned away the smoke and gave a little chuckle meant to exasperate Tex, which it did.

"I guess the roosting's going to be pretty good," he said. "You better send cookee word to bring your meals to yuh, Tex. Because if you roost there till I tell yuh, you'll be roosting a good long while!" He got up and lounged out, his hands in his pockets, his well-shaped head carried at a provocative tilt. He heard Tex swear under his breath and mutter something about making the darned little runt come through yet, whereat Johnny grinned maliciously.

Halfway to the corral, however, Johnny's steps slowed as though he were walking straight up to a wall. The wall was there, but it was mental, and it was his mind that halted before it, astonished.

What had touched Tex off so suddenly when Johnny had flung out that meaningless taunt? Meaningless to Johnny--but how about Tex?

"Gosh! He took it like a guilty conscience," said Johnny. "What the horn-toad has Tex been doin'?"

CHAPTER THREE

JOHNNY GOES GAILY ENOUGH TO SINKHOLE

Johnny Jewel, moved by the fluctuating determination of the young, went to bed that night fully resolved that he would not quit a good job just because untoward circ.u.mstance compelled him to herd with a bunch of brainless clowns. He, who had a definite aim in life, would not permit that aim to be turned aside because various and sundry roughneck punchers thought it was funny to go around yelping like a band of coyotes. Mary V, too--he did not neglect to include Mary V. Indeed, much of his determination to remain was born of his desire to crush that insolent young woman with polite, pitying toleration.

Even when the boys trooped in and began to compose what they believed to be rhymes, Johnny did not weaken. He turned his face to the wall and ignored them. Poor simps, what more could you expect? They went so far as to attempt some poetizing on the subject of Johnny's downfall in the corral, but no one seemed able to eliminate the word bronk at the end of the first line, "_Johnny tried to ride a bronk._" No one seemed able, either, to find any rhyme but honk. They tried ker-plunk, and although that seemed to answer the purpose fairly well, they were far from satisfied.

So was Johnny, but he would not say a word to save their lives. In spite of himself he heard a howl of glee when some genius among them declaimed loudly: "_Johnny volluped into Job's Coffin, and Venus she most died a-lawfin!_"

Johnny gave a grunt of contempt, and the genius, who happened to be Bud, lifted his head off the pillow and stared at the black shadow where Johnny lay curled up like a cat.