t straightway gird himself for a life
struggle when he has passed the flowered gateway of a woman's tremulous
yes.

To Johnny Jewel the achievement of possessing himself of so coveted a
piece of mechanism as an airplane, and of flying it with rapidly
increasing skill, began to lose a little of its power to thrill. The
getting had filled his thoughts waking and sleeping, had brought him
some danger, many thrills, a good deal of reproach and much
self-condemnation. Now he had it--that episode was diminishing rapidly
in importance as it slid into the past, and Johnny was facing a problem
quite as great, was harboring ambitions quite as dazzling, as when he
rode a sweaty horse across the barren stretches of the Rolling R Ranch
and dreamed the while of soaring far above the barrenness.

Well, he had soared high above many miles of barrenness. That dream
could be dreamed no more, since its magic vapors had been dissipated in
the bright sun of reality. He could no longer dream of flying, any
more than he could build air castles over riding a horse. Neither
could he rack his soul with thoughts of Mary V Selmer, wondering
whether she would ever get to caring much for a fellow. Mary V had
demonstrated with much frankness that she cared. He knew the feel of
her arms around his neck, the look of her face close to his own, the
sweet thrill of her warm young lips against his. He had bought her a
modest little ring, and had watched the shine of it on the third finger
of her tanned left hand when she left him--going gloveless that the
ring might shine up at her.

The first episode of her life thus happily finished, Johnny was looking
with round, boyish, troubled eyes upon the second.

"Long-distance call for you, Mr. Jewel," the clerk announced, when
Johnny strolled into the Argonaut hotel in Tucson for his mail. "Just
came in. The girl at the switchboard will connect you with the party."

Johnny glanced into his empty key box and went on to the telephone
desk. It was Mary V, he guessed. He had promised to call her up, but
there hadn't been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of
inaction, which meant failure, and Johnny Jewel never liked talking of
his failures, even to Mary V.

"Oh, Johnny, is that you? I've been waiting and _waiting_, and I just
wondered if you had enlisted and gone off to war without even calling
up to say good-by. I've been perfectly _frantic_. There's something--"

"You needn't