st hut. As they came on, their great wings out-spread rigidly,
the propeller whirring at slackened speed, the motor sputtering
unevenly, the doorway spewed forth three fat squaws and some naked
papooses who fled shrieking into the brush behind the willows.

CHAPTER FOUR

MARY V TO THE RESCUE

Mary V Selmer was a young woman of quick impulses, a complete disdain
for consequences as yet unseen, and a disposition to have her own way,
to override obstacles man-made or sent by fate to thwart her desires.
Ask any man on the Rolling R Ranch, where Mary V was born; they will
bear witness that this is true.

Mary V had fired the first gun in the battle of wills. She had told
Johnny Jewel that she would expect him to fly straight to the ranch--if
Johnny loved her. Mary V did not mean to seem dictatorial; she merely
wanted Johnny to come back to the Rolling R, and she took what seemed
to her to be the surest means of bringing him. So, serenely sure of
Johnny's love, she had no misgivings when the sun went down and those
wonderful, opal tints of the afterglow filled all the sky.

Johnny would be hungry, of course. She wheedled Bedelia, the cook,
into letting her keep the veal roast hot in the oven of the gasoline
range. She herself spread one of mommie's cherished lunch cloths on
Bedelia's little square table in the kitchen alcove, where she and
Johnny could be alone while he ate. She dipped generously into the
newest preserves and filled a glass dish full for him. She raided the
great refrigerator, closing her eyes to the morrow's reckoning. Johnny
would be hungry, Johnny was a sort of prodigal, and the fatted calf
should be killed figuratively and the ring placed upon his finger.

She told her mommie and her dad that Johnny was coming, and that
everything was all right, and Johnny would be sensible and settle down
now, because he was not going to enlist after all. She kissed them
both and flew back to the kitchen because she had thought of something
else that Johnny would like to eat.

This, you must understand, was while Johnny was feeding Bland,--and
himself,--in "Red's Quick Lunch", and worrying because Bland tactlessly
chose such expensive fare as T-bone steak and French fried. She was
out on the porch, watching the sky toward Tucson and looking rather
wistful, while Johnny was generously sorting out clothes for Bland and
insisting upon the bath and the change before Bland should sleep in
Johnny's bed