hone and a rifle and six-shooter could do as much to protect his
herds as three or four men, and with less personal risk. Sudden banked
rather heavily on that telephone. He was prepared, at any alarming
silence, to send the boys down there posthaste to investigate. But
so long as Johnny reported every evening that all was well, the
horse-breaking would go on.

It is a pity that he had not impressed these facts more deeply upon
Johnny. A pity, too, that he had not confided in Mary V. Because Mary V
might have had a little information for her dad, if she had understood
the situation more thoroughly. As thoroughly as Tex understood it, for
instance.

Tex knew that any suspicion on the part of the line rider at Sinkhole, or
any failure on his part to report every evening, would be the signal for
Sudden to sweep the Sinkhole range clean of Rolling R horses. He had
worried a good deal because he had forgotten to tell his confederates
that they must remember to take care of the telephone somehow, in case
Johnny was lured away after the airplane. It had been that worry which
had sent him out in the night to find them and tell them--and to learn
just what was taking place, and how many horses they had got. When a man
is supposed to receive a commission on each horse that is stolen
successfully, he may be expected to exhibit some anxiety over the truth
of the tally. You will see why it was necessary to the peace and
prosperity of Tex that the surface should be kept very smooth and
unruffled.

Tex, of course, overlooked one detail. He should have worried over Mary V
and her industrious gathering of "Desert Glimpses," lest she glimpse
something she was not wanted to see. I suppose it never occurred to Tex
that Mary V's peregrinations would take her within sight of Sinkhole, or
that she would recognize a suspicious circumstance if she met it face to
face. Mary V was still looked upon as a spoiled kid by the Rolling R
boys, and she had not attained the distinction of being taken seriously
by anyone save Johnny Jewel. Which may explain, in a roundabout way,
why her interest had settled upon him, though Johnny's good looks and his
peppery disposition may have had something to do with it too.

Mary V, having climbed to the top of Black Ridge, adjusted her field
glasses and swept every bit of Sinkhole country that lay in sight. Almost
immediately she saw a suspicious circumstance, and she straightway
recognized it as such. Away over