: "Those boys were so scared they never
chirped when the poet actually went sky-riding to an altitude of about
ten feet above the saddle horn, and lit on the back of his neck. Johnny's
a good rider, too, but he was mad. He was so mad I don't believe he knows
yet that he was piled. Afterwards? Oh, well, they came to along about
supper time and yawped his poetry all over the place, I heard. But that
was after I had left the ranch."

There were a few details which Sudden, being only human, could not
possibly give his friends. He could not know that Mary V went back down
the hill, sneaked into the bunk house and got Johnny's coat, and sewed
the sleeve lining in very neatly, and took the coat back without being
seen. Nor did he know that she violently regretted the deed of kindness,
when she discovered that Johnny remained perfectly unconscious of the
fact that his coat sleeve no longer troubled him.

CHAPTER TWO

ONE FIGHT, TWO QUARRELS, AND A RIDDLE

Rolling R ranch lies down near the border of Mexico--near as distances
are counted in Arizona. Possibly a hawk could make it in one flight
straight across that jagged, sandy, spiney waste of scenery which the
chance traveler visions the moment you mention southern Arizona, but if
you wanted to ride to the Border from the Rolling R corrals, you would
find the trip a half-day proposition. As to the exact location, never
mind about that.

The Selmer Stock Company had other ranches where they raised other
animals, but the Rolling R raised horses almost exclusively, the few
hundred head of cattle not being counted as a real ranch industry, but
rather an incidental by-product. Rolling R Ranch was the place Sudden
Selmer called home, although there was a bungalow out in the Wilshire
District in Los Angeles about which Sudden would grumble when the tax
notice came in his mail. There was a big touring car in the garage on the
back of the lot, and there was a colored couple who lived in two rooms of
the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against
thieves, and to keep the lawn watered and clipped and the dust off the
furniture. They admitted that they had a snap, for they were seldom
disturbed in their leisurely caretaking routine save in the winter. Even
Mary V always tired of the place after a month or two in it, and would
pack her trunk and "hit the trail" for the Rolling R.

Speaking of Mary V, you would know that a girl with modern upbringing
l