from calling Johnny's attention to
it, she was so proud of it:

"Skyrider, Skyrider, where have you been?
I've been to see Venus, which made the moon grin.
Skyrider, Skyrider, what saw you there?
I saw old maid Venus a-dyeing her hair!"

Having through much industry accomplished all this while Johnny was
putting up her horse, Mary V slid the revised lesson out of sight under
other papers and was almost decently civil to Johnny when he returned.
She did not help him with dinner--which was served cold for obvious
reasons--but she divided her sandwiches and sour pickles with him in
return for a fried rabbit leg and a dish of stewed fruit. In the
intervals of their quarreling, which continued intermittently all the
while she was there, Mary V quizzed him about his ambition to fly. Did
he really intend to learn "the game"? Had he ever been up in a flying
machine? It seemed that Johnny had made two ecstatic trips into the
air--for a price--at the San Francisco Fair the fall before, and that his
imagination had never quite felt solid ground under it since! Where--or
how--could he learn?

If she were secretly trying to inveigle Johnny into showing her his new
Correspondence Course, so that she might be a gleeful witness when he
discovered her additions and revisions, she must have been a greatly
disappointed young woman. For Johnny that day demonstrated how well he
could keep a secret. He warmed to her apparent interest in his chosen
profession, but he did not once hint at the lessons, and kept rigidly to
generalities.

Mary V mentally called him sly and deceitful, and started another quarrel
over nothing. While this particular battle was raging, there came an
interruption which Mary V first considered sinister, then peculiar, and
at last, after much cogitation, extremely suspicious and a further
evidence of Johnny's slyness.

A Mexican rode up to the doorway, coming from the east. Not Tomaso,
who would have convinced even Mary V of his harmlessness, but a
broad-shouldered, square-faced man with squinty eyes, a constant smile,
and only a slight accent.

Johnny went to the door, plainly hesitating over the common little
courtesy of inviting him in. The man dismounted, announced that he was
Tomaso's brother, and then caught sight of Mary V inside and staring out
at him curiously.

His manner changed a little. Even Mary V could see that. He stopped where
he was, squinting into the cabin, smiling still.

"I c