Mary V would have died before she would ask Johnny what was the matter, but she took what measures she could to find out, nevertheless. She asked her dad, that evening, what Johnny thought about his aeroplane being all fixed up again. Sudden smoked for a minute or two before he answered. "Well, I don't know, kitten. He didn't say." Sudden's tone was drawling and comfortable, but Mary V somehow got the notion that her dad, too, was rather disappointed in Johnny's lack of appreciation. "Well, but what's he going to do with it, dad?" "He didn't say, kitten." "Well, but dad, he was looking at it, and you were with him, and didn't he say _anything_, for gracious sake?" Mary V could not have kept the exasperation out of her voice if she had tried. Sudden's lips quirked with the beginning of a smile. He looked at the end of his cigar, looked toward the bunk house, scraped off the cigar's ash collar on the porch rail, looked at Mary V. "Well, he asked me how it got here to the ranch, and I told him with a wagon and team and so on. And he said, 'Mh-hum, I see.' Then he asked me who repaired it, and I told him that buttermilk-eyed aviator he'd had with him. He replied, 'I--see.' Then he asked me what the repairing had cost, and the fellow's wages or whatever he had got, and I told him, 'Dam-fi recollect, Johnny.' And he didn't say a word. Just strolled off as if he'd talked himself tired--which I guess maybe he had." "Well, but dad, what do you _suppose_ he's going to do? He--he's awfully queer since he was hurt. Do you suppose--?" "Kitten," said her dad quietly, "when you're breaking a high-strung colt he sometimes sorta resents his schooling and sulks. Then you've just got to wait till he figures things out for himself a little. If you force him you're liable to spoil him and make him mean. Johnny's like that. He's just a high-strung human colt that life is breaking. I guess, kitten, we better not crowd him right now." "Well, I don't see why he should act that way with _me_," Mary V complained, and thereby proved herself altogether human and feminine in her point of view. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE SKYRIDER "HAS FLEW"! Just at dawn the humming of the airplane motor woke Mary V. She sat up in bed and listened, a little fear gripping at her heart; a fear which she fought with her reason, her hopes, and all her natural optimism. Surely Johnny would not be foolish enough to attempt a flight that morning. He must be just trying put the motor. He would know he was not yet in condition to bear any physical or nervous strain, sick as he had been. Of course he wouldn't be so selfish as to make a flight without so much as asking her if she would like to go with him. He knew she was simply crazy over flying.