There the matter was dropped. Nevertheless, Johnnie had then formed a certain firm conviction, which he continued to hold. It was that Cis was lacking in loyalty to the old doll (forgetting that only recently he had hurled Letitia headfirst into the tiny room). By the end of March Johnnie had begun to fret about One-Eye. He missed the cowboy sadly; and what made the latter's absence seem all the harder to bear was the belief that his friend was back in New York again, yet was not visiting the flat because he was, for some reason, displeased. With Cis?--about that new doll--or what? "He's mad about somethin',"--Johnnie vowed it over and over. "He said he'd be gone a few days. But that was _months_ ago." Cis denied that she had anything to do with One-Eye's staying away. She missed him, too; or, rather, she felt the loss of those almost nightly gifts of fruit and sweets. As for Barber, he had no more good cigars to smoke before his fellow longshoremen. And his lunch pail lacked oranges and bananas at noontime, and had to be filled with prunes. Altogether, the cowboy's failure to return worked a general hardship. "Oh, why don't he write me again?" mourned Johnnie. These days he secretly enjoyed any glimpse of Edwarda, and would even steal into Cis's room sometimes to peep at her. She made him feel sure that One-Eye had really once been there with them--as did also the letter and the blue handkerchief. Johnnie lightened his heart with all this testimony. For it was often difficult for him to feel any more certain about the cowboy than he did about his four millionaires, or Sir Galahad, say, or Uncas, or Goliath, or Crusoe. He could revel gloriously in make-believe, yes; but perhaps for this very reason he found himself terribly prone to doubt facts! And as each day went by, he came to wonder more and more about the reality of One-Eye, though the passing time as steadily added romantic touches to the figure of the Westerner. Often at night Johnnie held long conversations with him, confessing how much he missed him, thanking him for past favors, begging him to return. "Oh, One-Eye, _are_ y' mad at me?" he would implore. And if there were stars framed by the window, they would dance as the gray eyes swam. Whenever he roved hither and thither, hunting for boxes, he was really hunting his friend. He kept close watch of the men who passed him, always hoping earnestly that one day he might catch sight of One-Eye. He brought home only one box at a time. At first if some grocer gave him a large one, so that he had more wood than was needed to start the morning fire, he burned his surplus, so that he would have to go out again the following day. Later on he gave the extra sticks to Mrs. Kukor, tying them into a Robinson Crusoe bundle, like fagots, and sending them up to the little Jewish lady via the kitchen window when she let down a string. The two had a special signal for all this; they called it the "wood sign."