Skyrider | Page 4

on the chin and filled his mouth so that he nearly choked, and a
jagged pebble that hit Aleck just over the ear a glancing blow that sent
him reeling. The third was aimed at Bill, but Bill ducked in time, and
the rock went on over his head and very nearly laid out Mary V's father,
he whom the boys called "Sudden" for some inexplicable reason.
Mary V's father dodged successfully the rock, saw a couple of sheets of
paper lying on the ground, and methodically picked them up before he
advanced to where his men were trying to appear very busy with the
horses, or with their ropes, or with anything save what had held their
attention just previous to his coming.
All save Johnny, who was too mad to care a rap what old Sudden
Selmer thought of him or did to him. He went straight up to the boss.
"I'll thank you for that paper," he said hardily. "It's mine, and the boys
have been acting the fool with it."
"Yeh? They have?" Selmer turned from the first page and read the
second without any apparent emotion. "You write that?"
Johnny flushed. "Yes, sir, I did. Do you mind letting--"
"That what I heard them yawping here in the corral?" Selmer folded the
paper with care, his fingers smoothing out the wrinkles and pausing to

observe the place where Mary V had torn off a corner.
"Poets and song birds on the pay roll, eh? Thought I hired you boys to
handle horses." Having folded the papers as though they were to be
placed in an envelope, Sudden held the verses out to Johnny. "As
riders," he observed judicially, "I know just about what you boys are
worth to me. As poets and singers, I doubt whether the Rolling R can
find use for you. What capacity do I find you in, Curley? Director of
the orchestra, or umpire?"
Curley climbed shamefacedly off the fence and picked up his rope. The
business of taming bronks was resumed in a dead silence broken only
by the trampling of the horses and a muttered oath now and then. A
lump over Aleck's ear was swelling so that the hair lifted there, and
Bud limped and sent scowling glances at Johnny Jewel. Tex spat dirt
off his tongue and scowled while he did it; indeed, no eyes save those
of little Curley seemed able to look upon Johnny with a kindly light.
Mary V's father stood dispassionately watching them for five minutes
or so before he turned back to the gate. Not once had he smiled or
shown any emotion whatever. But he had a new story to tell his friends
in the clubs of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles. And whenever he
told it, Sudden Selmer would repeat what he called _The Skyrider's
Dream_ from the first verse to Mary V's last--even unto Bud's
improvisation. He would paint Johnny's bombardment of the choir
practice until his audience could almost hear the thud of the rocks when
they landed. He would describe the welt on Aleck's head, the exact
shade of purple in Curley's face when his boss called him off the fence.
He would not smile at all during the recital, but his audience would
shout and splutter and roar, and when he paused as though the story
was done, some one would be sure to demand more.
Then a little twitching smile would show at the corner of Sudden's lips,
and he would drawl whimsically: "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