“Yo’ all ain’t quittin’?” Tex roused himself to ask. “Not over a little josh? Say, you’re layin’ yoreself wide open to more of the same. Yo’ all wants to take it the way it’s meant, Skyrider. Listen here, boy, if yo’ all wants to git away from the ranch right now, why don’t yo’ all speak for to stay at Sinkhole camp? Yo’ all could have mo’ time to write po’try an’ study up on flyin’ machines, down there. And Pete, he’s aimin’ to quit the first. He don’t like it down there.”
Johnny dropped the letters back into his suitcase and sat down on the side of his bed to smoke. His was not the nature to hold a grudge, and Tex seemed to be friendly. Still, his youthful dignity had been very much hurt, and by Tex as much as the other boys. He gave him a supercilious glance.
“I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m a quitter,” he said pettishly. “First I knew that a bunch of rough-necks could kid me out of a job. Go down to Sinkhole yourself, if you’re so anxious about that camp. Furthermore,” he added stiffly, “it’s nobody’s business but mine what I write or study, or where I write and study. So don’t set there trying to look wise, Tex—telling me what to do and how to do it. You can’t put anything over on me; your work is too raw. Al-to-gether too raw!”
He glanced sidewise at a circular letter he had dropped, picked it up and began reading it slowly, one eye squinted against the smoke of his cigarette, his manner that of supreme indifference to Tex and all his kind. Johnny could be very, very indifferent when he chose.
He did not really believe that Tex was trying to put anything over on him; he just said that to show Tex he didn’t give a darn one way or the other. But Tex seemed to take it seriously, and glowered at Johnny from under his black eyebrows that had a hawklike arch.
“What yo’ all think I’m trying to put over? Hey? What yo’ all mean by that statement?”
Johnny looked up, one eye still squinted against the smoke. The other showed surprise back of the indifference. “You there yet?” he wanted to know. “What’s the big idea? Gone to roost for the night?”
Tex leaned toward him, waggling one finger at Johnny. The outer end of his eyebrows were twitching—a sign of anger in Tex, as Johnny knew well.
“What yo’ all got up yore sleeve—saying my work is raw! What yo’ all aimin’ at? That’s what I’m roostin’ here to learn.”
Johnny fanned away the smoke and gave a little chuckle meant to exasperate Tex, which it did.
“I guess the roosting’s going to be pretty good,” he said. “You better send cookee word to bring your meals to yuh, Tex. Because if you roost there till I tell yuh, you’ll be roosting a good long while!” He got up and lounged out, his hands in his pockets, his well-shaped head carried at a provocative tilt. He heard Tex swear under his breath and mutter something about making the darned little runt come through yet, whereat Johnny grinned maliciously.
Halfway to the corral, however, Johnny’s steps slowed as though he were walking straight up to a wall. The wall was there, but it was mental, and it was his mind that halted before it, astonished.
What had touched Tex off so suddenly when Johnny had flung out that meaningless taunt? Meaningless to Johnny—but how about Tex?
“Gosh! He took it like a guilty conscience,” said Johnny. “What the horn-toad has Tex been doin’?”
JOHNNY GOES GAILY ENOUGH TO SINKHOLE
Johnny Jewel, moved by the fluctuating determination of the young, went to bed that night fully resolved that he would not quit a good job just because untoward circumstance compelled him to herd with a bunch of brainless clowns. He, who had a definite aim in life, would not permit that aim to be turned aside because various and sundry roughneck punchers thought it was funny to go around yelping like a band of coyotes. Mary V, too—he did not neglect to include Mary V. Indeed, much of his determination to remain was born of his desire to crush that insolent young woman with polite, pitying toleration.
Even when the boys trooped in and began to compose what they believed to be rhymes, Johnny did not weaken. He turned his face to the wall and ignored them. Poor simps, what more could you expect? They went so far as to attempt some poetizing on the subject of Johnny’s downfall in the corral, but no one seemed able to eliminate the word bronk at the end of the first line, “Johnny tried to ride a bronk.” No one seemed able, either, to find any rhyme but honk. They tried ker-plunk, and although that seemed to answer the purpose fairly well, they were far from satisfied.
So was Johnny, but he would not say a word to save their lives. In spite of himself he heard a howl of glee when some genius among them declaimed loudly: “Johnny volluped into Job’s Coffin, and Venus she most died a-lawfin!”
Johnny gave a grunt of contempt, and the genius, who happened to be Bud, lifted his head off the pillow and stared at the black shadow where Johnny lay curled up like a cat.
“What’s the matter with that, Skyrider? Kain’t I make up po’try if I want to?”
“Sure. Help yourself—you poor fish. Vollup! Hunh!” The contempt was even more pronounced than before.
“Well? What’s the matter with that? You said it yourself. And look out how you go peddlin’ names around here. You think nobody knows anything but you! You’re the little boy that invented flyin’—got the idea from yore own head, by thunder, when it swelled up like a balloon with self-conceit! That there gas-head of yourn’ll take yuh right up amongst the clouds some day, and you won’t need no flyin’ machine, neither! Skyrider—is—right!” Accidentally Johnny had touched Bud’s self-esteem in a tender spot. “And that’s no kidding, either!” he clinched his meaning. “Punch a hole in yore skelp, and I’ll bet that big haid of yourn would wizzle all up like them red balloons they sell at circuses! You—”
“Hm-m-m! Just so it ain’t all solid bone like yours,” Johnny came back at him with youth’s full quota of scorn. “Keep away from pool rooms, Bud. Somebody is liable to take your head off and use it for a cue-ball. Vollup! Hunh!”
Bud said more; a great deal more. But Johnny flopped over on the other side, buried his head under the blankets, and let them talk. Cue-balls—that was all their heads were good for. So why concern himself over their senseless patter?
It occurred to him, just before he went to sleep, that the unmistakable, southern drawl of Tex was missing from the jumble of voices. Tex, he remembered, had been unusually silent at supper, also, and twice Johnny had caught Tex watching him somberly. But he could think of no possible reason why Tex should want him to go down to Sinkhole Camp, and he could not see how either of them could effect the change even if Johnny had cared to go. Sudden Selmer did not ask his men what was their desire. Sudden gave orders; his men could obey or they could quit. And if Pete left, as Tex had hinted, Sudden would send some one down there, and that would be an end of it. There was just about one chance in six that Johnny Jewel would be the man to go.
Yet it so happened that Johnny did go—though Tex had nothing to do with it, so far as Johnny could see. For all his determination to stay and tolerate his companions, noon found him packed and out by the gate that opened on the stage road, waiting to flag the stage and buy a ride to town. He had accomplished, since breakfast, two fights and another quarrel with Mary V over that infernal jingle he had written. And though Johnny could not see it, Tex had had something to do with them all.
Tex was not one of these diabolically cunning villains. He did not consider himself any kind of a villain. He accepted himself more or less contentedly as a poor, striving young man who wanted to get ahead in the world and was eager to pick up what