Chapter 4

A THING THAT SETS LIKE A HAWK

Six days are not many when they are lived with companions and the numberless details of one's everyday occupation. They may seem a month if you pass them in jail, or in waiting for some great event,--or at Sinkhole Camp, down near the Border.

Three days of the six Johnny spent in familiarizing himself with the two or three detached horse herds that watered along the meager little stream that sunk finally under a ledge and was seen no more in Arizona. He counted the horses as best he could while they loitered at their watering places, and he noticed where they fed habitually--also that they ranged far and usually came in to water in the late afternoon or closer to dusk, when the yellow-jackets that swarmed along the muddy banks of the stream did not worry them so much, nor the flies that were a torment.

He reported by telephone to his employer, who seemed relieved to know that everything was so quiet and untroubled down at that end of his range. And once, quite inadvertently, he reported to Mary V; or was going to, when he recognized a feminine note in the masculine gruffness that spoke over the wire. And when she found he had discovered her:

"Oh, Johnny! I've thought of another verse!" she began animatedly.

Johnny hung up, and although the telephone rang twice after that he would not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the ranch, but now he thanked heaven, emphatically enough to make up for any lack of sincerity, that he was where he was.

He got out his aviation circulars again and went over them one by one, though he could almost repeat them with his eyes' shut. He tried to dream of future greatness, but instead he could only feel depressed and hopeless. It would take a long, long time to save enough money to learn the game. And the earning was dreary work at best. The little adobe cabin became straightway a squalid prison, the monotonous waste around him a void that spread like a great, impassable gulf between himself and the dreams he dreamed. He wished, fervently and profanely, that the greasers would try to steal some horses, so that he could be doing something.

People thought the Border was a tumultuous belt of violence drawn from Coast to Gulf, he meditated morosely. They ought to camp at Sinkhole for awhile. Why, he could ride in an hour or two to Mexico--and see nothing more than he could see from the door of his cabin. He wished he could see something. A fight--anything that had action in it. But the revolution, boiling intermittently over there, did not so much as float a wisp of steam in his direction.

He wished that he had not "hung up" on Mary V before he had told her a few things. He couldn't see why she didn't leave him alone. The Lord knew he was willing to leave her alone.

A few days