Johnny's eyes flew wide open. Then he laughed to cover his embarrassment. "You're not up on sky-riding, are you, Mary V? I'll have to train you a little. I expect to 'vollup, bank and la-and,' coming back."
"Poor Bud isn't singing to-day. A bronk slammed him against the fence and hurt his leg so he's going around with a limp. What is that contraption, for gracious sake?"
"That? Why, that's a travois. You ask Sandy what it is, though, and he'll give you a different name, I reckon. Sandy's beginning to think life is just one thing after another. But he's getting educated."
Surreptitiously they eyed each other.
"Why do you buy your gas that way?" Mary V inquired with extreme casualness. "It's a lot cheaper if you get a drum, the way we do."
"I know; but it's a lot harder to handle a drum too. Besides—" Johnny broke his speech abruptly, hiding his confusion by straining to carry a case over to the travois.
Mary V studied his reply carefully, keeping silence until Johnny had loaded the other cases and was roping them to the travois frame.
"Is that Bland Halliday with you yet?" she asked him suddenly.
"Yeh—er—how do you know anything about Bl—" Johnny was plainly swept off his guard.
"Why, why shouldn't I know about BL?" Mary V's smile was exasperating. "I've seen Bland Halliday fly—and fall, too, once. Because he was drunk, they said. I've seen him drunk, and trying to do figure eights with a car on Wilshire Boulevard. He almost put me in the ditch, trying to dodge him. He was arrested for that, and his car was taken away from him. And I've heard—oh, all kinds of scandal about him. I was awfully surprised at your taking up with him. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Johnny Jewel."