said, "Wait till you've been in the game as long as I have," had Johnny
realized to the full just what it would mean to him to part with his
airplane without being accepted by the government as an aviator.

At the Rolling R, when his conscience debt to Sudden pressed so
heavily, he had figured very nicely and had found the answer to his
problem without much trouble. To enlist as an aviator with his
airplane, or to sell the plane in Tucson, turn the proceeds over to
Sudden to pay his debt and enlist as an aviator without the machine,
had seemed perfectly simple. Either way would be making good the
mistakes of his past and paving the way for future achievements.
Parting with the plane had not promised to so wrench the very heart out
of him when he fully expected to fly faster and farther in airplanes
owned by the government; faster and farther toward the goal of all
red-blooded young males: glory or wealth, the hero's wreath of laurel
or the smile of dame Fortune.

Mary V stood on the heights waiting for him, as Johnny had planned and
dreamed. He would come back to her a captain, maybe--perhaps even a
major, in these hot times of swift achievement. They would all be
proud to shake his hand, those jeering ones who called him Skyrider for
a joke. Captain Jewel would not have sounded bad at all. But--

There is no dodging the finality of Uncle Sam's no. They had not
wanted Johnny Jewel to fly for fame and his country's honor. And if he
sold his own airplane, how then would he fly? How could he ever hope
to be in the game as long as Bland had been? How could he do anything
but go back meekly to the Rolling R Ranch and ride bronks for Mary V's
father, and be hailed as Skyrider still, who had no more any hope of
riding the sky?