Perversely she blamed Johnny Jewel for putting her to all this trouble
and discomfort, and for interrupting her in her work of getting Desert
Glimpses. She repeatedly told herself that he would not even have the
common human instinct to feel grateful toward her for riding away down
there to see if he were murdered.

She was right in that conjecture, at least. When she rode up to the
squat adobe cabin, somewhere near noon, she found Johnny Jewel stretched
morosely on his back, staring up at the low roof and thinking the
gloomiest thoughts which a lonesome young man of twenty-one or two may
conjure from a fit of the blues. That he was not murdered or even menaced
with any danger seemed to Mary V a personal grievance against herself
after that terrifically hot ride.

Johnny turned a gloomy glance upon her when she walked in and sat down
limply on the one chair in the cabin; but he did not show any keen
pleasure in her presence, nor any gratitude.

"Well! You're still alive, then!" she said rather crossly.

"I guess I am. Why?" Johnny, his meditations disturbed by her coming,
rose languidly and sat upon the side of his bunk, slouched forward with
his arms resting across his strong young legs and his glance inclined to
the floor.

"Oh, nothing." Mary V took off her hat, but she was too fagged to fan
herself with it. Her one emotion, at that moment, was an overwhelming
regret that she had come. If Johnny Jewel had the nerve to think that she
wanted to see _him_--