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.