This chapter would have ended with a glorious fight out there under the moon, because Johnny would not have stopped to count noses before he started in on them.
But even though horse thieves are riding boldly and laughing as they ride, you cannot expect the bullets to fly when honest men have not yet discovered that they are being robbed.

Johnny never dreamed that duty called him out on the range that night.

He went to bed with his brain a whirligig in which airplanes revolved dizzily, and the marauders rode unhindered to wherever they were going.

Thus do dramatic possibilities go to waste in real life..