Johnny, listening while he led the way down a blind trail to the bottom, caught a word now and then and decided that Bland Halliday must surely be what he claimed to be, or he would choose different terms for his troubles.

He would not, for instance, be wondering all the while what would happen if Sandy did a side-slip; nor would he have openly feared a "pancake" at the landing.
Johnny let the horses drink at a water hole, permitted the fellow five minutes or so in which to make sure that he was alive and that aches did not necessarily mean broken bones, and led the way on down that small canon and out across the level toward another gulch, heading straight for Sinkhole much as a burdened ant goes through, over, or under whatever lies in its path.
It was a very good way to reach home quickly, but it had one drawback which Johnny could not possibly have foreseen.

It brought him face to face with Mary V without any chance at all of retreating unseen or making a detour.
The three horses stopped, as range horses have a habit of doing when they meet like that.

The riders stared for a space.

Then Bland Halliday turned his attention to certain raw places on his person, trying to ease them by putting all his weight on what he termed the foot-controls.