Yet she was considered a very resolute young woman by those who knew her most intimately.
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.