That person _hoped_ she was smarter than Johnny Jewel, and to prove it she would find out what it was he was trying to be so secret about.

And then she would confront him with the proof, and then where would he be?
She certainly owed it to the outfit--to her dad--to find out what was going on.

There was no use, she told herself virtuously, in worrying her dad about it until she knew just exactly what that miserable Johnny Jewel was up to.

Poor dad had enough to worry about without filling his mind with suspicious and mysterious men with fake colds, and things like that.
Mary V unsaddled a very sweaty Jake before the sky was reddening with the dawn; before even the earliest of little brown birds were a-chirp or a rooster had lifted his head to crow.
She wakened Tango with the bridle, slapped her saddle on him and tightened it with petulant jerks, got her rifle and her camera out from under the sacks, mounted and rode away again before even the cook had crawled out of his blankets..