FullReads

Thus one half hour. The speedometer dial showed the figures 29,260. I allowed myself to think of a possible late lunch at my friend’s ranch.

We slowed down. The driver advanced the hand throttle the full sweep of the quadrant, steered with his knees, and produced the “makings.” The faithful little motor continued to hit on all four, but in slow and painful succession, each explosion sounding like a pistol shot. We had passed already the lowest point of the “sink,” and were climbing the slope on the other side. The country, as usual, looked perfectly level, but the motor knew different.

“I like to hear her shoot,” said the driver, after his first cigarette. “That’s why I chucked the muffler. Its plumb lonesome out yere all by yourself. A hoss is different.”

“Who you riding for?”

“Me? I’m riding for me. This outfit is mine.”

It didn’t sound reasonable; but that’s what I heard.

“You mean you drive this car–as a living—-“

“Correct.”

“I should think you’d get cramped!” I burst out.

“Me? I’m used to it. I bet I ain’t missed three days since I got her–and that’s about a year ago.”

He answered my questions briefly, volunteering nothing. He had never had any trouble with the car; he had never broken a spring; he’d overhauled her once or twice; he averaged sixteen actual miles to the gallon. If I were to name the car I should have to write advt. after this article to keep within the law. I resolved to get one. We chugged persistently along on high gear; though I believe second would have been better.

Presently we stopped and gave her a drink. She was boiling like a little tea kettle, and she was pretty thirsty.

“They all do it,” said Bill. Of course his name was Bill. “Especially the big he-ones. High altitude. Going slow with your throttle wide open. You’re all right if you got plenty water. If not, why then ketch a cow and use the milk. Only go slow or you’ll git all clogged up with butter.”

We clambered aboard and proceeded. That distant dreamful mesa had drawn very near. It was scandalous. The aloof desert whose terror, whose beauty, whose wonder, whose allure was the awe of infinite space that could be traversed only in toil and humbleness, had been contracted by a thing that now said 29,265.

“At this rate we’ll get there before six o’clock,” I remarked, hopefully.

“Oh, this is County Highway!” said Bill.

As we crawled along, still on high gear–that tin car certainly pulled strongly–a horseman emerged from a fold in the hills. He was riding a sweat-covered, mettlesome black with a rolling eye. His own eye was bitter, and likewise the other features of his face. After trying in vain to get the frantic animal within twenty feet of our mitrailleuse, he gave it up.

“Got anything for me?” he shrieked at Bill.

Bill leisurely turned off the switch, draped his long legs over the side of the car, and produced his makings.

“Nothing, Jim. Expaicting of anything?”

“Sent for a new grass rope. How’s feed down Mogallon way?”

“Fair. That a bronco you’re riding?”

“Just backed him three days ago.”

“Amount to anything?”

“That,” said Jim, with an extraordinary bitterness, “is already a gaited hoss. He has fo’ gaits now.”

“Four gaits,” repeated Bill, incredulously. “I’m in the stink wagon business. I ain’t aiming to buy no hosses. What four gaits you claim he’s got?”

“Start, stumble, fall down and git up,” said Jim.

Shortly after this joyous rencontre we topped the rise, and, looking back, could realize the grade we had been ascending.

The road led white and straight as an arrow to dwindle in perspective to a mere thread. The little car leaped forward on the invisible down grade. Again I anchored myself to one of the top supports. A long, rangy fowl happened into the road just ahead of us, but immediately flopped clumsily, half afoot, half a-wing, to one side in the brush, like a stampeded hen.