"Just who is this confidential informant, anyway, Ole?" Elshawe asked curiously.
Winstein grinned widely. "It's supposed to be very confidential. I don't want it to get any further than you."
"Sure not. Since when am I a blabbermouth? Who is it?"
"Malcom Porter."
Two days later, Terrence Elshawe was sitting in the front seat of a big station wagon, watching the scenery go by and listening to the driver talk as the machine tooled its way out of Silver City, New Mexico, and headed up into the Mogollon Mountains.
"Was a time, not too long back," the driver was saying, "when a man couldn't get up into this part of the country 'thout a pack mule. Still places y'can't, but the boss had t' have a road built up to the ranch so's he could bring in all that heavy equipment. Reckon one of these days the Mogollons 'll be so civilized and full a people that a fella might as well live in New York."
Elshawe, who hadn't seen another human being for fifteen minutes, felt that the predicted overcrowding was still some time off.
"'Course," the driver went on, "I reckon folks have t' live some place, but I never could see why human bein's are so all-fired determined to bunch theirselves up so thick together that they can't hardly move—like a bunch of sheep in a snowstorm. It don't make sense to me. Does it to you, Mr. Skinner?"
That last was addressed to the other passenger, an elderly man who was sitting in the seat behind Elshawe.