"'Twill discommode me, but 'pon honor, I like your honest simple face, and I won't desert you. Besides! I know a guy in Kalispell, and I can panhandle the sordid necessary chuck while I wait for you. Little you know, my cockerel, how facile a brain your 'bus so lightly bears. When I've cashed in on the mine, I'll take my rightful place among the motored gentry. Not merely as actor and spieler, promoter and inventor and soldier and daring journalist, have I played my rôle, but also I am a mystic, an initiate, a clairaudient, a psychometrist, a Rosicrucian adept, and profoundly psychic—in fact, my guide is Hermes Trismegistus himself! I also hold a degree as doctor of mento-practic, and my studies in astro-biochemistry——"
"Gonna stop. All off. Make little coffee," said Milt.
He did not desire coffee, and he did not desire to stop, but he did desperately desire not to inflict Pinky Parrott upon the Boltwoods. It was in his creed as a lover of motors never to refuse a ride to any one, when he had room. He hoped to get around his creed by the hint implied in stopping. Pinky's reaction to the hint was not encouraging:
"Why, you have a touch of the psychic's flare! I could do with coffee myself. But don't trouble to make a fire. I'll do that. You drive—I do the camp work. Not but that I probably drive better than you, if you will permit me to say so. I used to do a bit of racing, before I took up aviation."
"Huh! Aviation! What machine d'you fly?"
"Why, why—a biplane!"
"Huh! What kind of motor?"
"Why, a foreign one. The—the—— It was a French motor."
"Huh! What track you race on?"
"The—— Pardon me till I build a fire for our al fresco collation, and I my driving history will unfold."