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?"