It was the point; his wistful smile had been so persuasive that I had almost forgotten it. Fortunately this reason convinced him without further arguing. He gave us directions about our route, and we left him, hat off, smiling and waving us bon voyage.
Crossing a state line is an adventure in itself. Even with no apparent difference of landscape there seems inevitably a change, if only the slight psychological variance reflected by any country whose people are marked off from their neighbors by differences however slight. The universe reflects many distinctions, I firmly believe, so subtle as to be undefined by our five senses, which we note with that sixth sense finer than any. Their intangible flavor piques the analyst to the nice game of description. Hardly had we crossed the political line dividing sand and sage brush from sage brush and sand before we sensed New Mexico;—a new wildness, a hint of lawlessness, a decade nearer the frontier, Old Spain enameled on the wilderness.
Or perhaps it was only Mrs. Flanagan, with her Mexican face and Irish brogue, when we stopped to buy gas, whose longing to have us for guests at her hotel made her paint the dangers of New Mexico with Hibernian fluency and Iberian guile. She thickened the coming twilight with sand storms, bandit shapes and murders.
“Do ye know what a sandstor’rm is in these parts? Ye do not! I thought not! Last month a car left here to cross the desert to Deming, as ye’re doing. Late afternoon it was,—just this hour, the wind in the same place. I war’rned thim to stay, but they w’d be gettin’ along,—like yourselves.”
“And what became of them?”
She gave us a look that froze the blood in our veins, despite the scorching wind from the edge of the desert.
“Yes, what did become av thim? That’s what many would like to know. They have not been heard of since!”
“You would advise us to stay here for the night, then?”
“Suit yourselves, suit yourselves. I see your rad-aytor’s leakin’. ’Tis a serious thing to get out in that desert, miles fr’m anywhere wid an impty rad-ayator. What could ye do, an’ night comin’ on? Ye’re hilpless! An’ suppose ye get lost? The road’s not marked. ’Tis a mass of criss-cross tracks leadin’ iverywhere. At best, ye’d have to stop where ye are till mornin’, if ye don’t git too far lost ever t’ find y’rselves again.”
Here entered a Gentleman from Philadelphia, a traveler for Quaker Oats, who listened to our debate with great interest. He was a brisk and businesslike young man, with a friendly brown eye and a brotherly manner.